Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Depression, guys ilya's POV is so sad i'm so sorry, Getting Together, Love Confessions, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Idiots in Love, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Not Beta Read, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of all this and heaven too

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-02 Completed: 2026-03-28 Words: 21,725 Chapters: 3/3

it has a language of its own

Summary

Ilya learns very young that he has a soulmate.

Ilya's POV of the heart is hard to translate.

Notes

Hi everyone!

Thank you so, SO much for the love on the heart is hard to translate. I am still in awe of how many people loved it. I had from the very beginning tossed around the idea of doing an Ilya POV, and after all the love the first part received, I knew I had to do it.

WARNING: this one is much angstier. It goes over some of Ilya’s childhood in Russia, which includes: homophobia, implied conversion therapy, verbal abuse, and suicide.

There’s also a bit about the 1996 Olympics. I know that the events described wouldn’t be airing in the middle of the day in Russia (they would actually be in the middle of the night), but we’re all going to ignore that, okay?

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Ilya learns very young that he has a soulmate.

He is five, not yet in school, and his father is at work, and Alexei in primary school. He and his mother are watching the Summer Olympics, Ilya tucked into her side on the couch.

Ilya has seen very little of the Olympics this year. There’s no hockey in these ones, which is the one sport he would maybe like to watch. But he likes the gymnastics events, especially the ones with music. His father doesn’t usually let them watch those, so it’s a special treat when his mother puts it on.

On the screen, an American girl is getting ready to vault. Ilya doesn’t know the details, but everyone is certainly acting like this is an important event. Even his mother, who only ever watches casually, seems antsy to see how this girl does.

The announcers say this girl is what stands between Russia and the gold medal. They talk about her like she is the enemy, but Ilya thinks she looks perfectly nice.

The girl starts running. Everything seems to go well, but when she lands, she looks hurt. She hops on one foot as she is surrounded by coaches, who immediately help her off the mat. As they pick her up, her score is announced.

She won. Russia lost.

Ilya looks up at his mother, trying to see if she is as disappointed as the announcers. But she has a hand over her mouth, brows pinched.

Ilya looks to the TV, where the girl is now being carried by medical staff.

“It doesn’t look broken,” the camera’s microphone picks up, following the man and woman carrying the girl. “Probably a bad sprain.”

“I hope she didn’t break her ankle,” his mother sighs. She seems genuinely worried for the girl. Ilya is confused. Did she not hear what the man carrying her just said?

“Мама, don’t worry. They said it’s just a sprain,” Ilya tells her, pointing at the screen, where the girl is gritting her teeth as she is carried. His mother looks at him then, a question in her eyes.

“How do you know that, Ilyushka?”

“The man carrying her just said so, to the woman.” He points at the medical staff with the girl. His mom looks at the TV, then back at him.

“You heard him say that?” She asks. Ilya doesn’t understand why this is so confusing. Sure, it wasn’t said directly into a microphone, but he heard it clear as day.

“Yes, Мама.”

His mom just looks at him then, a mixture of awe and confusion. She looks around the room, as if to confirm they are alone, then looks back to Ilya.

“Hello, how are you?” she asks, and she sounds weird. Beyond the fact that it’s a weird thing to ask him, her voice sounds odd and accented in a way he can’t describe.

“I’m okay, Мама. Are you okay?”

His mom gasps, and Ilya sort of wants to cry. Why is she acting strange? But then she smiles, her teeth showing, her eyes lit up big and happy the way they only are around him. “You understand English, solnyshko!”

Ilya is confused, but then he is being hugged by his mom, and he is in his favorite place. She kisses his cheek, his forehead, his hair. She’s giving him the same excited reception that the American gymnasts on the TV are getting.

She explains, then, about soulmates. It’s something he was vaguely aware of, but now she explains it in greater detail, definitely too complex for his five-year-old mind to grasp. It’s confusing and weird, but eventually she puts it in simpler terms.

There is a girl somewhere who loves him, and because she loves him, he can understand her language, and she can understand his. He will love her someday, even if he has not met her yet. They will be best friends.

None of it sounds particularly interesting to him. He doesn’t really care about some girl he doesn’t even know. It’s cool that he can understand English, though. At least there’s that.

He looks at the TV, where the group of American gymnasts are now hugging and crying. He doesn’t want to watch the Olympics anymore. Maybe they can do a puzzle together instead.

“One last thing, Ilyushka,” his mother says later as he works on his puzzle. She looks scared now, and Ilya does not like it. “This is our secret. Do not tell your father.”

Ilya promises her. Her mistake, he later learns, is that she did not tell him to not tell his brother.

Ilya is seven when he finally tells Alexei his secret. He’s still young, and his brother is still his hero. 

Grigori is working late, and their mother is in bed, explaining that she is too tired to move. Ilya thinks she must be getting a cold or something.

Alexei is eleven and angry at the fact that he has to babysit Ilya even though their mother is technically home. He was supposed to hang out with friends after school, and now he’s stuck with his kid brother instead.

“It’s so stupid,” he grumbles as they walk home. “What am I even supposed to do with you?”

Ilya has some ideas, but Alexei shoots every single one down. They end up just sitting on the couch, watching TV. They have a new channel, MTV, and it plays music videos. Some are Russian, but others are international.

On the screen, a group of claymation fairies dance on a Rubik’s cube. The video is weird, but the song is actually very beautiful.

“What the fuck is this song even about?” Alexei asks, gesturing at the TV. It seems like more of a rhetorical question, but Ilya jumps at the opportunity to impress his brother.

“They’re singing about waiting for someone, it sounds like maybe they lost a love,” Ilya answers with a big smile.

Alexei looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “What? How are you getting that from this weird video?” 

“Not from the video, from the lyrics.”

Alexei’si brow furrows, like it does when he’s working on his math homework. He turns towards Ilya to face him fully. “They’re singing in English, Ilya.”

Ilya nods emphatically, excited that his brother is getting it. “I know!”

“You understand English,” Alexei says in disbelief. “You have a soulmate, Ilya?” For the first time all day, his brother actually looks interested in what he has to say. Ilya can barely contain his excitement.

“Мама told me it was a secret,” he shares. “But you’re my big brother, so I’m telling you.”

Later that night, after many angry words, Ilya’s father sends him to bed without dinner. Grigori screamed at him so much that Ilya didn’t have much of an appetite anyway, and he’s sort of relieved to escape to his room.

He lays in bed, but he can’t fall asleep. He can hear his parents arguing in the next room. Well, he can hear his father arguing. His mother doesn’t seem to say much. It gets quiet for a while, and Ilya thinks maybe they went to bed.

The next day, his father sits him down. His explanation of soulmates is much less romantic than his mother’s. His father explains that a soulmate is the person chosen for him by fate, and he does not get a say in the matter. 

It’s a status symbol in many circles, to have a soulmate. Many see it as a sign that fate has smiled upon them, like heaven itself has chosen them. His father explains that it is very special to be gifted a soulmate, and only the best people get the honor.

So I’m not sure why it chose you, he says. The words hit like a physical slap, mean and precise, burrowing deep under Ilya’s skin.

He’ll have to improve himself if he wants to deserve her, his father says. He needs to start taking hockey more seriously (he’s already captain of his team). He needs to start getting better grades in school (he’s one of the top students in his class). He needs to start learning English (he’s been trying, but it’s so hard).

The message is clear. Ilya was surely given a soulmate by mistake, because he doesn’t deserve one. But if he works hard and listens to his father, maybe someday he will.

They have a neighbor, an artist named Nikolai, who his mother is very close with. She never talks about him when Grigori is home, but sometimes when his father is at work and his brother is out with friends, she brings Ilya over to Nikolai’s house with her.

They sit and drink tea, and Nikolai always gives Ilya fancy paper and sticks of oil paint to draw with, a hobby Grigori adamantly forbids. It feels like a little secret between the three of them, an oasis in a blisteringly cold wasteland, where they can shed the layers of pretense and be their true selves. Ilya spends many happy afternoons laying on Nikolai’s floor, drawing flowers and animals and clouds, listening to the music of his mother’s laughter.

Nikolai has a roommate for a bit, a tall, friendly man named Ivan, and he is a happy addition to their group. Ivan likes to bake, and for a while their afternoons are accompanied by a variety of pastries and cakes.

But then one day Ivan is gone, and when he asks his mother what happened, she gives him a sad smile and says, “Ivan did not want to be a secret.” 

Ilya isn’t sure what that means, but it seems like the conversation is making her upset, so he drops it.

Then, three weeks after his twelfth birthday, Ilya finds his mother crying in her bathroom. It is not the quiet and subdued way she usually cries. It is brutal, visceral, verging on violent. He holds her as full-body sobs wrack her small frame, and soon Ilya is crying too, though he doesn’t know why.

“He’s gone,” she keeps saying. “He’s gone.”

Later, Ilya learns that Nikolai is no longer their neighbor. His father mentions it in passing, claiming that Nikolai is getting treatment for a “shameful condition.” Ilya asks his mother about it later, when they are alone, and he feels guilty when her eyes immediately fill with tears.

“He found his soulmate, Ilyushka. There is nothing shameful about it.” She gives him a weak smile, then a horrible sob breaks free. “At least, there shouldn’t be.”

He asks his father about Nikolai the next day, and Grigori scoffs when Ilya uses the word soulmate.

“He didn’t have a soulmate, he had a disgrace,” he sneers. It doesn’t escape his notice that his father is using past tense. “It’s unnatural, what he was. What he and his—” his father grimaces “soulmate were.”

Ilya starts to piece some things together, then. The way Nikolai always laughed off questions about when he was going to settle down with a wife; the way his mother was comfortable with him in a way she wasn’t with other men; his roommate Ivan. Ivan. Who was maybe, he realizes, not just a roommate.

But if the powers that be made Nikolai’s soulmate a man, then surely it can’t be as wrong or shameful as his father says? It’s special, sacred. “But I thought fate decides our soulmate, and we don’t have a choice?”

His father looks at him, his eyes filled with something cruel and hateful, his mouth an angry line. “Sometimes,” Grigori forces the words out like pus from a wound, “fate is wrong.”

Ilya doesn’t ask about Nikolai again.

There is a prestigious hockey camp in Canada, Ilya’s coach says. They have been invited to send someone from their team. Everyone knows it will be Ilya. He is the best player on the team. Maybe the best player on any team in their league.

Ilya is excited, for many reasons. He’s never been to an English-speaking country, for one. He doesn’t know how it will feel, being surrounded by so many people speaking English. His English lessons have been slow-going, much to the disappointment of his father, but he’s working hard at it.

And even with his limited English, Ilya will understand the other players, and that’s huge. He might not be able to answer quickly, or eloquently, but he will understand them.

He looks up the camp online. It’s in a city called Vancouver, and the camp’s website is set against the backdrop of the Vancouver skyline. There’s a video, and Ilya excitedly clicks play.

Welcome to Elite Ice Hockey, the video starts in English. We are an ice hockey organization dedicated to training the best to be the best.

Ilya smiles to himself as he listens. Because he is the best, despite what his father says. The video shows kids of all ages playing hockey, skating around a fancy rink in custom jerseys.

Welcome to Elite Ice Hockey, the video continues. Ilya is confused, why are they repeating this part? We are an ice hockey organization dedicated to training the best to be the best.

It takes him a second, but a smile breaks out across his face when Ilya figures it out. This part of the video is not in English. It’s in a different language. French, he’s pretty sure. He understands French. His soulmate speaks French!

He rushes into his parents’ bedroom, where his mother is laying in bed. She’s been in one of her moods lately, and this one has lasted longer than the others. She hasn’t been the same since Nikolai went away.

“Мама,” he shouts excitedly, jumping on the bed. If his father was home, he would be punished for such behavior. But it is just him and Мама, so he can be himself. “Мама, Мама, I understand French!”

His mom looks over at him, her eyes sunken and her face sallow. She is still the most beautiful woman Ilya has ever seen. She gives him a smile, and it is small, but it is there. Ilya feels like he could fly.

“That is wonderful, Ilyushka,” she replies, voice small and sad. “I am so proud of you.”

He feels like a little kid again, giddy and free. He tells his mother all about the camp, and how they speak French and English in Canada. His soulmate could be there. Probably not at the camp, the program is for boys only, but he could at least be in the same country as her.

His mom smiles as she listens, and eventually Ilya ends up laying with his head in her lap, his mother petting his hair. It is where he feels safest. For the first time in a long time, he feels hopeful.

Two weeks later, he finds his mother in this very same bed, limp and lifeless, and he thinks he’ll never feel safe again.

The grief numbs him, like a cold winter storm, but he forces his body to do what it must. He goes to the funeral, he shakes hands with his father’s friends, he stands next to the grave as they lower the casket.

A part of him, small and scared, looks for a familiar face among the crowd. It’s been months, but surely Nikolai would come to pay his respects? He was her closest confidant, and Ilya can’t imagine finding his soulmate would keep him from saying goodbye to his closest friend.

Nikolai doesn’t show up, though. Ilya knows, more than he’s ever known anything before, that if Nikolai knew what had happened, nothing could have stopped him from coming to the funeral. He thinks maybe Nikolai did not choose to go away.

Ilya doesn’t go to the camp. They send another boy on his team, Pyotr, instead.

Ilya does eventually make it to Canada five years later, but this time it’s for the World Juniors, and he is very different from the boy he was back then.

He’s still good at hockey, really good, but that might be the only thing about him that is the same. Where he was once a sensitive, kind boy, he is now hard and mean, all his soft edges sharpened into blades.

Now he wraps himself in barbed wire, keeps even his teammates at a distance. There are lots of people who consider him their friend, but he knows he only has one. Svetlana.

He met her a year after his mother died, when she and her parents moved into Nikolai’s old house. He was shy at first, but she was persistent. He kissed her for the first time when they were fifteen, and she smiled and kissed him back.

“We can kiss, but you should know,” she’d told him, “I have a soulmate who speaks English. So this can never be more.”

And what a relief that was to hear. He loved her, sure, but not in the way he thought he was probably supposed to.

She and her mother moved to America the next year, and now he mostly talks to her over the phone, or during the school breaks she spends with her father. He has one friend, and she is so far away.

He supposes he could call Sasha a friend, too, but that doesn’t feel right. Sasha is someone he fucks—an exciting diversion, yes, but not someone Ilya likes to talk to. They don’t do much talking.

He had hoped that maybe he would feel different at the World Juniors, but he feels lonely here too. His teammates are fine, but he isn’t close with any of them. And sure, he can understand the other players when they speak English or French, but he can’t talk to them.

Everything changes at the finals, though. He sneaks behind the rink to smoke, and he’s barely lit his cigarette when one of the Canadian players approaches him.

He knows this person, he realizes. Shane Hollander. The Canadian phenom whose name is always brought up alongside Ilya’s when discussing the hottest NHL prospects.

He is the most beautiful thing Ilya has ever seen. His freckles spill out across his cheeks like stars, and Ilya wants to map constellations with the tips of his fingers. He can’t look away.

“You can’t smoke here,” Shane says. Ah, okay. One of those. A stickler for the rules, Ilya’s least favorite type of person. Shane Hollander is boring. Pretty, but boring. Ilya nods at him and takes another drag from his cigarette.

“Um, the rink has rules against smoking,” Shane continues, miming smoking a cigarette. He looks flustered. Ilya kind of likes it. “Sorry, I don’t speak any Russian.”

He’s not sure what happens then. He usually avoids telling people about his soulmate, mostly because he worries they’ll agree with his father. You don’t deserve her. But looking at Shane, something in him breaks loose, a leak in the dam, and the truth spills out.

“Is okay. I understand English.”

He could stop there, pretend that he just means he has learned English. But against his better judgement, he lets the conversation continue.

“Right, yeah, of course. I wasn’t trying to comment on how well you speak—”

“No, not speak. I understand English. My soulmate speaks it,” he interrupts, and that shuts Hollander up. A furious blush breaks out across his cheeks, and Ilya’s dead heart feels like it’s coming back to life.

“Oh wow, I—that’s cool.” Hollander is scrambling. It’s very cute. “Do you—do you know her? I mean, do you—”

“I have not met her yet, no,” he answers with a shrug. Her. Not for the first time, Ilya wonders if that’s correct. He knows now that he’s attracted to both men and women. It’s entirely possible that his soulmate could be a man. The thought fills him with dread. Not out of shame, but out of fear.

Does Shane Hollander have a soulmate? He looks at Canada’s golden boy with curiosity, noticing the way Hollander tries to hide the tension in his body. But Ilya can see it, the way his shoulders drift upwards, the white knuckle grip on his coat.

Some secret part of him hopes Hollander has a soulmate. Maybe even one that speaks Russian, he thinks. He doesn’t want to examine that closer just yet.

“Do you have one?” Ilya asks, deciding to just be straight forward with it. He takes another drag of his cigarette.

“A cigarette? No, I don’t smoke, and even if I did you’re not supposed to smoke here,” Hollander replies, sounding annoyed. Ilya laughs, because Hollander is so cute and oblivious and he hasn’t felt this light in years.

“No, not a cigarette,” he smirks, and he notices the No Smoking sign behind him. He puts his cigarette out on it in the hopes it’ll annoy Hollander. “A soulmate.”

Hollander looks shocked at the question, and Ilya thinks that’s pretty revealing in and of itself. People without soulmates don’t react like that, he’s found. He watches, amused, as Hollander visibly schools his features back to nonchalant.

“Uh, yeah, I do,” he answers, sounding uncertain. “Haven’t met her yet, but she’s out there somewhere.”

Her. Hollander says it like he has to force the word out. Curious.

Over his (admittedly few, but not nonexistent) hookups with other boys in Russia, Ilya has had to develop the ability to quickly determine whether someone would be…amenable to that sort of arrangement. It’s for survival as much as it is for pleasure, and Ilya likes to think he’s gotten pretty good at it.

Shane Hollander, despite what he himself may think, is definitely not straight. Not entirely, at least. From the way he just made female pronouns sound like gallows, Ilya suspects maybe not at all.

“Don’t tell anyone, though,” Hollander adds in a rush. “It’s, uh, not something I like people to know about.”

Now this, Ilya is used to. He wasn’t going to ask the same of Hollander, because who the fuck would Hollander tell that would matter, but he finds it curious that Hollander doesn’t want other people to know.

“Ah, there goes my best gossip,” he jokes. “Was going to tell all of Russia that some random hockey player in Canada has soulmate.”

Hollander laughs at that, and Ilya is struck dumb by the sight and sound. It’s like the storm clouds hanging around Hollander’s head have cleared, and now the sun is revealed, blindingly bright.

Ilya smiles back, a real smile now, and he tries to think of something else to say. Anything to keep Hollander here, smiling at him like that. But Hollander tenses up again, the storm clouds returning.

He makes up some lame excuse about his team and dashes away, leaving Ilya standing in the cold with a half-smoked cigarette.

Maybe Shane Hollander isn’t as boring as he thought.

When Ilya gets back to Russia, he sneaks onto his father’s computer to look up Shane Hollander.

He types Shane Hollander French in the search bar. He doesn’t even pretend like it’s for any other reason. He knows why he’s wondering, he knows it’s stupid, and he doesn’t care.

Nothing comes up that helps. There’s some articles praising Hollander’s hockey skill, insisting he’s a surefire pick for the NHL draft, but nothing in terms of interviews or information about his life. Which makes sense, they haven’t even been drafted yet. One article mentions that Hollander is from Ottawa, and Ilya looks that up next.

The city isn’t officially bilingual, but he reads a statistic that over a third of the population there speak French. It’s definitely possible, then, that Hollander speaks French. 

He’s pretty sure his soulmate speaks Canadian French, based on his research. The same website includes another statistic: about a fifth of the Canadian population is fluent in French. Over seven million people.

The odds are not in his favor, it seems. He rubs the skin behind his right ear, where a soulmark will eventually appear. His soulmate is not just one in a million. They’re one in seven million.

He closes the browser and shuts off his father’s computer. This is stupid and pointless. Sure, his soulmate is probably Canadian, but there is no way it’s Shane Hollander.

Despite his best efforts, Ilya can’t stop thinking about Hollander.

He goes on dates, sleeps with several very beautiful women, uses his fake ID to get into clubs, but no matter what he does, when he closes his eyes at the end of the night, he dreams of strong arms, curved lips, and freckles. Those stupid fucking freckles. He’s haunted by them.

When hook ups can’t distract him, Ilya tries to focus on other things. He works even harder to build his English fluency, even though the soulmate thing has always made that process so difficult. He throws himself into hockey, running constant drills at the rink.

But none of it works. On draft day, he scans the crowd for Hollander, desperate to see him and desperate not to admit it.

When Ilya gets drafted first, he is delighted by the angry, sour face Hollander makes. They’ve both just been drafted to the NHL, they are the top prospects, and yet Hollander looks like an angry kitten. 

After a quick photo, they’re both whisked away to schmooze with various NHL personalities and journalists. Ilya tries to redirect his focus. To Grigori’s credit, he does help there. Because when he talks about Ilya, he makes him sound lazy, immature, and stupid.

He was the first fucking draft pick, but his father thinks he’s lazy. He can’t even throw him a fucking congratulations. Ilya is so angry he sees red.

Later that night, he can’t sleep, his mind a swirl of the draft, his father’s disappointment, and, yes, Shane Hollander. Goddamnit.

He gets out of bed, throwing on athletic gear and heading down to the hotel gym. Maybe he can sweat Shane Hollander out of his system.

Except when he gets to the gym, Shane Hollander is there, riding an exercise bike. Because of course he is.

When they match each other’s speed, Ilya is pretty sure Hollander thinks they’re racing. But to Ilya it feels like they’re falling into sync, meeting each other at a place only they can go. It’s intoxicating.

And then, later, Hollander is drinking from his water bottle, and Ilya can only resist so much. He reminds himself that Hollander has a soulmate. Hell, Ilya has a soulmate. For all he knows, Hollander could’ve found her already.

Or Hollander could be his soulmate…

When he asks Hollander about his soulmate, he seems caught off guard. Ilya gets the sense that he doesn’t talk about “her” much. He’s a little jealous, to be honest. His father reminds him practically every day that he doesn’t deserve his soulmate.

Hollander confirms he hasn’t met his soulmate, and Ilya shares the same. “She’s probably in Canada, though,” he adds. He watches for Hollander’s reaction. It’s subtle, but Ilya catches it. Hollander is curious, and he doesn’t want to be. How interesting.

“Oh yeah? How do you know that?”

“She speaks English and French,” Ilya sighs. One of the main reasons he’d chosen the NHL instead of playing in Russia was that he could maybe meet his soulmate. And then he got drafted by an American team. Just his luck. “Canadian French, I think. Hard to tell, is weird.”

Something about what he said has spooked Hollander. He looks terrified, like Ilya pointed a gun at him. Hmm. Odd. Ilya wonders (hopes) whether Shane’s soulmate speaks another language.

Shane stands up, looking everywhere but at Ilya. “I should probably get back to my room.”

And then he’s gone. Ilya follows soon after, and as he jerks himself off in the shower, he lets himself indulge for the first time. He thinks of pretty freckles, a prominent cupid’s bow, athletic shorts riding up to show tantalizing glimpses of upper thigh.

He finishes in record time. It’s a good thing he’s alone, because it’s actually embarrassingly quick. He has a reputation for endurance, and here he is shooting off in less than a minute because he imagined Shane Hollander.

God, he’s fucked.

The thing is, Ilya becomes a little bit obsessed.

He can’t stop thinking about Shane Hollander, and it’s causing problems. They’re going to be playing against each other, the league is hyping them up as a huge new rivalry, and here Ilya is pining after him like a teen boy.

Well, technically he is a teen boy, but nineteen barely even counts.

He convinces himself that if he can just have Hollander once, he can get him out of his system and get back to normal. Wash his hands of this weird obsession. A one-time thing.

He has no doubts that he can make it happen. He saw how Hollander was looking at him in that hotel gym. He knows if he can just get Hollander alone, neither of them will be able to resist.

It ends up falling into his lap. They want him to shoot a commercial, and it’s so easy to suggest that they invite Hollander along to play up the rivalry. It’ll be great for promo. They’re immediately on board.

But shooting the commercial feels nothing like rivalry. It feels silly and exhilarating in a way that has Ilya struggling to look serious for the pictures. The air between them is electric.

And then there’s the showers, and Shane’s hotel room, and Shane’s mouth. Fuck, Shane’s mouth. He’s inexperienced but enthusiastic, and Ilya is mesmerized at the sight of those pink lips wrapping around him.

Fuck, he thinks as he finishes embarrassingly quickly (again). This is not going to be a one-time thing.

It is not a one-time thing.

When he and Hollander sit down for a press conference before the All-Star game, the cameras and reporters are the only things that keep Ilya from jumping his bones.

The press conference is easy, at first. Yes, he’s excited to play. Yes, he’s talked with his teammates. No, he isn’t worried about the skills competition.

But then a woman from the back stands up, and she looks like she means business. She asks her question with a confidence that makes Ilya suspect she’s from a major publication. Shit, this answer matters.

But the question is complex, and Ilya struggles to find the words. If he could just answer in Russian, he’d give her the perfect soundbyte. But instead the English slides around his head, slippery and elusive like an eel.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

And then, like a beautiful, freckled angel, Hollander steps in, giving the exact type of detailed answer that Ilya was struggling to phrase. When they come back to Ilya, he turns it into a joke. And even though he shouldn’t, he presses his foot against Hollander’s under the table.

Thank you, he thinks. That was kind, and I did nothing to deserve it.

He thanks Hollander out loud later, after they’ve gotten each other off in Ilya’s hotel room. “Thank you again, for earlier. Sometimes is hard to find the words in English. I am slow learner.” It’s embarrassing to admit, and he hates that Shane can see just how pathetic he is.

“No, no. Your English is really good. I know it’s hard to learn a language that your soulmate speaks.”

Ilya looks at him then, trying to decode the nervous expression on Hollander’s face. Does he know that because his soulmate speaks another language, and he’s attempted to learn it? Or does he just know a lot about soulmates in general?

“Do you hope that she’s doing the same? Learning Russian for you?”

The question catches Ilya off-guard. He’s never thought about it, really. But it can be hard, living in translation.

“I guess maybe. I know she will understand me no matter what language I speak. But sometimes it is nice to have conversation in Russian,” he says. “I only speak Russian with my father and brother. It would be nice to speak it with someone who—”

Who loves me, he thinks, and the words are made of broken glass.

“Someone who what?” Shane’s voice is gentle, kind. It makes Ilya want to lay down, put his head in his lap, let Shane’s warmth thaw the rime beneath his skin. But they don’t do that.

“Nevermind, is not important. It would be nice, but I would not blame her if she did not.” Ilya tries to sound unaffected, and hopes that Shane doesn’t notice the way his hands are shaking. He sits on them.

Learning English for him has always been a necessary burden, something he has to do to deserve his soulmate. But Shane talks about it like an act of devotion.

The rotten truth is that Ilya had resented his soulmate for a long time for making him learn English. It was hard, and tedious, and often felt impossible. He had to claw and scrape his way to fluency, an uphill climb buffeted by his soulmate’s native tongue.

When it was a faceless figure, it was hard to imagine the effort being worth it. But looking at Shane, Ilya thinks to himself that he finally understands. Shane speaks English, so Ilya is glad he can speak English.

Shane speaks French, too. Ilya has never once made the effort to learn French, but maybe he would for the right person. For Shane, his brain unhelpfully suggests. He shoves the thought down.

“You speak French, right?”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t use it as much as English, but I’m fluent,” Shane confirms. He pauses for a second before looking up at Ilya. “I can’t, like, teach you or anything. If that’s why you’re asking.”

“What? No, I don’t want you to teach me French.” Ilya is a bit frustrated that Shane isn’t getting it. Maybe he needs to be more direct. “Would you want your soulmate to learn French?”

Shane takes a moment to think about it, and Ilya waits patiently for his answer. He has a feeling it will determine whether or not he himself attempts to learn French, pathetically.

Shane finally speaks. “I think as long as she spoke English or French, it’d be fine. I don’t need her to speak both.”

Oh, thank god. Ilya really, really did not want to have to learn French.

Shane leaves then, but not before giving Ilya his phone number. They make plans to fuck in two weeks, and Ilya feels almost giddy at the thought of getting to fuck Shane Hollander. Which, fucking finally. He’s wanted to fuck Shane since the moment he saw him.

It’s like Ilya jinxes himself, because he doesn’t get to fuck Shane until two years later.

He’s fucked men before, so he expects sex with Shane to be more of the same. But everything with Shane feels different, and this is no exception.

The intimacy of their first time shocks him. Ilya has never felt more connected with another person, like they are two halves coming back together. A puzzle finally finished.

He thinks, then, that Shane has to be his soulmate. There’s no other explanation for it.

“You killed me, Hollander. I am dead,” Ilya says as he gets back in bed after his shower. He feels a bone-deep exhaustion settle in, threatening to send him under. It wouldn’t be the end of the world to fall asleep in Shane Hollander’s bed.

A thought occurs to him, then. It’s risky, but he doesn’t care.

“You know, we have this thing we say in Russian, when we have worked too hard and we are tired,” Ilya shares, tone conversational. “Уебался вусмерть. This time it’s actually true, though.”

Ilya looks at Shane’s face, searching for any sign of understanding. Shane looks confused, but his eyes are unreadable. “What does it mean?”

Fuck. 

So Shane doesn’t speak Russian. Which means, despite how right everything with him feels, Ilya is not Shane’s soulmate. 

There is someone else out there who will get to love Shane Hollander, someone else whose fate is intrinsically linked with his. It’s honestly laughable that Ilya thought for a second that it could be him.

Hollander could find that person any day now. It’s in Ilya’s best interest to end this thing between them before he develops feelings and sets himself up for further heartbreak. It’s a kindness to Hollander too, he thinks, to set him free so he can go find his actual soulmate.

“It doesn’t matter,” he sighs, turning to the side to hide the tears that burn his eyes. “I should go now.”

It only takes Ilya six months to come crawling back.

When he sees Hollander crying in a bathroom at the NHL Awards, he decides he doesn’t care about soulmates. Fuck that. He wants Hollander, and Hollander wants him. So what if they’re not destined to be together. They don’t need to be soulmates to fuck.

This means nothing, he tells himself. Every time they fuck for the next two years, Ilya reminds himself. This means nothing.

The way he gets excited every time Boston plays Montreal? Means nothing. The way his body itches to be closer to Hollander? Means nothing. The way his heart aches whenever he manages to make that beautiful blush bloom beneath Hollander’s freckles? Nothing.

This means nothing.

Ilya refuses to examine why he wants Shane to stay over the next time Montreal comes to Boston.

Hollander staying over means they can have more sex. It’s been two months since they last hooked up, and they’re making up for lost time. That’s all. 

Sure, he bought an entire case of ginger ale and made sure there were at least six cans chilling in his fridge. Yes, he prepped ingredients for two tuna melts rather than one. And yeah, he checked the TV guide to see when and where there was a hockey game playing tonight.

It all means nothing.

Later, Hollander’s moans are pained as he rides him, like it hurt him not to have this for so long. Ilya feels a sick glee at the thought that maybe Hollander hadn’t been satisfied since then. It’s selfish and twisted, but he doesn’t fucking care.

No one else can fuck Shane Hollander like Ilya Rozanov. Maybe not even his soulmate.

After a quick nap, Ilya makes the tuna melts, and he and Shane chat as a hockey match plays softly in the background.

This part is harder to ignore, oddly. Sex is sex, and it’s almost too easy to turn off his brain and lose himself to the ecstasy of Shane’s body. But hanging out, chatting, smiling like they’re the only two people in the world, that’s more difficult.

Ilya needs to course correct. Shane has a soulmate, someone who isn’t Ilya. He brings them up, asking Shane if he’s found them yet. The question burns in his chest, but he asks anyway.

And when Shane shares that he hasn’t found her yet—still her, interesting—Ilya tells him about Svetlana. He isn’t sure why he does it. She’s not his soulmate, and she’s definitely not his girlfriend. Her soulmate speaks English, like his. And he doesn’t even feel that way about her.

“And you’re not looking for your soulmate?” Shane asks.

Ilya doesn’t want to talk about it, not really. Because he hasn’t looked for his soulmate at all. He hasn’t wanted to, and isn’t that just more proof that he doesn’t deserve her? He’s been lazy, just like his father always said.

“Mmm, I think I will find her eventually,” he sighs. “But you know me. I’m lazy.”

“I don’t know that side of you at all,” Shane says, and Ilya knows that the smile he gives him must be the sappiest expression he’s ever made. He needs to reel himself back in.

The oven timer saves him, and he goes to get their sandwiches from the kitchen. As they eat, he brings up Shane’s soulmate again. “Are you looking for her? Your soulmate.”

Shane looks shocked at the question, like Ilya’s asking if he’s ever killed a person. Ilya waits for Shane to correct him, to reveal his soulmate is not a girl. Shane looks down, clearly struggling with something. ““Oh, yeah, sure. When I have time.”

Hmm. Maybe not, then. Ilya tries to coax it out of him a little more. ““I never hear about you with girls.”

Shane looks uncomfortable, and he won’t look Ilya in the eyes. Does he even know? It occurs to Ilya for the first time that maybe, despite the gay sex they’ve been having for years, Shane has never wondered if his soulmate could be a man.

“Yeah, well, that’s private. Same reason nobody knows I have a soulmate,” Shane shrugs.

Before Ilya can press further, his phone rings, and when he sees his father’s name on the screen, he excuses himself to the hallway. 

God fucking damnit, Alexei. He’s supposed to be with their father, but Grigori is confused and alone on the phone. Ilya wonders momentarily if he should go to another room, but decides it doesn’t really matter. Shane can’t understand Russian anyway.

He tries to handle things with his family as best he can, losing his temper a bit towards the end. He hates them. They’re his family, the only family he has left, and he fucking hates them.

When he comes back to the couch, Shane looks worried. Maybe even guilty, oddly enough. “Are you okay? It sounded like something was going on with your father.”

For a moment, Ilya thinks perhaps he got it all wrong. Maybe Shane does understand Russian, and overheard that entire conversation. The yearning beast he’s kept locked up for years breaks free, hope and fear surging in his chest.

“Ah, you speak Russian, now?” He says it like a joke, but he waits for Shane’s answer like it’s the most serious thing he’ll ever hear. Maybe it is.

“I know the word for father,” Shane laughs. The hopeful creature in Ilya’s chest dies.

He pulls Shane into his side, not wanting the other man to see the devastation on his face. He already knew Shane doesn’t speak Russian, accepted it years ago. So why does it feel like the gaping wound inside him has reopened?

He knows why. He’s known this whole time, and just refused to admit it to himself. It’s the terrible, terrible truth at the center of his being. He doesn’t want his soulmate. Not when Shane Hollander exists.

Why couldn’t it be him?

It’s like Shane can hear the thought as it happens, because he jumps away from Ilya like he’s been burned. When Ilya looks up at him, his eyes are panicked, his body tense. “What is—”

“I have to—I can’t—I have a soulmate,” Shane stammers. It feels like a bullet to the chest.

Shane is worried Ilya will keep him from his soulmate. Because someday, Shane will meet the person who is his perfect match, and they will fall in love, and it won’t be Ilya. Shane wants to end things.

“And I have one too, but I am sure she will understand, Shane.” Ilya is practically begging. Shane looks even more panicked, and Ilya realizes it’s the first time he’s ever called him by his first name. Fuck.

“Hollander, come on. It is nothing, we both know there is someone else for us.”

It’s a lie. Sure, there’s someone else for Shane, but there is no one else for Ilya. No one could possibly compare, not even his soulmate. It’s pathetic, he knows it’s pathetic, but Ilya will take as much of Shane as he can get, for as long as he can. Whether it's months or years, he doesn’t care.

It turns out it’s seconds. Shane leaves in a rush, grabbing his phone and shoes and speeding out the door. He doesn’t look at Ilya once.

Ilya doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring at the spot where Shane was. Time feels irrelevant, inconsequential compared to the gaping maw inside of him. It is a void, sucking everything into it, leaving a yawning emptiness in its wake.

For the first time, his mantra is true. Ilya feels nothing.

Chapter End Notes

Fuck Grigori Rozanov, all my friends hate Grigori Rozanov.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think.

I'm on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, and Tumblr.

Notes:
- the gymnastics they are watching is Kerri Strug's famous vault, which won the U.S. the gold in the women's team competition. the team was later dubbed "the Magnificent Seven"
- MTV premiered in Russia on September 25, 1998. the music video they are watching is the Spice Girls "Viva Forever," which was the highest charting Spice Girls song in Russia in 1998.
- "Уебался вусмерть" roughly translates to "I've fucked myself to death." Once again, message boards and Russian Reddit tells me this is a thing that is said in Russia. I'm sorry if it isn't, I really really tried to do my research.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Hollander has a girlfriend. 

What if she’s his soulmate?

Chapter Notes

Hiiii! Sorry this one took longer, in true AO3 author fashion, I got Covid and then my house got an ice dam and started leaking and literally falling apart. Things are better now! But it was a wild couple of weeks.

This one gets angsty. We're in Ilya's head, of course it gets angsty. I tried really hard not to just redo all the same scenes as the first part, and actually add new material. There's still some overlap, obviously, but I hope you all enjoy the new insight into Ilya's thoughts.

Ilya forbids himself from thinking about Shane.

It works for a little. But thirteen days after Hollander runs out of Ilya’s apartment (and his life, it seems), his teammates forcibly rip him out of his ignorance.

The team is working out, and Marly and Connors are giggling over one of their phones. Their giddiness annoys him. Maybe it’s because the last time Ilya felt that happy—no, no. He is not thinking about that.

“Roz, you gotta see this,” Marleau calls him over. Ilya resists the urge to roll his eyes as he walks over to join them. Connors shows him his phone. On the screen, Shane is holding hands with a beautiful woman, smiling and happy. 

Is Rose Landry dating NHL star Shane Hollander?

Ilya’s stomach drops, blood running cold.

“No.” The word comes out before Ilya can hold it in. He grabs the phone, reading through the article as quickly as he can. He barely even registers that Connors and Marleau are still talking.

Actress Rose Landry has been spotted with hockey star Shane Hollander out and about in Montreal. Landry is in the city to shoot a new project, and sources say the pair met through a mutual friend. They sure look awfully cozy!

Bile rises in his throat, along with a slow simmering rage, bubbling towards a boil, that scares him in its intensity. He doesn’t want to look at this anymore. It’s stupid, it’s pointless, who even cares? Ilya sure doesn’t.

He repeats it to himself as he storms away. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. His vision tunnels, and he can’t get out of the gym soon enough. He grabs his bag out of the locker room and heads to his car without showering.

He drives home in a daze. He doesn’t look at his speedometer, but he’s sure he’s going nearly 100 miles per hour. The adrenaline of going so fast does nothing to clear his mind. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t keep the thoughts away.

Hollander has a girlfriend. 

What if she’s his soulmate?

Rose Landry is perfect.

A quick Google search makes that very clear. She’s pretty and nice, she’s beloved by fans, and she’s able to hold Shane’s hand in public. She’s everything Ilya is not.

But whatever, he doesn’t even want to be half those things. He loves how many hockey fans hate him—revels in it, really. He’s not nice, and no one has ever expected him to be nice. He’s not sure he even knows how.

“Did you buy ginger ale just for me?” Shane asked that day at Ilya’s house, as Ilya prepared their tuna melts. Shane’s fingers were tapping against the can, an anxious tick that Ilya suspected he wasn’t even aware of.

“Maybe,” Ilya shrugged, moving a skillet onto the stove. “I noticed you mostly drink water and ginger ale. Wanted to make sure you had something to drink.”

Shane was quiet for a moment, and when Ilya looked up, he was met with a small, beautiful smile. “Thanks,” Shane mumbled shyly, eyelashes fanning against his cheeks as he looked down. “That’s really nice.”

Whatever. A fat lot of good that did him. Fuck being nice.

The Montreal air itches, crawling beneath Ilya’s skin like an allergic reaction. He hates being here. Every corner of every street reminds him of Shane, and it doesn’t help that the name Hollander is scrawled across half the jerseys he sees on fans.

I wonder if Rose Landry will be here tonight.

He wants to tell himself he doesn’t care, that it doesn’t matter, but he’s fucking tired. Tired of thinking about this, tired of pretending he doesn’t care, tired of seeing their smiling faces on the cover of every magazine being sold.

He’s too tired to lie to himself. He really fucking hopes Rose Landry is not at this stupid fucking game.

In the locker room, Ilya stares at his text thread with Shane as his team gets ready around him. See you soon, he’d written over a month ago. Just two texts earlier, he was teasing Shane about taking his athletic cup off with his teeth. God, how pathetic.

He doesn’t think too hard about what he does next. Clicks next to the conversation, presses “Delete,” and throws his phone into his stall.

Time to fucking destroy Montreal.

They don’t destroy Montreal. They don’t even win the game at all. A sick part of Ilya wants to be happy that at least Shane played like shit too, but Shane is probably beating himself up about it, and Ilya can’t muster the spite to be happy about it.

He stares at himself in the mirror of his hotel room, anger burning beneath his skin. Stupid Montreal air making his skin feel too tight. Stupid Shane fucking Hollander. Stupid Rose Landry. Stupid Ilya Rozanov.

No, fuck that. He’s Ilya fucking Rozanov. “Fuck this shit.”

He needs to get laid. After yelling at Connors to gather the guys, Ilya takes thirty seconds to style his hair before throwing on one his most expensive shirts, leaving most of the buttons undone.

He’s clearly only thinking so much about Shane because he’s horny. What was it Svetlana said once? The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. Right. Well obviously the saying works better for women and bottoms. But the point still stands.

Once he gets someone else under him, Shane Hollander and his dumb fucking freckles will be the last thing on Ilya’s mind.

Connors picks the club, and Ilya is happy to lose himself to the crowd of sweaty, writhing bodies. They fight their way to the bar, Ilya apologizing for his friends as he orders his beer. As he waits, he scans the crowd, wondering which lucky lady he’ll take back to his hotel tonight.

When he turns to his right, his stomach drops. Because there’s a man looking back at him from the other side of the bar, and Ilya recognizes him. It’s Miles Kane.

They’ve never met, but Ilya has seen the actor’s face a lot this past month. It’s all over the private browser on his phone, where he has several tabs open on news about Shane Hollander. Miles Kane is one of Rose Landry’s costars, and has spent the last couple weeks hanging around her and Shane.

If Miles is here, that can only mean one thing. Ilya grabs his beer and turns around, dread weighing heavy in his veins.

Fuck. 

There, right in the center of the dance floor, Shane Hollander is dancing with his movie star girlfriend, her hands under his shirt. Who does she think she is? His girlfriend, he reminds himself. She has every right to touch him like that.

Ilya downs his beer, feeling reckless and vindictive. This club is full of women who want him, and he feels a twisted thrill as he looks for someone in Shane’s direct line of sight. Hollander isn’t the only one who can dance with a beautiful girl.

The woman he finds is hot—blonde hair, full lips, and not a freckle in sight. She doesn’t ask Ilya’s name, and Ilya doesn’t ask hers. They waste no time with small talk. He puts his hands all over her, trying to distract himself from the man on the other side of the club.

Ilya kisses her, and it feels all wrong. Shane hasn’t even noticed him. He growls in her ear as he forces his eyes away from the crowd, determined to enjoy himself.

He can’t stay away for long, though. And it’s just his luck, because when he looks again a minute later, Shane is standing alone at the edge of the dance floor, staring at Ilya, looking stricken.

Ilya feels a sick pleasure at that. Good, he thinks. See how little I need you.

Ilya maintains eye contact with Shane as he kisses the blonde. Shane’s gripping his beer so hard it looks like he could shatter the glass, and Ilya barely conceals the mean smile that fights its way to his face.

An idea worms its way into his head. It’s twisted, more than a little cruel, not to mention indecent, but he does it anyway. He takes the blonde’s right ear into his mouth, licking and sucking and kissing as if he’s worshipping her nonexistent soulmark.

This woman is not his soulmate. He knows that for a fact. But, god, he kind of wants Shane to think she is. I don’t need you either, he thinks. Go back to your famous girlfriend.

Shane watches in a trance, and Ilya thinks he may even see tears in his eyes. No, that’s not right. Shane Hollander would never cry over someone like him. Not when he’s the one who left. Not when he has a soulmate out there waiting for him. 

A soulmate who is not Ilya.

He doesn’t take the blonde home. He doesn’t even stay out much longer, leaving his team at the club and grabbing an Uber back to the hotel.

As Ilya jerks himself off in the shower, he tries to think of his soulmate. He imagines long legs, soft skin, plush lips. Freckles—no. Trim waist, soft eyes, back dimples. Fuck. He’s too weak and tired to resist anymore.

He thinks of Shane, whining as Ilya fucks into him, his warm, tight heat milking his cock. Shane, on his knees, wrapping kiss-bitten lips around Ilya’s thick length, taking him all the way to the root. 

Shane, holding Ilya in his arms, kissing him gently on the forehead. Shane, smiling at Ilya in a stairwell, waiting for a tender kiss goodbye.

And he hates himself, he really does, because it’s that last memory that pushes him over the edge into white-hot pleasure, finishing with a shout.

When Shane walks into the hotel bar in Tampa looking every bit like the celebrity he’s become, Ilya has to resist the urge to leave. He downs the rest of his beer.

He’s sure Shane is going to ignore him, just like he has for almost two months. But Shane walks right up to the bar and plops down next to him.

Shane orders a beer, and Ilya gestures for another as well. He’s going to need all the alcohol he can get if he’s going to survive this weekend. Hell, if he’s going to survive this conversation. A month and a half of silence has led to this.

He wants to hold out, wait for Shane to say something first, but Ilya can’t resist the urge to tease him. “So are they out of ginger ale? Captain.”

“I’m feeling a bit wild,” Shane says, and Ilya fights to hide the smile that wants to break free. “So this should be fun, huh? I’ve always wondered what it would be like to play on the same team.”

Ilya doesn’t let himself look at him. “Have you?”

“Yeah,” Shane laughs. God, Ilya missed that sound. “I have. Nice that it’s in Florida this year, right?”

And that pisses Ilya off, because what the fuck does Shane want? They’re not friends, this is their first conversation in weeks, and Shane keeps staring at Ilya like he’s drinking in the sight. “I guess,” Ilya mumbles.

The bartender drops off their beers, and Ilya looks over at Shane for the first time. He takes a long pull from his beer, lips wrapped around the bottle, and Ilya kind of wants to explode. Because, seriously, what is going on? Why is Shane acting like this when he’s dating Rose Landry?

Ilya can’t resist any longer. He asks Shane if he came alone. Shane only mentions that his parents didn’t come, but Ilya finds it suspicious that he doesn’t mention Rose Landry at all.

He tries again a minute later when he asks if someone took Shane shopping. And yes, he also uses it as an excuse to call Shane pretty. He has eyes, after all. And he’s only human. 

Shane looks embarrassed at the question, oddly enough. “If I, um, if I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone or make fun of me?”

He agrees, and Shane braces himself. A pit forms in Ilya’s stomach, dreading the next words. Rose and I are moving in together. We’re engaged. She’s my soulmate.

“I, uh, I hired a stylist.”

The unexpectedness of the confession leaves Ilya speechless, equal parts relief and amusement. Despite his promise, Ilya does tease him a little bit. Shane surprises him by teasing back, and it feels like flirting.

Ilya has to check again, more directly this time. “So Rose Landry is not with you?”

The question clearly catches Shane off guard, and Ilya hopes that’s a good sign. Shane clears his throat. “No, she’s not. Not in Tampa or in general. She and I—we weren’t compatible.”

He might as well have said we aren’t soulmates. Ilya feels the tension bleed out of him, limbs loose and liquid, almost as if his muscles haven’t relaxed since that day in Boston.

There can’t be any other way to interpret that, right? Later, after playing an electrifying game together on the ice, Ilya finds Shane on the beach and decides to make certain. He needs to know, definitively, if Shane found his soulmate.

“No,” Shane says softly when Ilya asks, like a secret. “It wasn’t her.”

When Shane asks him for his room number, Ilya’s hands itch with the need to touch him. He settles for brushing their thumbs together, the only contact they can get away with outside of closed doors.

“Twelve seventeen.”

In between the time it takes for Ilya to get back to his room and Shane to show up, Alexei calls him six times.

Ilya feels like he was in a cloud, wrapped in the warmth of Shane being back in his life, and now reality has come crashing down. His father, his brother. Russia. The last time he’d spoken to his father, he’d only been half-lucid.

“Where is your mother?” Grigori was angry, the tiny phone speaker doing nothing to mask his contempt. “Probably with that artist. She needs to stop hanging around that f—”

“Мама is dead,” Ilya interrupted. He never wanted to hear his father talk about his mother or Nikolai again.

“What?” Grigori laughed, then, mean and condescending. “Yes, Ilya, I know your mother is dead. Don’t be so stupid.”

“Of course, Папа.”

Grigori scoffed and changed the subject to something just as unpleasant. “Did you find your soulmate yet? Stop dragging your feet and find the damn girl. You’re embarrassing us. Everyone is waiting.”

Ilya hasn’t looked for his soulmate at all. Honestly, he hopes he never finds them. What would happen if his father knew that he dreaded finding his soulmate? If he knew that Ilya wanted to reject his soulmate for a man?

Probably the same thing that happened to Nikolai. The thought comes to him like a poison blade, slipping between his ribs and infecting his bloodstream. He’s looked for Nikolai since coming to America, even hired a private eye, but nothing has come up.

It seems like Nikolai has completely disappeared. Almost like he was never there in the first place. Would the same thing happen to Ilya?

The thought stays with him as he lets Shane into his room, and he purposely stands across the room from him. He’s poisoned, he’s infected, he can’t let whatever rot is within him touch Shane.

And the nightmare only continues, because it seems like Shane is here to make things worse. Suddenly, Shane Hollander is coming out as gay, and he’s apologizing for leaving, and he’s telling Ilya that he likes him. Maybe a little too much.

He feels dizzy. The room feels like it’s shrinking. When did Ilya join Shane on the bed? He tries to make him understand, but Shane isn’t getting it. God, he’s going to make Ilya say it, isn’t he?

“Don’t, don’t fucking do this, Hollander,” Ilya practically begs, his voice breaking. “I’m not…I wouldn’t be able to go home again. Ever. Do you get that?”

And no, Shane doesn’t get that. As Ilya tries to explain, he can feel the fight draining out of him, replacing itself with a dull hopelessness that feels like it’s smothering him. He tells Shane everything. Russia, his family, his mother. His father.

The pressure behind his eyes burns, and Ilya feels like he’s dying. He turns away, afraid that Shane will see the way he’s flayed open, raw and bloody, for anyone to see. He tries to hide it.

But Shane—beautiful, stubborn Shane—doesn’t let him. One second Ilya is closing himself off, burying the viscera, and the next he has a lap full of Shane Hollander, holding him close and kissing him so sweetly that it pulls him back into his body like a ripcord.

And Ilya Rozanov might not be the brightest, but he knows a lifeline when he sees it. He grabs onto Shane with both hands, nuzzling into his neck as if he can fuse them together.

“Ilya, we shouldn’t,” Shane warns, and it sounds like he wants to say more, but Ilya won’t hear it. He needs this. He needs Shane. He needs to be guided back into his skin, he needs to be sewn back together.

He’s not above begging. “Please,” he whispers. “I need this. I need to not think anymore.”

Shane kisses him then, hungry, dirtier than before. It feels like coming home. Ilya tries to be gentle, takes his time opening Shane up. He may be desperate, but he’d rather die than let his jagged edges hurt Shane.

When Shane finally sinks down onto him, taking him all the way to the hilt, Ilya feels alive again. His synapses reconnect, electricity humming through his veins like he’s risen from the dead. He feels whole.

Shane leans forward, pressing their chests together so that they are touching in every possible way. Shane makes a sound like he’s been punched, spilling between them as Ilya continues to fuck up into him.

“Fuck, so good,” Ilya says in Russian. And since Shane can’t understand him, he adds, “I missed this.”

The calls from Alexei keep coming.

Ilya keeps rejecting them, swipes away the missed call notifications like they’re not even there. Out of sight, out of mind. A small voice in the back of his mind tells him that he knows what these calls must be about, that if he doesn’t answer them now it’ll be too late, but he ignores it.

He transfers the money every month. That’s all they’re getting out of him.

He’s on edge, though, the incessant buzzing of his phone grating on his nerves like sandpaper. He does a pretty good job of hiding it, though, his teammates none the wiser. Hide it away, stuff it in a box, it can’t get him if it can’t find him.

Shane notices, of course. Ilya can never seem to hide as much from Shane as from everyone else. He’s not sure if it’s that Shane is actually paying closer attention, or if being in Shane’s presence throws him off enough that he can’t be as convincing. He hopes it’s the former; he knows it’s the latter.

Before their next game, Shane comes over. They don’t do this, meeting up before a game, but the need to see Shane has Ilya coiled tight like a spring, all potential energy and suspended momentum.

It’s like a hit of a drug, being inside Shane. The world is stress and anxiety and pressure, but inside of Shane’s skin there is nothing but relief and warmth and pleasure.

Ilya loves him, he knows he does. He’s known for a while now.  He loves him, he loves him, he loves him. He just doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“Hey, Hey, um. Are you okay?” Shane asks, looking at Ilya with concern.

“What do you mean?”

“You just seem off, is all.” Shane shrugs. Ilya hasn’t talked to anyone about it, afraid that once the gate is open he won’t be able to stop the rest from flooding out. But he wants to tell Shane.

“My father is dying. My brother won’t stop calling. I don’t want to talk to either of them.”

Shane considers that for a moment, then looks at Ilya with eyes that are so soft he almost wants to look away. “Do you…want to talk about it?”

Shane doesn’t need to hear the ugly truth of it all. “No, not right now.”

Shane almost looks disappointed, but he perseveres. “Well, if you ever do want to talk about it, let me know. I’m here for you.”

Ilya can’t help but smile at that. There have been few people that he’s believed when they said they would be there for him. His mother, Nikolai, Svetlana. And now Shane.

“Enough talking for now,” Ilya sighs, patting Shane’s leg to make it clear that he’s not upset. He’s noticed over the years that Shane sometimes struggles to pick up on tone, and that it helps to add a secondary action—a smile, a pat on the leg, a kiss—as an extra indicator.

Will Shane’s soulmate know to do that? The thought comes to him like a whip, the reverberation shaking his composure. Fuck.

Shane still looks worried when he leaves, but he doesn’t bring it up again. He does stop halfway to the door, turning around and striding in front of Ilya, pulling him into a kiss. Ilya melts. Choose me, he wants to say. Please choose me.

“Good luck tonight.” Shane presses one last kiss to his lips. “You’re gonna need it.”

Grigori Rozanov dies on March 15, 2017, halfway through the third period of the Montreal-Boston game.

Ilya doesn’t find out until after the game, when he sees that he’s missed seven calls from Alexei in the last hour. When he finally answers on the next ring, the news of his father’s passing is yelled at him like it’s somehow his fault. 

Alexei is mad, and Ilya can practically see the red of his face as he screams insults and curses at him over the phone. He can hear the hatred in his brother’s voice, but he can also hear the secret woven between his words. Alexei is bereft.

Ilya, on the other hand, feels nothing. There’s a slight annoyance that this means he’ll have to go to Russia, have to schedule a last-minute flight, but he is not sad. He doesn’t think anyone really expected him to be, or what it says about him that they were right.

He gets on the next plane to Moscow, gives a thumbs up to Svetlana’s text with her own flight information. At least she will be there.

It isn’t until the plane is halfway over the Atlantic that he realizes he never texted Shane. 

When he lands, Ilya is immediately swept up into a whirlwind of funeral planning. Alexei wants one thing, his stepmother wants another, and all of them only need one thing from Ilya: money.

He foots the bill without a second thought. It’s easier than arguing, and the NHL pays him more money than he knows what to do with anyway. At least he can contribute this one last thing to his family. It’s the last they’ll ever get out of him.

He feels pulled in a thousand different directions by his family, none of them gentle or kind, and when he finally checks his phone hours later, he sees he has a text and a missed call from Jane. 

Are you okay?

Honestly? He has no idea. Svetlana’s plane hasn’t landed yet, and Ilya feels adrift in a sea of unfriendly faces. The notifications from Shane feel like the first bit of warmth he’s seen all day, and suddenly nothing becomes more important than seeing Shane’s face.

And, fuck, what a face. Shane answers the phone wearing glasses—glasses!—and Ilya almost feels like crying when Shane takes them off. 

He’s so in love it’s becoming a problem, but right now he lets himself give into temptation and sink into the comfort of Shane’s voice. Shane acquiesces and puts the glasses back on, and then he’s pulling his pretty cock out and looking at Ilya like he misses him.

I miss you too, he wants to say. I love you. I never want to be away from you again.

He says none of it. Shane deserves better.

The funeral is terrible. It’s cold and clinical, void of all emotions. A pretty decent tribute to the spirit of Grigori Rozanov, Ilya privately thinks.

At least Svetlana is there. She’s a lifeline, the one spot of sunshine in a sky full of gray. And the calls with Shane have helped, too. Every bit of Shane’s attention has felt like a balm to his raw and ragged heart.

When Ilya looks up, he sees that Alexei is staring him down from the other side of the table. His gaze is accusatory, as if Ilya personally killed their father.

Ilya excuses himself to the other room to give himself a moment to think, to breathe outside of the oppressive atmosphere of the room. He gets about thirty seconds to himself before Alexei is following him out.

“Stop fucking avoiding me.”

Ilya braces himself before turning around. “If only.”

“So?” Alexei asks, as if Ilya can read his mind. Except they’re not that kind of close anymore. They never really were.

“So what?” Ilya knows that he’s goading his brother, pushing his buttons the same way he did when they were teenagers, but he doesn’t expect Alexei to grab him the way he does.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Ilya spits. Anger builds in him, like a geyser ready to blow.

“Then tell me the fucking plan.” God, the fucking audacity. Ilya came out here to recenter himself, let himself breathe, and he can’t even have that.

“Jesus Christ. I don’t know yet, Alexei! He just died. Can I get a minute to breathe?”

“And me? What about me? Do I get to breathe too?” Alexei’s eyes are filled with hatred. “Or is that just something reserved for rich faggots who abandon their families for their soulmates?”

It’s not the first time Alexei has called him a slur like that. He’s used them so much that they barely even register to Ilya anymore. No, what hurts more is the idea that Ilya has abandoned his family, when they’ve been sustaining themselves off the blood they draw for years.

“Abandoned? Who’s money do you live on, you piece of shit?” And Ilya knows he shouldn’t say the next part, shouldn’t let his anger get to him, but he wants to hurt Alexei. “Who puts food in your mouth and coke up your nose?”

It’s a low blow, to bring up Alexei’s addiction. But Ilya doesn’t care about what’s fair or kind right now. But what he forgets is that Alexei knows how to hurt him too, knows the ways Ilya feels he failed them.

“I have a child, Ilya! And a fucking wife. And me, I’ve spent the last five months taking care of our dying father every fucking day.”

The words cut deep. Before he can respond, the beads part, and Svetlana is joining them.

“I thought I heard singing,” she says, voice cold. She’s never tried to hide her distaste for Alexei.

“Great. Now we have to listen to this whore run her mouth.”

The geyser erupts. Ilya can put up with Alexei calling him slurs, has put up with it for years, but he will not for a second tolerate him using that sort of language to describe Sveta. The one person from home who actually cares about him.

Ilya punches him, raises his fist to do it again, but is stopped by Svetlana calling for him. “He’s not worth it, he’s not worth anything.”

She’s right. And now that their father is dead, Ilya never has to deal with his brother ever again. As far as he is concerned, he has no family. Maybe his niece, but Alexei has barely allowed them to interact.

“You can have my apartment,” Ilya says, voice shaking with anger, “and there will be a trust for my niece. She can have it when she’s eighteen. And you will never, ever contact me again.”

Ilya could stop there, but the floodgates have opened, and he cannot hold back his contempt. “If you do, I will use every piece of my fame and money and notoriety to make sure that you can’t show your face in this fucking city without someone wanting to break it open. So take what I offer, shut your fucking mouth and walk away.”

He’s never felt more like his father.

Alexei looks genuinely affected by Ilya’s words, but he doesn’t say anything. Just wipes away a tear, fixes his tie and hair in the mirror, and exits. Ilya thinks again of the big brother he used to worship and wonders where that boy went.

Svetlana is on him immediately, rubbing his arm and fixing his shirt. He was worried when he told her he didn’t want to sleep with her anymore that she would abandon him. The thought is embarrassing now. She has always been his friend first. “I don’t deserve you.”

Svetlana shuts that thought down quickly. “Yes, you do. And you deserve love. The universe thought it so much it made you a soulmate.”

Ilya wants to cry. She’s trying to cheer him up, but it just makes him feel worse. How can he tell her that he only wants his soulmate’s love if it’s Shane? He deflects instead. “You know I love you.”

“I know you do. But it’s not the same as it is with Jane, is it?” Svetlana asks, and Ilya doesn’t know what to say to that. She knows him so well.

He opens his mouth to respond, but Svetlana cuts him off. “I love you too. And whatever you need, I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere. No soulmate can change that.”

Ilya is so lucky to have her.

Later that night, Ilya tells Svetlana that he needs to go for a walk. She insisted on staying with him tonight, and even though he won’t say it, he’s grateful to not be alone.

But as much as he loves Svetlana, she’s not the one he wants to talk to right now. He needs to hear Shane’s voice, knows that it will soothe him in a way nothing else will.

He walks for a while, makes it to a park several blocks away. He sends a text, not even sure what time it is in whatever city Shane is currently in, and then within minutes Shane’s voice is in his ears.

Ilya realizes that in his rush to call Shane, he never really thought about what to say. He tries, at first, but the English words slide around in his head, mixing together and translating themselves into a labyrinth he’s too tired to traverse.

He gives up. “I don’t know. English is too hard right now.”

He expects Shane to be disappointed, maybe even end the call, but he should know by now that Shane would never do that. Not his Shane.

Instead, Shane offers for them to sit together in silence. “And maybe when you do have the words, you can tell me.”

Ilya actually loves the idea of closing his eyes and listening to Shane breathe. Maybe if he concentrates hard enough, he can pretend that Shane is there with him.

And beautiful, perfect Shane fails miserably at keeping quiet. Ilya loves him so much he thinks it could kill him. He teases Shane, but also asks him to keep talking. That’s why he called him, after all. He just wants to hear his voice.

As Shane describes the hockey book he’s reading, Ilya shuts his eyes, crouches down and lets the low, melodic sound of Shane’s voice run through him. He can’t resist the smile that breaks out across his face, his first one all day.

There’s a slang word for this in English, he thinks. Connors told him about it once. Info-dropping? No, that’s not it. Info-diving? Info-dumping. That’s it. God, Ilya could listen to Shane info-dump for hours.

And maybe when you do have the words, you can tell me, Shane had said.

Ilya doesn’t have the words right now. But maybe he will have them soon.

Later, back at the condo, he and Svetlana lay in his bed. She’s somehow figured out how to get the Boston game on his TV, and Ilya doesn’t question how. Witchcraft, probably. His head is in her lap, her fingers in his hair.

“Do you ever wonder if you’ve already met your soulmate?” Svetlana asks suddenly, breaking the silence.

Ilya is halfway to sleep from the gentle monotony of her hands in his hair, but her question wakes him up. 

Her question is hard for him to answer, because he can’t think of his soulmate without also thinking about Shane. He almost tells her, then. About all of it. Almost throws open the door he keeps those thoughts behind and welcomes her in. But he locks it up instead.

“Maybe,” he offers noncommittally. “Why, Sveta? Do you think you’ve met yours?”

Svetlana laughs, giving him a look that says she knows he’s avoiding a real answer. She doesn’t press him on it, though, and he’s reminded again how lucky he is to have her as a friend.

“I don’t think so,” she shares. “I think maybe they are near. Like they are right around the corner, just out of reach. They feel close, but not familiar. If that makes sense.”

Ilya wants to roll his eyes at the romantic, overly sentimental idea that someone can feel whether their soulmate is near (something he knows for a fact science has never proven), but he’s distracted by the way she didn’t say “he.”

“Not he is near?” Ilya asks, lifting up to look her in the eye. She’s known about Sasha from the beginning, seen him hook up with other men in clubs before, but he’s never actually come out to her in an official sense. He wonders now if maybe he should’ve brought it up sooner.

“He, she. They. I don’t know, Ilyusha,” Svetlana blushes, uncharacteristically shy. “It’s all so fluid. I used to think he. Now, I am not so sure.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything in response, just puts his head back down on her lap and squeezes her thigh.

“My point is, things can’t be so bad. We have soulmates. Every day is a day closer to finding them,” Svetlana sighs. She sounds dreamy, which is a stark contrast to the pit of dread that spreads in Ilya.

Because she’s right. Every day is another day closer to meeting their soulmates. To Shane meeting his soulmate.

Fuck.

Ilya can’t fall asleep.

His mind keeps spinning, about soulmates, about Shane, about language. He doesn’t want his soulmate if it isn’t Shane. He knows this for a fact.

Shane’s never actually said he doesn’t understand Russian, is the thing. It’s possible he does. Ilya can’t imagine why Shane wouldn’t tell him, and he’s never indicated that he’s understood the few times Ilya spoke Russian around him. 

Which means the chances are so low it’s probably not even worth thinking about, but he doesn’t know for sure.

He climbs out of bed, careful not to disturb Svetlana where she’s sprawled out on the other side. She’s graceful in almost everything, but in sleep she spreads out like a starfish. Ilya loves that about her.

He goes out to his balcony. He checks the time in Detroit, sees that Shane is in the middle of a game. Perfect.

He dials, gets Shane’s voicemail. Just as expected. Hello, this is Shane Hollander. I’m sorry I’m not able to answer the phone right now. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll be sure to get back to you.

The line beeps. It’s now or never.

“Shane,” he starts. “I think I have the words. But I am not yet ready to say them to you yet. So…please don’t translate this.”

And then he rips open the door in his mind, bringing all the things he’s kept locked up into the light. He tells Shane about his family, about his father, about his failures.

He brings up Sveta, how he loves her so much. Before he can second guess himself, or talk himself out of it, Ilya lets the truth bleed out of him. 

“But not like I love you. That’s the worst fucking part of all this is that all I want is you. It’s always you. I’m so in love with you and…” Ilya pauses, tears in his eyes. He’s never said this next part out loud.

“And I know I have a soulmate. And I know it probably isn’t you. But, God, I know I will never love anyone the way I love you. And it scares me that God or the universe or biology has decided that there is a person out there who is my perfect match, and it might not be you. I need it to be you. Because if it isn't you…I don’t know what I will do. And if it is you…I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which scares me more.”

There it is. The terrible, awful truth is out there now, and Shane will either understand it or he won’t. The die is cast.

Shane doesn’t mention the voicemail.

Ilya returns to Boston, and he and Shane are back to their usual, flirty texts. They have a game in Montreal in a few days, and Shane talks like they’re going to hook up like normal.

He doesn’t mention soulmates, or love, or any of the things Ilya said in his voicemail. Which means he probably didn’t understand it. Which means he doesn’t understand Russian. Which means—

Ilya ends up dry heaving into the hotel toilet. Svetlana’s words run through his head again. Every day is a day closer to finding them.

Every day is a day closer to Shane finding his soulmate. Shane admitted to having feelings for Ilya back in Tampa, even said he wanted them to be together. He hadn’t pushed it, but Ilya knows it’s irresponsible to act like that conversation didn’t happen.

Ilya has never really felt like he deserved his soulmate, just like his father always said, but he knows without a shadow of a doubt that Shane deserves his.

He’s not completely sure that Shane would reject his soulmate for him, but the thought alone terrifies Ilya. There is someone out there who is perfect for Shane, who will love him so thoroughly that he never feels alone again.

How selfish of Ilya, to deprive him of that. Who does he think he is, really?

By the time he gets to the arena, Ilya has made up his mind. He needs to end things with Shane, for Shane’s sake. Shane deserves to find his soulmate, who will make him happier than Ilya ever could.

It’ll hurt, God, it’ll hurt worse than anything’s ever hurt before. But Ilya loves him, and he needs to do this.

They text before the game, and Ilya tries to act normal. He doesn’t want Shane to know about the storm raging inside him. They make plans to meet up after the game. Ilya thinks maybe it’s cruel of him to act like everything is okay, but he doesn’t want to mess up Shane’s game.

Ilya throws himself into playing, distracting himself with the pure electric synergy that comes with competing against Shane. At least they will always have this, he thinks.

Shane steals the puck, and as he races ahead, he looks back at Ilya. He’s smiling around his mouthguard, cheeks flushed from exertion, and he looks so, so beautiful. His beautiful, beautiful Shane.

Ilya sees Marleau out of the corner of his eye, barrelling towards Shane at full speed. Shane doesn’t see him coming. Everything happens in slow motion, then.

Marleau combines with Shane, hitting him hard. Shane falls to the ice, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. Even before he even skates over, Ilya can tell that he’s out cold.

Ilya gets to Shane first, calling his name as if that will bring him back to consciousness. Shane doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move at all. Ilya can’t tell if he’s breathing. He looks so small, crumpled on the ice. 

Ilya thinks he can see his own heart bleeding out beside him.

Chapter End Notes

Yes, that is the groundwork for Roselana you're picking up on. I'm gay, you think I wouldn't add Roselana??? What do you take me for?

Let me know what you think! Comments and kudos are always appreciated, they fuel me. I'm not sure when Chapter 3 will be out, but hopefully it'll be sooner than this one was. As long as my house doesn't fall apart again.......let's all hire Etsy witches to give me good vibes.

I'm on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, and Tumblr.

update 3/20/26: thank you all for the love! i am almost finished with chapter 3, i just have the cottage scenes left to write. i’m working hard to get this completed ASAP!!

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

This stupid fucking language is failing him, that he was forced to learn because of his soulmate. Maybe Ilya would’ve chosen to learn it himself, but he’ll never know. His father took that choice away from him; one of many.

He’s sick of English. Sick of soulmates.

“Get well soon,” he says. Knows Shane understands. He walks out of the room, passes several nurses as they rush in the opposite direction. As the elevator doors close, he catches a glimpse of Yuna Hollander rushing for Shane’s door.

Shane will be okay. He has people to look after him, arms to fall into. Loving family, supportive friends. Shane will be okay. Ilya isn’t so sure about himself.

Chapter Notes

Hi. Thank you all for your patience with this last chapter. I had some severe writer's block getting through this, and I'm still not sure with how it turned out, but I didn't want to leave this story unfinished. Thank you for reading, thank you for waiting, thank you for existing.

Ilya hates the smell of hospitals.

It’s always too sanitized, too sterile, like even the air has been scrubbed clean. The same thought always comes to him, since he was young. Someone in here is dying. Someone in here is grieving. 

He has to grin and bear it, though, if he wants to see Shane. He didn’t sleep at all last night, and he’s sure the bags under his eyes are a dead giveaway. As he rides the elevator, he rubs gentle fingers over the bruises on his knuckles.

He’d given Marleau a black eye after the game. It’s a testament to their friendship that Cliff didn’t hit him back, especially because Ilya was way out of line. It was a rough hit to Shane, but it was a clean hit. Marleau was just doing his job.

No, instead Marly looked at him with sad eyes, something akin to pity on his face. His teammates had been tiptoeing around him since he got back from Russia, like he was one moment away from breaking down into sobs. Cliff probably assumed that Ilya was on edge because his father just died.

No, it’s because the love of my life was just laid out limp and lifeless on the ice, and you put him there.

The elevator dings, doors sliding open to reveal a hallway that looks nearly identical to the one he just left. It’s still too white and too clean, bright fluorescents sending a splinter of pain straight from his eyes to his brain.

Ilya feels terrible, physically and emotionally. He hasn’t changed his decision since last night. This thing with Shane needs to end.

When he gets to the hospital room, he can see through the small window on the door that Shane is alone inside. Ilya tries to enter quietly, but Shane ruins that plan the moment he sees him, because he sings out Ilya’s name like he’s the best thing Shane’s ever seen.

Shane is quite obviously high, probably on some sort of painkiller. Ilya tries to start the conversation off easily, but Shane keeps derailing things by being needy. And loopy. And way, way too loud. God, Ilya loves him so much.

It strips him of his defenses. The distance he’d planned to keep between them is closed in two strides the moment Shane whines that he wants to hold Ilya’s hand. His face is bruised, arm in a sling, but he looks happier than Ilya has maybe ever seen him. All because Ilya is holding his hand.

Ilya decides then and there that he can’t break Shane’s heart in this state. Shane is too high to control his reactions, and Ilya knows that neither of them would survive the heartbreak that would clearly show on his face. 

Besides, Shane is in no state to understand Ilya’s reasoning. How can Ilya convince Shane that he should give his soulmate a chance if he can’t even convince him to be quiet? Later, then. He will do it later.

“You scared me,” he admits. Shane smiles like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. Ilya doesn’t know much about painkillers, has always refused them himself, but he hopes that maybe Shane won’t remember this. It’ll only make the fallout harder for both of them.

“I’m sorry I didn’t text you last night,” Shane says, face falling. It knocks Ilya’s breath from his lungs. Even in this state, unable to finish the hockey season and in enough pain to warrant painkillers, Shane is concerned about Ilya’s feelings. No one has ever cared this much.

Shane’s soulmate is one lucky man. Ilya hates him.

Ilya makes assurances that everything is okay, but it’s almost like Shane doesn’t hear him. He barrels ahead, like he’s reciting a prewritten speech. Knowing Shane, he probably is.

“You know, I had a whole plan to ask you something,” Shane smiles. Ilya’s stomach plummets.

He can’t think of a single thing Shane could have to ask him that doesn’t have ice cold tendrils of dread crawling down his spine. Will you be my boyfriend? Are you in love with me? Do you think I’m your soulmate?

“Maybe it’s better if you just rest now,” he tries, hoping Shane will take the bait and get distracted again. But even though the haze of the painkillers, Shane is steadfast in his mission.

“I was gonna ask you—”

Ilya tries again. “Hollander.”

“—will you come to my cottage this summer?”

Well, that’s certainly not what he was expecting. It’s somehow both better and worse. He watched the documentary from a few years back, so he knows that the cottage is Shane’s happy place. He knows what it means to be invited there.

Shane seems to take his silence as a sign he needs further convincing. “Don’t go to Russia. Come to my house. We’ll have so much fun, it’s so private, no one will know.”

Ilya tries to let him down easy. “Hollander, you know I can’t do that.”

“We can have a week, or even two. We’d be completely alone. Together,” Shane whispers the last part. He needs to shut this down, get Shane to understand that they can’t be together, not even temporarily. But Shane goes for the throat. “Haven’t you ever wanted more time?”

Yes. God, yes. That’s all Ilya’s ever wanted. More time with Shane. Every day feels like a death march, closer and closer to the moment Shane will leave him forever. Sure, he likes Ilya, but he’s going to love his soulmate. Every day, every hour, every second is another grain of sand in an hourglass that is quickly running out.

Shane is looking up at him so hopefully, a naked affection on his face that’s usually better hidden. Ilya can’t bring himself to say no right now. He won’t say yes—it would be a lie—but his mouth won’t form around the word “no” either. He settles for—

“Maybe. Maybe.”

Shane closes his eyes then, and Ilya can’t resist the urge to gently run his thumb across those freckles. They’ve haunted him for almost a decade. If he has to end things, he can at least let himself have this.

There’s so much he wants to say, but he knows he can’t give Shane false hope. He’s reminded again of their phone call, the voicemail where he already confessed so much. There’s a way he can still say what he wants.

“I missed you,” he says in Russian. “Please never scare me like that again.”

He wants to continue, tell Shane he loves him, confess all he said on the voicemail and more. But then the world comes to a screeching halt, because Shane answers him. Answers him. Ilya spoke in Russian, and yet Shane is answering.

“I won’t, I promise.” Shane’s eyes are still closed, a dopey smile on his face. “I missed you, too.”

Shane understood him. An incessant buzzing starts up in Ilya’s ears. The tension from last night slams back into his body, sending him reeling, and for the first time he feels like the prey rather than the predator.

Maybe Shane just guessed what he said, but that doesn’t seem right. Ilya has to be sure. “Did you understand me?” 

Shane laughs at that. Actually, honest to god laughs. Ilya’s world is crumbling around him, the bars of a prison cell he’s lived in for years falling to dust, and Shane is laughing at him. He didn’t think Shane could be that cruel.

“Of course I did, the drugs aren’t that strong, Ilya,” Shane giggles.

Ilya feels like he can’t breathe, can barely even swallow, the confirmation wrapping itself around his neck like a noose. Shane understands Russian. Shane understands Russian, and he never told Ilya.

He can see the moment it clicks for Shane. His big dopey smile falls, and is replaced with a look of fear. Not just scared, but a primal, bone-deep fear. Ilya knows that fear. He’s felt that fear, seen it in his reflection facing his father.

Shane is scared of him. “I was gonna tell you.”

Ilya doesn’t believe him. Shane looks small in the bed, like he’s trying to shrink away. Does he really think Ilya would hurt him? Punch him just like he punched Marleau? Why else would Shabe be so scared? Ilya feels pathetic.

Shane’s laughter is gone, but Ilya can still hear it ringing in his ears. He’s been bullied his whole life, laughed off the sneers and slurs and unkind words, but he never thought he’d have to do it with Shane. He thought he could trust him.

A bubbling rage begins to boil in his stomach, threatening to erupt.

When he speaks, his voice shakes with barely contained anger. “Tell me what? That you understand Russian? That you’ve been laughing at me all these years while I told you my secrets?”

The expression on Shane’s face is answer enough. He understood everything. Every small confession, every term of endearment, every whispered sweet nothing. The phone call with his father, the phone call with Alexei, the voicemail.

The voicemail.

Part of Ilya had hoped Shane would somehow understand the voicemail, but he hadn’t considered what it would mean if he did. That Shane had lied to him all these years, let Ilya think that there was no way Shane could be his soulmate. The message is clear.

Shane doesn’t want Ilya.

“I would never laugh at you,” Shane says, and Ilya absolutely cannot stick around for the rest of Shane’s gentle rejection. It might actually kill him. “You have to know that.”

He shakes his head, eyes burning. He doesn’t know anything anymore. It feels like everything he thought was true about the world is now somehow wrong. He’s wrong. Fuck. He can’t let Shane see him cry.

He turns his face away. “Yes, well I thought I knew a lot of things. Seems I was wrong.”

“Ilya, please, I can explain.” The monitor behind Shane starts beeping insistently, his heart rate rising alarmingly fast. That means there will be people in the room soon. “Please, Ilya, don’t go.”

Ilya can’t let anyone see him like this, rubbed raw and bleeding. He’s not ready for whatever conversation he and Shane need to have. He moves to the door, pausing when he hears the way Shane is panicking behind him.

English feels impossible right now. This language that eluded him for so long, a rough and barren soil he worked and toiled at for years, coaxed and watered until his fluency bloomed. He forces himself to concentrate. “I can’t talk right now. I need to think.”

“Please,” Shane begs. “I’m sorry. Please don’t shut me out.”

The words feel foreign again in a way they haven’t for years, Ilya’s understanding unearned—not from fluency, but through whatever damned connection he has to his soulmate. 

This stupid fucking language is failing him, that he was forced to learn because of his soulmate. Maybe Ilya would’ve chosen to learn it himself, but he’ll never know. His father took that choice away from him; one of many. 

He’s sick of English. Sick of soulmates.

“Get well soon,” he says. Knows Shane understands. He walks out of the room, passes several nurses as they rush in the opposite direction. As the elevator doors close, he catches a glimpse of Yuna Hollander rushing for Shane’s door.

Shane will be okay. He has people to look after him, arms to fall into. Loving family, supportive friends. Shane will be okay. Ilya isn’t so sure about himself.

Ilya doesn’t sleep that night either. The entire team gives him a wide berth, looking at him with a mix of pity and apprehension. They’re all probably fighting over who has to sit next to him on the plane, he thinks.

Ironically, it’s Cliff who ends up climbing into the aisle seat on the plane, lifting his chin in friendly acknowledgement when he meets Ilya’s eyes.

“You feeling better, Rozy?”

It’s a stupid question, and they both know it. Ilya looks like shit. He’s barely slept the past two days, and the permanent scowl on his face matches the one he has when they’re losing and the referee makes a bad call.

“I’m not feeling anything,” Ilya replies, staring out the plane window. They’re still on the tarmac, so he watches the workers as they load the luggage onto the plane. This conversation would be more dramatic if they were already in the air.

“I’m, uh,” out of the corner of his eye, Ilya sees Marleau look around, checking to make sure no one can hear them, “I’m always here if you need to talk, you know.”

“Nothing to talk about,” Ilya mutters. He can practically hear Marly’s eye roll.

“Okay, well when you finally manage to get your head unstuck from your ass, I’ll be here to listen. Or whatever.”

Ilya is incensed. “Do you know who the fuck you’re talking to? I’m your captain.” He finally turns to Marleau, hoping this will get mean or maybe even violent. Anything to relieve some of this tension.

“Yeah, but I’m not talking to my captain right now,” Cliff responds in a rare moment of softness. “I’m talking to my friend.”

Ilya wants to hug him. He wants to punch him. But most of all, he wants to talk to Shane, and he can't do that. So he numbs himself further, and he doesn't do any of it.

When they land, Ilya has a missed call from Shane, along with what looks like a long text message.

Ilya lets it sit in his inbox unread, scared to look at whatever it says while there are other people around. He actually managed to get a little sleep on the plane, and he at least feels a little more rested.

When he gets home, he throws his suitcase to the ground and collapses onto the couch, swiping open his text chain with Shane before even taking his shoes off.

Jane [11:46 AM]
Ilya, I am so sorry I didn’t tell you. I was scared. I was a coward. You deserve better than that. I never wanted to hurt you, but then I did anyway. I want you to know that I didn’t listen to your voicemail. I couldn’t. You said all that stuff thinking that I wouldn’t understand it, and I’d never betray your trust like that. I know that’s hard to believe after everything, but it’s true. I know you may need time. That’s okay. Call me any time. The invitation to the cottage still stands. My feelings for you haven’t changed. Good luck at the playoffs.

There’s so much to unpack that Ilya has to read it three more times before it all even sinks in. Pathetically, the part that stands out most is the bit at the very end. My feelings for you haven’t changed.

The last time they’d discussed feelings, Shane had confessed that he liked Ilya. Maybe a little too much, he’d said back then. Despite the complicated thicket of feelings tangled up in his chest, that still hits Ilya harder than anything else.

There’s other important things in the text, too. Primarily that Shane didn’t listen to the voicemail, which means all of those secrets that had poured out of Ilya back in Russia are still secrets. He feels one fractured piece of his old reality slip neatly back into place. Shane would never betray his trust like that.

A smarter man may be suspicious still, or question whether there’s any trust to be betrayed at all anymore. But Ilya is weak, and still so desperately in love, and most of all he knows Shane Hollander.

Shane is flighty, anxious, neurotic, easily startled. But he is also reliable, and loyal, and good. He wouldn’t do that to someone. Especially not to Ilya.

It’s a very good apology, and Ilya appreciates Shane’s offer of time. He still has so much to untangle, and it helps knowing Shane is waiting on the other side. Whether it’s as a friend, a lover, or a soulmate, Ilya isn’t sure. 

But if Shane is at the end, then it’s worth getting to.

The playoffs are brutal, and Ilya bruises his ribs pretty badly in the third period against Toronto. They still win the game, and Ilya brushes off the team doctor when she tells him he should probably sit out the next game.

He still hasn’t texted Shane back, but not a moment has gone by where he hasn’t thought about him. It’s probably why he took such a bad hit, and when he lifts his shirt to see the bruises running up his side, he thinks for a second that his outside finally matches his inside.

The next game is against New York, and Ilya will be damned if he lets Scott Hunter get to the finals without a fight.

He gives it his best, gets a few good checks in, but his ribs keep him from playing at his best, and when the team doctor looks him over after they lose, she tells him he’s lucky he didn’t do permanent damage.

He doesn’t really care about that, but they're out of the playoffs anyway, so he can’t play more no matter what. None of his teammates say anything to him about it, all looking at him like they’re afraid he’ll snap at a moment’s notice. It pisses Ilya off, and he can’t figure out why.

He doesn’t figure it out until an hour later, when he finally gets home from the stadium. He knows exactly why it pissed him off that his teammates didn’t call him out for his self-destructive behavior. 

Because unlike them, Shane would’ve said something. Wouldn’t have been able to resist reading Ilya the riot act, no matter how bad of a mood he was in. Shane would’ve said something, and his teammates didn’t, because they are not Shane.

God, he misses Shane. Ilya pulls his phone out from where he’d thrown it in the bottom of his gym bag. Like the thought summoned him, there’s a text from Shane. It’s from hours ago, during the game it seems, and Ilya smiles for the first time in days.

Jane [8:56 PM]
You shouldn’t be playing with bruised ribs, asshole.

Yes, Shane would’ve said something. Shane did say something, and didn’t even wait for the game to be over to do it. Shane promised him space and time, yet broke no contact the moment Ilya did something he deemed stupid.

Ilya doesn’t want to wait anymore. He may not know where they can go from here, but he knows they can go somewhere. He hits the call button.

Shane picks up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“How did you know I bruised my ribs?”

Shane’s answer is cautious, watery in a way he probably thinks Ilya can’t hear. Shane apologizes about the loss, and Ilya makes a jab about Scott Hunter. It feels good, but Ilya didn’t call to talk about hockey.

“So you understand Russian, then?” He already knows the answer, got his proof in the hospital, but he wants to hear Shane say it. He wants Shane to tell him, even if it’s belated and pointless.

“I do, yeah,” he admits.

“Your soulmate speaks it, I assume?” It feels wrong to ask, to bring up the potential third person in this love triangle between them.

“Yeah, uh.” Shane pauses, like he’s not sure what to say next. “He does.”

Hmm. He, not you. It’s not a confirmation, it’s not a denial. Ilya is too afraid to ask if he has a name; knows that whatever the answer is, whether his name or another’s, it will destroy him. If he doesn’t ask, the answer doesn’t exist yet. Schrödinger's soulmate.

He moves on to his next burning question instead. “And you did not listen to my voicemail?”

“Correct,” Shane confirms, and relief floods through him like a river bursting from a dam. His secrets are safe; Shane doesn’t know. “I mean, technically, uh, technically I listened to the first twenty seconds, but once you started speaking Russian I turned it off.”

Ilya bites back a laugh. Typical Shane, worried and neurotic and beautifully kind. He probably spent the last couple weeks beating himself up about those twenty seconds, worried Ilya would hate him.

If he’d listened to the rest of the voicemail, he’d know just how ridiculous a thought that is. Ilya could never hate Shane. He never even tried all that hard to, really. 

“That is good.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and Ilya can practically hear the cogs turning in Shane’s brain, feels the panic leaking through the phone. He decides to put Shane out of his misery and change the subject. “What does your mom think about New York?”

They talk about hockey, joke about Scott Hunter, and Ilya even gets some good teasing in. It’s almost jarring, how quickly his mood has flipped from how it was just the day before. Nothing can be all that bad if Shane Hollander is talking to him.

But nothing is actually fixed, a fact which Ilya has to remind himself of when Shane finally plucks up the courage to ask him about the cottage again. Ilya wants to go, god he wants to go so bad, but he isn’t sure he can trust himself not to get on his knees and beg for Shane to choose him the moment they're alone together.

And if he does that, and Shane doesn’t choose him, well. He doesn’t think he could survive it.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Hollander.”

Shane fires back almost immediately. “What was it you said to me once? Everything we do is a bad idea.”

Ilya has to laugh, because if he doesn’t he’ll cry. He wants to say yes, knows he has to say no, and is too much of a coward to do either.

“I’m not saying no, Shane,” he says.

“But you’re not saying yes either?” Shane’s voice is different now, somehow less heavy than it was before. As if, despite his refusal to give a clear answer, somehow Ilya has given him hope.

“I will think about it.”

It’s not a lie, either. He will think about it. He will think about it as he lays in bed, as he answers Shane’s silly texts, as he listens to Svetlana complain about an annoying customer. The thought of Shane and the cottage, the two of them private and unguarded, follows him around for two weeks like a spectre.

He doesn’t even realize that it’s the day of the Stanley Cup until Svetlana shows up at his door with a bottle of vodka and a Scott Hunter bobblehead she bought him as a joke. It suddenly makes a lot more sense why Cliff had been so bummed that he turned down the invitation to come over and watch the game.

It’s perilous, having Svetlana here when he’s so conflicted, because she can sniff out his internal conflicts like a bloodhound. If she finds out about the cottage, she won’t leave until he’s made a decision.

She hasn’t said anything for now, so maybe he’s hiding better than he thought. Ilya grabs them a couple glasses while Svetlana settles onto the couch and puts on the game.

She gives him a shrewd look as he joins her. “How are your ribs?”

Ilya relaxes just a little. This, at least, is easy to answer. “They hurt like a bitch, but they’re getting better. Doctors say as long as I don’t do any strenuous physical activity, they should heal fine.”

Svetlana smirks at that. “Ah, lucky for you, then, that we don’t have sex with each other anymore.”

Ilya laughs, handing her a glass of vodka as he takes a sip of her own. He sits down beside her, watching as the announcers start talking about how amazing Scott Hunter has been playing this year.

Before he can second guess, he pulls out his phone and texts Shane.

Lily [7:03 PM]
Are you watching this? Terrible nature documentary. They keep showing the same dinosaur over and over.

Shane texts back almost immediately.

Jane [7:04 PM]
Ha! Maybe an asteroid will strike before the final buzzer and no one will win the cup.

Lily [7:05 PM]
Knowing the league, they’d probably still give it to him post hummusly.

Jane [7:07 PM]
Do you mean posthumously?

Lily [7:09 PM]
Whatever. English is a stupid language.

They keep texting back and forth for the entire game, and even though Shane acts annoyed at Ilya’s nonstop jokes about Scott Hunter, they both know he secretly thinks they’re funny. In between texts, he and Svetlana make actual commentary on the game, and, though he’d never admit it out loud, Scott Hunter does actually play well.

When the final buzzer goes off, the crowd explodes, New York players crowding Hunter as they celebrate their first cup win in years. Ilya smiles to himself; he knows that feeling. He misses that feeling.

Lily [9:49 PM]
Your mom was right.

Jane [9:50 PM]
She usually is.

“Who is that?” Svetlana asks, and at first Ilya wants to be defensive, to guard his phone screen from her, but he realizes that she’s pointing towards the television. On the screen, Scott Hunter is waving to a fan in the crowd, urging him to come down to the ice.

Jane [9:52 PM]
What is he doing?

Lily [9:52 PM]
I don’t know.

They don’t have to wonder much longer, because soon the man is hopping the boards and being dragged out onto the ice by hand. And then Scott Hunter is bending down and crushing their mouths together. Holy shit. Holy shit.

The crowd around them cheers, and it’s like Ilya is watching things in slow motion. Here is someone throwing caution to the wind, raising a middle finger to the consequences, and grabbing happiness by the cheeks (or mouth, more accurately).

You can be that happy, if you are brave, a voice that sounds strangely like his mothers tells him. It’s just in his head, but he hasn’t heard her voice in years. Мама?

He’s on his feet and dialing his phone before the adrenaline has time to fade. If Scott Hunter of all people gets to be happy, then so does Ilya fucking Rozanov.

Shane picks up with an incredulous laugh. “What is—”

“Listen to the voicemail,” Ilya interrupts. “Then let me know if I am still invited.”

He doesn’t specify where, because he doesn’t have to. He knows the decision has been weighing on Shane just as heavily.

“And if you are?” Shane asks.

“Then I will come to the cottage.”

“What the fuck was that about?” Svetlana asks, and Ilya turns to see she has followed him into the hallway. He looks at her face—dear in a way his brother’s never was, the closest thing to family he has left—and Ilya is tired of being an island.

“I am in love with Shane Hollander,” he says, looking to the floor as tears fill his eyes.

“Oh, Ilyusha,” Svetlana tuts, rushing towards him to pull him into her arms. She guides his head down to her shoulder. “Is he your soulmate?”

The question still scares him, sitting heavy in his chest, but it feels as though by asking Svetlana is carrying some of its weight. “I don’t know. I know that he understands Russian, and I understand French and English, but it is not a guarantee.”

Svetlana pulls him away from her shoulder, graciously saying nothing about the wet spot he’s left there. She takes his face in her hands and pulls him down to place a gentle kiss on his forehead.

“My dear Ilyusha, nothing is ever guaranteed. But that can’t keep us from happiness.”

Her eyes are big and wide and understanding, full of love and acceptance. He feels tears on his cheeks again. “I know. I know, I do. I’m going to try now. To be happy.”

Ilya can’t sit still, checking his phone every minute or so. Svetlana has gone home, given up on trying to keep him company. She got frustrated with him when he told her to stop talking, just in case he missed the sound of his text tone. 

(“Fuck off, Ilya. I’m going home then. Text me if you need anything. I love you, you bitch.”)

Right now Shane is listening to the voicemail. He’s hearing all of those things Ilya said. He tries to remember everything. He knows he went into detail about his family, and the struggles there, but what really scares him is what’s at the end.

“And I know I have a soulmate. And I know it probably isn’t you. But, God, I know I will never love anyone the way I love you. And it scares me that God or the universe or biology has decided that there is a person out there who is my perfect match, and it might not be you. I need it to be you.”

His father would disown him if he heard him say such things. Not just for saying them to another man, but also for even entertaining the concept of rejecting his soulmate. Unless, of course, his soulmate was a man, because then the otherwise omnipotent fate would have miraculously made a mistake.

But Grigori Rozanov is dead, thank God, and Ilya hopes he rots in hell. Soon he’ll be just as withered as his soul.

The sound of a text notification rings out from his phone. It might as well be a choir of angels.

Jane [11:23 PM]
You’re still invited.

Ilya wastes no time, pulls up a travel app and looks for a direct flight to Ottawa. He doesn’t even look at the price, just fetches his credit card and inputs the numbers. His fingers are shaking so hard he has to do it twice.

But then his seat is booked, and it’s real. He’s really going to the cottage. He’s going to spend two full uninterrupted weeks with Shane Hollander. With the man who may or may not be his soulmate.

He texts a screenshot of the flight confirmation to Shane, along with a quick message.

Lily [11:34 PM]
See you soon.

The flight feels like it goes on for hours, even though it actually only takes about ninety minutes. The two hours in the car feel equally grating, for a different reason. Shane is right there, and he’s clearly excited to see Ilya, but they both seem to have an unspoken agreement that the big conversations should wait until they get there.

They hold hands for the whole drive, and that’s the only thing that keeps Ilya from biting off his fingernails in anticipation. Every time he looks over at Shane, beautiful and unbuttoned in a way he never is during the hockey season, Ilya has to remind himself they can’t just pull over to the side of the road so he can suck him off.

When they arrive, Ilya recognizes the large glass house from Shane’s documentary. When Shane tries to point him towards the front door, he has to resist the urge to reveal he knows where he’s going.

Shane takes his suitcase, and even though Ilya tries to fight back, Shane will hear none of it. He’s a bit of a bitch about it, actually, and Ilya feels like the love he has for this ridiculous man is seeping out of his every pore. Or maybe he’s sweating. It could honestly be either.

Maybe it’s both, because when Shane turns around after opening the door, he takes one look at Ilya before pulling him in and kissing him.

They fuck in the bedroom, desperate and frantic, and the way Shane’s tight heat feels around Ilya’s cock is enough to have black stars dance in the corner of his vision.

Shane comes first, like he always does, but Ilya follows after, his orgasm so intense that it feels like he is pouring his very soul into Shane, leaving his own body empty and cold.

They lay there breathing heavily for a few moments, reality slowly creeping back in. When Shane leaves the room, Ilya is swept into a storm. 

I love you, he thinks, and the words are like lead. They weigh down his arms, each movement heavy and slow; they fill his tear ducts, falling down his cheeks; they clog up his head until there’s nothing but those three words.

I love you. I love you. I love you. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.

He at least has the wherewithal to dispose of the condom in the little waste basket next to the bed. He can hear Shane moving around in the bathroom, running the tap. As he lays back down, Ilya covers his face with his arm to hide his tears.

This is the first time he’s ever had sex with someone he openly loves.

Well, sort of. He loves Svetlana, but not that way. And he’s far from openly loving Shane. He’s never even actually said it to him in person—just on a voicemail that he didn’t even realize at the time could be understood.

But this is the first time he's had sex with someone who knows that he's in love with them. Whatever happens at this cottage, it will change everything. He will either have to give Shane up for good, or he will have to stand with him against the hockey world, Russia, and maybe even fate itself.

More than anything, Ilya is scared. Shane hasn’t said how he feels, but the fact that he still invited Ilya to the cottage has to be a good thing, right? And if he doesn’t love Ilya, that’s okay, Ilya can be okay, he can survive that—his cheeks are wet again.

He hears Shane pad back into the room, using a wet cloth to clean Ilya’s dick so gently, so carefully, that Ilya wants to scream. No one has ever touched him this softly. If this isn’t love, it will kill him.

He feels a soft, small kiss against his pelvis, and that’s the last straw. His silent, quiet tears turn into full on sobbing, and he can almost feel the way the air in the room changes when Shane realizes.

“Hey. Hey, hey. What’s going on?” Shane tries to pull at Ilya’s arm, but Ilya can’t let him see him like this.

He feels kisses pressed into his skin, everywhere Shane can reach, each one more intimate than the last. “Ilya, I need you to look at me. I have something to tell you.”

Ilya knows, then, what Shane is going to tell him. But he still needs to hear him say it. He uncovers his face, his arm ten times its normal weight, but he finds his courage and looks Shane dead in the eye.

“I love you,” Shane says from above him, and even though Ilya knows that Shane is just propped up on an elbow, the way the light pours out from behind makes him look like some sort of guardian angel. “I’m sorry if it’s too late, or if you don’t feel the same way anymore. But I love you, I love you so much, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”

And that’s simply unacceptable. As long as he’s alive, Ilya will never let another second go by where Shane Hollander does not know how loved he is.

“My love,” he smiles, cupping Shane’s cheek. He isn’t sure what language he’s speaking, but it doesn’t matter. Shane will understand either way. “I have never stopped loving you. I never will.”

Shane cries then, and it breaks Ilya’s heart. It’s cosmically unfair that Shane somehow looks even more beautiful this way, tears clinging to his lashes and connecting the freckles on his cheeks.

“I love you so much,” Shane cries. “So, so much.”

Ilya pulls Shane into his lap. It’s like Shane has eased the heaviness inside him, trapping it within his own body instead. That’s not right either. They can share their burdens from now on. The weight of this love inside him can rest on two sets of shoulders now.

“Does it feel like agony for you, too?”

The answer is easy. Simple. So many things in his life have felt like agony, but this floating, happy feeling is nothing like that. “Not anymore.”

Shane falls asleep against Ilya’s chest, and Ilya can’t look away at the way his features even out in sleep, relaxed and beautiful.

This has to be his soulmate, Ilya thinks. There’s no way the universe could create someone so intrinsically perfect for him and not let him have it. He’s given enough, goddamnit. He deserves this one good thing. The one good thing.

The thought hits him like a speeding train. Yes, he deserves this. He deserves this love, this tenderness, this care. Fuck the universe, or fate, or God. This is Ilya’s soulmate. He doesn’t need fate to tell him that.

But still, they need to talk about it.

When Shane wakes up, Ilya asks about the voicemail, ripping the bandaid off as quickly as possible. He’s not scared, because he knows that no matter what, he’s not letting this go.

“I think that some part of me has always known you were my soulmate,” Shane says, and despite his resolve, relief still floods Ilya’s system. For maybe the first time in years of this thing between them, they’re finally on the same page.

Ilya wants it to be true, them being soulmates, he does, but he needs Shane to know that even if they aren’t, Ilya is choosing this. Choosing them.

“And if I’m not…” he trails off, unsure of how to end.

“If you’re not, then I don’t care. I choose you, Ilya. I will never love anyone like I love you. But I know that you are.” Shane says it like it’s an unshakeable truth, and his certainty is a balm to Ilya’s nerves.

And that’s all well and good, but the reality is that they don’t know that for sure, and Ilya is worried that Shane hasn’t fully considered the possibility that they might not be destined for each other; this fight may be much harder than he realizes.

“Our marks haven’t appeared.”

Shane actually rolls his eyes at that, the fucker. “They will. I know they will.”

Shane says it the same way he says anything he’s sure about. Smoking is bad for you. I play better if I put on my left sock before my right. Hockey is the greatest sport of all time.

And now, this. The most beautiful truth of all. We are soulmates.

Ilya floats through the rest of the day on a high, buoyed by constant kisses and I love you’s.

They kick around a soccer ball for a bit, but eventually Ilya can’t resist temptation and tackles Shane to the ground. And when Shane looks up at him, all freckles and affection and sunshine, Ilya can’t help but lick into his mouth.

They lay there, making out lazily, for what feels like hours. There’s never been time for this before, Ilya realizes. It’s entirely new. The freedom to take their time, kissing not as a means to an end, but as the destination itself.

Every touch of lips, swipe of tongue, small happy whimper, feels like a little piece of heaven, broken off and brought down to earth. This has to be his soulmate. There’s no other way.

Мама, he thinks. If you can ask for one favor up in heaven, please let it be this. Please let him be mine.

The breeze picks up, warm and tender against his back, and Ilya feels like somehow, somewhere, he’s been heard. Everything will be okay. 

Мама will take care of it. 

Мама will take care of me.

Ilya wakes up to pain, acute and burning, behind his ear.

He opens his eyes, and sees only the darkness of the room, illuminated only by the light of the moon. Shane is sitting up already, and within moments the room is bathed in the soft yellow light of the bedside lamp.

It takes Ilya a second to catch up, his mind still half asleep. Shane’s hand is against his own ear, his right ear, just like Ilya’s, which means—oh god, oh god, oh god.

Within moments, Shane is on top of him, gently guiding his head to the side. Ilya lets him take charge, his head too much a swarm of nerves and giddy anticipation to make demands.

He feels Shane’s fingertip brush the skin behind his ear, and it’s like the pain is instantly switched off the moment he makes contact with—

“Your mark,” Shane says. “You have a mark.”

Shane reaches over to the bedside table, frantic, and grabs his phone, pulling up his camera app and snapping a picture. He hands the phone to Ilya, photo pulled up, and turns his head to the side so that his right ear faces Ilya below him.

“Is it the same?” His voice is shaky, trembling in the same way Ilya suspects his own will when he finally speaks.

Ilya looks at the swirling pattern on the phone screen, then turns his attention to the skin behind Shane’s ear. The pattern is complex and unique, two-of-a-kind, and Ilya is looking at both halves of the pair right now.

“It’s you,” Ilya says, voiced rough and clogged with emotion. Shane bursts into tears, and Ilya kisses them away, then moves to kiss everywhere else on his face when he’s done, hoping his lips somehow say everything stuck in his chest.

Shane Hollander, you are my soulmate. I love you, I love you, I love you. Whatever comes to us in this life or the next, we will face it together.

Verbally, all Ilya can manage to say is the same two words as before, repeated indefinitely. “It’s you. It’s you, it’s you, it’s you.” He’ll say it for the rest of his life, their lives, and whatever comes after.

“My soulmate,” Ilya says in Russian. He’s held back a bit since the hospital, despite knowing Shane could understand, because it felt wrong, like somehow the Russian he spoke wasn’t for Shane. It belonged to someone else—to Shane’s soulmate.

But now he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, he is Shane’s soulmate.

“Say it again,” Shane demands, and Ilya wonders somehow if Shane can read his mind. 

No, no, that’s silly. Science has never proved that, despite what some soulmates say. It doesn’t matter, anyway. They know each other well enough now that their thoughts blend together regardless.

Ilya wastes no time giving Shane what he wants. “Моя родственная душа.”

Shane’s brows scrunch adorably in concentration, and Ilya realizes that he’s trying to hear the actual Russian words, not the translation.

“Moya rodstvennaya dusha,” Shane attempts, and his accent is so terrible, it really is, but it’s the most beautiful Russian Ilya has ever heard.

As tears fill his eyes, Shane kisses Ilya’s face, coating him in kisses that Ilya prays will stick like a brand. When he kisses Ilya right against his new mark, it feels something like being remade.

He wonders if people will notice, when he returns to Boston. He can wear a soulmate patch, that’s not a big deal, most public figures do with or without a soulmark as a means of privacy, but Ilya can’t help but wonder if he’ll be able to hide it at all.

As far as he’s concerned, his life is now neatly bisected into two halves: before the marks, and after. How can anyone see him and not realize they are looking at an entirely new person? How can he go home, when home is now the man above him?

“What are we going to do?”

The question comes out shaky, but Ilya isn’t embarrassed to let Shane see his fear. If Shane wanted, Ilya would peel back his skin to let him see to the very core of him. But he doesn’t need to be flayed for that; Shane already knows him down to his marrow.

“I have some ideas,” Shane smiles, pressing a comforting kiss to Ilya’s lips. “We can discuss them tomorrow morning. We have two weeks to get our story straight. But right now,” another kiss, “we don’t have to worry about that.”

Ilya doesn’t doubt that for a second. His soulmate is beautifully neurotic, and by morning those ideas will probably be fully flushed strategies, contingency plans and all.

“Okay,” he grins, cheeky again. “But after morning sex, okay?”

That gets a laugh out of Shane, and Ilya almost wants to throw sleep out the window and fuck him now. Almost.

“After morning sex,” Shane agrees, and Ilya has never been happier.

When Shane goes to climb back to his side of the bed, Ilya refuses, not wanting even a millimeter's separation between them. 

“No,” he demands. “Sleep here. On me. Like blanket.”

And as he drifts back to sleep, Shane warm and heavy on his chest, Ilya feels excited for the future for the first time since he was twelve.

Chapter End Notes

And with that, we're done. I may add an epilogue to this eventually, but I don't want to promise anything.

Writing fic right now is very scary, especially seeing how other authors have been treated in this fandom. Please be kind in the comments and the bookmarks. Because, reminder, authors can see your public bookmarks too. If you have something unkind to say, keep it to yourself.

The reception of the first fic and this sequel has been amazing. I always feel so self-conscious of my writing, so for people to praise it feels unreal. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

If you want to connect with me outside of AO3, I'm most active on Twitter, but I'm also on Threads, Bluesky, and Tumblr.