Rating:

Mature

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, Jackie Pike, Hayden Pike, Hayden Pike's Children

Additional Tags:

Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Bruises, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Blow Jobs, Mutual Pining, Shower Sex, minor descriptions of hockey injuries, Drunk Dialing, Minor Injuries, Love Confessions, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Angst

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-02 Words: 42,517 Chapters: 1/1

love letters on your skin

Summary

What was he supposed to say? Yes, Hollander. I have a soulmate. All I know is that he has played hockey in Canada before. Oh, that could apply to the entire league? Oh, that could apply to you? Oh, you are now having a panic attack in my bed?

Yes. That would not have gone well. 

(Or: Soulmate AU where the marks that appear on your body appear on theirs. Ilya finds out that Shane is his soulmate long before Shane does. They are idiots in love.)

Notes

this fic is mostly canon-compliant but still diverges a little (particularly toward the end!). this is also my first ever soulmate au, and is not fully beta'd :)

tw for descriptions of bruises/minor character inuries/descriptions of a difficult home life (extremely brief)

Shane was seven years old when he got his first soulmate mark.

An early spring day spent helping his mother in the garden, he sat twiddling with pieces of grass while listening to her lecture about how to properly disentangle a weed without disrupting the plant that was growing there. She was mid-sentence, instructionally brandishing her trowel, when Shane gasped in shock.

There, where the skin had been previously unblemished, a mark was blooming across his knee— a dark purple-red scrape, cross-hatching itself in real time across his skin. It was the sort of scrape that would hurt, Shane knew, probably really badly, if it was his. But it wasn’t. 

“Mom,” he breathed incredulously.

Yuna took a split second to process the mark blossoming across her son’s skin, her eyebrows furrowing briefly with concern, before she shot to her feet and darted over to him.

“Honey? Did you hurt yourself?”

“No,” Shane said quietly, still awed. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from the mark.

Yuna called for his father before she squatted down next to Shane. Her lips turned up into a smile. “Is that what I think it is?”

Amazed, Shane ran his thumb over the injury. It looked like it should be rough and painful under his touch, but the cut was just a mirage of broken skin— the wound belonged to his soulmate, someone in the world somewhere. His father slid open the screen door and called out, asking what was going on.

“Shane got his first mark!”

Shane heard more than saw his father slam the door, his footsteps heavy across the patio and through the grass as he made his way to look.

“Let me see that— oh, ouch, buddy! Looks like your soulmate took a rough fall. I bet that hurts.” 

Neither of his parents could wipe the grins off their faces. Not everyone got a soulmate— some people went their whole lives without any evidence that they were tied to anyone at all. Shane had heard all of the stories, and had prayed that wouldn’t be him. He’d once spent an entire month falling asleep with his fingers crossed, hoping that he would get a mark someday.

He couldn’t stop tracing his thumb around the blurred edges of the scrape, wondering if he might go to school tomorrow and see another kid with an identical mark. It really did look painful; Shane pressed his palm over it and screwed his eyes tightly shut. I hope you’re okay, he thought as loud as he could. I hope you heal quickly.

Somewhere, somehow, he hoped his soulmate could hear it.

***

“I hate my soulmate.” Ilya buried his face into his pillow, leaving streaks of damp tears across the space-patterned sheets. 

“Stop pouting, Ilyushenka. I know it’s frustrating, but you’ll be able to play in next week’s game.”

Despite his mother’s fond tone, Ilya’s scowl only deepened. He tucked himself tighter, miserably, against his mattress, both fists shoved into his sleeves so that he didn’t have to look at the red pockmarks that zipped up and down his arms. He’d noticed the spots that morning, in the shower. Red welts had cropped up, seemingly in moments, all along his limbs, his stomach, his chest, his face.

He felt the bed dip beside him, and his mother’s gentle fingers carded through the curls behind his ears. Ilya relaxed, just a little, but his teeth were still clenched so hard they were beginning to hurt.

“I should be able to play today,” he gritted out. “Stupid soulmate.”

“You shouldn’t speak like that, sweetheart.” His mother brushed her thumb against a spot that felt so specific, he knew he had to have another pockmark there. His chest grew impossibly tighter with anger. “Think of your poor friend. It isn’t fun to have chicken pox. Be grateful it isn’t you, all itchy and contagious.”

Ilya rolled over to face his mother, and an errant tear slipped down his cheek. “If I’m not contagious, why can’t I play?”

“Because to all eyes, you have chicken pox, and it’s not so easy to explain to so many parents and coaches that it’s not you, it’s your soulmate.” It was maybe the fourth time she’d said it, but Ilya’s eyes still burned indignantly. “You’ll be back next week, I promise.”

“This is a big game,” he muttered, and buried his face back into the pillow. “Next week’s game doesn’t matter.”

“All games matter, Ilya.”

“Some matter more than others. They need me to play.” He sniffled, and his mother’s hand stroked soothingly over his cheek again. “They’re going to lose without me.”

His mother made a displeased noise. “That’s not true. You’re a good player, but you’re not the whole team. You know that, right?”

Ilya did, but he didn’t particularly feel like acknowledging it just then. 

“I hate my soulmate,” he whined again, just to feel the words on his tongue. It felt good to have this anger, to take it out on someone. “I hope I never meet them. Ever.”

His mother tutted again. “No, you don’t. A soulmate bond is special, little mouse. Don’t speak like that, or the angels will hear you, and then you’ll never meet the person that the universe has picked out just for you.” She brushed her thumb comfortingly along the shell of his ear. 

“I don’t even want a soulmate.”

“Yes, you do.” She sighed, exaggerated and dreamy. “When you meet your soulmate, Ilya, it will be the best feeling in the world. You’ll understand them. You’ll feel their feelings— when they are happy, you’ll feel it, when they are sad, you’ll feel it. You’ll always feel like you belong, like something inside of you has settled. It will be magical.”

Ilya rolled over again to face her, cheeks sticky as he blinked away the tears. “But you and Papa aren’t soulmates.”

He had never explicitly been told they weren’t soulmates, but he knew. He could tell from the distanced way they held each other, the way they argued, the knack Papa had for spitting words at his mother that turned her face sour and sad.

She smiled wistfully at him. “No, we’re not. And that’s okay.”

“So why should I care about meeting mine?”

“A soulmate is the most special thing in this universe,” she said softly. “It’s someone who understands you intrinsically, like meeting someone who knows who you are before you’ve ever even met. It’s like you two speak a different language than everyone else on the planet.” 

She glanced toward the window, and Ilya watched her gaze fog a little, as if she had gotten lost in thought.

Ilya asked a question he had never thought to ask. He felt silly, because it had never occurred to him before. “Do you have a soulmate? Do you get marks?”

The question earned him another sad turn of her lips. “I did, once, but I never met them. I stopped getting marks a long time ago.”

Remorse twisted at Ilya’s gut. He wasn’t sure what to say in the wake of this knowledge, and his mother seemed to read his expression, because she forced a bigger smile onto her face and patted his shoulder encouragingly.

“Now come on, Ilyushenka. Coach says you can still come watch the game. You just can’t play. Are you going to be a good sportsman, or what?”

***

When he was twelve, Shane tried to write to his soulmate.

It was how lots of people found theirs, he knew. The soul marks didn’t just translate to scrapes and bruises, but also things like pen ink. One of his friends at school kept getting soul marks that were in the shape of Elmo temporary tattoos. 

The rules on writing to your soulmate were generally undefined, but Shane knew the idea. You couldn’t write anything too identifying— if you wrote your name, or your address, it’d still appear on your skin, but on their side the words would be scrambled and smudged until they were illegible. There were stories of soulmates who devised intricate codes to communicate with each other, and others who figured out who their soulmate was by deciphering class and train schedules that had been scribbled onto the back of a hand. Once the soulmates had met, the marks became convenient for constant communication; Shane’s mother still sometimes wrote grocery lists for his father on the inside of her arm, so that he never forgot what she had asked him to pick up.

Shane had never intentionally created a mark before. His marks from his soulmate, up until now, had all been obvious accidents— lots of bruises, enough to make Shane wonder if she was some kind of athlete, and the occasional scribble of marker on the inside of a thumb or another scraped knee. No writing, ever.

He was bored in class, staring distantly at a chipped tile in the floor, when he decided to just do it. Slowly, letting the drone of his algebra teacher fade into the background, Shane rolled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and fiddled anxiously with his pen, unsure of where to put it or what to write. It felt like an immense amount of pressure, like if he wrote the wrong thing he’d make a bad impression and then he’d never meet his soulmate.

After a few moments of deliberation, Shane picked his location— the inside of his arm, a few centimeters below the crook of his elbow. Just two letters. Then he paused, screwing his lips to the side, uncertain, and added a smiley face. That was better. Optimism and excitement bloomed in his chest. 

Though it was gross, Shane spent the next several showers with his elbow carefully pointed out of the spray, worried about washing the writing off. He wanted to give his soulmate as much time as possible to see it and to respond, although days passed and nothing happened. No one wrote back.

Maybe she’d been sick, or just hadn’t happened to glance at her arm that week. Maybe she’d sprained her elbow and had it in a wrap and hadn’t seen it— although Shane knew that wasn’t likely, because he would have noticed the bruising. He always did, cataloging the bruises carefully and keeping track of which were his and which were his soulmate’s. There were a lot of them, occasionally in odd spots: his shins, his hips, his thighs. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that they were hockey injuries, spots that looked like he did when he accidentally took a stick to the side or got checked into the boards particularly hard. Once, he’d tugged off his shirt in the locker room, and another kid had shouted “Dude, that looks gnarly!” which is how Shane had discovered that his soulmate had somehow done something to herself that resulted in a ginormous purple and black bruise spreading across his back. 

When he was fifteen, he’d heard his parents arguing in the kitchen about it. 

“Yuna, there’s nothing we can do until he meets her. You know that.”

“I know, David, but what if someone’s hurting her? That’s our son’s soulmate. It’s the fourth black eye he’s gotten in a year because of her.” His mother’s voice was tense in a way he rarely heard it, thick with concern.

“I know, I know. I’m worried about it too.” His father sighed, and Shane pressed himself further against the doorframe where he was hiding. “All we can do is hope he finds her soon. If she’s in a bad spot, we’ll get her out.”

When their conversation petered out, Shane ducked back up to his room, and found another new mark spreading across his upper arm. This one was already dark purple, a haunting impression of what Shane felt certain were someone else’s fingers. 

Without thinking too hard about it, he picked up a pen from his desk, where it had been lying discarded on top of a history essay. He rolled it nervously between his fingers before he committed to what he wanted to say, and scrawled a short message on his arm.

***

I hope you’re okay.

Ilya wasn’t sure how long the words had been there. 

He’d been skulking around all morning, blinking sleep from his eyes and avoiding Alexei, who he’d had another fight with the night before. Fucking dick. Ilya had been brushing his teeth before he had to head to the rink when the sleeve of his sweatshirt rode up and he caught a glimpse of the dark ink on the inside of his wrist. 

It was in English. Ilya didn’t know how to read English, at least not well. He’d learned a bit in school, but so far, he was better at speaking it than he was at reading or writing it. Too many grammar rules— not like Russian. Russian was easy.

It took him a second to find an English-to-Russian dictionary, buried deep in the bookshelves in his father’s study. The book was cracked and old, and he spent twenty minutes flipping through it before he felt confident that he’d found a definition for what he thought had been written on his arm.

Надеюсь, с тобой всё в порядке. ‘I hope you’re okay.’

What the fuck was that? Ilya was fine. He was more than fine.

He had wondered, briefly, what his soulmate must think of all the black eyes. He was getting into a lot of fights recently, both on the ice and at home. He knew he was getting a reputation as a bit of a troublemaker, aggressive, but that was fine with his coaches when he was playing as well as Ilya had been. Who cared if his father wasn’t currently speaking to him, or if Alexei had grabbed him so hard the night before Ilya had been worried he might break his arm? He’d hit back— a sharp tap to the ribs that hopefully meant his brother wouldn’t fuck with him for a while.

Ilya frowned again at the letters on his skin, which were small and rounded, a little childish, and revealed nothing about who his soulmate was. They’d written to Ilya before, once. Hi, was all it had said, with a dopey little smiley face next to it, and Ilya hadn’t needed a dictionary to translate that one. It had appeared in the crook of his elbow days after his mother’s funeral, when Ilya had been nearly catatonic. The words eventually faded and he’d hardly thought of it since.

He began to flip back through the dictionary, searching for inspiration for what to say in response. 

***

When Shane peeled his gloves off after practice, there was new writing on his wrist. His words from the day before had smudged with the sweat of practice and the friction of the gloves, but his soulmate’s words were stark against his skin. 

Every single part of him jolted in surprise, like someone had stolen the breath directly from his lungs. He blinked disbelievingly as he tried to process what he was looking at. 

The words were awkward and shaky, like the handwriting was unpracticed. All it said was this: Don’t worry.

‘Don’t worry’? What kind of response was that?

Shane furrowed his eyebrows, and could hardly manage to stumble into the showers and throw his clothes back on. If any of his teammates noticed him nearly walking into a wall because he was too busy staring at his wrist, no one said anything about it. 

***

For the next several months, none of Ilya’s marks appeared to be of any interest.

A few days after his message in English, a thick black question mark had appeared. He hadn’t known what he was supposed to do with that, and they’d had a big tournament that weekend, his father in a rare good mood for once, so Ilya had just let it sit until it faded. 

He wanted to believe in his soulmate. He remembered his mother’s words, remembered the softness in her face when she spoke about her own lost soulmate. The thing was that a majority of people never met their soulmates, and Ilya didn’t even speak the same language as his.

He was busy, anyways. Too busy for soulmates. At sixteen, Ilya was focused on hockey, and girls, and keeping his grades up, although the last one had to be a far more subtle effort than the other two. 

The next time words appeared on Ilya’s hand, they hadn’t even been directed at him. He’d gone to all the effort of digging out the English-Russian dictionary (now stored in his nightstand drawer) and flipping through it, only to translate the words don’t forget milk. Don’t forget milk? What was he, a fucking notepad? 

A few months later, in the winter, another mark appeared on his hand. It was a doodle of a stick figure with a Santa hat. Ilya had been in class, and immediately lost interest in whatever his teacher had been saying in favor of watching the careful lines materialize on his skin. When the drawing seemed completed, Ilya hesitated, then added a few snowflakes around the stick figure’s head. 

It took a few minutes, but when he checked his hand again, his soulmate had responded. There was an exclamation point over the stick figure’s head, and eyebrows had been added to his expression, lifted, like the figure was surprised and excited to see Ilya draw back. All Ilya could do was bury a smile in his fist and go back to taking notes.

Six months after he’d received the first message, however, things changed.

Ilya had known the girl was going to approach him before she ever took a step in his direction. She’d been glancing at him from across the party all night, tucking her long dark curls behind her ear and smiling shyly until she’d eventually made her way over to him. 

“Hi.” Ilya let a smile slowly tug at his lips as he stared down at her.

“Hello.” She lifted her cup to her mouth. Her eyelids shimmered with green glitter, reflecting iridescent in the flashing lights. “I’ve been waiting for you to approach me all night.”

Ilya laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was waiting for you to approach me all night.”

She swatted at him playfully, and the game was on. Half an hour later, Ilya had her pressed into the corner of the room, fingers resting on her hip. Their faces were inches apart, and he was about to wrap up the flirting and ask if she wanted to go somewhere with him when she’d gasped excitedly in the direction of the cup in his hand.

“Oh my God! A soulmate mark!”

Ilya’s hand jerked so suddenly that beer sloshed out and over his knuckles. “What?”

He rotated his wrist to see what she was looking at, and sure enough, there was an image settling into the center of the back of his hand. 

“What is it?” The girl, whose name Ilya had already forgotten, grabbed his arm and held it towards the lights, even though they were too dim to really make the image out. “I’ve never seen one actually show up on someone before.”

“You’ve never gotten a soulmate mark?” Ilya asked, before he realized it was probably an insensitive question. The girl’s mouth turned into a pretty frown. 

“No, I never have,” she said dismissively. “I’m sure it’ll happen soon, though. This isn’t your first?”

Ilya studied the mark, trying to make sense of what it was. It was a circle with some kind of cross in the center, and English words wrapped around the entire thing. Probably a stamp of some kind.

Belatedly, he remembered he’d been asked a question. “No, not my first. I got my first mark when I was eight.”

“I’m jealous.” The girl was smiling a little, now. “Do you guys write to each other? If I had a soulmate, I’d be talking to them all the time. I’d never get anything done.”

Now it was Ilya’s turn to frown. “Uh, no. We don’t talk.” 

“Oh.” The girl drummed her fingers on her cup. “That’s sad, I think.”

“I should go,” Ilya said abruptly. Something about the mark was bothering him, and suddenly he needed to get the fuck out of the party. The lights and the loud music were clobbering his senses, too loud, too bright, and this girl he’d just met was studying him with eyes that felt like they were looking right through him, and before he knew it, he was setting his cup down and slipping out the front door onto the street.

He took a second to inhale the fresh air, marred only by a few party stragglers smoking cigarettes by the road. Ilya had half a mind to ask for one but he recognized a few of them, and he knew that if he struck up a conversation he’d be out all night.

When he held the back of his hand up to the streetlight, Ilya realized what was bothering him. He recognized, now, that it wasn’t a cross in the center of the stamp, but two long lines with hooked ends. Not lines at all, actually, but hockey sticks.

Ilya practically ran home. By the time he was diving into the desk where the family computer sat, his fingers were shaking so badly that he fumbled his login several times. Slowly, he copied the English words into the search bar. One of them—hockey—he recognized, but the rest were a mystery to him. 

When the results loaded, Ilya’s breath caught in his chest. The stamp was for a hockey tournament somewhere in Canada, the same logo now reflected in the glow of the computer screen. The dates listed matched today’s. He scrolled urgently through paragraphs of English he didn’t bother to try to read until he found photos of the participating teams. All male. All seemingly around his age.

“Fuck.” Ilya leaned back in the office chair, scrubbing at his face with his hands.

It wasn’t like he’d never noticed boys. Since he was a few years younger, Ilya had found his gaze catching on the strips of skin that showed when other boys lifted their arms to stretch, had noticed himself thinking more than he’d have liked to about guys he hung out with outside of the team. Sometimes he even caught himself flirting with his coach’s son, subtle yet fun, but it wasn’t like he could do anything like that. Ilya liked girls, too. Why could his soulmate not have been a girl?

His eyes flickered, anxiously, to the wall of police awards his father had earned. Alexei was training now too, in school to become a cop. And if he and his soulmate both played hockey? They could never come out, even if they did find each other. It had never been done— it never would be done, Ilya felt sure of it. 

He spent a brief moment scanning through the team photos listed on the website, wondering if a face might stick out to him. Wondering if someone had a ponytail sticking out of their helmet, hoping that maybe one girl was playing on an all-boys team (it happened sometimes, he knew) and maybe, if he was lucky, it’d be her. Wondering if maybe he’d lay eyes on his soulmate and know. When he caught himself, nose nearly pressed to the computer screen with how hard he was staring, he took a shuddering breath and forced himself to close the window.

Ilya could never let anyone know what he now knew. His soulmate was a boy. An English-speaking boy. A hockey player, even, and though the thought of falling in love with someone who cared about hockey the way Ilya cared about hockey made his stomach flutter, he found himself hoping now more than ever that they would never meet.

***

Shane really tried to resist his attraction to Ilya Rozanov.

He didn’t date much, for various reasons— there was hockey, and the knowledge that he had someone out there somewhere, and a general lack of interest in girls he knew weren’t his soulmate. It wasn’t very taboo to hook up with people before meeting your person, but something about it sat unpleasantly inside of Shane’s chest. He felt, a little bit, like he was supposed to be saving himself for someone.

That sentiment lasted all of three seconds before the first time Rozanov pinned him to the hotel wall, hands radiating heat through the fabric of Shane’s shirt, and kissed him senseless. It took mere moments for Shane to drop to his knees, pressing his mouth emphatically to the skin above Rozanov’s waistband as he tugged it down.

It wasn’t like his soulmate was practicing abstinence, either. Shane woke up with hickeys that did not belong to him all the time— had even snuck into his mother’s bathroom to try to cover one with makeup when it had popped up on a draft media day. It was easy enough to shove away the weird twist of unhappiness in his stomach each time he woke up with another swollen purple mark stained against his throat. Sometime last year, he’d woken up with the name Maria on his arm beside a garbled smear of characters that might have been a phone number, smudged and made illegible by ambiguous soulmate communication rules. He’d raised an eyebrow, but kept it moving. Plenty of people didn’t wait for their soulmates. 

Plus, Shane knew that Rozanov wasn’t his. There was no way— they barely even tolerated each other. Rozanov thought Shane was boring. He wanted to crush him on the ice. He just also happened to particularly excel at taking Shane apart with his firm, practiced fingers and his soft, decisive mouth. 

Still, occasionally, there were moments of intimacy that Shane couldn’t explain.

Somewhere around their fifth year of sneaking around—and god, Shane could not believe he’d been secretly sleeping with the enemy for five entire years—they had begun to linger for just a little while. They never stayed the night, of course, but it was just so comfortable, the post-sex haze, Ilya all broad and muscled and cozy when he pulled Shane into his side. He made Shane feel taken care of in a way that relaxed every single muscle in his body, and that was proving impossible to give up.

There was one specific night that Shane had been thinking a lot about, in the months since it had happened.

The sex, as always, had been excellent. Shane had come hard, groaning Rozanov’s name into his shoulder. It had been tempting to bite into the muscle there, muffling his noises with Rozanov’s skin, but then he might have left teeth marks, which was a risk neither of them could afford to take. Shane flushed at the mental image as Rozanov pulled out of him, sweaty and breathless.

This was the part where they should split. Rozanov disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a warm, wet washcloth, even though he had to have known that Shane was moments away from crawling into the shower (the minute he could move again, that was). When he was done cleaning them both up, Rozanov had climbed back into the bed, and it took no effort at all to tug Shane’s boneless and spent body back against him.

They weren’t cuddling. They definitely were not cuddling.

Except that Ilya’s arm wound around Shane’s waist, and Shane buried his face into Ilya’s neck like it belonged there, one hand curling around Ilya’s neck and tangling with the curls at the base of it. He loved to play with Rozanov’s curls, teasing and twisting them. Ilya made some sort of contented noise, and they laid there for a while, washed in the light of the television that Ilya had only bothered to mute when Shane had knocked an hour before.

He didn’t normally leave the television on. Sometimes it felt distracting and weird to have something else happening in the room while he hooked up with Rozanov. But now, with his ear pressed to the rise and fall of Ilya’s chest as they watched some sort of reality series about biker gangs, Shane found that he wasn’t quite bothered. 

“Do you mind the words on the screen?” Ilya’s breath was warm against the shell of Shane’s ear. He shivered.

“Uh, no. I like the subtitles, too.” Shane flushed a little bit, but Rozanov didn’t say anything, just hummed thoughtfully. The noise was a pleasant reverberation against Shane’s cheek.

“You like this show?”

"I’ve never seen it.”

“Well, I am interested now. Do you think he will get his wife back?”

“I don’t think so,” Shane admitted. The man in question had been in the on-screen confessional for what must have been five entire minutes, lamenting his impending divorce and listing off the ways he thought he could win his partner back if he gave up riding his motorcycle. “He likes the thrill too much. Plus, she’s not his soulmate. She’s not stuck with him.”

“How do you know she isn’t his soulmate?”

Shane shrugged in the direction of the TV with his shoulder when the footage cut away to show the woman again. Washed-out brunette hair flashed over her shoulder as she gestured unhappily at the man from the confessional.

“She doesn’t have any of his awful tattoos.”

Another thoughtful hum from Ilya. “What do his fingers say?”

Shane squinted his eyes at the TV. Every inch of the man’s body seemed to be covered, but his knuckles had aged green letters on them that were just barely visible with how much he was waving his hands as he spoke. 

“Ride... hard?” Shane sounded out, his voice lifting at the end as if he wasn’t certain. “Maybe.” 

That drew a laugh out of Ilya, a sound Shane didn’t hear very often. He found himself immediately tucking the noise deep into the back of his brain, saving it to replay for later.

“You like that one?”

“Yes. Is good tattoo.” Ilya paused. “Would be good for you. You also like to ride hard.”

Shane groaned and moved to roll off of Rozanov, shoving at his chest. “Fuck off. That’s not funny.” 

It might have been more convincing if Shane hadn’t been laughing, too, and if he had resisted even a little when Ilya caught him by the wrist and held him there. He rubbed his thumb over Shane’s knuckles, staring at them like he was imagining it.

“I am serious. I think you should get knuckle tattoos.”

“Yeah, right.” Shane was still laughing. “For sure. And what would they say? Besides ride hard.”

“Hmm. I do not know. Maybe Metros suck.”

“That’s not even the right amount of letters.”

“Oh, yes, it is. Come on, I show you,” Ilya said, and then he was grabbing for Shane’s hand, holding it so close to his face that Shane could feel Rozanov’s warm breath against his wrist. Adorably speaking just under his breath, Rozanov began to count out the letters, pressing his thumb gently into each of Shane’s knuckles as he did so. Despite the fact that Shane was technically being attacked, when Ilya reached for his other hand to continue counting, Shane didn’t even try to withhold it. 

He was right, and the spacing didn’t work out— in this hypothetical tattoo design, Shane ended up with two consecutive tattoos of the letter S on his right thumb and index finger, instead of one on the other hand. He wanted to come up with something witty to say about it, but there was something about the soft pressure of Rozanov’s thumb moving along each of his fingers and the murmur of his voice as he spelled out the words that made Shane feel like he was melting.

“I’m not getting that tattoo,” Shane told him.

“I know. You are no fun.” Ilya exhaled with another laugh, not unkindly, and Shane began to chew the inside of his cheek. He’d become distracted by staring at Rozanov’s heinously long eyelashes. “You know, I almost got a tattoo once. When I was eighteen.”

“Oh, yeah? Of what?”

“A bear. For Russia.”

A surprised breath left Shane’s throat. “What?”

“A bear. You know.” Ilya made some sort of gesture that might have been a mimic of a bear claw, and there was nothing Shane could do to hide the smile that split his face at the gesture. “The creature in the woods. Did I use wrong word?”

“No, no, you didn’t, I just—” Shane pressed his lips together. “Where were you going to put a bear tattoo?”

“Right here,” Rozanov said like it was obvious, and traced a giant circle over his pec, his fingers bumping into Shane’s where he’d left them laying on his chest. “Big bear. For my home.”

Shane swallowed, and an embarrassingly fond sound left his throat. If Ilya noticed it, he didn’t react. “That’s a huge tattoo, though.” Shane ran over the spot with his fingertip. And then, because he was a goddamn idiot, he added: “I bet your soulmate would really like that.”

In a split second, it was like the air was sucked out of the room. Shane’s fingers froze where they had been tracing soft circles across Ilya’s chest. He’d meant it to be a joke, but they’d never discussed soulmates. Ever. 

“Sorry, that was stupid. I shouldn’t have said that,” he stammered. His cheeks grew warm with embarrassment.

“No, it’s okay.” Rozanov shifted a little, like he was uncomfortable, but his face had totally stilled. It was giving away nothing.

“I mean,” Shane coughed, and then, because he didn’t know how to shut the fuck up about anything, he kept speaking. “I mean, do you have a soulmate? Have you ever gotten a mark?”

Rozanov said nothing. His face was still impassive, not revealing a thing as he stared down at Shane. Shane did his best to wait, patient, but the longer the silence droned on, the more embarrassed and squirmy he felt. 

They’d hit maybe a solid thirty seconds of silence before he began to babble. “That’s okay. Not everyone has a soulmate. I feel like it’s totally normal, actually, lots of people don’t even seek theirs out—” 

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

Shane paused. “What? Of course, I do. Soulmates are real. They’re like, a proven thing.”

Ilya raised a single vaguely derisive eyebrow. 

“I mean—” Shane continued. “My parents are soulmates. They met at school. I’ve heard that story my entire life, you know? It’s supposed to be the most magical part of being alive. You don’t believe in that?”

Rozanov blew out a breath and tilted his head back onto the pillow, exposing a long column of perfect neck. Shane was briefly distracted by the desire to put his mouth on it. 

“Is not that I don’t believe in it,” Rozanov said slowly. “But not everyone meets their soulmate. Is a flawed system. Some people do not even like their soulmates.”

That, Shane knew, was true, but extremely rare. Sometimes, your soulmate was a twin flame: someone designed to challenge you, to reflect your own weaknesses back to yourself. Not everyone had that immediate flash of love and connection with their soulmate. Some soulmates collided for a brief moment, a bright flare of light that fundamentally changed them both, but they were not meant to spend their lives together. The thought of that kind of soulmate relationship made sadness well in Shane’s sternum.

“That doesn’t happen for most people,” he began to argue. “Soulmates are—”

“Do you have one?”

The question took him aback. Shane’s words died in his throat, his cheeks flushing a bit. “Um, yeah. Yes. I do. We’ve never met. I mean, obviously, that’s obvious. We don’t communicate, is what I mean. I don’t know anything about her.”

For the first time since the topic of soulmates was brought up, Rozanov’s expression changed, and his eyebrows jumped a little. “But you know that she’s a girl?”

Shane was pretty certain he was beginning to sweat again, the sheets suddenly too warm against his bare back. His skin felt clammy in every place that he was touching Rozanov. 

“Uh,” Shane started again. “Yeah, I do.” 

He didn’t, actually (not for certain), but he was pretty sure that his soulmate was a girl. He couldn’t afford to entertain the thought of what would happen if they weren’t. 

“Relax,” Rozanov said, and he smiled again, like he was teasing Shane, but there was something a little strained about it. “I just have never seen you with a girl before. I did not know that you liked them.”

“I do.” Shane jerked his head back. “Of course, I like girls. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Rozanov said simply. He was doing that thing where he was looking at Shane like he could see right through him, his hazel eyes made dark in the dim light. Shane couldn’t bear to look at him like that, not while his entire body was erupting into an anxious fire. 

“I should go.”

Before Rozanov could say anything else, Shane forced himself out of the bed. His legs felt shaky as he stepped back into his pants, tugging them up his hips and pulling at the zipper so quickly that it snagged on the fabric of his briefs. In moments, he had his shirt on over his head, and was stumbling out into the hallway.

It wasn’t until Shane had retreated into the quiet safety of his own house that he realized that he’d raced through the hotel lobby in a shirt that was both inside-out and backwards.

***

Fuck. Fuck. That had been a close one.

Ilya could not afford to look Shane Hollander in the eye and admit one single thing that he knew about his soulmate. He could not even so much as admit that he had one. 

Ilya had done a lot of work to pretend he didn’t have a soulmate, once he’d realized what would happen to him if the truth ever came out. If you asked any of his friends, even Svetlana, they would all say that he’d never received a mark. It was a not uncommon fate, although people always looked at him with immense pity when the topic was brought up. That part was hard, but it was better than honesty. Ilya would never be able to enter another locker room again if people thought he was looking for his soulmate there. 

He’d never discovered any other specific details, after that shockingly enlightening night spent searching up hockey tournament logos when he was sixteen. He’d effectively ignored any other marks that had appeared, even the ones that were baffling— once, a few years ago, his soulmate had gotten what looked to be a few glittery temporary tattoos of Disney princesses. Thankfully, they’d only lasted half of a day before they were scrubbed off. Most of the other marks were bruises Ilya recognized as typical hockey injuries, which lead him to spend a lot of time very decisively not wondering if his soulmate had gone to the league. 

It had been such a nice moment, too. The kind of nice moment that Ilya might stick away, deep in his mind, and never reach for again except for the comfort to know that it was there— Shane, his eyes molten and earnest, the soft smile that tugged at the edges of his lips while he let Ilya play with his fingers. Ilya had wanted to press a kiss to each of his knuckles. He’d wanted to bury his face into Shane’s chest and ask him never to leave the hotel bed.

Of course, those were ridiculous wants. They were wants that Ilya was not allowed to have, which was perhaps the only reason that he thought of them so often.

Mercifully, Hollander seemed to interpret that strained conversation much differently than Ilya had. He’d taken Ilya’s silence as an indication that he didn’t have a soulmate at all, because Hollander was a forgiving and kind and open-hearted person. Hollander was honest. He wore his heart on his sleeve, or at least on his face, nearly all of the time. Ilya could not afford to be so open, so vulnerable.

And what was he supposed to say? Yes, Hollander. I have a soulmate. All I know is that he has played hockey in Canada before. Oh, that could apply to the entire league? Oh, that could apply to you? Oh, you are now having a panic attack in my bed?

Yes. That would not have gone well. 

All Ilya could do was hold his mouth shut and hope Hollander would stop fucking asking— but then, the lines had been blurred, they were talking about something they had never spoken about, and without stopping to think about it Ilya decided to cross a line that had very clearly been drawn in the sand since they first started hooking up, five years before. He had asked Hollander about girls. And Hollander had run.

It was stupid. Ilya had a reputation, he knew, as a ladies man. Hollander had maybe never even spoken to a woman, for all Ilya knew. It was not a shock that it was a sensitive topic, but in his desperation to get away from the discussion of his soulmate, Ilya had pressed the bright red emergency button anyways. 

It was all so terrible. He would never see Hollander again, at least in that way. There was no doubt about it. He’d ruined maybe the one good thing he had going for him. 

And because Ilya’s life was so horrible, there were only a few weeks before he knew he would run into Hollander again. Boston was facing Montreal, uncharacteristically late in the season. Maybe Shane would use that as an excuse not to see him— maybe he was beginning to focus on playoffs. That was another unspoken rule of theirs.

Ilya spent those several weeks being a miserable sack of shit. He woke up every day and hit the gym as hard as possible, until he got in trouble with one of the athletic trainers for nearly straining his calf. He called Alexei with increasing frequency if only for an excuse to yell at someone. 

On the day of the actual game, Ilya kept to his pre-game routine with a strict regiment. Ice-cold shower. Ran several miles on the treadmill. Gave one of his finest, most aggressive pre-game speeches, yelling until his throat nearly gave out and the room was filled with hollering and clapping. Fuck Hollander. He didn’t even need to see Hollander. He hadn’t even looked at his texts that day (and if that was a lie, no one had to know about it).

It was only when he stomped back over to his locker, reaching for his helmet, that he heard the buzzing in the top shelf. He froze, then sucked in a breath and reached for his phone. He was ripping off the bandaid. Hollander was going to tell him to fuck off. Hollander was going to say that their arrangement was over. Hollander was going to tell Ilya that he never wanted to breathe the same air as him again. It was certain.

Are we seeing each other tonight?

Ilya inhaled very sharply, then took a brief moment to thank God a dozen times over.

***

Things were awkward, the first time Shane saw Ilya after their soulmate conversation.

Shane had expected them to be. He had, after all, been an idiot, and asked Ilya about a very sensitive topic before essentially yelping out that he liked women (not twenty minutes after he’d had Ilya’s dick in his mouth) and then running from the room. It did not make for a relaxed environment.

“Hello,” was all Ilya said when he appeared on Shane’s doorstep. He looked unfairly handsome, his hair slicked back and still damp from the shower.

“Hi,” said Shane. “Come in, dude. It’s freezing out there.”

“Is not so bad,” Rozanov said. His cheeks and nose were flushed a little with the cold. When he stepped past Shane and into the stairwell, he brought in a gust of wind that smelled like expensive cologne and, a little soothingly, like locker room soap. Even that couldn’t fully relax Shane, however.

His feet felt like lead as he trudged up the stairs, Rozanov close behind him. The awkward silence hung like a cloud around them as Shane held the door for Rozanov. 

Shane waited while Ilya unbuttoned his navy wool coat, leaning with one hand pressed into the counter. He let the sharp edge dig into his palm a little, grounding himself with a breath.

“Listen, I wanted to talk to you. About last time.”

Rozanov paused from the doorway, where he’d been toeing off his boots. “Last time?”

“Yeah.” Shane swallowed. “I just— I shouldn’t have asked about that stuff.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Rozanov said quickly. He took a step forward. “I’d rather not.”

“But I wanted to apologize—”

Before Shane could finish his sentence, Rozanov had taken several steps forward, pinning him lightly to the counter. His face was very still. It was the sort of expression that would have terrified Shane a few years earlier, but now only puzzled him. “Please,” Ilya said. “Let’s not.”

“What—”

And then Ilya was kissing Shane, fervently, like he had somewhere to be. He was unzipping Shane’s hoodie. And Shane had planned so much of his speech, his apology, but it was hard to remember what he’d written out in his notes app when Ilya Rozanov was slipping his talented tongue into his mouth, running a demanding hand up his back and holding him close.

He could apologize later. 

***

Ilya had been dead asleep when his phone had rung.

He’d had a long day. Ilya had been fighting off a cold for what felt like a week, extremely bravely battling off the effects of the congestion by taking enough Dayquil to kill a small horse. They’d taken the team bus to New York for the game, which had been an exhausting 3 and a half hours. Ilya could always sleep on flights, but he could never sleep on the bus. Then there had been the pre-game interviews, and the game itself, and the post-game, and he’d been attempting to hide his exhaustion the entire time. He’d only yawned through one question at the post-game presser, which was actually more impressive than it seemed.

By the time he’d stumbled back into his hotel room, he had barely bothered to rinse his mouth with toothpaste before he’d curled eagerly into the mattress and fallen unceremoniously unconscious. And now, here, when it was so late at night, his phone was ringing. Loudly.

He fumbled around for it, groaning when the bright light beamed into his skull and he slammed it back down again. The phone continued to ring, shrill in his ears, and Ilya swore loudly before he flipped it over again and thumbed at what he thought was the decline button. Fuck whoever was calling him at this hour.

He buried his face back into the sheets, relishing in the merciful quiet. Then, he realized, it wasn’t as quiet as it had been before. There was a muffled hello? hello? radiating from the direction of his phone. Ilya had evidently not declined the call. 

He groaned again and reached for it, pressing it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Rozanov?”

“Yes, yes, who is this,” he mumbled unhappily. He laid his cheek back into the pillow as he spoke, letting his eyes drift shut.

“It’s me,” the voice said. “It’s Shane.”

Ilya shot up in his sheets as quickly as if there had been a bucket of ice water poured over his head. “Hollander?”

“Yeah,” said Shane, like it was obvious. He giggled a little. “You didn’t check who it was before you answered the phone?”

Ilya peeled the phone away from his face and blinked at the screen. Surely enough, the caller ID read Jane. 

“Why are you calling me? It is late, Hollander.”

“Um,” Shane giggled again. “I don’t know. Wanted to talk to someone, I guess.”

Ilya processed the sound of his voice. There was something wrong about it— the vowels drawn out, the words almost smothered. “Where are you?”

“Walking home. Well, walking back to my hotel, I guess.” 

“And where were you?” Ilya wracked his brain, trying to remember what city the Metros were playing in tonight. Was it Buffalo? 

“I was at the bar. With some teammates.” 

Ilya sighed as many things became clear to him. A smile tugged at his lips. “You are drunk, Hollander?”

“No,” said Shane, except he dragged the word out for several seconds. Ilya could practically hear the pout on his face. “I think you’re drunk, Rozanov.”

“I am not,” he said simply. He buried a laugh in his elbow, but then something else occurred to him and he stopped laughing immediately. “You are walking back alone? Where is your team?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shane said dreamily. “It wasn’t the whole team who went out. Just a few of us. I think most of them were talking to girls when I left.”

A frown worked at Ilya’s brow. “Where is Pike? He was with you, yes?”

“No, he’s out with Jackie’s parents. She’s from Chicago, you know. They live in the suburbs somewhere, so Hayden went out with them for dinner, I think he said some steakhouse, and—” 

Shane kept talking, explaining in detail how they’d found this rooftop bar and someone had gotten them a table, there had been bottle girls and Shane always felt weird about that. Ilya scrubbed a hand across his face, trying to wake himself up more. Yes, that was right. Montreal was playing Chicago that night. Ilya was pretty certain they’d lost.

“So you’re walking back by yourself? It’s late, Hollander. Do you even know where you’re going?”

“I’m walking toward the river,” Shane said confidently. Ilya nearly dropped his phone.

“What?”

“You know,” Shane said, the duh obvious in his voice. “The Chicago river. Big thing. I think we might do a boat tour tomorrow, our hotel is right across from it. Oh, our hotel is so cool, they have this soap that’s shaped like swans, it’s honestly a little ridiculous—”

“Hollander. You are sure you’re going the right way? Chicago is a big city. Do you have directions?”

“I don’t need directions, Rozanov,” Shane said, and dragged out Ilya’s last name as if he liked the taste of it. It might have been more endearing if he hadn’t heard a car horn blare and Shane swear quietly under his breath. “I told you. The river is right there. I can literally see those buildings that look like corn cobs,” he said like that meant anything at all.

“Okay.” Ilya took a breath and leaned back against the pillows. He was beginning to ask another question when Shane gasped.

“Did I tell you that Russ met his soulmate tonight?”

Ilya rubbed at his brow. “Who the fuck is Russ?”

Shane sounded wounded. “Russell Oberst. He’s our rookie goalie. You don’t know Russ?”

“Hollander, he is rookie for your team, not mine.” Ilya sighed. “He met his soulmate? This is why you are walking home alone?”

“Well,” Shane swore softly under his breath again. “Sorry. Nearly tripped. What was I saying?” More jostling, windy noises through the phone. “Yeah, actually, because Russ has this little bee tattoo on his wrist, and the team’s always giving him shit for it, because you know, but he’s always saying that it isn’t his. Then, tonight, he goes up to get a drink from the bartender, and she has the same tattoo on her wrist, Ilya, would you believe that?”

Every part of him freezes up, his brain desperately trying to scramble backwards in time like there’s a tape he can rewind. Ilya. Shane had called him Ilya. He’d never done that before.

Of course, he hadn’t seemed to notice. Shane continued to ramble on, talking about how the X on the back of Russ’s hand from the bouncer had shown up on the bartender’s, too, and how they’d tested it out by drawing something on the inside of one wrist and watching it show up on the other.

“I just think it’s so amazing,” Shane sighed happily. “I love love. I love soulmates.” Another car horn ripped through the speaker. “Whoops. That was my bad. Oh my god, Rozanov, I can see the river!”

Ilya swallowed and had to clear his throat before he was capable of speech again. “I thought you were already able to see the river?”

“Well, yeah, a little, but now I’m on the bridge.” The sound of traffic was much closer, the noise of cars whizzing by clearly audible. Ilya prayed to God that there was some sort of sidewalk that Shane was on. “I’m looking right over the river. Rozanov, it’s so beautiful. All the lights, and the buildings.”

Ilya shut his eyes, allowing himself to enjoy just for a half of a second the sound of Shane sighing, all breathy and happy in his ear, before he snapped his eyes open again. “Hollander. You have to go home. You’re going to drop your phone into the river.”

“No, I am not!” Shane sounded offended. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Hollander. Go home.” 

Shane grumbled, but then a few moments passed, the sound of the traffic changed, and Ilya could tell that he’d moved off of the bridge. 

“How was your day?” Shane said it like that was a thing that they said to each other all the time. Ilya rolled his head onto the headboard.

“My day was fine. We played New York tonight.”

“It’s New York or nothing,” Shane said quietly, then laughed to himself. If there was a joke there, Ilya was missing it. “Did you win? I’m sorry, I can’t remember if I checked the score.” He hiccuped a little. 

“We did win, Hollander. Are you almost to your hotel?”

“How many goals did Scott Hunter score?”

Ilya thought about it. “Actually, none. It was a rough night for Hunter.”

Shane blew out breath. “That sucks for him. He’s having a lot of those recently.”

For the next several minutes, he wandered on about hockey. Ilya let him. Even while drunk, Shane Hollander had some incredibly insightful things to say about their peers and the way they were playing, what teams he thought were doing well. 

“Okay, I am at the hotel now.” Shane’s voice dropped a little lower, the background noise immediately hushed as he entered the lobby. “Will you stay on the phone with me until I get upstairs?”

Ilya’s heart squeezed inside of his chest. “Sure, Hollander. I’ll stay on the phone.”

“Okay. Don’t hang up, please,” Shane told him softly. He heard the ding of an elevator, the quiet mumble of Hollaner humming to himself. 

“What song are you singing?”

“What? I’m not singing,” Shane said, only after he’d stopped. “Okay, I think this is my floor.”

“You think? Or you know?”

“Yes,” said Shane simply. Ilya sighed. “I think this is my room. 1714. Does that sound right to you?”

“I don’t know, Hollander, is not my hotel room,” he said, but no one responded. There were many noises, the sound of an oop and several angry beeps before a lock clicked open. Ilya let out a breath of relief. He hadn’t realized how tense he was until that moment. Hollander was back in his hotel room. Everything was okay.

“See? That wasn’t hard,” Shane said proudly. “Okay. I’m going to wash my face now. Don’t hang up.”

There was a clatter when Shane presumably set the phone on the bathroom counter, then the gush of water from a faucet. Ilya listened patiently, letting his eyes close again. He was very tired, and it was hard not to sink into the mental image of Shane doing his night routine. He imagined a very expensive face soap, a blue toothbrush. He knew from using the bathroom in Shane’s hotel rooms before that he had a very nice monogrammed leather toiletry kit.

“Okay, all done,” said Shane when he picked the phone back up. 

“You should drink some water,” said Ilya. “And take a headache pill. You’re going to be hurting in the morning.”

“A headache pill?” Fabric rustled against the phone, presumably as Shane slid into bed. It wasn’t hard for Ilya to fall into that mental image, either— Hollander, all soft against the pillows, his expression open and warm. “Oh! You mean an Advil. I don’t have any of those.”

“Oh,” said Ilya. He yawned.

“I’m sorry.” Shane sounded legitimately remorseful. “I’m keeping you up. You should be sleeping.”

“I’m fine, Hollander. It’s you who should be sleeping. Boat tour tomorrow, yes?”

“What?” Now it was Shane who yawned. “Oh. I forgot I told you about that. Yeah, before our flight, I think. I’m really tired.”

“I’ll let you go to bed, then.” Ilya slipped down against the pillows, let the phone dig into his cheek and imagined for one brief second that it was Shane Hollander’s chest he was laying on. “Good night, Hollander.”

A breathy sigh, the sound of a smile on Shane’s lips as he spoke. “Good night, Rozanov. Sweet dreams.”

They were both silent for a long moment. It was Ilya, inevitably, who had to reach up to press the disconnect button. The moment he ended the call, he wished he hadn’t. 

***

Floaty and fuzzy one night, Shane was fighting sleep when he heard the loud thud from the bathroom, and the string of angry Russian cursing that followed.

“What happened?” His words were slurred, half-pressed into the pillow. He pried one hesitant eyelid open.

The sight, to him, was comical. Rozanov bounded into the bathroom doorframe on one leg, his opposite hand clamped to his calf and his face screwed up in annoyed pain.

“Motherfucker! That fucking hurts. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.”

“What did you do?” Shane rubbed sleepily at his eyes.

“Tripped on the fucking bathmat. Hit my leg on the counter.” Rozanov rubbed furiously at the spot, like he could somehow scrub the pain away. Shane knew the feeling, but couldn’t stop himself from laughing a little, turning his face fully into the sheets so that Rozanov wouldn’t see.

His movement didn’t go unnoticed. Rozanov’s cursing slowed. “Ah, it is funny to you? My suffering?”

“A little,” Shane croaked, voice muffled. A warm weight landed next to him on the mattress, and with it came a comforting cloud of spicy body wash— his own body wash. It smelled different on Rozanov. Shane inhaled, subtly but greedily, before something occurred to him and he frowned. “Did you towel off? You’re going to get my sheets all wet. You always do that.”

“Shut up, Hollander. You would not even care if I had broken my leg.” A weight rolled onto his back, forcing Shane into the mattress, and he groaned, pushing at Rozanov’s shoulder and shoving him back off with a protest that sounded whiny to his own ears.

“I would care,” Shane murmured. “Not fun to play Boston if you’re not there when we beat you.” 

With another heavy sigh and moving like dead weight, Rozanov flopped over onto the pillows next to Shane, who lifted his head curiously to study him. Like he’d suspected, droplets of shower water still speckled his muscled shoulders, and Shane frowned again, but knew it was a fight he wasn’t going to win.

“Does it really hurt?”

“Da.” Rozanov looked at him, a flirty smile tugging at his lips. “Aren’t you going to kiss it better?”

Shane rolled his eyes, but didn’t waste a second before pressing his mouth to Ilya’s.

***

A few days later, in the locker room, Hayden looked at Shane’s leg and winced. “Ouch, man, what did you do to yourself?”

Shane blinked down at where his teammate was looking. He hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a dark, swirling purple and blue bruise blossoming on the side of his calf. “Oh, I don’t know.” He pressed his thumb into it, but it wasn’t tender the way it would’ve been if it belonged to him. “It’s not sore. Must be a soul mark.”

Hayden nodded knowingly. “I got one of those today, too.” He pulled up the sleeve of his t-shirt, revealing a mottled spot on his bicep. “Jackie ran into the car door. She’s so clumsy. I’m always telling her to be more careful.”

Shane was hit with a surprisingly strong sense of wistfulness. He didn’t think much about his soulmate— there weren’t so many black eyes, anymore, and neither of them had written anything on their skin in years. The bruises still continued, still in odd places, but they often mixed with Shane’s and he barely even noticed them. 

In truth, the silence from his soulmate when he was a teenager had been resounding and painful. A clear rejection, like he’d done something wrong. Shane didn’t allow himself to dwell on it, but he knew that somewhere deep inside, he was a tiny bit jealous of what Hayden had. He wanted to know who his person was. He wanted to know how the marks appeared, wanted to be able to reach out and talk to his soulmate however he wanted without any weird rules of the universe getting in the way.

His mind flickered to a few nights ago: a vague memory of being half-asleep, warm all over, listening to a litany of Russian curses. Something inside of him shifted, a little, wondering, but Shane dismissed it immediately. That wasn’t possible. He glanced again at the mark, but felt positive that it was in the wrong spot. He hadn’t actually seen Ilya get hurt, but he remembered the way he’d rubbed at the front of his leg, and Shane’s mark was on the side. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was.

Ilya Rozanov was not his soulmate. There was just no way. Ilya didn’t even have a soulmate. Right?

***

Ilya woke up hungover in his hotel room.

It took him several minutes to even remember what city he was in, blinking at the odd morning light through blinds he had not bothered to close when he’d stumbled in well after midnight. 

Vegas. He was in Vegas. Maybe.

His head soared with pain as memories of the night before flashed into his head. The game had been tight, but ultimately they’d lost, and the only answer had been to make their way out to a club afterward. Ilya had found a girl he wanted to take back to the hotel with him, but she’d gotten too drunk, and he’d made sure she was sent home safely with her friends instead. Once she’d left, there was nothing else to do but pound vodka until someone called them a ride. 

His flight wasn’t until the afternoon, and it was only nine o’clock, a mercy that had Ilya sending a silent thank you in the direction of the ceiling. He groaned as he pushed himself up onto his elbows and drained the last of what was in the glass of water on his nightstand, pursing his lips with dissatisfaction at the remaining sour taste in his mouth. 

It wasn’t until Ilya stumbled into the bathroom, hoping he’d kept some painkillers in his toiletry kit, that he caught sight of himself in the mirror and froze.

The entire left side of his body was covered in a thick blanket of purple and blue bruises. The marks faded into an uneasy, sickly green, spreading from his ribs down over his hip and disappearing underneath the band of his briefs. 

Sudden panic thrummed in his pulse, his heart thundering in his ears. What could he have done to himself? Had he fallen, drunk, and not remembered it? How was he not sore? He pressed a hand to his side and turned, realizing in horror that the bruises continued to map their way around to his spine. The light streaming into the bathroom caught on his cheekbone, and Ilya jolted again, pressing a quick hand to it. There was a cut there—he could see it in the mirror—but the skin felt smooth and uninterrupted underneath his hand, his jaw prickly with the beginnings of stubble but nothing else.

All at once, clarity and understanding crashed through the fog of his hangover. These were not Ilya’s injuries.

They were his soulmate’s.

The marks on his body this morning, however, were not what Ilya would classify as normal hockey injuries. He wondered if it was something worse— a car accident, maybe. He thumbed gently at the cut on his face, wincing at what felt like phantom pain. It was not his wound, but he knew what that must feel like. Poor guy.

Ilya took a deep breath, then bent to the sink, splashing cold water up and over his face until his hair was damp and droplets ran down his elbows and onto the tiled floor. He located a few Advil and tumbled back to the bed, collapsing into the sheets and fumbling around for his cell phone.

There were a few texts he needed to respond to, including one from Alexei. He tapped out a succinct response about a doctor’s appointment his father had that week, reminding his brother that he couldn’t miss it, before he shut the phone off and reached instead for the television remote.

It took a few clicks to find the hockey channel, where, he noticed with a slight drop in his stomach, they were recapping his game against Vegas from the night before. It had been a rough one, and the men in the suits didn’t hold back as they scrolled highlights across the screen.

“Captain Ilya Rozanov was in rough form last night, missing several goals and losing possession on a huge percentage of his attempted passes. This is the third consecutive loss for his Boston Raiders,” droned a heavy-set man with ruddy cheeks. “One has to wonder if he was just distracted, or if he’s losing his touch.”

“Boooooo!” Ilya called at the screen, then winced when the sound reverberated around his skull. “Fuck you. Midwestern motherfucker. You know nothing.”

He reached again for the remote, hoping to click away, but then another of the men in suits started to say something that caught his attention.

“Speaking of rare form, on the other end of that spectrum Shane Hollander had what might have been the game of the season last night— if it weren’t for that rough hit he took at the top of the third period. I’m shocked he made it to the press conference afterward—”

— and then the screen was cutting away from the men at the desk to a clip of Hollander in his gameday suit, his expression controlled in a way that Ilya was beginning to recognize meant that he was exhausted. It wasn’t the look on Shane’s face, however, that made Ilya sit up, nor was it what he was saying, which was the no doubt the same bullshit everyone always spewed at press conferences.

No. What caused Ilya to shoot straight up in the hotel bed, clutching the television remote to his chest so hard that the volume on the screen ratcheted way up, was the scrape Shane Hollander had slanting across his cheekbone. 

Ilya knew the truth even before he launched himself across the bed for his phone. They were rolling another clip, now, number 24 on the Montreal Metros being tossed hard into the boards by someone on the opposing team. Hollander took the hit on his left side, sprawling across the ice, but Ilya noticed none of that. He was too busy frantically clicking open his phone camera, and pressing an insistent hand to his face.

His face, which was marked with the same exact cut that Shane Hollander had. 

***

Shane could not be Ilya’s soulmate. It was just not possible.

He spent the next several weeks in torment, tossing the idea around in his head. There was always the chance that it was some sort of deeply fucked up coincidence. That his soulmate, the one who definitely was not Shane Hollander, had somehow been doing something else that resulted in bruises from their shoulders to their ankles on the same night that Hollander had been checked into the boards so hard he’d had to exit the game. That his soulmate, when he was doing whatever it was that he had been doing that resulted in those bruises—a skiing accident, falling from a roof, getting stuck beneath a piece of large furniture—had cut his face, in some random fluke of the universe, in the same place Hollander had. That his soulmate was some other person who had also been going to teen hockey tournaments in Canada in 2006, at the same time as Shane. Maybe they even knew each other. But they could not be the same person. 

Ilya thought about it a lot. He thought about it while brushing his teeth. He thought about it while he was grocery shopping. He thought about it before he fell asleep, and after he woke up, and when he ate lunch, and even during team meetings he found his focus waning, drifting from the plays on the board to thoughts of deep brown eyes, soft smatterings of freckles.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t already aware that his capacity of emotion when it came to Shane ran too deep. It had been eight years of hooking up. He’d accidentally spent all those years doing what came very close to pining, searching for reasons to text Shane, to tease him, to make fun of him until he was pushing at Ilya’s chest and calling him an asshole and Ilya could catch him around the waist and taste the words on his tongue. 

But was this what meeting your soulmate felt like? Was this what the movies described— the settling of his heart, the language only he and his soulmate were supposed to speak? 

He didn’t think he and Shane communicated in any way that felt different. If anything, in a lot of ways he found it more difficult to speak with Hollander. He looked at Shane, and it was like the English bunched up on his tongue, like he had so much to say until Shane was looking back at him, always patient, always waiting, and then the thoughts just dissolved out of his head.

So, maybe he was fucked.

Ilya spent the entire morning of his next game against Montreal pacing the hotel room and thinking so hard that he was certain anyone who passed in the hallway would be able to hear it. All of his usual preparations for the game had passed in a blur, though he wasn’t sure anyone else could tell. His teammates were out doing something, going to some park; Ilya had waved them off in favor of wearing a hole through the carpet.

He could always just tell Shane he wasn’t up for meeting up that night. Hollander probably wouldn’t even care. Probably.

But even as he tilted that idea around, Ilya knew he wouldn’t do it. Even the thought of seeing Shane sent his stomach dropping low, anticipation and nerves and sudden, offputting need curling in his stomach. Despite the fact that he wasn’t certain Shane was his soulmate, Ilya wanted him. Badly. He couldn’t deny it, even to himself, but that still didn’t mean he could act on it.

Ilya’s eyes snagged on the hotel desk, where a notepad and a branded pen laid innocuously. An idea began to whir in his brain. It was not a bright idea, but it was an idea nonetheless. He peeled off his shirt and picked up the pen, clicking it anxiously a few times before he moved to the bathroom. 

Staring at himself in the mirror, Ilya blinked. He knew, vaguely, that he looked rough. Dark circles ringed his eyes, his cheeks paler than usual after a rough Boston winter. His father hadn’t been doing well. His soulmate might be his archrival. His soulmate was definitely a man, and Ilya was a Russian from a family of police. Considering all of these things, he hadn’t slept well in weeks, maybe years.

Slowly and awkwardly, cradling the pen in his fingers, Ilya lifted his arm and reached over his shoulder. He pressed the tip of the pen into his skin, scribbling just a little before he turned to inspect his work in the mirror. 

There was a small mark— faint black ink in the vague shape of a Z at the top of his shoulder blade. Not very noticeable. Hopefully not something that someone would ask about in a locker room.

This was stupid. This was so, so stupid. But when he saw Hollander tonight, and ran his fingers over his back and confirmed that there was no mark there, he’d be able to breathe easier. It’d prove that Hollander wasn’t his soulmate, and Ilya could work towards walling off whatever it was that was trying its best to erupt out of him.

***

It had only been a few months since Shane last saw Rozanov, but his fingers buzzed a little with anticipation all through his locker room shower and his post-game interviews. By the time Rozanov knocked on his door, Shane practically jumped to open it, though he forced his steps to slow so that he didn’t seem too eager. 

“Hey,” Shane breathed as he stepped aside to make room in the entryway. Rozanov wasn’t smiling, but he never was. It didn’t deter Shane as he lead them into the house, Ilya’s heavy footsteps close behind him.

“Good game tonight.”

“Yeah. You too. I couldn’t believe that last score, did you talk—”

Shane was still mid-sentence when Ilya kissed him.

He made a surprised sound against his mouth. Ilya was usually not much of a time-waster, but it hadn’t felt like this in a while. Maybe not since the earlier days of their arrangement, when they were younger and a little more desperate (or at least, Shane had been). Ilya led him backwards by his hips, pinning him against a shut closet door, strong hands gripping at his waist. 

Shane was quick to respond, parting his lips so Ilya’s tongue could find his. He let out a quiet moan, and Ilya hummed in response. He was touching Shane in precisely the way he loved, his hands practically massaging up his arms and his shoulders, warm sparks showering across his skin. Shane slipped Ilya’s shirt off, and his mouth slid to Ilya’s cheek, his jaw, his neck, the soft sweet spot that he knew Ilya liked behind his ear. Rozanov moaned, his eyes fluttering distractingly. Shane grinned, pressing more kisses to his collarbone before Ilya yanked him back up and hooked his fingers in his waistband.

Shane flipped them, so that it was Ilya who was firm against the wall, and then dropped to his knees. He’d been thinking about sucking Ilya off all day, and bit his lip eagerly as he made his way down Ilya’s happy trail. Rozanov had his head thrown back with pleasure as Shane’s hand wrapped around his cock, his fingers tangled in Shane’s hair. Rozanov tugged at his collar, growling a little, and Shane snickered at his desperation but complied, tossing his shirt somewhere onto the floor behind him. He bent forward to lick at Ilya’s tip, bracing his hands on muscular thighs.

Then, before Shane could even properly get his mouth on him, Rozanov stiffened. His entire body went suddenly tight with tension.

Surprised, Shane glanced up. He’d never seen Rozanov do that before— nor, for that matter, seen that odd expression on his face. Shane stopped immediately.

“Ilya?”

Shane hardly even noticed the name as it slipped out of his mouth, too focused on standing so that they were eye-level. Concern raced through him.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” Gently, Shane took him by the shoulders.

The contact seemed to send Rozanov back into himself. His eyes finally met Shane’s. Shane realized, as he took him in, that Ilya looked like he hadn’t slept in a while. His lips, which Shane had thought were pleasantly rough against his own, were chapped and dehydrated, and his cheeks were gaunt, his eyes set deep with rings of exhaustion. 

“Sorry, I— sorry.” 

“What happened?” 

“I— nothing,” Rozanov stammered. Shane didn’t think he’d ever heard Ilya’s words catch like this before. His gaze was still a little unfocused. “Migraine. I have a migraine.” 

“Did you hit your head during the game?” Shane sounded panicked, even to himself. He tried to tamp it down.

“No, no. Is not like that.”

He rubbed at Rozanov’s shoulder in a way that he hoped was comforting. Something in his face was still wrecked, somehow, and it was scaring the shit out of Shane. “Do you get migraines often?”

“Yes. Hockey player. Concussions,” Rozanov said like it explained everything. “I have to go.”

He began to push past Shane, but he grabbed his shoulder before he got too far, standing in between him and the front door. Before he could stop himself, he was cupping Ilya’s face.

“Hey,” Shane said softly. “What is it, really? Did I do something? I’m sorry.”

Rozanov shook his head, his expression still miserable but now he was staring at Shane, really looking at him, like he’d never seen him before. “It’s not your fault. Like I told you. Migraine.”

“Okay.” Shane nodded, trying not to let his mind catch on the idea that something else had happened. His thumb rubbed circles into Ilya’s jaw, and for a split second Rozanov leaned into the touch, letting his eyes fall shut. Shane had never seen him this way before— like a spooked horse. “You should take a breath. Go lay down on the couch, I’ll get you water.” 

He sounded like his mother. Rozanov was already shaking his head before Shane had finished his sentence. “I have to go, Hollander. I’m sorry.”

“What? No. You’re clearly hurting. Just wait, for a minute. Come sit down.” Shane couldn’t keep the concern from his voice, his hands still pressed into Ilya’s shoulders like he could convince him with the touch alone.

“I will be okay.”

 Stay. It’s fine, Ilya.” There was that name again, slipping out of Shane’s mouth like he said it all the time. He could hear that he was pleading, a little bit. A brief embarrassment flared in his stomach, but he wasn’t ready for Rozanov to leave. Something was very clearly wrong, and if Ilya left him alone with no answers, Shane didn’t know how he would cope. “Don’t go back to the hotel. Just stay.”

Ilya’s eyes fluttered open, and when he looked at Shane again, he still seemed sad. Shane wished he understood what was happening. 

“I have to go, Hollander. I’m sorry. I won’t—” He broke himself off mid-sentence. “I’m sorry.”

And with that, Ilya was ducking out of Shane’s grip and moving swiftly towards the door. Shane could do nothing but stand and stare after him. For a long time after the automatic lock clicked into place, Shane stood very still in the hallway, shirtless, alone in the confusing and somehow devastated silence.

***

Ilya barely made it out onto the street and hopefully out of view from Hollander’s front windows before he was doubling over, digging his palms into his shut eyes. Fuck. Fuck.

Of course, it was Hollander. His soulmate was Shane Hollander.

And he’d had the audacity to be so sweet about it, his hands gentle on Ilya’s jaw, his eyes all careful and concerned as he studied him. He saw through Ilya’s lie about the headache, but didn’t call him out on it, only asked him to stay. Only called him by his name, his first name, which was a sound Ilya wanted to capture inside of a bottle. 

Except that Ilya couldn’t focus on that, because moments before, Shane had been on his knees, about to wrap his lips around Ilya, and he’d seen it there— on Shane Hollander’s muscled shoulder blade was the slant of faint black pen mark, the vague shape of a Z. The same mark Ilya had scribbled on his own shoulder blade mere hours before, while still trying to convince himself that he was being paranoid and stupid and that of course, Shane Hollander was not his soulmate.

Except there it had been. And so it was true.

Ilya didn’t remember making it back to the hotel. All he knew was that some period of time later, he was stumbling back into his darkened room, not even bothering to brush his teeth before he threw himself on the bed and curled up tightly. Hot, embarrassing tears threatened his eyes. What was he going to do?

Shane had already texted him, asking if he was okay. God. Hollander was so good. He was too good. Ilya could never deserve him. And he would not want Ilya— he knew from the look in Shane’s eyes when he talked about his soulmate, knew from the fact that Shane thought his soulmate was a woman, knew from the way that Hollander’s parents were soulmates, too. Hollander wanted a fairytale ending. Ilya could never give that to him.

When he eventually drifted off to sleep, his pillow was damp with tears. Ilya dreamt, as he often did, of Shane.

***

“Hey, man, can I talk to you?”

Shane flinched in surprise. He was slumped into a chair outside one of his coach’s offices. He wasn’t certain how long he’d been staring off, or how long Hayden had been standing there, but from the expression on his friend’s face, it had been a while. 

“Um, yeah. Sure.”

Shane followed Hayden down the corridor and back into the team meeting room, where they’d been half an hour earlier. Neither of them sat, but the more formal setting made Shane antsy. 

“What’s up, dude?”

“I just wanted to check in. You seem like something’s bothering you.” Shane began to shake his head, but Hayden raised a hand to stop him and barreled onward. “I know you always get tense when we play Boston, but it seems like this is something else.”

Shane blinked, a little shocked. They were only a few days away from playing Boston, but he hadn’t realized he was showing the strain he was feeling about it.  “I seem tense?”

Hayden nodded towards Shane’s hand, where he had a green smoothie clenched in his fist. Shane wasn’t even certain of how long he’d been holding it. “You’re about to make that cup explode, buddy. And you’ve been jumping a foot into the air any time someone says your name.”

Oh. Right. Shane swallowed.

It had been eight months since he’d heard from Rozanov.

He’d reached out several times after that night when Ilya had run off. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong— either with Rozanov, or with him. There’d been this strange ache in his chest that he couldn’t get rid of, ever since that night. It throbbed a little worse when he caught moments of Rozanov on-screen somewhere, doing an interview or posing with a glass of whiskey for an expensive cologne commercial. 

He couldn’t stop thinking of the look on Ilya’s face that night. Something wounded, haunted, his skin clammy underneath Shane’s touch. Shane had never seen someone have a migraine come on so quickly. Every time he replayed that moment, he remembered some new detail— the curl that fell over Rozanov’s forehead and brushed across his upset brow, the quiver of his mouth as he apologized (which was certainly something Shane had never, in his nine years of knowing him, seen him do). 

 But Shane had gotten the message. He knew when someone didn’t want him to reach out, and Ilya’s silence on the other end of the text thread felt clear as a bell.

Shane had called him Ilya, that night. There was an odd feeling in his stomach every time he thought of it— like he was scared, like he was excited, like he had liked the way the syllables tripped off his tongue. He didn’t know if he would get the opportunity to say it again. He didn’t know if he had ruined everything.

To make matters worse, his soulmate appeared to be fighting again. Shane had woken up with an absolute shiner right at the start of season, and had woken up a few weeks later with unfortunate purple bruises blooming up his jaw. He’d spent half an hour in a Shoppers far too late at night, on FaceTime with his mother as she tried to help him shade-match himself for concealer. 

“I’m fine.” He forced his lips into a smile, and could tell from the divet in Hayden’s brow that he had only made things worse. “Thanks for checking in, but you’re right. It’s just normal pre-Boston jitters. I’ll be fine by game day.”

Hayden was clearly not satisfied. Shane knew what the next words out of his mouth would be far before he even started to shape them. “Would you come over for dinner tonight?”

Shane began to stammer out an excuse as to why he couldn’t, but Hayden wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“No, no, none of that. Jackie says she’ll make brussels sprouts. Just for you. An entire pan of them.” Hayden shuddered. “You’re lucky we love you.”

When Shane smiled again, it felt a little more real. Still, he could feel the tension coiling around his spine, tight and unpleasant, and knew that it wouldn’t ease until he’d laid eyes on Rozanov.

***

It was taking everything in Ilya not to stare.

Across the rink, Shane Hollander was skating in long, lazy loops. It looked like a warmup, but Ilya recognized it for what it was— Hollander was anxious, and taking out that energy in something repetitive. The ice hummed with players, everyone stretching and batting pucks around the ice. 

This was a big game. Montreal was prepped to head to the playoffs after this. Boston had suffered a bit of a rough season, which was partially Ilya’s fault. It had been difficult to steer the team when his father’s health had been declining so rapidly, but that was no excuse. Ilya had been a little absent— not so much that anyone had commented on it, but enough that he knew it would become obvious if it went on for much longer.

Ilya’s day had been mercifully busy, mostly because he’d designed it that way. Their flight had been delayed due to weather, so they’d had a tighter window than normal to land in Montreal and prepare for the game. Ilya had passed those precious pre-game hours by running six miles on the hotel treadmill (more than he probably should have, more than was necessary) and angrily declining calls from Alexei. The fucker had called him the night before. 

“What do you want?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Alexei had started, but Ilya knew from his voice alone that that was a lie. He paused, deliberate. “I just wanted to tell you that Kasha was in a crash yesterday.”

“What?” Ilya froze. He’d been in the process of packing, squeezing each shirt tightly in his clenched fists before he shoved it into the bag in an effort to work out his tension. 

“Car accident,” Alexei repeated, like Ilya was slow. He fucking hated that tone. “A very bad one.”

“Is she okay? Was the baby with her?”

“She is fine,” Alexei said dismissively. He didn’t even acknowledge Ilya’s second question. “The car is totaled, though. The Mazda.”

Ilya chewed on his cheek. “Okay.” Understanding sank in his stomach— he knew where Alexei was leading with this.

“It will cost lots of money, of course, to get a new one.”

He pressed his palm to his forehead, exhaling raggedly. “I gave you money last month. What did you do with it? And does insurance not cover anything?” 

“Spent it,” Alexei said, in that same infuriating voice. “I need more. You want me to drive my child around in a car that is totaled?”

“The Mazda was Kasha’s car, right? You have another.” He was beginning to pace, now, the task of packing long forgotten. Ilya had given his brother tens of thousands that year. Surely Alexei couldn’t need more.

“Fuck you. You want us to live off one car? How am I supposed to take Father to his appointments under these conditions?”

Ilya swore under his breath.

“It’s not like Father can drive himself. You made us take his keys away,” Alexei continued snottily.

Ilya wanted to beat the shit out of him. He wanted to dig his fingers into the drywall of his bedroom and claw at it until his nails bled. He wanted to crumple to the floor and scream until his lungs gave out, his chest trembling with hot anger. Ilya had made them take away his father’s car keys, that much was true— after he’d driven through the garage door. 

“He has advanced dementia,” Ilya snarled. “You know as well as I do that he is unfit to drive. He’s hardly fit to operate an oven, Alexei.”

“I need a car,” his brother said simply. “Will you send money for it?”

Ilya dragged the phone to his chest and spent a moment staring at the ceiling, conjuring every single nasty name and insult he could think of and letting them boil deep and ugly inside of his stomach. Then he pressed the phone back to his ear. “You are the biggest piece of shit on the planet. I will wire money tonight. Don’t forget to take Father to his appointment on Thursday.”

Alexei had laughed, and then he had hung up.

Ilya really had wired the money over, more than Alexei deserved, so he wasn’t sure why the asshole had continued to blow up his phone all day long. Before Ilya took to the ice, he’d declined the fourth call of the day. If it was urgent, Alexei would text.

Not that Ilya was looking at his texts. He’d received a message from Hollander, earlier that day, and had hardly unlocked his phone since.

Your place or mine?

It had been a very long eight months since Ilya had realized what he’d realized about Shane. He couldn’t say the words to himself. He couldn’t even bear to think about it.

In July, he’d watched half of a documentary about two news anchors who had known each other for years before they put together that they were soulmates. Now they were building a home, commuting to work together. It had made him so miserable that he’d hardly left his bed for three days afterward.

When he slept, his dreams were plagued by Hollander. Sometimes, the dreams were pleasant— bright sun streaming over white linen sheets, the comforting line of Shane’s body against Ilya’s, the gentle press of lips on his forehead. When Ilya woke from dreams like that, he found himself grasping at the sheets and expecting them to still be warm.

More often than not, Ilya had nightmares— long, dark nights spent curled into himself. Most of the time, he was on a boat in the middle of the ocean, certain he was about to capsize. Sometimes, Shane was on the boat with him. Other times, it was his father, or his mother. He’d reach for them, trying with all his might to pull them out from underneath the wall of water that was crescendoing onto the deck, but he never got there in time. In those dreams, it was only a matter of time until Ilya drowned too, and woke up having sweat through his shirt. 

He knew he was in bad shape. His knuckles were chapped, raw and red beneath his gloves, and he was constantly fidgeting with a spot on his bottom lip that he’d bitten open, centering himself with the twinges of pain that resulted when he found it with his teeth. Again, Ilya was grateful for the fact that no one on the Boston Raiders seemed very inclined to comment on the state of their captain, so long as he showed up.

“Hey.”

Ilya blinked up in surprise from where he’d been doing stretches on the side of the rink. He hadn’t even noticed Shane skating in his direction.

Hollander looked good. He always did, but there was something about the way the lights hit his eyes that made them look twinkling and intent, his cheeks a little flushed.

“Hollander.” Ilya hoped his surprise wasn’t reading on his face. Shane had never spoken to him before a game.

“You didn’t text me back,” Shane said. It was so quiet, Ilya almost didn’t hear it. He straightened up to stretch his back out, appreciating the fact that this brought his face closer to Shane’s.

Ilya shrugged, but didn’t say anything, like he wasn’t sure precisely what text Hollander was referring to. There had been several over the months, all of which he’d had ignored. Shane’s face fell a little, and he glanced furtively over his shoulder.

“Just let me know, okay?” Hollander swallowed. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

Fuck. That couldn’t be good. Ilya had been planning to talk to Hollander, too, if they’d met up. He hadn’t decided yet if he had the stomach to end things, but he knew he had to. 

“Okay.” Ilya nodded, then bent back down to stretch his calves. His eyes landed on Shane’s skates— he tilted one up to push off, then paused, hesitating. Ilya looked back up. Hollander was studying him, brows furrowed, lips parted as if he wanted to say something.

“They’re calling you,” Ilya blurted before Shane could say something stupid and endearing like are you okay. He jerked his head to the other side of the ice, where Pike and a few other players were looking at them with clear confusion. “Don’t want them to think we are scheming, no?”

Shane snorted. “Scheming?” Still, he glanced over his shoulder and nodded. “I’ll see you later?” 

He waited for Ilya to cautiously nod, a quick jerk of his chin, before he skated off. 

***

Ilya wasn’t sure how he had ended up in this small room. 

He’d taken the call from Alexei after the game, and the words had rattled through him, cold spikes of fear radiating through his fingertips. 

Papa is in the hospital. They don’t think he will make it.

He’d had to take very many deep breaths. Someone—he couldn’t remember who, now, someone in a Raiders visor with a soothing smile, one of the team assistants—had said Mr. Rozanov? Do you need help? He thought that maybe he’d answered in Russian at first. One of his teammates had been there. Maybe Cliff. Someone had helped him book the flight.

He’d calmed down a little in the airport, lost in the now extremely familiar shuffle of the security line. Someone had asked for a photo while he was buying a Red Bull and he’d had to shove a lukewarm smile onto lips that felt frozen. He was clenching onto his passport so tightly that he worried he might rip it.

He remembered nothing about the flights, nothing about the three-hour layover in Morocco. Time was bland and wasteless, and Ilya’s throat worked constantly— holding back tears or a shout, he could often hardly tell.

Now he was in this small room. His father was dead. He was in a hospital in Moscow and his terrible father was dead and Alexei was outside, arguing with his wife in low tones. 

Ilya inhaled slowly, and ground his palms into his eyes. They needed him. Everyone needed him. He remembered, now, that he’d ducked into this small room so he could call to make arrangements for the funeral. Someone needed to order the coffin, to reserve the space for the ceremony, to call his miserable aunt and tell her that her brother was dead.

Ilya would take care of all of it. 

***

He wasn’t certain when he’d missed the call. It had probably rung while he was on the phone with the florist, asking for whatever their most traditional funeral arrangement was. His father, as far as Ilya knew, had never afforded so much as a passing glance at a flower bed. Fuck if he knew what kind of flowers to order, but it had to be done, so he had done it. He’d had to call his coaches, trying to keep the exhaustion from showing in his voice when he said that he would be back before the end of the week. One of them had said that he didn’t need to rush, but his tone had been flat and Ilya had heard the truth. He did need to rush. He was needed across the ocean. He was needed here. The issue was that he didn’t feel particularly wanted anywhere, but that thought was sentimental and stupid and Ilya did not have time for it.

Ilya flopped, exhausted, onto the ornate couch in his father’s living room and buried his face into the cushion. It smelled like dust, tickling his nostrils. He could hear Svetlana in the hall, glasses clinking faintly where she was helping him inventory his father’s belongings and decide what should happen to them. He had never been so grateful for Svetlana in his life. He should tell her so, but he thought she was aware of it anyway.

When Ilya dug his phone out of his pocket, there were a lot of notifications that he had been expecting. The Raiders had lost in Nashville, and in an ordinary moment that news would have worried Ilya, angered him maybe, but the message bounced off of him as if he just couldn’t absorb it. There were emails from his coaches. There were emails from his agent. It all felt spectral, ambiguous, like Ilya was on a small island very far away from everything. If someone was shouting for his attention, he couldn’t hear it.

But there, when he scrolled all the way to the bottom, was a missed call from Shane Hollander. 

Ilya’s breath caught. He sat up, ignoring the creak of his spine as his back protested the movement. He hadn’t rested properly in days, but that didn’t matter, because Shane had called him. He’d never done that before, at least not sober.

He shouldn’t call back. There were so many reasons not to— they had nothing to say to each other. He was supposed to be cutting Shane off. He couldn’t let it slip how needy he was, how he was falling asleep imagining the murmur of Hollander’s voice in his ear, how they were soulmates. That was a connection he needed to be suffocating, no matter how badly he wished he could let it breathe. Not to mention that he didn’t even know what time it was in Montreal. 

A half second later, Ilya had pushed the call button.

It only rang twice before Hollander picked up. “Hey. Are you okay?”

He sounded a little ruffled, but Ilya didn’t care, because he was too busy blinking in surprise at the glasses on Shane’s face. The lenses shone blue in the reflection of his phone screen, his freckles dark. Ilya didn’t think he’d ever looked so handsome and his heart twisted in his chest at the thought.

“I am fine. What have you heard?”

“Nothing. Just that you didn’t go to Nashville.”

“Yes,” Ilya confirmed. “I am home.”

A little furrow formed between Hollander’s eyebrows. “Boston?”

“Moscow.”

The furrow deepened. “What happened?”

“My father died.” Ilya practically exhaled the words— as if the faster he said them, the less they would disturb the shards of ice that were stabbing into his lungs. “He was very sick. Is okay.”

He wanted so badly to be able to tear his eyes away from Hollander’s face, the tender expression there, but he could not. He could only dance his gaze from the soft points of Shane’s face (the beautiful sweep of his brow, the jut of his chin, the pink swell of his lip) and think to himself this is my soulmate, and he is so lovely, and he is looking at me like he knows I am about to explode. 

Shane had been speaking. He was giving condolences, the words skimming over the surface of Ilya’s consciousness as he studied him. He had heard so many condolences over the last few days.

“I am fine, Hollander.” He paused, then added: “Better now.”

It was both a mistake and a delight to watch the way Shane’s expression lightened, something hopeful in his eyes. Ilya could not help but want to do or say whatever he could to keep Hollander’s face like that.

“When will you be back?”

Ilya shuffled himself against the cushions, throwing his legs over the arm of the couch so he could get comfortable. “End of week, probably. They need me for the game against San Jose. Especially after what happened in Nashville.”

Shane visibly winced. The Raiders had performed horribly in Nashville. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What?” Ilya rubbed at his eye. “My team is playing terrible this season. You think me coming back will make them worse?”

“That’s not what I said.” Shane straightened. He looked like he was in bed, and there was a split second where the only thing Ilya wanted, more than anything else, was to be curled against him. The sensation was so strong that it twisted at his stomach. “You should rest. Take time for yourself.”

Ilya snorted. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

Hollander’s eyebrows dropped as his expression saddened, just a little. “Ilya. That’s not what I meant.”

Ilya’s traitorous gut gave a little thrill of excitement at the sound of his first name on Shane’s lips. He hadn’t been sure Hollander would call him that again. Shane had kept talking, something about telling Ilya to rest. He was having a hard time focusing— even now, talking to the one person in the world who seemed like he might be able to tether Ilya back to himself, he still felt like he was floating. 

Shane exhaled. “Are you listening?”

“What?”

Shane frowned, and a dimple appeared on his cheek with the expression. “You need to be taking care of yourself.”

“I need to be taking care of lots of things,” Ilya said without thinking. Immediately, the weight of what he had said sunk into his chest. Hollander couldn’t know what Ilya meant by that, the full extent of it, but his face changed anyways, eyes softening even more with concern.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

To his astonished embarrassment, Ilya found that tears had begun to gather in his eyes. He lowered the phone and quickly wiped them away.

“Ilya?”

He tipped his head back and blew out a breath. Shane could only see the ceiling, so he took a second to collect himself before he picked the phone back up and reangled the camera.

“I can’t talk about it.” His voice came out thick and Ilya swallowed desperately, trying to wash the sound away. “Not here. Not right now.”

He wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He shouldn’t be making what sounded, to his own ears, like promises that he might talk about anything at all. 

“Okay,” Hollander said softly. “You don’t have to. Maybe we can talk when you get back?”

At that, Ilya laughed derisively. “Right. With all the time in our schedules—“

“I’m serious.” Ilya could tell by the way Shane lifted his chin that he really was. “I wanted to talk to you at the last game, remember?”

“Oh, I remember,” Ilya bit out, then regretted it. That had been a painful night. He didn’t need to sour the memories more.

Shane’s face crumpled with remorse. “I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously, you had to go. But I was still hoping we could talk.”

He sighed. Hollander was so earnest when he spoke like this, and there was some strange tug of war happening inside of Ilya’s ribcage. Of course, he wanted to talk to Shane. He wanted to lay out beside him and talk until their voices went hoarse, about everything, about all of it. Despite that, he knew there was nothing he should be doing less.

Ilya shut his eyes for a second. “What could you possibly want to talk about, Hollander?”

Shane bristled. “I don’t know, Rozanov. You’ve been acting weird for months, ever since you ran out on me last time. I just wanted to see if you were okay.” 

“I don’t want to talk about last time,” Ilya said immediately. He couldn’t. Any more of that sad, imploring look on Shane’s face, and he’d be coughing up far more than he wanted to. 

Hollander’s lips pinched, just a little, in the middle. “Okay. So we don’t have to.”

“Okay.” Ilya nodded. “So we have nothing to talk about. See?”

“Well, I don’t know if that’s true. Did you see the news about that three-team trade with Duchene?”

Ilya sat up a little straighter. “What? No.” He had hardly looked at the Internet at all this past week.

Hollander cracked a tiny smile.

***

“Jesus, dude, did you sleep at all?”

Shane gave an exhausted nod, muffling another yawn with his elbow. Hayden raised an eyebrow in concern. 

“I’m fine.”

“You fell asleep on the weight bench.”

“Not true.” Shane had maybe, possibly, let his eyes close for a solid fifteen seconds on the weight bench. He’d barely even drifted off.

“Why didn’t you get any rest? Did something keep you up?” Hayden paused, then waggled his eyebrows in a manner that had Shane groaning before he could even speak his next sentence. “Did someone keep you up?”

“Fuck off. I just didn’t sleep well,” Shane lied.

He hadn’t slept at all in the last three days. Inexplicably, every night as he crawled into bed, his phone would buzz with a text from Rozanov. Something along the lines of are you still awake? Shane’s stomach would flip, and he would tap out a response, and then his phone would ring in his hand. 

It wasn’t even like they were talking about much. Ilya didn’t want to discuss whatever it was he was doing in Russia, still, but Shane had presumed that the funeral had already happened and that Rozanov was probably dealing with grief and family members and his father’s last wishes. Instead, Rozanov asked Shane a lot of questions that he thought were surprising.

“What was the last good movie you saw?”

“Um,” Shane tipped his head back against his pillow in thought. “I don’t even know the last time I saw a movie. I watched a bit of Monster’s Inc with Hayden’s kids a few months ago, I guess.”

A pause, then a loud laugh through the phone. “Monster’s Inc? You are serious?”

“Yes!” Shane’s tone was defensive. He sat up a little bit and pressed the phone closer to his ear. “It’s a good one. Fuck you.” More laughter. Despite himself, Shane smiled. 

“I think you are like him. The big blue one. You know?”

“Oh, fuck off, Rozanov,” Shane groaned, but his smile only grew wider at the delight in Rozanov’s voice.

“Yes, yes. Is just like you. He is boring and slow.” 

Shane wasn’t really sure how accurate Rozanov’s characterization was, but he played along. “If I’m Sully, that means you’re Mike Wazowski.”

“The little green one?” A dramatic intake of breath on the other end of the line. “You insult me.”

“He’s loud and annoying,” Shane teased. “Like someone else I know.”

“I’ll hang up—”

“Don’t,” Shane blurted. “Don’t hang up yet.”

It was a little embarrassing, how quickly he’d said it. It wasn’t even like Shane was the one going through a giant loss. He wasn’t supposed to be needing this phone call as badly as he did. But still.

Rozanov was silent for a few seconds. His response, when it came, was soft. “Okay, Hollander. I will not hang up.”

It was late for Shane, which meant it was nearly seven in the morning for Ilya in Moscow. He wasn’t sure if Rozanov had gotten any sleep— they’d been on the phone for nearly two hours. Still, he didn’t bring it up. He didn’t want to burst this strange bubble they were in.

“Is there a reason we’re not on video call?” Rozanov’s voice curled at the edges in a way Shane recognized immediately. He sighed, but smiled.

“You’re the one who called me, remember? We could have been on video this whole time.”

A remorseful sigh, probably exaggerated, echoed through the phone. “Do you have your glasses on?”

Shane gnawed on his lip. “Yes.”

The phone immediately began to buzz with a video chat request. Shane laughed, but picked up. They spent another hour and a half talking, until Shane could hardly speak with how tired he was, mumbling his words into his pillow while he half-heartedly held the phone to his face so Ilya could still see him.

“You should go to sleep, lyubimiy.”

“What did you call me?” Shane was surprised his words were even audible, but Rozanov made them out anyways.

“I didn’t call you anything. You need rest. Practice tomorrow morning, yes?”

Shane forced his eyes open wider, but Rozanov’s face didn’t betray anything. The room he was in was soft with morning light that landed just so on his beautiful cheekbone and Shane wished so badly that he were there, or that Rozanov were here. 

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

Rozanov hesitated, his face unreadable. “You want me to call you tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Shane murmured. “Please. I like talking to you. If that’s okay.” He was so tired. He shouldn’t be saying this. It was too much, it was a line they hadn’t yet crossed. 

There was a strange expression on Ilya’s face, tension mingling with what looked to Shane to be a lot like relief. “Okay. I will call you tomorrow, dorogoy. Maybe a little earlier, huh? Don’t fall asleep with your glasses on.”

“You called me something again,” Shane whined, but Rozanov had already hung up. 

***

For the last three days, Ilya Rozanov woken up at 5 in the morning to go for a run and he’d decided that instead, he was going to call Shane Hollander.

He didn’t know how it kept happening. It was like he was possessed. They talked about nothing of substance, except for hockey sometimes. Hollander liked to talk about things that had happened to him growing up— playground bets and school projects on Argentina and his first experiences at hockey camp. Though he complained about it, teasing Shane and calling him boring and saying he could keep his long stories to himself, Ilya liked to listen. He was pretty sure Shane knew that, but had been polite enough not to say anything about it.

Today was the last day, he had decided. He was packing to fly back to America in a few hours anyway, cramming the last of his t-shirts into his bag. From where his phone was propped on the nightstand, Shane was monologuing about this book he’d been reading about the history of the national teams. He was in the middle of saying something about the Canadian team in the eighties, some controversy with the editor-in-chief of a big journalism outlet.

Ilya rolled up a pair of socks. “Yes, yes, Hollander, we all read Wayne Gretzky’s autobiography.”

Even with his back mostly turned to the phone, Ilya knew Shane’s expression was rumpled with annoyance. “That’s not at all what I was talking about.”

Ilya smiled. It was so fun to rile Hollander up. “You make for nice white noise. Easy to block out.”

Shane grumbled something unhappily, but didn’t hang up, which meant Ilya hadn’t pissed him off too badly. He was in bed, the edge of a duvet cover tucked endearingly over his chin, and he looked so cozy that Ilya couldn’t handle looking at it for long. 

“How’s your leg?”

“Oh, it’s fine, I just—“ Shane paused. “Wait, how did you know about that?” His voice was a little amused. “Did you watch my game last night?”

Ilya froze, then pretended to be very busy folding a black sweatshirt. He hadn’t, in fact, watched Shane’s game. He hadn’t even meant to let that question slip out. 

Shane knew that Ilya slept before their calls, since they happened so early in the morning for Ilya and so late at night for Shane. Ilya had staggered into the bathroom around midnight and noticed a spread of ugly purple bruises across his thigh, which resulted in him blinking intently against the bright screen of his cell phone, checking to see whether or not there were any headlines about Shane Hollander being grievously injured. That was not an explanation he could provide. 

“I like to watch the highlights when Montreal loses,” he said smoothly. “Brightens my day.”

It was a bad lie. If Shane thought it through for even a second, he’d know the times didn’t line up. Still, miraculously, he’d somehow played it well, because when Hollander’s lips pursed unhappily it was because he was thinking about the loss and not about the fact that what Ilya was saying did not line up at all. 

“We shouldn’t have lost that one,” he mumbled. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have missed that final shot.”

“You spent time in the penalty box, no?” Ilya asked as he carried his phone into the bathroom to pack up his toiletries. Shane launched into an explanation of the absolutely bullshit chirp he’d gotten, and how he’d had to drop his gloves, his voice rising in the way it did when he was upset.

Ilya took a second, bent out of of frame to pick up a loose sock he’d missed, to breathe in and out with relief. 

***

“Oof, Hollander. Maybe they’ll just find a lake for us to play on, huh? It’s cold enough.”

Shane turned and laughed over his shoulder at his teammate, bounding excitedly down the jetbridge after him. It was a bright and sunny day in Denver, but that could do nothing to disguise the bitter February cold that descended immediately when he walked off his flight. Delicate frost had ringed the airplane windows, and Shane’s breath fogged in front of him for only a few moments before he made it all the way into the airport.

He was undeniably tired. The airplane had left a weird, fuzzy sensation inside of his skull. In theory, he’d been on a hockey break for the last several days, mandated by coaches, but there was never really a break from hockey for Shane. Not while he was still in Montreal, anyway. 

When his phone buzzed in his hand, he picked it up expecting it to be his mother. She’d been texting him all morning about the freeze warning.To his surprise, it wasn’t.

When will you be here? My hotel room is cold.

There was a little snowflake emoji at the end of the text. Shane fought the urge to stop in his tracks and read the text more closely, make sure it was real.

Turn on the heat? I just landed.

It would be better if you were here to warm me up...

Shane squashed down his smile and shoved his phone into his pocket. They were in Colorado for an All-Star Game, and he hadn’t seen Rozanov since his father had died. Part of Shane thrummed with a deep anxiety about being reunited with Ilya— they’d texted a few times since he’d left Russia, but the phone calls had stopped once Rozanov was back on the ice and focused on leading his team through to the end of the season. Shane, of course, had been focused on the same thing. He just happened to be thinking a lot about Rozanov as he did it.

It was reckless, but Shane didn’t even bother to make it to the social hour happening in the hotel lobby before he was knocking on Ilya’s door. It swung open immediately.

“Hi.” 

“You didn’t want to go play nice downstairs?”

“I’d rather play nice up here,” Shane said, and smiled when Ilya took the opportunity to press him close against the door. He looked good— better, at least, than he had the last time Shane had seen him. His hair was a little longer, and he was wearing a crimson sweater that was soft beneath Shane’s hands.

“Denver is very dull,” Ilya murmured. “Cold, awful city.”

“I like Denver. Lots of good museums.” Shane knew he was setting himself up, but it was worth it to see the teasing crook of Rozanov’s smile.

“You would say that. It is boring city for boring people. Maybe you should retire here,” Ilya said, and then leaned forward to kiss Shane’s neck. 

For a moment, Shane was floored by the sensation of Rozanov’s mouth so pleasant and warm and slick against his neck, floating in the comforting smell of Rozanov’s aftershave. He wanted to stay here forever. It’d been almost a year since he was last able to pull Rozanov into him, and his body felt like it was reacting to his presence on a molecular level. He took what felt like the first deep breath he’d taken in months. 

“Are you still cold?” His voice came out breathy, half-sigh. Shane had been thinking about asking the question in the elevator. It sounded less flirty, now, but Rozanov still paused from where he was undoing the buttons of Shane’s shirt. He dragged his teeth across the hollow of Shane’s throat, and Shane shivered. 

“Yes.” Ilya’s rough voice sounded a bit like a growl. “Come here. Warm me up.”

Shane grinned as Rozanov grasped him by the thighs and hauled him up, letting his legs wrap around Ilya’s waist. He used to hate when Ilya did this, but it didn’t feel like there was much to hate when it brought them flush against each other, allowed him to feel the drag of Ilya’s hardness against his own.

He wanted this to last forever. He wanted to be wrapped in Ilya’s arms, enjoying the thrill of his broad and warm hand spreading across his spine, until the end of time. He wanted to lay here and let Ilya kiss him breathless for hours. Still, he didn’t complain when Ilya finally worked his shirt off and began to reach for the button on his pants.

Several hours later, Shane found himself still thinking about that moment. After several rounds of excellent sex, they’d headed downstairs and were swimming through what Shane considered to be the more nerve-wracking social aspects of the All-Star weekend. Not every introduction was scary, but he’d just shaken hands with a Fortune 500 CEO and then accidentally made eye contact with Ilya across the room, immediately overwhelmed by the sense memory of fingers tugging through his hair, his desperate mouth wrapped around Ilya’s cock.

Shane swallowed nervously. Ilya smiled confident and bright, like he knew what Shane was thinking about, and raised his glass a little before he turned back to the room. Shane took a centering breath and forced himself back into the conversation.

It was a long afternoon of that— shaking hands, smiling, circulating. Shane was much better at it than he used to be, but he found that his jaw was aching, his eyes tired. His head still hummed with that angry, distanced buzz from earlier, like his ears had never popped after the flight. He’d stopped drinking before dinner, but beer always made him feel sluggish and awful anyway, and the feeling lingered. He made what felt to him like strained conversation around bites of salmon, resisting the urge to scrape the mustard crust off. 

Shane hated when he felt this way— oversensitive, like every sound was grating against his skin and the inside of his skull. Cavanaugh, a center from San Jose who was seated across from him, kept clashing his metal fork across his ceramic plate in a way that made Shane’s ears ring. 

At the end of the night, it was an immense relief to slip away, citing a rough flight and a need for a full eight hours of sleep before the game. Five different people patted him on the shoulder on his way out, and Shane fought the urge to flinch every time. 

He didn’t even notice Ilya was behind him until he stepped into the elevator and felt the presence at his back. That was the biggest testament to how burnt out Shane was; he’d been achingly aware of Ilya’s movements all night. 

Rozanov blinked mildly at Shane as he leaned forward to press the button. “What floor?”

“What are you doing?”

Rozanov’s fingers hung in the air as the metal doors swished shut. “I am asking you what floor you are on.”

“We shouldn’t be so obvious,” Shane protested half-heartedly. His head was beginning to well and truly throb now. “Someone could have seen.”

“See what? Two hockey players, staying in the same hotel, heading upstairs at the same time? No one would question it, Hollander. Cavanaugh and Westing just went up together not five minutes ago. You think they are fucking?” Ilya’s eyebrows were raised, but there was something serious about his mouth. 

Shane sighed as the elevator began to rise. They weren’t staying on the same floor, so he exerted the energy to lean forward and press the button for 20. Everything about him felt sluggish.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Shane muttered. The elevator hummed around them, a faint beeping as they passed the other floors. He could tell that Rozanov was trying to meet his gaze, as if he could read what was happening in the lines of Shane’s face.

The doors opened, and although he wasn’t surprised when Ilya stepped out behind him, Shane immediately turned to try to push him back into the elevator and presumably back to his own floor. 

“Stop that. I am stronger than you.” Rozanov batted his hands away.

“No, the fuck you aren’t.” Despite his exhaustion, Shane’s next breath came a little easier, lighter with exasperated laughter as he swatted back at him. 

Rozanov sighed dramatically, the corners of his lips turning up as he took a step back into the elevator, one arm propped on the mirrored doors so they wouldn’t shut on him. He used his other hand to tug at Shane’s lapel.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he went easily, stepping immediately into Ilya’s space. He smelled faintly of mint and spicy cologne. “What are you doing? Someone could see.”

He glanced furtively around, but the hallway was very empty. Still, it didn’t mean it was safe. 

Rozanov slid his hand up Shane’s chest and onto the back of his neck. Shane expected the touch to make his skin crawl, the way every other touch had that night, but his body instead relaxed, his tense spine immediately soothed by the pressure of Rozanov’s fingers. Ilya forced Shane to meet his gaze. “Tell me what is wrong.”

“I’m just tired.”

“No,” Rozanov said. “Is something else.” He slipped his hand around to cup Shane’s jaw, his fingers brushing softly at the skin below his ear. His palm was warm and slightly rough and Shane’s eyes fluttered closed at the contact.

The elevator doors let out a furious buzz. Rozanov had been holding them open for too long. Someone else was going to need the elevator soon, and they’d stumble upon Ilya and Shane and the secret would be out and their lives would be ruined, Shane knew. Still, he felt entirely overwhelmed, like each of his limbs had been strapped with weights and the only part of him that knew freedom were the parts where Ilya’s hands were lingering.

A thumb brushed softly against Shane’s cheek. “What do you need?”

Shane’s eyes stayed closed. “A shower,” he mumbled. The sound was close to a whine. “I need to shower.” 

Every part of him felt grimy. He’d rinsed off quickly after the airport, but he felt disgusting, sticky with the dirt of the day. So many hands shaken. The sound of cutlery scratching and scraping along plates. The unhappy sound of ice cubes clacking against whiskey glasses, raucous laughter. It all clung to him, a layer of discomfort on his skin.

The elevator beeped again. Shane forced himself to open his eyes, lean away from the hand that was cradling his face.

Ilya was studying him, appraising and sharp. He was quiet for a moment, until the elevator beeped again. Shane was half-convinced it was going to shut on them.

“Okay.” Rozanov nodded. “We will take a shower. I’ll be right back.”

He stepped back into the elevator, and the doors whirred shut instantly. Shane blinked for a moment, unmoored by the sudden absence of warmth.

True to his word, Rozanov knocked on Shane’s door ten minutes later. He’d changed into low-slung sweatpants and a green sweatshirt. Shane was still in his suit— he’d made it back to his room and sat stiffly in an armchair, frozen by the knowledge that Ilya was coming back and the paralyzing sense that he wasn’t supposed to do anything until that happened. 

“Why are you wearing clothes?”

Shane blinked. “What?”

“We are showering, no?”

“You wanted me to open the door fully naked?” 

That cocky smile spread across Ilya’s face. He tugged Shane closer by his hips, and Shane’s stomach gave a nervous flop. 

“Is preferable, yes,” Rozanov murmured, before he reached up and slipped Shane’s jacket off of his shoulders. 

The undressing was slow, careful. Shane’s head still throbbed as he let Ilya undo every button on his shirt with what seemed like painstaking care. He waited patiently while Shane turned away from him to fold each article of clothing, leaving them in a neat pile on the hotel desk until he was left in just his briefs.

“You’re still dressed,” he said. Ilya was tracing his fingers gently up and down Shane’s sides, still studying him intently. It was like he was trying to see right through him. 

“Not for long,” Rozanov said simply, and steered Shane toward the bathroom. Shane leaned against the door, watching as Rozanov turned on the shower tap and messed with the water temperature. They’d showered together before, but something about this was different. Shane’s head hurt and his body was sore, even without stepping onto the ice today, and here was Ilya Rozanov, turning on his shower for him.

The actual shower was luxury. The water was warm, bordering on hot, slipping over Shane’s shoulders in a way that immediately released the rest of his tension. Ilya backed him underneath the stream and Shane shut his eyes, enjoying the pressure of the water for a second.

“You want?”

Shane leaned his face out of the spray and blinked at Ilya. He was waggling the bottle of shampoo at him. Shane nodded. 

He wasn’t sure if he had fully realized that this was what Ilya meant, but Rozanov squirted the shampoo into his hands and lathered before he reached for Shane. They’d taken many a shower together. This was completely new.

The pressure of Ilya’s hands was intense, firm but still soft as he scrubbed the shampoo through Shane’s hair. He let out a soft groan at the contact, pressing one of his hands to Ilya’s chest to stabilize himself. His other palm curled around Ilya’s lower back, pulling him closer.

Ilya murmured something soft in Russian. Shane’s eyes were closed as suds washed down his neck, enjoying the gorgeous feeling of Rozanov’s hands, careful and attentive as they followed the soapy water. 

He went in with body wash next, practically massaging Shane as he ran his hands over his arms, his pecs. “I can wash myself,” Shane mumbled. The protest was probably a little late, but he still felt an ounce of prickling discomfort in his chest.

A string of kisses was pressed to this neck, Rozanov mouthing gently at the skin. “Let me do it, yes?”

So Shane didn’t protest when Ilya dropped onto his knees, massaging soap into Shane’s thighs and ass and stomach and pressing kisses to what felt like every inch of skin as he did so. His mouth would probably taste like soap the next time he kissed Shane. The floor of the shower was tiled, and Shane winced a little, certain that Ilya would be left with uncomfortable grooves in his knees once he got up. 

Shane wasn’t sure how long he’d been hard for. Possibly even before they had started the shower, his dick twitching with interest at Rozanov’s proximity, but Ilya took his time making sure he’d rinsed every part of Shane’s skin before he wrapped his lips around Shane’s cock. 

He’d had his eyes closed with pleasure already, luxuriating in the journey of Ilya’s hands moving and massaging down his body, so he wasn’t expecting the sudden warmth of Rozanov’s mouth. His hips jerked a little and he moaned loudly.

Ilya laughed a little around his cock, and Shane frowned down at him.

“Feel good, Hollander?”

“Fuck off,” he muttered. Ilya got water in his eyes from staring up at Shane, so he shut them and returned to the task at hand, his hand digging deliciously into the crease where Shane’s thigh met his hip. 

Everything around Shane was floaty and warm and fuzzy. His headache had eased— Rozanov had pressed two ibuprofen, sourced from god knew where, into his palm before pressing Shane into the shower. He was clean and safe here, and Ilya Rozanov was on his knees in front of him, thoroughly devoted to the task of taking Shane apart with his tongue. It didn’t take long until Shane’s hips were stuttering, his hand coming up to cover his mouth and muffle the sound until Rozanov grabbed him the elbow and pulled the hand away. He wanted to hear Shane come, and so he did, fingers twisting into the back of Rozanov’s curls as he moaned. 

Moments later, Rozanov kissed his way back up Shane’s body and pressed their lips together. Shane’s shoulder blades pressed against the tiles of the shower wall as Ilya backed him into it, his tongue slipping easily along Shane’s. It was only a few more minutes before Shane reached for Ilya’s cock and brought him off with slow, lazy strokes as Rozanov panted against his mouth, hot and open. 

Ilya took a few minutes to kiss Shane senseless before he pulled back and rinsed himself off, washing his hair with a scrubbing intensity that he hadn’t used with Shane. When it was time to step out, he grasped Shane gently by the forearm and pulled him out behind him. 

Even the towels felt decadently soft as Shane wrapped one around his hips. The mirrors were fogged with steam, the room practically glowing with warmth as Ilya stepped into his sweatpants. He didn’t bother to put his sweatshirt back on (as always, his preference was to go shirtless), and Shane only hesitated for a moment before he reached for it instead, the dark green fabric crumpled and heavy in his hand.

If Ilya minded that Shane stole his sweatshirt, he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, an odd smile tugged at his lips as he looked at Shane.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Rozanov shook his head, then pulled Shane back into the main room. He waited patiently while Shane tugged on a pair of fresh socks (already wincing at the fact that he hadn’t had them ready in the bathroom— he hated bare feet on hotel carpet) and a pair of dark sweatpants. Once Shane was situated on the bed, his head cushioned by the pillow and the sheets tangled around his legs, Ilya crawled slowly over him, bracing his hips over Shane’s. He pressed a kiss, soft and inquisitive, on the side of Shane’s throat. 

A surprised exhale of breath left Shane’s lips. “What’s up with you tonight?”

Ilya was studying him again, his eyes still dancing a little with mirth. In a moment, though, his expression dropped a little. Something more serious lingered there. “I should be asking you that. Something was wrong earlier.”

Shane was already shaking his head. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“I was just tired. Things were loud. It happens.” Shane shuffled uncomfortably, fidgeting with the sleeves of the sweatshirt. “I didn’t realize it was obvious that I was uncomfortable.”

“You are always obvious.” Ilya swallowed. “To me, at least.”

Shane let out a little noise, somewhere between an oh and an exhalation. His stomach flipped again, his eyes stuck on Ilya’s soft gaze.

Ilya studied him again, and then brought his hand up, cupping Shane’s jaw. His thumb smoothed over Shane’s cheekbone. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” he said honestly and immediately. His headache had eased. His eyelids were still heavy, but it wasn’t with that painful exhaustion he’d been feeling earlier. Instead, he felt fully relaxed, like Ilya had soothed every single raw edge of the night. “I don’t know what happened earlier,” he frowned. “I was fine. When I saw you before the social stuff—”

“You were fine,” Ilya echoed, and a smile touched his lips seemingly at the thought. Shane had been more than fine. He had incredibly enthusiastically sucked Ilya off. Then, Rozanov’s face sobered. “It is okay, Hollander. We all have rough nights.”

The next time Shane blinked, his eyes felt wet. He blinked harder. “I hate feeling like this. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.” Ilya pressed a kiss, feather-light, to Shane’s cheek. “It’s just a feeling. Can’t be helped.”

There were many feelings going through Shane. None of them could be helped. He stared at Ilya, his face gentle in the hotel lamplight, and wondered if he might be feeling any of the same things. If he couldn’t help it, either. 

Shane’s mind traced over the phone calls from the last few weeks, the low and soft rumble of Rozanov’s voice in his ear now made real, here, wrapping around him and surrounding him in comfort. His brain was beginning to float off, his body lost in the sensation of Ilya’s lips, the scent of him.

Then, Shane shifted a little. Something pricked unhappily at his thoughts. Ilya caught the change in his expression immediately.

“What is it?”

Shane hesitated, opening his mouth and then closing it. Concern crinkled Ilya’s brow.

“What’s wrong?” 

“I should be the one checking in on you,” Shane finally said. “I mean, with everything. You should be the one being taken care of.”

Something twinged near Ilya’s eyes. He rubbed again at Shane’s jaw, as if grounding himself with the touch. “I am fine, Hollander. Is nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. It’s a big deal,” Shane said. It didn’t escape his notice that neither of them was saying out loud what exactly had been a big deal. Rozanov hadn’t spoken explicitly about his father’s death, at least to Shane, since that very first phone call. “You said we could talk about it.”

“It is a big deal,” Rozanov conceded. “But I am okay. Really. I don’t need to talk.”

Though he knew it was selfish, Shane didn’t like that response. He didn’t like that Ilya never wanted to talk to him about anything serious (not including hockey, which was always serious). He didn’t like that Ilya was always noticing when Shane was off, and that Shane felt like he couldn’t even begin to chip away at Ilya’s elusive exterior. 

Ilya was always running away. Shane felt like he could never catch him.

As always, Ilya read the conflict on Shane’s face. They studied each other for a moment. Then he exhaled, like he had decided to give something up.

“My father was not a nice man. Ever.” Now it was Ilya who fidgeted with the sweatshirt sleeves, his fingers brushing against Shane’s wrist as he focused his eyes there. “He was police. Very intense. Like my brother.”

“You’re not close to your brother?”

“No.” Ilya shook his head. “I hate him, sometimes. I didn’t always hate my father. But I have always hated my brother.” A humorless laugh. “Only because he hated me first. He was awful when we were growing up, you can imagine.”

Shane really couldn’t. He’d grown up in a house that was quiet except for game nights and when the Metros were on the television. He’d always been a little jealous of people with siblings—people who came from big, loving families—but he could tell from Ilya’s tone that his situation was nothing to be jealous of.

“He is an asshole. They both were. My father was difficult, especially after he got sick, but.” Ilya shrugged. “It was harder to hate him. He is my father, you know?”

Shane nodded. His mind flitted guiltily to the sweet call he’d received from his own father before the flight that morning, his dad going on about a new high score on the mini crossword and wishing Shane good luck both with the flight and the weekend at large. They’d said I love you twice before they hung up. Shane wondered, distractedly, when the last time someone had said ‘I love you’ to Ilya was. 

“What about your mom?”

“She’s dead.”

A stab of sadness and discomfort pierced Shane’s stomach. He fought to hide the sharp, surprised rise of his chest. “I’m sorry to hear that. Ilya, that’s awful. I can’t imagine—”

He was already waving Shane off. “No, no. It’s okay.” He looked up at Shane, and Shane blinked hard to try to get rid of the of the tears he felt lingering at his lashline. “I don’t really want to talk about it anymore. Is that okay?”

Shane swallowed and nodded. His hand had been carding through Ilya’s hair, and now he brought it up to brush over his brow, his thumb sweeping across Ilya’s forehead. “That’s okay. I’m sorry I pried.”

“Don’t be,” Ilya said. He leaned forward and buried his face in Shane’s neck, left more kisses there like gifts. “Is not a sad night, eh? I will beat your team tomorrow and we will forget about it.”

It was another hour before Ilya left the hotel room. Shane hadn’t wanted him to go— every time he caught Ilya starting to push himself off the mattress, his eyes darkening in that way that surely meant he was about to say he had to leave, Shane had leaned up to capture his mouth in another kiss. It had worked. 

His body had totally forgotten the sensory overload and evening, all of the tightly wound tension in his back slowly undoing itself with every press of Ilya’s mouth to his skin. They laid there kissing like they had all the time in the world to do it. Shane wished so badly that was true.

Eventually, though, he was falling half asleep with the press of Ilya’s tongue inside of his mouth. When he kissed like this—langorous, like he was personally dedicating himself to memorizing each of Shane’s teeth, the kind of kissing that made Shane think he wanted to spend a week with the sensation of Ilya’s bottom lip trapped between his—it was almost relaxing. He was taking Shane apart. He was putting him back together.

“Hollander. I need to go,” Ilya murmured against his mouth after the fourth or fifth kiss interception. “We both need sleep.”

“I wish you could stay,” Shane said before he thought better of it.

Rozanov stilled. Something tensed in his back, underneath Shane’s fingers, but then it relaxed. “I wish I could, too,” he murmured back. Shane couldn’t help the immediate smile that tugged at his lips, the thrilled relief of the admission. “But I can’t. You know that.”

Shane exhaled, long enough that his breath ruffled the dusting of curls across Ilya’s brow. Rozanov strummed his fingers comfortingly across his jaw. Moonlight cascaded through the hotel window, washing him in unfairly beautiful light.

“Plus, you are falling asleep.” His thumb brushed sweetly at Shane’s undereye. “You need rest.”

“I know,” Shane mumbled. Still, he didn’t move his hands from where they were wrapped below Ilya’s arms, pulling him close against him. The weight of Ilya’s body, resting fully on his own, made him feel like he was melting. It was practically a religious experience. 

Still, after a few more kisses, Ilya was slipping from the bed. Shane immediately felt cold. He drew the sheets up to his chin, tucking his fingers tightly into them so that he didn’t reach for Rozanov. 

Ilya paused by the nightstand. He cupped Shane’s face once more.

“Good night, Shane.”

It was the first time he’d ever said it. Shane had been calling him Ilya for weeks, hoping he would catch the hint. Hoping he would give Shane that small pleasure back. His heart did several flips in his chest.

“Good night, Ilya.” He smiled.

Ilya pressed his thumb to Shane’s bottom lip, fond and final, before he slipped from the room.

***

The next morning, Shane was looking pretty in a way that Ilya felt deeply personal about.

He showed up to the press brunch looking well-rested, better than he had the day before, in a navy cashmere sweater, powdery blue button up peeking over the collar, and with his hair artfully tousled in a way that just made Ilya want to walk over and run his fingers through it. His eyes practically sparkled as he joked with his teammates and NHL reps, although Ilya secretly thought they glimmered a little more when he’d caught Ilya’s gaze over the coffee bar. There was a private smile, closed and happy. Ilya’s heart flew.

He wanted to cross the room and kiss Shane so badly. Instead, he drank four glasses of orange juice and passed half an hour speaking to the goalie for New Jersey. Nice guy. A little dull.

When he’d left the hotel room the night before, Shane was still wearing Ilya’s sweatshirt. A tiny part of him had hoped that Hollander would show up wearing it to the brunch, but Ilya should have known better. They’d taken enough risks. 

The night before had been a lot. Shane wasn’t well. It would have been obvious from space (at least to Ilya)— the slightest flinch in his eyebrows whenever that buffoon across from him had erupted into raucous laughter, his smile wavering when someone set their glass down too harshly. Ilya hadn’t been sure if he should follow him into the elevator, hadn’t been sure if he should touch him. 

The shower had been a luxury. Finally granted permission, both by himself and by Hollander, to take care of Shane, to wrap him up in soft sheets and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. He should have been anticipating that when it was all over, Shane might start asking questions— might start cashing in on the promises Ilya had made in the days following his father’s funeral. The conversation had dislodged something painful in Ilya’s chest, but there Shane had been, ready to catch it. Ready to listen, with his big wandering eyes and the  comforting way he’d pulled Ilya closer. Had Shane realized the way his bottom lip quivered when Ilya spoke about his mother?

Someone at the brunch was asking Ilya a question. Something about the winter weather warning in Denver, and whether or not the snowstorms were anything compared to Russia— Ilya blinked away from the shock of dark hair at the next table and focused instead on the conversation in front of him.

By the time they were skating onto the ice, Ilya had to do a mental reset to force all of the lights and sounds of the afternoon from his head. There had been pre-game interviews, and stupid little team-bonding activities, all televised, hardly real. The crowd was excited. It was an exciting time, really, except Ilya still felt a raw edge of exhaustion inside of him. He needed the season to be over. He needed to go home and sleep for days. He hadn’t slept well since the funeral. 

The only time he felt that exhaustion ease was when he was taking a water break and someone skated up beside him, bumping their shoulders a little bit on accident. Ilya turned, expecting a chirp. Instead, it was Hollander, his smile bright as he drank from his waterbottle— Ilya, distracted momentarily by the sight of his lips wrapped around the straw, the flicker of muscle in his jaw—and didn’t even say anything to Ilya before he skated away again. Tease.

The actual game was mostly distraction free— as distraction free as a game could be for Ilya, when Shane Hollander was on the ice. In the first period, he scored two goals and pissed off that fuck from Saint Petersburg on Shane’s team, which was almost more of a success. He spent part of the second period in the penalty box. It was in the third period when things really interesting.

The two teams were tied, 5-5. Ilya had just scored his second goal of the game, and was racing back down the ice to follow the puck as it bounced between North American players. He wasn’t even looking at Shane when it happened, because Shane didn’t yet have the puck— it had flashed to McDonaugh, then Hunter, then was sliding smoothly behind a pair of European skates in a beautiful pass to Hollander. 

It was then that Ilya had to pull up on his skates because Westing, that giant forward from Florida, was passing in front of him and barreling down on the puck. He was colliding with someone, throwing them into the boards.The crowd was screaming. Whistles were being blown. Everything around Ilya—the noise, the ice beneath his still-moving skates, the breath inside of his chest—stopped entirely. 

Because it was Shane.

Shane, down on the ice. One arm clutched pitifully to his chest, his face scrunched with pain. Shane’s helmet, skidding down the ice towards Ilya. Without really thinking about it, Ilya skated forward and picked it up, then moved toward Shane like he would be able to give it back. Immediately, the arm of the referee closest to him came up and held Ilya back.

“You need to give him space, Rozanov.”

“Is he okay?” Ilya’s face felt slack. He pushed forward a little bit against the arm. “Shane?”

Hollander was sitting up, his arm still held awkwardly against his chest. He was surrounded by medics, but seemed to be very conscious (a relief to Ilya, even if it definitely was not one to Shane). Someone was flashing a pen light into his eyes. Ilya was vaguely aware that he was the only player left on this part of the ice, and that he was clutching onto Shane’s helmet like it was a lifeline.

They were helping Hollander up, now. His gaze was unfocused, but it still latched onto Ilya, standing behind the ref. There was a sad little smile on his face as he took him in, then began to skate off the ice.

“I have his helmet,” Ilya said weakly. “He needs his helmet.”

No one seemed to hear him. 

***

They lost the game. Ilya couldn’t have cared less.

The rest of the evening was practically agony. No one in the locker room knew if Hollander was okay, and he couldn’t ask while he was doing post-game interviews because he knew it wouldn’t make Shane happy. He’d already been feeling tense about how unsubtle they were being that weekend, and Ilya didn’t want to make that worse. 

“Looked like a broken arm,” someone had commented while Ilya was tying his shoelaces. “Hollander’s a tough egg. He’ll be fine.”

A Ilya had never heard of someone being a tough egg. He frowned, trying to stop his brain from scraping itself over the tired image of Shane’s face, ribbed with pain. Ilya had had to tuck himself into the far corner of the showers so no one noticed the swollen red and purple soul marks blooming down his forearm. The entire side of his body was streaked with more bruising, and even an odd scrape on his hip. Ilya wasn’t sure where Shane could have gotten that, but he rubbed his thumb mournfully over the spot anyway.

Every single smile felt like an uncomfortable contortion of his face. If people thought he was behaving weirdly, no one commented on it. Even his agent was there, complimenting him on his hat trick as if that meant anything at all when his team had lost and Shane Hollander was injured somewhere. 

Still, Ilya drank. He forced laughs. He was very good at this— smoothing concrete over his feelings, polishing his rough edges even if just to make it through the night. He’d texted Hollander almost immediately, the moment the game was over, but there had been no response. His agent was able to confirm that Hollander had broken his arm, but nothing more specific than that.

“It’s good sportsmanship, Roz, for sure, but there’s no need to be worried.” The goalie from New Jersey, the one he’d eaten breakfast with that morning, had clapped him on the shoulder. “Happens to us all, eventually, right?”

It did. Hockey players got injured all the time. But not Hollander. Not Hollander, like this, not in the middle of a season, not when he might have been headed to a cup. Emotion soured inside of Ilya’s chest as he waded through a final dinner, eating chicken that tasted like sawdust. Chicken, he thought sadly to himself, that Shane probably would enjoy. Maybe he should ask the kitchen for a box. 

There were more drinks after dinner. Ilya forced himself to slow down, realizing halfway through a conversation with Scott Hunter that the warm candlelight around the room was beginning to swirl a little in the edges of his vision. Scott Hunter was so boring, and not the kind of boring that Ilya had begrudgingly begun to like— he was the human equivalent of moth balls. Ilya was testing those words behind his teeth, trying to decide if he could say them or not, when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He set his drink instantly on the bar to check it, ignoring the tight look on Scott Hunter’s face as he was offended by Ilya’s rudeness. No one gave a fuck about Scott Hunter. Ilya’s phone was ringing.

“Hello?”

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice was tired, like he hadn’t used it in a while.

Ilya immediately began to move out of the fray of people. “Sorry, boys, I have to go,” he shot over his shoulder in the direction of the Americans.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, you’re still at the social hour. I thought— I thought you might be—” Shane’s voice broke off.

“Are you okay?” Ilya made his way through the gilded lobby, leaving behind the cloud of laughter and drunken, wealthy voices. “Shane?” 

He shouldn’t have said that name out loud. At least not here. He gave a furtive glance around, but there was no one else in the lobby except for the desk attendant, who was very determinedly avoiding his gaze. Whatever. It didn’t matter.

“I’m okay,” Shane said, the words a little wobbly. “Bruised my ribs and I broke my arm. Could have been worse.”

Ilya exhaled, relief spreading through him. “Yes. It could have been. It hurts?”

“Yeah. They gave me meds for it, though.” That might explain the spiraling, weedy tone of Shane’s voice. 

“Are you high?” Despite himself, Ilya smiled. 

“No!” Shane practically squawked the word. “I’m not high. You’re not funny.”

Still, the image was amusing. Ilya was so stuck on imagining the softness that might result from a stoned Shane Hollander that he almost missed the fact that Shane was apologizing.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I just thought you might be done with the social hour. I just—” Shane cut himself off again, paused.

Ilya gave him a second, his breath catching in his chest at what he thought Hollander might be about to say. He kneaded a palm into the cushion of a fancy leather couch, waiting. When Hollander didn’t keep going, Ilya spoke. “I am done with social hour. Very, very done.”

More silence. It was beginning to give Ilya a heart attack when it was broken by a surprisingly huffy sigh from Shane’s end of the phone. “Will you come up here, then? It’s killing me to know that you’re so close but you’re not here.”

He was already moving quickly toward the elevators. “You are in your room?”

“Yeah. Do you remember the number?”

Ilya grinned.

Exactly three minutes later, the door to Hollander’s hotel room was swinging open. Shane was there, his expression rumpled and his arm in a sling. 

“Hi,” he said miserably. Ilya fought the urge to smile at the pouty look on Shane’s face. He was just so endearing— everything about Shane made Ilya want to wrap him in blankets and never let him go.

“Hi,” he said back, and stepped into the room. Shane let the door shut behind him before he buried his face without preamble into Ilya’s shoulder. Immediately, Ilya was wrapping a gentle arm around Shane, running his fingers through the back of his hair. 

“Are you okay?”

A small nod against Ilya’s suit jacket. “You smell nice. No cigarettes tonight?”

Ilya bit his tongue. “No cigarettes tonight.” But oh, he had needed one. If Shane hadn’t called at the time that he had, Ilya would probably have been on a fast track to head outside with one of the Americans for a smoke. Instead, he stepped carefully out of his dress shoes, doing everything he could not to jostle Shane.

After a moment, Hollander let Ilya slide his hands to his shoulders and guide him slowly back to the bed. Shane was wearing flannel pajama pants and a fitted dark t-shirt, blue arm sling carefully arranged over the top of it. Ilya gently squeezed the bicep of Shane’s uninjured arm as he appraised the sling on the other.

“It hurts?”

Shane swallowed and shook his head. He was standing against the bed now, letting Ilya run his hand along his jaw. “Not much, anymore.” A feeble smile. “I’m on good pain meds.”

“Right.” Ilya smiled back. He picked up the prescription bottle on the nightstand and inspected the contents, and then his eyes skipped over Shane’s shoulder. Only half of the bed was disturbed, the sheets pulled neatly back to reveal a stack of pillows propped upright and a perfectly Shane-shaped imprint, remote askew on the mattress. “Look at your sick bed. How sweet. Are they flying your mother to Denver so she can tuck you in?”

“Fuck off.”

Annoyed in a way that didn’t reach his eyes, Shane pushed at Ilya’s chest with his uninjured arm, and Ilya caught it there. He held his hand and ran his fingers softly up the back of it, letting relief course through him. Shane was here. He was okay. He was warm and annoyed and tugging at Ilya’s collar, urging him onto the bed with him. It seemed difficult, with only one arm, but Hollander managed it. 

Shane shuffled back cozily onto the pillows and let Ilya follow, although he didn’t lay on him the way he had the night before. He was giving Hollander (and his bruised ribs) plenty of space, especially since he clearly needed to be sitting upright in bed. 

“Come closer,” Shane whined, and unceremoniously tugged at Ilya’s collar again.

“Is nice suit, Hollander. You will rip it.” Ilya batted his hand away if only to catch it again, to guide it up and into his hair until Shane was twisting his fingers through the curls, familiar and with his eyes half-lidded, like he was falling asleep.

They were silent for a moment, studying each other. Then, Shane let out a sigh, real annoyance laced with it now.

“My season is over.”

Ilya nodded soberly. “I know.”

“It sucks.”

“I’m sorry, Hollander.” Ilya pressed a kiss to Shane’s chest, the soft cotton of the t-shirt. “Don’t worry. Metros would have lost next game even if you were there.”

“Fuck you, Ilya,” Shane said, and seemed actually frustrated. Ilya winced a little. He’d overplayed that.

“I’m sorry. Too much.” He tangled his fingers in the hem of Shane’s shirt sleeve. “It’s awful. Not fair for your season to end this way. But there will be other seasons, yes? You will not need surgery?”

Shane shook his head. “No. It was a clean break. I’ll be in the cast for six weeks, then physical therapy through the summer, but they’re optimistic that I’ll be able to play in the first game in October.” 

“That’s good, yes?” 

A swallow and a nod. Ilya didn’t miss the gathering of wetness along Shane’s lashes. “It’s good, I guess.”

“What would make it better?” Ilya glanced around the hotel room. “Water? More pain medicine? A gun?”

A surprised laugh shot out of Shane, but then he grimaced, bracing a hand over his side. “Ouch, Ilya, my ribs. Fuck. Don’t make me laugh.”

“I cannot help my natural charms and good humor.”

“No,” Shane laughed again, but then something changed in his face. “No, you really can’t.”

Stupid butterflies erupted in Ilya’s stomach. His fingers tightened where they had been grasping onto Shane’s shirt. He still seemed to be lost in thought, his gaze distanced as he absentmindedly skated his fingers up and down the back of Ilya’s neck.

“How was the dinner?”

“Very dull.” Ilya buried his cheek into Shane’s chest. “Awful food. Awful company. Scott Hunter is like talking to a brick wall. You know.”

Shane laughed and tugged a little at Ilya’s hair. “I do know. And I bet you were a delight.”

Ilya frowned. “I am always a delight. You say that like I’m not.” 

Shane snorted, and Ilya pressed another kiss to his chest, chasing the rise and fall of it. For a while, they were lulled into silence— Ilya, practically dozing off in his suit with his cheek pressed against Shane’s uninjured shoulder. He didn’t notice that Shane wasn’t asleep until he spoke again, his voice soft and rumbly.

“Can I ask you something?”

Ilya looked up, blinking in surprise. He felt immediately nervous. “What is it?”

Shane opened his mouth to try to speak, then hesitated. He fidgeted with the edge of Ilya’s shirt collar, fingers brushing against his neck. “What are you doing this summer?”

Ilya froze. Blinked. “I don’t know. Probably going home to Russia. Why?”

He knew why. Fuck. Of course, he knew why.

“I have this cottage in Ottawa. It’s remote. Like, extremely remote, and nice. I was wondering if you might come stay with me for a week or two.” Shane’s voice was steady as he asked, his eyes focused. It was Ilya who looked away.

“I don’t know, Hollander.”

“What don’t you know?” Shane swallowed, and it was audible. Ilya’s heart twinged. “Haven’t you ever wanted it? Just you and me, alone, for a few weeks?”

“It’s risky.”

“It’s not that risky.” Now it was Shane who sounded incredulous. “I’m serious. The cottage is in the middle of nowhere. Give me your phone.”

“What?” Now, Ilya looked at him.

“Give me your phone.” Shane pulled his hand away from Ilya’s collar and made an exaggerated grabbing motion. “Let me see it.”

Ilya sighed but fumbled around in his pocket and slipped his phone out. Shane spent several moments tapping at his screen, mumbling to himself, before he was flipping it around to show Ilya. 

“I need you to hold it,” he said expectantly. So Ilya turned his entire body so he could hold the phone between them while Hollander made a big show, impressively dexterous with his nondominant hand, of showing Ilya the cottage.

“This is the airport, see? And then all the way out here”—he dragged out the word all to emphasize just how long he had to scroll—“is the cottage. Look at that.”

It was just a rectangle engulfed in a sea of green on the map, a patch of blue lake straggling out in front of it. “The next closest house is my parents’,” Shane said, “but they won’t be a problem. It’s an acre of land, Ilya. No one would see us. You could even rent a car or something at the airport if you didn’t want me to pick you up. I’ve thought about it.”

Ilya’s brain felt like it was doing acrobatics. Of course, Shane had thought about it. While Ilya fell silent, Shane went back to stroking a hand through Ilya’s hair and he fought the urge to flutter his eyes closed at the comforting touch. 

He thought about the identical masses of bruises spreading along their sides— and the way that Ilya was the only one who knew about them. It wasn’t fair, anymore, that Ilya was keeping the secret— he was letting it go too far, and he knew that, but here was Shane, his eyes big and open and honest, and how could Ilya destroy the fantasy? How could Ilya look at him and say I’ve been lying to you, say the dream soulmate you want does not exist and I am sorry, but it’s me? 

There was, of course, a possibility that Shane had also put two and two together, but Ilya thought he would know if that had happened. He would be able to see it on Shane’s face— Shane’s face, which was still patiently waiting for his response. Ilya inhaled deeply. 

“Maybe,” was what he said, like an idiot. “Maybe. I was supposed to go home and see my niece.”

It was a cop-out answer, but Shane let it happen. He nodded, and made a little sound in his throat. “Okay. Think about it, alright?” He paused, and there was the faintest tremble in his earnest bottom lip. “I think it would be nice to spend some real time with you.”

When Ilya swallowed, his throat clicked audibly. He buried his face back into Shane’s chest, and Shane held him there for a moment.

“Do you want to watch something? House Hunters was on earlier.”

Ilya turned his face to peek at the TV while Shane clicked it on. “I fucking love House Hunters.”

So Ilya watched two and a half episodes of House Hunters with his face in Shane’s lap. It felt sort of weird that Shane had been injured and Ilya was the one laying on him, but there hadn’t been a better way to get closer— he’d tried to pull away, asking if Shane wanted space, but Shane had made this sad little noise and guided him back down and Ilya would have done anything he wanted in that moment. 

After the third couple made what Shane and Ilya both agreed was the absolute wrong choice in houses, Ilya rolled over to look at Shane, who was in the middle of letting out a jaw-cracking yawn.

He began to push himself up. “You’re tired. You should rest—“ and was stopped by Shane’s insistent hand grasping at his sleeve. 

“Will you stay tonight?” 

Ilya’s mouth went dry. “What?”

Shane looked suddenly uncertain. “Would you stay? I know we’ve never done it before, but...” His fingers tangled tighter in Ilya’s shirt, and he glanced down at where Ilya had hardly even noticed his palm was spread softly across Shane’s abdomen. “I want you to stay. I don’t think I’m up for anything tonight, but you could be here anyways. We could just sleep.”

A sweet, embarrassed blush was spreading across his cheeks. Ilya felt like his heart had turned into a puddle, like it was about to ooze out of his mouth if he opened it to speak.

“I thought you said we needed to be more subtle this weekend,” was what Ilya said instead of I would personally burn down every building in Denver if it meant it would keep you warm. 

There was a flash of hurt in Shane’s eyes. “I mean, if you don’t want to—”

“No, no.” Try as he might, Ilya couldn’t deny himself this— couldn’t deny himself a night spent wrapped around Shane, a night spent with his nose buried in Shane’s hair. “I want to. I want to.”

“I mean,” Hollander swallowed. “I know it’s risky. But most of the guys will be trying to get out of here early, anyway. I don’t think anyone would notice, if we were careful.”

Ilya nodded. “Yes. Okay. I will stay.” 

Immediate relief swam over Shane’s features. He made a show of shuffling deeper into the hotel pillows, cradled decadently by the sheets, and shutting his eyes.

A laugh escaped Ilya. “You are going to sleep? So soon?”

Shane cracked an eyelid at him. “I thought that was obvious.”

“I just thought you might want to talk some more. You had so much to say tonight.” Ilya slipped his fingers under the hem of Shane’s t-shirt, traced circles into the firm warm skin he found there. 

Shane didn’t react to the bait. “We can talk in the morning, Ilya,” he said, and it was obvious that he meant it. The floaty way his words drifted out made it clear that Shane was half-asleep already.

Ilya glanced down at himself. He was still wearing most of his suit from the dinner, the belt buckle digging uncomfortably into his stomach. “I don’t have anything to sleep in. I might go upstairs to grab something.”

A sleepy, unhappy furrow formed between Shane’s brows. “I thought you liked to sleep in boxers.”

Ilya did like to sleep in boxers, but not on nights when he was covered in Shane Hollander’s soul marks. He cast a glance around, and his eyes landed on the sweatshirt he’d left Shane in the night before. “Okay. I’ll be right back. I might borrow some of your toothpaste.”

“Just don’t use my toothbrush again,” Shane grumbled, and Ilya couldn’t help but smile. That was a mistake he’d only made the one time.

On his way to the bathroom, he snagged the sweatshirt, attempting to be subtle. By the time he’d slipped back into the bed, Shane was frowning again, burrowing a gentle fist into the fabric against Ilya’s chest.

“You’re taking your sweatshirt back?”

“Why? Did you want to keep it?”

The look of mild embarrassment on Shane’s face made the corners of Ilya’s lips tug up. “Maybe,” he admitted. “It’s a nice sweatshirt.”

If Ilya were feeling more normal about the way the night had progressed, he would have made a joke. Something about Shane being obsessed with him, Shane trying to become him. Instead, a knot of emotion rose in his throat and he had to force it down. 

“It’s cold in here,” Ilya conceded. “I’ll wear it to sleep, but you can keep it in the morning. Deal?”

“Deal.” Shane used the fist still holding onto the sweatshirt to tug Ilya closer, the way he had all night. “It really is cold. Get over here.”

“You’re keeping me on a tight leash tonight,” Ilya murmured, but then Shane was kissing him for the first time in hours, and he immediately forgot what he was saying. 

***

It had been a rough night of sleep for Shane.

Sleeping propped upright was not ideal, and particularly not on hotel pillows, which weren’t the right density, not the same as the ones he had at home. The sling kept digging into his neck, and his arm ached with the effort of keeping his thumb underneath the most irritating of the plastic buckles, trying to keep it from leaving an uncomfortable indent on his skin. The hotel room was breezy, and Ilya was taking up half the blankets, snoring faintly. He’d spent the first part of the night curled endearingly against Shane, trying his best not to jostle him, but had eventually rolled away. Shane missed his warmth, missed the weight of him, but had to admit that it had been a little easier to drift into his small fits of sleep when he hadn’t had Ilya’s face buried in his stomach. 

Shane was trying hard to feel like this was normal, like he wasn’t thrilled at the fact that Ilya was here— actually here, staying the night with him just to sleep. They hadn’t even had sex. It made Shane feel like they could maybe be something, more than what they had been.

Ilya’s uneasy answer to the cottage question hadn’t been unexpected. Shane was stepping into unprecedented territory. They didn’t do things like that. They weren’t a couple. But what if they were? What if they tried it? His stomach flipped at the thought.

It was very early in the morning now— 5:30, if the clock on the dresser was accurate. Shane couldn’t reach his phone on the charger, but he was entertained enough with thoughts of Ilya and what a future with him might look like. He’d never allowed himself to consider a future with someone else, mostly because he’d always been on the lookout for a soulmate. But Shane had never met his soulmate, and here was Ilya in the bed next to him, all tousled and warm and caring and perfect. Shane didn’t need to hold out for someone he’d never met. 

The only problem was that he was getting thirsty. Ilya had refilled Shane’s water glass on a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night— he’d drained the glass, more accurately, but then had immediately gotten up to refill it, which was nice. Shane had woken up to the thunk of the wet cup on the nightstand, only drifting back to sleep when he felt Ilya’s weight back in the bed beside him, a soft kiss pressed to his cheek. 

Now, the cup was empty again, and Shane kind of had to pee. He sighed, not eager to leave the warm cocoon of the bed, but eventually awkwardly shifted off the mattress and padded toward the bathroom. It was shocking how many things he needed his arm for, which Shane only remembered when he went to shut the door behind him and realized he needed to set the glass down on the counter first. Slipping his underwear down over his hips was another story entirely.

It took him an agonizingly long time to do his business, wash his hand, and fill the cup again. By the time Shane made his way back to the bed, Ilya had rolled over, soaking up the warmth of the spot where Shane had been laying. He was also blocking Shane’s neatly stacked pile of pillows, the ones he needed if he was going to be able to sleep again.

Shane set the glass down on the nightstand and prodded Ilya in the side. “Rozanov. Scoot over.”

It took a few more pokes, but eventually Ilya grumbled and did as Shane had asked, tumbling across the sheets with a little more force than necessary. His eyes were still shut, and his sweatshirt rose up with the movement.

Shane didn’t notice at first. He was entirely occupied with situating himself back on the bed, groaning a little and slipping his hand underneath the buckle of the sling to try again at alleviating the discomfort. He had half a knee on the mattress when he glanced down at Ilya and froze.

There, where the fabric was bunched up around Ilya’s mid-back, was a large patch of bruises. Bad ones— a comprehensive map of purple and blue taking over what looked like his entire abdomen. 

Shane leaned forward and carefully lifted the rest of the sweatshirt, wincing when he saw the rest of it. Over Ilya’s ribs, the bruises were nearly black.

“Ilya?”

Rozanov let out a breath, but didn’t stir. 

“Rozanov. Ilya.” He reached out and shook Rozanov’s shoulder, then winced as the movement sent reverberating aches through his own body. 

“Hmph.” Ilya rolled over a little, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Hollander, what? I am sleeping.”

***

“Rozanov, get the fuck up.” Hollander’s voice was urgent, panicked. It forced Ilya to sit up, blinking hard to orient himself.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” He glanced around, but there was nothing obviously amiss. Nothing was on fire. There were no alarms going off. Ilya looked at Shane, whose face was ashen. 

“You’re injured!”

“What?”

Ilya followed Shane’s gaze down to his stomach and swore under his breath, tugging the sweatshirt down to cover the marks. 

“Did that happen during the game? Did you get it checked out?” His voice was nearly hysterical. 

“Hollander, is nothing.” Ilya scrambled off the bed. “I’m fine.”

“What do you mean, you’re fine?” Shane took a step towards him, and Ilya shrank back, pinning the hoodie to his side like if he covered up the marks long enough, Shane might forget that he’d seen them. “Fuck, Rozanov, that looked like a broken rib! How long has it been like that?”

“It hasn’t—” Ilya tried to interject, but Shane was still going.

“I didn’t hear about you taking a bad hit during the game, and you weren’t bruised like that yesterday. How did no one notice in the locker room?”

“Hollander, I’m fine, really, I’m fine.” Ilya mimed taking a deep breath, gesturing for Shane to do the same. “Please, breathe. I’m okay. No broken rib. Okay?” 

“What happened?” Shane’s brow was still furrowed with concern. “I would know if you’d taken a hit that bad. I’d have seen it.”

Ilya weighed his options. There weren’t many. 

“I didn’t take a hit,” he said slowly. “That’s not what happened. It was...” He took a deep breath, his heart pounding in his chest. “They’re not my bruises.”

It took Shane a second. Something was dawning in his expression, understanding swimming slowly to the surface in his eyes. “What?”

“It wasn’t me who got hurt.”

“It wasn’t you who got hurt,” Shane repeated, slowly. He reached down and carefully lifted the hem of the sweatshirt, staring again with a mute horror at the bruises etched on Ilya’s side. “It was your soulmate?”

"Yes.” Ilya could barely handle looking at him.

“I thought— I thought you said you didn’t have a soulmate.” Shane’s expression was beginning to look hurt. Ilya winced, knowing it could only get worse.

“I didn’t say I didn’t have one. I just said I didn’t really believe in them,” he explained feebly. It was a shitty explanation. He knew it was.

There was more terrible understanding coming to Shane now. It was like watching a car crash, seeing Hollander put the pieces together. He reached down and lifted his own shirt, awkwardly maneuvering around the sling, to stare at the matching bruises on his side. 

“It wasn’t you,” he said softly. “It was me. These are—” Shane’s voice grew choked. He stopped speaking very abruptly, and took a step back.

Ilya inhaled, bracing himself. “Soul marks. They are soul marks.”

He thought Shane might faint. He swayed a little on the spot, his face pale. “You knew?”

Ilya opened his mouth, but couldn’t bring himself to speak. 

Anger flared on Shane’s face. “Rozanov. You knew? For how long?”

“Two years,” he said weakly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Shane turned away, swiping at his eyes with the fist that wasn’t in a sling. Ilya’s heart clenched. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Ilya’s mouth flapped a few times. He felt like his throat had been wrapped in rubber bands. Shane kept going, pacing a little as he visibly put the timeline together. It was all Ilya could do to keep staring, even as he felt distinctly like he was watching his life fall apart.

“You didn’t want me to find out.” Shane’s face creased with pain. “You were going to hide it from me?”

“No, Shane, it was not like that. I wouldn’t—”

“—wouldn’t what?” Shane wheeled on Ilya and then winced a little, cradling his arm to his chest.

“You should take it easy, Hollander, you’re going to hurt yourself again.” Ilya reached for Shane only to find that his hands met empty air. Shane had jerked away from his touch.

“Oh, don’t. Don’t act like—” Hollander’s voice broke off, damp with tears. “Don’t act like you care if I get hurt now. What were you going to do, Rozanov? Keep fucking me until you decided we were done and then leave me?”

Ilya swallowed. It wasn’t in those terms, but he had been thinking that he would have to end it soon. If he was less of a lovesick coward, he would have done it already. Shane read his face, and horror crossed his expression.

Shane inhaled raggedly. “That’s awful. That’s an awful thing to do to someone. You were going to put us both through that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Ilya buried his face in his hands. “I did not know what to do, Hollander, okay? Fuck. What would you have done?”

Shane froze. “What would I have done? I would have told you! You’re my soulmate, Ilya. That matters more than anything.”

“Oh, you really expect me to believe you’d put this over anything? You’d put it over hockey?” Ilya bit out the words, angry now. He didn’t like feeling attacked.

A flicker of uncertainty, now, on Shane’s face. He changed his argument. “You didn’t think I had any say in the matter? You had so many chances to tell me.” Shane was trembling. “You didn’t think it was worth it?”

“Shane, I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I promise. I just didn’t know what to do.” Hot tears threatened in Ilya's eyes. 

“What about last night? Why would you stay if you didn’t want me?” Shane’s voice was thick with tears, his voice rambling in a way Ilya had never heard. There were so many questions. Ilya didn't feel like he could answer any of them.

“Shane, I do want you. Of course, I want you. I just didn’t think that you would want—” He broke himself off. 

“Want what?” Suddenly, his eyes flared, hot and upset. It was the angriest he’d ever seen Hollander. “You didn’t think I would want what, Ilya?”

Ilya swallowed, and tried to speak. No sound came out.

“You didn’t think I would want you? You’re my soulmate. You’re everything. You were supposed to be everything.” Shane’s voice cracked. It sounded painful. Ilya was stuck on that last sentence— you were supposed to be everything. Past tense.

“Hollander, I know that I’m not what you wanted.” Ilya dug his fingers into his palm, trying to ground himself. “You want fairytale soulmate, remember? You told me— like your parents. Some pretty girl you can marry, a happy ending. I could never be that for you.”

Hollander’s expression did something very strange. He took a step forward, and Ilya braced himself, somehow expecting to get punched. “Rozanov. I am gay. My soulmate was never going to be a girl. It was never going to be a fairytale ending. I’ve known that for a long time.”

Oh. Ilya sucked in a breath. He had always suspected Shane was gay, not bisexual, but had never had it confirmed so clearly for him. He prepared to say something else, but Shane barreled on.

“It’s not fair that you’ve stolen these last two years from me. From us, Ilya. I mean, fuck, did you think about how happy we could have been? We could have tried it.”

Ilya reacted before he thought. “No, Shane, we could not have tried it,” he spat out defensively. “I cannot be out. Could not be out. Whatever. Not while I am still Russian citizen. Do you know what happens to gay people in Russia? It is awful. It’s not like Canada with the goddamn pride parades.”

That was harsh. Ilya loved watching the pride parades every year, loved seeing streets full of rainbow flags and face paint and joy. He’d always wished he could go to one.

Shane’s face crumpled. “I understand that, Ilya, obviously it would be complicated. We’d have a lot to figure out. But we’re soulmates. Do you get that?”

“Yes, I get it,” Ilya said. He tried hard to keep exasperation out of his tone. “Shane, I understand. I’m sorry. I should not have kept it from you.”

“No,” Shane sniffled. “You shouldn’t have.” Something terrible and final had entered his expression. “I can’t believe you lied to me for so long. I can’t believe you knew. For years, Ilya. I mean, I’ve been worried about you and wanting to know you since—” He cut himself off, voice breaking.

Ilya nodded. He took a slow step towards Shane, grasping gently at his arm. “Please, Hollander. Please forgive me. Please let me make it up to you.”

There was a split second where he thought it might work. Shane’s expression softened, just for a moment, his eyes locked on Ilya’s. Then, as Ilya watched, a brick wall built itself back up behind his gaze. 

“I think you should go, Ilya.” Horrifyingly, Shane was audibly holding back a sob. Ilya wanted, more than anything in the world, to drop to his knees and hold him. But Hollander pulled his arm out of Ilya’s grasp. "I want to be alone."

Ilya’s heart sank into his stomach, tangled around his ankles. He was surprised he didn’t step on it in his rush to leave the hotel room.

***

“Shane? Did you hear me?”

“What?” Shane jerked his head up.

Standing in front of him, Jackie smiled patiently. “I asked how your arm was healing.”

Shane was currently half-sunk into a leather coach in the Pikes’ living room. Around him, the room buzzed with chatter and laughter— an end of season get together, a team function. Shane had been counting the minutes until his captainly obligation for attendance was over.

Jackie’s smile faded a little. Shane remembered that he was supposed to be answering a question. “Oh, it’s good.” He lifted his arm, now cast-less, in her direction. “Just going through physical therapy with it now, a few more months of that, but it’s totally fine.”

“Fine enough that you’d be able to help me with dessert in the kitchen?”

Shane looked around, a little confused at the request, but nodded and got up to follow her. Immediately, the kitchen was a respite— Shane hadn’t even realized how loud it had been in the living room until the sound dulled, relief sweeping through his skull.

“Uncle Shane!” 

He turned, and there were Jade and Ruby, sitting at the kitchen table and absolutely destroying some coloring sheets. He wasn’t sure which one of them had called out for him, but they both were waving, astronomically big smiles on their faces. Immediately, Shane’s mood softened.

“What are you guys up to?” He squatted by the table, and both girls launched into a description of what they had been drawing— something about a dragon, and waffles, and a girl who was on their soccer team.

“Is that—“ Shane craned his head to see better. “Is the dragon toasting the waffles with its breath? That’s very smart.”

Ruby nodded excitedly, and resumed her scribbling. “You get it, Uncle Shane.”

“What’s this?” Shane tapped the back of her hand, which was covered in some complicated string of hearts and stars. Jade’s had the same. 

“It’s our code,” Ruby said simply. “It says something but we can’t tell you what it says because that would be giving it away and it’s a really big secret. Sorry, Uncle Shane.”

“That’s okay.” Shane glanced at Jackie, who was smiling as she rummaged through the fridge. “Does your mom know what it says?”

“No,” said Jade defensively. She didn’t look up from where she was drawing a purple giraffe riding on top of the dragon. “We didn’t even tell Daddy. Or Arthur.”

Shane looked at their brother, who was busy drooling all over himself in his high chair. “Something tells me that Arthur can keep a secret.”

He made his way to the kitchen counter, where Jackie was laying out several sheet trays full of cake. He blinked down at them. “Woah, Jackie. Do you think you made enough?”

“It’s exactly as many as I made last year, and there were no leftovers.” She raised an eyebrow at Shane, and he shut up. “Sorry to pull you from the party, but you seemed miserable out there.”

“I was fine,” he said automatically. Jackie raised her eyebrow again, then opened a drawer to look for something.

“Rough end to the season, right? I’m sorry about that.” 

Shane took a breath. It had been a rough end to the season. The Metros had made it decently far into the playoffs without him, but a devastating loss against Pittsburgh had sent them out of the race. That, piled on top of Shane’s broken arm and the other events of February (the events Shane was not allowed to think about, not at this party, unless he wanted to start crying in front of Jackie Pike and her children which he really did not want to do), was enough to make Shane’s chest feel like it was lined with weights. 

Jackie found what she was looking for and shut the drawer with her hip, the jostling sound enough for Shane to blink up at her. She was offering him the handle of a cake knife.

“Could you do me a favor and cut up the seven layer bars? I’m finishing up the strawberries.”

It was less of a request, more a demand. Shane blinked at her, his mind immediately filled with an image of the most hacked-up plate of dessert bars anyone had ever seen. “I’m not sure if I should be trusted with that. I’m gonna mess it up. Wouldn’t it be better to get one of the girlfriends, or something?”

Jackie narrowed her eyes at him. “Why? Because the kitchen is a place for women?”

“No!” Shane immediately backpedaled in panic. “Oh my god, no, Jackie, you know that’s not what I meant. I’m so sorry.”

Her face immediately relaxed, teasing again. She pressed the knife handle into his palm and then gestured toward one of the dessert trays. “Great. Hop to it, then.”

Shane shivered a little as he turned toward the task. Jesus. Women were so scary.

As it turned out, it was nice to have something to do with his hands. He made idle chat with Jackie about what the girls were doing for summer camp, what was new at her job. By the time he’d finished cutting up the seven layer bars, she was gesturing to a tray of strawberry shortcake and asking if he’d cut that up, too. 

“You’re going to the cottage this summer, right?”

“Yeah. I leave in a week.” Shane was intently focused on cutting a straight, even line through the center of the cake.

“And your parents are down there too, right? They have a place by yours?”

“Actually,” Shane winced as his knife sliced a little unevenly. “They’re about to go on a European cruise. They’ll be gone for two months.”

“Oh.” 

When Jackie didn’t follow that up with anything, Shane looked at her. Her face had fallen a little. 

“What?”

“You’re going to be alone out there? For weeks?”

“I mean.” Shane looked back down at the cake. “Yeah. But it’s really nice, it’s so private and I go swimming and catch up on stuff I missed during the season—“

With another look at Jackie’s face, Shane felt like he was making things worse.

“Maybe Hayden should go visit you while you’re out there. He loves to swim.”

“What? It’s the off-season. Don’t you want him home?” Shane made the first horizontal cut into the strawberry shortcake and grimaced. This was not going to go well.

“I do, but I could use a break sometimes. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor— Hayden goes crazy when there’s no hockey. Also, I don’t like the thought of you all alone out there.” Jackie resumed her task of piercing strawberries with toothpicks (why that couldn’t have been Shane’s job, he didn’t know). “Doesn’t it get lonely?”

For a moment, Shane didn’t answer.

He hadn’t been planning on being alone at the cottage this summer. He had invited someone to come stay with him, and when he thought about that conversation, and the one that had followed, the pleading look on Ilya’s face—

Shane cleared his throat. “I’m fine, Jackie. I’m an introvert. If it gets too lonely, I’ll come back up to Montreal.” He made another careful cut into the cake. “Did Hayden put you up to this? Why isn’t he the one asking me about it?”

“Daddy says you’ve been like Eeyore,” Ruby helpfully piped up from where she was still drawing at the table.

Shane nearly dropped the knife. “Oh my god.”

“Ruby, honey, what did we say about repeating Daddy?” Jackie wiped at her brow with her sleeve. “Sorry, Shane. You weren’t supposed to hear that. And for the record, Hayden didn’t put me up to it. I’m your friend too, remember?”

A little bit of guilt spread through Shane. It wasn’t like he wasn’t aware that he’d been a bit miserable to be around for these last few months. He’d thought it was understandable, especially with his arm still in a sling. But he probably should have expected that at some point, someone might try to intervene. He’d only barely been able to hold his mother’s worry at bay, particularly when he was still wearing the cast.

“Thanks, Jackie. I appreciate the concern.” Shane tried out a smile, and it didn’t feel totally disingenuous. “I’m okay. I’ll be better in August, when I can get back on the ice and we’re in the pre-season.”

“Hell yeah, you will be!” Wandering into the room, Hayden clapped a hand onto Shane’s shoulder, and he jumped. “Woah, sorry bud, didn’t mean to sneak up on you. Why would you give him a knife?”

Jackie gave him a look and kept working on the strawberries. Shane frowned at Hayden, but then looked down to focus on cutting the cake. It had taken him nearly five minutes; it always seemed like his mom cut cakes in seconds. How did she do that?

Hayden and Jackie were silent. Shane glanced up, and found that they were seemingly having an entire conversation with their eyes. Hayden looked pleading. Jackie looked exasperated. 

“Guys, you know it’s weird when you do that.” Shane blew out a breath. “I know you’re concerned about me, and I really appreciate it, but you don’t have to be. I’m fine, okay?”

“Buddy, no one’s seen you in weeks, except for me. Whole team’s worried.” Hayden nodded out the door, and Shane was briefly filled with the mortifying mental image of the entire Montreal Metros team, their ears pressed to the door to find out why their captain was drowning in misery.

Hayden read his face. “This isn’t an intervention, okay! I didn’t even know you were in the kitchen. I just wanted to check on the status of dessert.” He wrapped an arm around Jackie’s waist, then surreptitiously reached to grab a strawberry. She smacked his hand away, then laughed when Hayden kissed her cheek instead. Shane was reminded that they were the real deal, that they were soulmates, and his heart briefly ached.

Later that afternoon, after the party had demolished four entire dessert trays, it was finally socially acceptable for him to start making the rounds and saying goodbye. It was the last time he’d see most of them until preseason, so Shane made sure to hit every group, checking in and wishing their families well. 

He found Jade and Ruby, now bouncing around the living room with their mouths smeared with frosting. He grinned at the sight and squatted to give them goodbye hugs. 

“Uncle Shane,” Ruby caught him by the sleeve before he stood back up. “I’m going to tell you a secret.”

“Oh.” Shane made a show of looking around, as if to make sure no one would hear them, before he ducked his head down. “What is it?”

“Our code,” she said. She tapped her hand against his face, like Shane might have forgotten, and he laughed a little in surprise. “It’s for our soulmates. So they can see it, and if they’re really our soulmates, they’ll know what it says.” She swayed back, a satisfied look on her face. “It’s smart, right? Mommy used to do the same thing before she met Daddy. She told us.”

Shane had to fight hard to keep the smile on his face. He felt like his chest had been run over by a delivery truck. “Wow. That is really smart, Rubes. I bet your soulmate—“ He had to swallow. Fuck, he couldn’t cry in front of this child. “I bet your soulmate will like that.”

Hayden caught him by the shoulder before he slipped fully out the door. “Just check in, okay? Don’t be a stranger.”

“For sure, Hayd. I’ll talk to you later.” Shane’s smile felt wobbly.

He made it all the way to his car before the tears began.

***

Ilya’s phone was ringing.

He groaned and rolled over, fumbling through the sheets for it. He was shocked it wasn’t dead— he’d spent the night before doom-scrolling, locked in some awful thread about Scott Hunter online. It was something that was happening to him more and more, these days.

A few months ago, Scott Hunter had kissed a man on the ice. He’d come out as gay, and the league was still in an uproar about it, celebration and condemnation on all sides. It had made Ilya feel swamped with deep, overwhelming sadness, even amidst his excitement that someone in the league had come out. Someone so prominent, no less. Paparazzi photos of Scott and his twink boyfriend had been circulating all over every timeline of Ilya’s for weeks, and they seemed happy. He knew, in another life, this might have given him hope. It might have made him feel like he could do something, like he might be able to try with Shane. 

But Shane had been ignoring his calls, ignoring his texts. There was a bright flicker of scary hope in Ilya’s chest when he finally found his phone, still buzzing, but he knew it wasn’t Shane on the other end of the line.

“Are you still in bed?” 

“No.” Ilya buried his face in his pillow.

“You’re lying.” He could hear Svetlana’s frown through the phone. “You need to get out of the house, Ilya.”

“I know that,” he said unhappily. “It’s still early.”

“It’s two in the afternoon in Boston.” 

Disgruntled, Ilya checked his phone. She was right. “Why are you calling me, again?”

“Because Russia is boring without you.” He could hear the pout in her voice. “You’re sure you won’t come this summer?”

“I am sure,” Ilya mumbled. It had been a difficult conversation, explaining to her why he wasn’t going home for the off-season. It had taken some combined bullshit answer of not wanting to see his brother and not wanting to get out of the rhythm of being in Boston, whatever that meant, for her to scowl and say whatever, I am not dealing with you when you’re like this. For what was probably working in Ilya’s favor, she had seemingly changed her mind.

“What have you done this week?” She sounded exasperated, like coaches from his youth when they knew he wasn’t keeping up with his schoolwork.

Ilya thought about it. “I’ve been working out.” That was true— running made him feel a little better, like he could somehow breathe out the pain. “And I saw a movie.”

Svetlana’s tone brightened. “You went to the theater? That’s good.”

“Ah, no.” Ilya scrubbed his hand over his face. “It was on the TV last night. What is that movie? The one with the whale. And the little boy is his friend and he tries to save him.”

“Ilya, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Svetlana sounded unimpressed.

He’d quite liked the movie. It had made him cry, just a little, something about the power of friendship and how small the boy was compared to the whale. Then, while he’d been skipping through channels afterward, he’d landed on HGTV. It wasn’t even House Hunters, it was one of those shitty shows with the brothers who had stupid hair. Ilya hated the way they decorated a home. Still, he had thought of his last night with Shane, the rumble of his chest against Ilya’s cheek while he’d complained about the family who picked the apartment in the city compared to the house in the suburbs, that they’d never have enough space, and then Ilya had been crying so hard he couldn’t see the screen. He’d fallen asleep on the couch with all of the lights still on and then he’d woken up at three in the morning, eyes sore and cheeks sticky, and had to stumble up to bed.

“It was a beautiful movie,” Ilya mumbled. Svetlana kept talking, something about how the girls were going clubbing that night, how it would be lame without him. Ilya told her he knew. She asked if he was going to get his shit together any time soon. Ilya told her he didn’t know.

When she finally hung up, Ilya tossed the phone back into his mass of sheets and then carefully rolled up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. There, in the crook of the elbow, were the words he’d written a few days before— I miss you. 

Shane hadn’t written back.

***

The cottage had never been so miserable.

Shane had been trying and failing for days to settle into his normal routine. All of it felt off— the yoga boring, the singing of the birds discordant, his food always dry and tasteless in his mouth. He’d even gone to a bookstore to try to pick up something that wasn’t about hockey, because every time he picked up the novel he’d been reading, he found himself with eyes glazed five minutes in. He couldn’t focus on movies. The only time he found his brain flushed clean of thoughts was when he was exercising; Shane spent hours each day in the lake, or on the treadmill, sometimes even jogging through the woods when he really felt like it. The moment he stopped, the thoughts came rushing back.

Two weeks into being alone, it was starting to really get to him. He’d spent the day flipping distractedly through the sci-fi novel the bookstore employee had recommended to him, then grilling a chicken breast for lunch, no seasoning, biding his time until he was allowed (per his mental schedule) to swim for several hours. It was only when Shane was ready to crawl out of the lake, shivering and shuddering with the cold because it was June in Canada and the water was fucking freezing, that he realized he’d forgotten his towel inside.

The long trek to the house was full of suffering. He scrubbed his hands up and down his arms, swearing under his breath and trying to avoid the dark scribble of words that were written on his arm. It felt like a cruel placement. Did Ilya remember that the first time Shane had ever tried to write to him, back when he was a kid, that was where he’d done it? Did Ilya remember that he’d ignored it?

Every time the words in the crook of his elbow faded, Ilya wrote new ones. Call me. I’m sorry. Once, in a way that nearly brought Shane to his knees, he’d only written please. 

Shane thought often about reaching out. Ilya had stopped texting so much— probably assuming that if Shane wanted to call, he would. But that wasn’t true. Shane had dug himself a grave, and now he felt like he had to lie in it.

Every day, he wrestled with how he was feeling. Ilya Rozanov was his soulmate. Ilya Rozanov was a liar. Still, Ilya Rozanov had probably been scared, and when Shane thought about it, he knew that he would’ve been, too. There was a lot to unpack.

He had lots of questions. When was the specific moment that Ilya had realized that they were soulmates? How many signs had Shane missed? Was it something Shane had done that made him feel like he couldn’t say anything? Could he be in love with Shane?

He didn’t think so. Shane glanced around at his painfully empty cottage and thought about the way that Ilya was always saying he was boring. Shane was boring. He didn’t like to listen to music. He didn’t keep up with pop culture, or enjoy clubbing, and he wasn’t even a good flirt. He spent his summers eating dinner with his parents on the back deck and reading by the water. It was a life Shane liked, but it wasn’t a surprise that Ilya had been hesitant to be a part of it. It was enough to frighten anyone off.

After he’d showered, Shane sat in his favorite chair and tucked his knees to his chest. His phone sat a few feet away, the screen dark. No one was texting him. Hayden had reached out the day before, and they’d talked on the phone for a few minutes, but Shane had begged off a rescue mission, promised he was fine. Now, faced with yet another night where the sun was slowly setting and Shane was all alone in the world, he wondered if he should call Hayden back. He wondered, like a child, if he should ask for someone to come pick him up.

***

There was someone in Ilya’s bed. For half of a heartbeat, it was Shane Hollander, and he was warm underneath Ilya’s touch, saying his name all wondrous—

And then it dawned on Ilya that no, really, there was someone in his bed, and he was shooting up with a scream. The person screamed back. Ilya got hit by a pillow, and screamed impossibly louder.

“Fuck! Ilya! Shut the fuck up!”

Oh. It was Svetlana. Ilya clamped his mouth shut.

She glared at him from behind her curls, mussed where he must have tried to hit her back with the pillow. He didn’t even remember doing that, and was grateful that he hadn’t tried to hit her harder. 

“Sveta!” He pressed a hand to his chest, forcing himself to take calming breaths. His heart thundered in his chest. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking on you, idiot.” Svetlana’s stare was still less than friendly. She folded her legs gracefully beneath herself, straightening out her hair and her sweatshirt like nothing had happened. “And clearly you need it. Ilya, what is this?”

“What is what?”

Svetlana gestured widely, as if that could encapsulate what she was talking about. Ilya glanced around.

The nightstand was cluttered with empty bottles of Gatorade and wrappers from those cheese and peanut butter crackers he kept ordering from the supermarket. The dresser was yawning open, his t-shirt and sweatpants drawers both appearing as if a bomb had gone off inside of them. The blinds were drawn over his windows— he didn’t really remember when he had done that, but he did remember that he had been angry at the sun (so warm, so bright, so full of optimism) when he had done it. 

“It’s a little messy.” Ilya shrugged. “Sorry. I was not expecting guests.”

“Clearly.” Svetlana swiped crumbs off of the sheets and then grimaced, visibly disgusted. “What is going on with you? First, you don’t come to Russia. Then, I come to see you because you’ve completely stopped answering your phone, and you’re living in some sort of disgusting cave?”

“I’m not living in a cave, this is a very nice house,” he said defensively, then sighed at the stare Svetlana leveled him with. “Okay. I get it. It’s messy in here. It’s been a rough few weeks for me.”

“That is a clear understatement.” 

Ilya rolled his eyes. “Give me a break, Sveta. It’s been a rough year.”

Svetlana sighed, then leaned forward to pat his knee.  “Here’s the plan, okay? I brought breakfast and coffee. It’s downstairs. You’ll only earn it if you take a shower, because obviously that hasn’t happened in a while.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “You’ll clean yourself up, and then you’re going to come down and we’ll talk about it. Okay?”

Ilya perked up a little. “You brought coffee? Is it from Dunkin?”

“You’re such a Bostonian.” Svetlana shook her head dramatically, but then laughed. “Shower, and then you’ll find out.”

Twenty minutes later, Ilya made his way down the stairs with wet hair and freshly brushed teeth. It was surprising how much putting on clean sweatpants had made him feel like a new man; Ilya was admittedly a little embarrassed about the state his friend had found him in. 

Svetlana grinned impishly over her shoulder when she heard his footsteps. She was in the process of gently prying two steaming Dunkin cups out of his microwave. His kitchen counter was half-covered in an explosion of food containers, like she’d stopped somewhere to pick up a full breakfast before she came. 

Incredulous, he lifted the lid on one of the boxes. “You brought blini?” 

“And sausage, and bacon, and there are eggs in the fridge if you want to make them.” She passed him the coffee and Ilya blew on it, still staring at the piles of food. “I figured you might need to eat if we were going to talk.”

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” Ilya breathed. Svetlana smiled at him and patted his arm fondly.

“I don’t know what you did either, but wow, are you lucky.”

It took another fifteen minutes for them to settle on the couch, plates laden with food. Ilya bit gratefully into a blini with sweet cream cheese and raspberry preserves, his eyes practically rolling into his head with how extravagant it tasted.

“Were you living off of those peanut butter crackers? I found six packages of them in the pantry.” Svetlana raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re a professional athlete. Don’t you get paid millions of dollars to properly nourish your body?”

He lifted his shirt, making a show of inspecting the defined planes of his abdomen. “I think I’m doing okay.”

Svetlana leaned forward and smacked him right in the stomach. Ilya snapped his shirt back down, gasping in surprise and then in laughter. “That’s what you get for bragging,” she told him as she leaned back and bit into a piece of bacon. “And also for not speaking to me for days.”

Immediately, Ilya’s mood flattened a little. Remorse filled him. “I’m sorry, Sveta. I know I should have reached out.” He inhaled, considering ways to try to explain what had happened to him. Words didn’t seem to be enough.

For the first few weeks of off-season, around the time he’d last spoken to her, he’d kept routine well enough. Getting out of bed was hard, and he found himself often spacing out over meals and shows and practically any conversation he had, lost in thoughts of Shane. Still, he maintained his workout regiment. He got out into the neighborhood at least once a week, enough to breathe the summer air and pretend he didn’t feel like he was drowning in it. He’d written carefully worded text after carefully worded text to Shane Hollander, even sent a few drunk ones. There’d been no response, and Ilya had begun to languish.

Over the last week or so, it had been tougher. Ilya hadn’t seen much reason to get out of bed. The world felt slow around him, like nothing mattered at all. For most of his conscious moments, he was replaying his argument (if it could be called that) with Shane, wishing he could go back and do it differently. Wishing he’d picked up the phone the moment he’d discovered Shane was his soulmate, years ago in a hotel room in Vegas. Wishing he’d never made Shane feel like he might not want him.

It was unforgivable, really. Ilya couldn’t blame Shane for ignoring him. And now, here he was, spacing out again while Svetlana stared at him across the couch, waiting for answers.

“Is it your dad?”

“What?” Ilya blinked back into himself, met her inquisitive eyes.

“Your dad. Is it grief? Is that what’s got you like this?”

“No,” Ilya said immediately, then frowned. “I don’t think so, I don’t know. Maybe a little. But not really.”

It had been, without a doubt, the worst and most grueling year of his life, and now that Ilya didn’t feel like anyone needed him anymore, he felt like it was safe to let himself waste away. His father didn’t need him. Shane didn’t need him. Alexei probably did need him, but for money and nothing else, and Ilya was done feeding that fuck. Even Boston, for the next few months at least, didn’t need him. What harm was it if Ilya didn’t leave his bed for a while?

“Is it Jane?”

Ilya’s head jerked up at the name. Svetlana had a knowing look on her face. They hadn’t spoken about Jane since the funeral, since she’d let him know that she knew his secret (or at least part of it). He’d almost forgotten. Ilya was in love with a boy, and Svetlana knew about it.

He blew out a breath. “Yes.”

“What happened?” She bit into a strawberry, and Ilya knew that she was playing one of her games— approaching him like a stray cat, easily scared. 

Ilya let his head fall back against the pillows. “It’s a long story.”

“What the fuck am I here for, if not a story?”

“Sveta.” He looked at her. “Not quite the considerate tone I am looking for.”

“Tell me a story, Rozanov.” Another bite of a strawberry. “Come on. I know you want to.”

He let his eyes close. “He is my soulmate.”

A choking noise from across the couch. “What?” He thought she was exaggerating, but when he opened his eyes again, Svetlana was holding a hand to her throat, genuine shock on her face. “I thought you didn’t have a soulmate?”

“I lied.” Ilya smiled weakly.

“You lied. When we were children?” 

“When we were teenagers, yes.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I found out when I was sixteen that my soulmate was a boy. Obviously, that wasn’t an option.”

A grave expression settled on her features. “Oh, Ilya. I’m so sorry. That must have been terrifying.”

“It was,” he admitted. His eyes became immediately hot and wet with tears, the remembered fear of that age moving through him like a wave. “My mother had just died, and I was alone in the house with Papa and Alexei. I figured it out because of a stupid stamp on his hand. Hockey camp.” Ilya snorted. “Dumb.”

“Hockey camp,” Svetlana repeated quietly. “You knew from that?”

“Yes.” Ilya swallowed away the lump in his throat, chased it down with a flavorless bite of eggs. “It was a camp in Ottawa. All boys.” 

A sympathetic noise rose in the back of Svetlana’s throat.

“I didn’t think it would matter. Plenty of people don’t meet their soulmates, you know, and when he wrote to me, it was in English. My soulmate is a Canadian.” A bitter laugh from Ilya. “What are the odds that I meet my Canadian hockey-playing soulmate and he’s a boy and we speak English to each other? To me, nonexistent. That could never happen.”

“But it did.” Svetlana blinked at him. “You two met.”

“Yes. Yes, we did.” Ilya sighed. “We were hooking up for eight years before I found out he was my soulmate.”

Svetlana’s head rocked back, like she was physically reverberating with shock. “Eight years? I mean, I knew you’d known Jane for a while, but.” She shook her head, processing. “When did you start?”

“We met the summer before our rookie year.” Ilya dragged his fork blandly through the food, avoiding her gaze. 

“He’s still playing?”

Despite himself, Ilya snorted derisively. “Oh, yes. He is still playing.”

“Would I recognize him?”

This time, a more full laugh erupted from Ilya. “Yes, Sveta. You would recognize him.”

“Holy shit.” Svetlana nearly dropped her plate. “Your soulmate is Shane Hollander?”

Ilya looked up at her incredulously. “How the fuck did you figure that out?”

“Oh my god!” This time, Svetlana really did set down her plate. She clapped both hands over her mouth. “Oh my god. Montreal Jane. Montreal Shane. No fucking way. You idiot. That is not as clever as you think it is.”

“What do you mean? How did you figure that out?” Ilya’s eyes were wide. “I mean, I was probably going to tell you in a second anyway, but what the fuck, Svetlana?”

“This makes so much sense.” Svetlana took a deep breath. “I thought it was weird, all those times you denied that he was handsome or good at hockey. I mean, Ilya, seriously.”

Ilya’s chest inflated. “He's not better than me at hockey.”

Svetlana gave the lie a second to sit in the air, staring at him knowingly, before she brushed it aside. “You’ve been sleeping with Shane Hollander? For eight years?”

“Almost ten, now.” Ilya sighed. “But I ruined it.”

“How?”

So Ilya filled her in on the rest of the story. How it had never been casual (for Ilya, at least). The way he was immediately enamored by Shane’s freckles and his habits and his poor attempts to hide his softness. Years of hooking up, years of kissing in stairwells, years of searching for an excuse to text first. Ilya’s panic at discovering that they were soulmates, and his desperate attempts to hide it, to push Shane away (at this point of the story, Svetlana began to sadly shake her head). The phone calls after Ilya’s father’s death. The affectionate bubble of the hotel room during All-Star weekend. The way it had all shattered, so horribly, on that last day.

By the time he’d finished speaking, his voice had gone hoarse and his eyes burned. Svetlana was quiet for a long time before she finally spoke. “So, hold on. Shane is at the cottage now, yes?”

Ilya shrugged. “Probably. He’s always there during the summers, I think.”

“And you know where this cottage is?”

He thought about it. Ilya had a sharp memory, and it was hard to forget the drag of Shane’s fingers on the phone screen, the sound of his voice when he stressed just how remote the cottage was. “Pretty much.”

Svetlana picked up the throw pillow nearest to her and threw it, hard, at Ilya.

“Ow! Svetlana! What the fuck!” Ilya narrowly avoided spilling his plate of breakfast food (now cold because he had spent so long talking) on his nice couch, and glared at her. “What was that for?”

“You are an idiot,” she told him simply. “Shane Hollander is at the cottage, obviously waiting for you, and you’ve been sitting here eating peanut butter crackers and watching Free Willy.”

He perked up. “You do know what movie I was talking about!”

“That is not the point. You love him, yes?”

Ilya didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

Another pillow was launched in his direction. “What are you still doing in Boston?”

Ilya had fast enough reflexes this time to swat the pillow away. “What do you mean? I already told you. He’s not answering my messages. It’s been weeks.”

She had a scheming glint in her eye. Ilya knew that look. It was the same look she wore when they were seventeen and she was about to suggest they sneak out and go to a party, the same look she wore when she knew she had a plan that was better than his. 

“Ilya. You are in love with Shane Hollander. Shane Hollander is probably in love with you, too, but you hurt his feelings. You know he’s sensitive. Even I know he’s sensitive, and I’ve never met him.” Ilya frowned at the reminder. “The point is, there’s a princess in a castle in Ottawa and he is waiting for you!” 

To punctuate her last words, she smacked her hand excitedly against his knee until Ilya pulled it away from her, grimacing and rubbing at the spot. 

“Shane is not a princess,” Ilya mumbled, although a small part of him brightened at the image of Shane in a gown and a tiara. He would look very pretty. “He doesn’t want to see me.”

“Did he say that to you?”

Ilya thought about it. “No. He said he wanted to be alone, though.”

Svetlana leveled him with a stare. “Yes. He said he wanted to be alone, months ago, when he was rightfully upset because you kept the biggest secret in the world from him. Okay. Time has passed. You love him. You need to go to him.”

Ilya frowned. “Sveta, I’m pretty sure I was uninvited.” 

He had more protests to make, but it didn’t matter, because Svetlana was dashing from the room. He called after her, but could only hear the sound of her scrambling footsteps until she reappeared in the doorway, his laptop bundled in her arms. “Unlock this, please.”

Ilya did, eyeing her suspiciously when she grabbed it back from him and began to type fervently. “What are you doing?”

“Booking you a flight to Ottawa,” she said like it was obvious. She clicked something with the mousepad very decisively. “You shouldn’t keep your payment information saved on here, by the way. Like, super dangerous. Someone could hack you.”

With that said, Svetlana immediately proceeded to charge a $700 flight to Ilya’s credit card.

***

By that time the next day, Ilya was rolling out of the Ottawa airport in a rental BMW and attempting not to vomit with stress inside the very nice interior. 

He tried to make every breath he took a deep one, but then he felt like he was breathing too slowly, and his head felt heavy. He tightened his grip on the wheel and steered himself out of the city, onto a wide flat road that could very well be leading nowhere. Ilya had always been very good with directions, but even Svetlana’s confidence had wavered when he showed her where he thought the cottage was on the map.

“You’re sure that’s it?”

Ilya had shrugged. “You’re the one who bought the flight without checking that I knew what house it was.”

Now Ilya was having regrets. His stomach was flooded with anxiety, his palms slick with sweat. He was driving to the cottage. There was a chance that after today, nothing would ever be okay.

It was a rough two hours. He stopped at a gas station halfway through, even though the tank was still mostly full, because he wanted to buy a pack of mints. Then he ate the whole thing anxiously over the course of thirty minutes (at the very least, his breath would be very fresh when he saw Hollander again). The road to the cottage (or at least, the building Ilya had singled out on Google Maps that he thought was the cottage) was long and winding, shrouded with beautiful trees. Ilya could easily tell why Hollander would love a place like this. 

When he was eventually pulling up in front of the house, something settled in his chest like a stone. This seemed familiar— it looked like the building Ilya had seen, all those years ago, on the television. He hesitated, for a moment, upon seeing the big blue car in the driveway (surely that was the car of someone who had children, it looked like something Pike would drive), but still he clambered out of the BMW and made his way up the steps to the front door.

He knocked. Waited. For a while, there was nothing, but then there was movement through the frosted glass, the sound of the door being unlocked. It swung open, and there was Shane Hollander.

He looked good, more rested than he had the last time Ilya had seen him. He was wearing jeans and a pale linen button up, the cut of the collar crisp against his neck. His expression didn’t betray any emotion as he stared at Ilya.

“Hi.”

For a long and horrifying second, Shane didn’t say anything. Then his chest rose sharply, like he’d remembered to take a breath. “Rozanov. What are you doing here?

Ilya shrugged. “You were not answering my texts.”

It was almost too glib, but he wasn’t ready to launch into his practiced speech yet. Shane’s fingers tensed and then untensed on the doorknob.

“How did you get here?”

“Uh,” Ilya shuffled his feet on the step. “I flew. And then drove. Rental car.” He gestured, and Shane’s gaze shifted from Ilya to the BMW in the driveway. “Is that your SUV? Very economical.”

 Ilya was glad he had remembered the word. He was so nervous he feared he might drop dead right here on the steps of Hollander’s beautiful cottage.

“Don’t start,” said Shane, although for a split second something in his expression shifted and became almost familiar before it froze over again. “How did you find the house?”

“You showed me where it was on a map. May I come in?”

Hollander was still staring at Ilya like he was an alien. He wavered for a half of a second before he made room in the doorway and allowed Ilya to step past him.

“This is a very nice home,” Ilya said as he toed out of his sneakers without unlacing them first. His fingers trembled a little when he skimmed them against the hall table, and he hoped Shane didn’t notice. “TV doesn’t do it justice.”

“Where did you—” Shane cut himself off. “You saw that? We filmed that forever ago.”

Ilya shrugged. “I like HGTV. You know this.”

“That wasn’t for HGTV, that was—” Shane cut himself off again, frowning as he must have remembered his manners. “Whatever. Do you need anything? Water?”

Ilya took in more of the house as Shane lead him toward the kitchen and patiently filled up a glass with water from the tap. It had been ten years since he’d moved to North America and that was something Ilya had never adjusted to— in Russia, you never drank unfiltered water. Still, he took several sips of it while Hollander eyed him uneasily, keeping an entire kitchen counter as an island between them. 

Shane waited for Ilya to set the glass down before he repeated his question. “What are you doing here?”

Ilya licked his lips nervously. “I was hoping to explain myself.” 

It took Hollander a second to realize that he was supposed to give permission for Ilya to keep talking. He nodded, his bottom lip nervously tucked into his mouth. Ilya wanted to pry it free with his thumb, so he laced his hands together tightly instead. 

“When we were sixteen, you went to hockey camp. Summer 2006, right?”

Shane thought about it, then nodded, his expression wrinkled a little with confusion.

“You got a stamp, and I looked up the words on it. That was how I found out that my soulmate was a boy.” The furrow between his brows loosened. “It is not safe to be gay in Russia. I know that you know that. And I like girls, also, the same way I like boys. You know that, too.”

The tiniest frown materialized at the edges of Shane’s eyes. Ilya took a bracing breath. 

“For years, I ignored it. I knew my soulmate was Canadian, and that I was not allowed to like boys, so—” Ilya choked up a little, and he swallowed desperately to try to clear his throat. “I lied and told everyone I did not have a soulmate. I did not think we would meet. I did not think it would matter. Lots of people never meet their soulmates.”

Shane’s expression was unreadable. Ilya kept going.

“I have been infatuated with you since the moment I met you. Well, maybe a little after.” Ilya chuckled wetly. “Since we shot that commercial, for sure. I was obsessed. Your eyes. Your freckles. You were wound so tight. I wanted to unlace you.”

For a moment, Ilya was back there, in the locker room, staring down at Shane as he anxiously tied his shoes. He’d been so obviously nervous, and Ilya had been too, even if he wasn’t allowed to show it. That night, when they’d kissed for the first time, it had made Ilya feel a little bit like his world was slotting into place, like he could spend the rest of his life there with his thumb pressed to the indent of Shane’s chin. He hadn’t known how true that was.

“I felt that way for a long time— way before I knew you were my soulmate. I only figured it out after you took a bad hit in game against Panthers, two years ago. You remember this?” 

Shane nodded.

“The bruising was so bad, I thought my soulmate must have been in car accident. Then I saw your postgame interview. You had a cut on your cheekbone.” Ilya skimmed his fingers over the spot below his eye, wished he could demonstrate on Shane instead. He was still so far away. “It was on my face, too, same as it was on yours. So I knew. And I panicked.”

“The next time you saw me,” Shane looked like he was putting puzzle pieces together. “You said you had a migraine, and ran out of my house.”

An awkward laugh fell out of Ilya’s mouth. “Yes. You remember, now. I, uh,” he rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “I had wanted to be sure. I drew with pen on my back. It showed up on yours. So then, it was certain.”

Shane’s face, which had been very still for the last several minutes, twitched a little with what could have been amusement. “Ilya, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I had to be sure! You would do the same.” Feeling emboldened, Ilya took a step closer to him. “I did not know what to do. You are my soulmate. You are Shane Hollander. It was hard to deal with. I could not fuck you like that, so I said I had a migraine. It was bad lie. I am sorry.”

His expression softened a little. “That’s okay. I knew you were lying. I just didn’t know why.”

“I did not know how to explain it. It was such a big secret. I had no one to tell.” At the look on Shane’s face, he quickly rectified the statement. “I should have told you, but I was scared. I did not know what would happen. It’s no excuse, but my father was very sick, and Boston was playing terribly, and everything else in my life was shit, and I could not lose you, too. Not then.”

“So you ignored me for eight months.”

“You ignored me too, once. For two years, remember?”

Shane’s face darkened with annoyance. Ilya knew that he remembered the time that had passed between Vegas and the first time Hollander had allowed him into his apartment.

“That was not the same, Ilya. At all. I didn’t know we were soulmates. Actually, part of the reason why I didn’t want to fuck you was because I had a soulmate! I never liked feeling like I was being unfaithful to them, even if I didn’t know who it was.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not like you had the same hangups.”

A jab of instant remorse pierced Ilya’s ribs. He winced. “Yes, okay, I am sorry. I should not have ignored you. I just did not know what to do, and if we did not talk, I did not have to end what was happening between us.” He shuffled his feet miserably, eyes stuck on the floor. 

“And you were going to end it? After the last game we had against each other?”

Shane’s voice sounded remarkably sturdy. Ilya was flashed back to that night— Hollander had never spoken to him on the ice before, but had skated bravely right over before the game like Ilya hadn’t been blowing him off for nearly a year. His dark eyes had glimmered in the lights of the rink, his mouth not quite smiling but still warm when he looked at Ilya, whose stomach was twisted with cold dread.

“Yes. I was going to end it,” Ilya admitted. “I thought I had to. I thought it was best for us both. I could not be what you wanted your soulmate to be. I could not be what you needed. But I got out of the game, and Alexei called.”

They were both silent for a moment, remembering. Ilya let his eyes shut, suddenly awash in the memories of that weekend. He didn’t have many that were clear; it was mostly a blurry wave of grief, a snowy Russian funeral, bottles of vodka. There had been flowers, he remembered. He’d had to order flowers.

When he spoke again, his voice was choked. “I don’t know what I would have done, if it were not for you. Those phone calls. They were everything to me. My family was being so horrible, and I had to plan everything. I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

Warm fingers slid into his palm. Surprised, Ilya opened his eyes, and found that Shane had crossed the kitchen, and was now standing in front of him, studying his face intently. His brows were furrowed, his eyes damp the same way Ilya’s were.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. He intertwined his fingers with Ilya’s. “I’m so sorry that you had to go through that.”

Ilya swallowed, forcing a damp knot of emotion down his throat. “It is okay.”

“It’s not okay.” Shane tilted his head a little. “Grief is hard.”

Grief was hard, but if Ilya went down that road and started to talk about it, he wouldn’t speak about anything else. He shook his head. “Yes. But you were there, is what I meant.” He rubbed his thumb across the back of Shane’s knuckles. “You let me call you.”

His eyes were dark, soft around the edges. He squeezed Ilya’s hand.

“I knew I had to tell you, soon.” Ilya sniffled. “Then it was All-Star Weekend. That first night—”

“—I was needy,” Shane interrupted. “You had to take care of me, instead of the other way around. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Genuine confusion sparked inside of Ilya. “What do you mean?”

Shane’s grip on his hand loosened, and Ilya slipped his fingers instead to Shane’s elbow, holding him there. He looked regretful.

“I was supposed to check in with you, that weekend. Instead, I was weak, and you had to take care of me.”

“No, no.” Ilya squeezed his arm gently. Shane was steadfastly avoiding eye contact, his gaze fixed somewhere over Ilya’s shoulder, so Ilya brought his other hand up to touch his face gently. “Is that how you think of it? You were not weak. You were having bad day. We all have them. I wanted to take care of you— I always want to take care of you. You know this, yes?”

Shane inhaled audibly, but didn’t say anything.

“Hollander. Look at me, please.” He tapped Shane’s chin with his thumb. “It was one of the best weekends of my life.”

At that, Shane turned his face sharply. His eyelashes were wet.

“I know you got injured, and I am sorry. But that weekend felt to me like maybe it was the start of the rest of my life. So much time spent together, not having sex, just together. You asked me to come to the cottage. I started to think that maybe, if I came here, I could tell you the truth. Maybe you would want the same thing as me.” 

“What do you want?” Shane’s voice was raspy with tears. Ilya could feel that he, too, was starting to cry.

“It is not obvious?”

Hollander blinked at him, his expression unchanged. Clearly, Ilya was going to have to explain it the long way.

“Hollander, I am in love with you. I have been in love with you the whole time. I am standing here, in your kitchen in Ottawa where I had to track you down, because you are my soulmate and you make me crazy. You always have. ”

Ilya hoped that would be enough, but Shane didn’t say anything, so he kept going. This was what he had been practicing in the car.

“I do not know what the future looks like, or if we could even have one. Obviously, hockey is important to us both. But I think we can work something out. Please, Hollander. Say you will have me. Say you forgive me. I am so sorry that I kept such big secret from you, but it was never because I did not want you. If anything, I want too much. I want you and your disgusting protein smoothies and your boring books and your smile. I want to sit next to you and watch hockey documentaries. I want to cook dinner for you for rest of my life. I am, what is the word.” He paused. “Besotted with you.”

Shane’s expression lit up with humor, a smile that Ilya felt he had been waiting years for beginning to tug at his lips. “Besotted with me?”

“I have been very sad for many weeks. Watched a lot of romantic movies. That is the word, I think,” and then Ilya couldn’t say anything else, because he had an armful of Shane Hollander. 

It was like Ilya had been suffocating for months and here, finally, was clean air. Shane’s mouth pressed to his and there was nothing slow about it— teeth and tongue, a smile so big that Ilya could hardly kiss it fully. Shane pinned Ilya to the counter, cupped his face in his hands.

“I love you,” he said against Ilya’s lips. “Fuck. I love you so much. I can’t believe you said all of that.”

“It is true,” Ilya told him. He wrapped both arms around Shane’s waist, pulled him fully against him. “I would do anything for you, Hollander. Even booking a flight to Ottawa. Is very long drive all the way out here, you know. Not much to see.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane said, and then kissed him again.

***

“Shane, you have twenty-six chickens in your freezer.”

“Chicken breasts,” Shane corrected, then frowned. “Why are you counting?”

Ilya shut the freezer and frowned right back. “This is what you have been living off of? The whole time without me here?”

“I ordered in once,” he said defensively. He had— a single limp steak from a restaurant in town on a night when he’d been really missing his mother’s cooking. The sight of it, so sad and cold in the styrofoam delivery container, had been enough to break his heart all over again.

“Once,” Ilya mimicked, then pressed a kiss to his cheek. “My poor baby. I will cook for you tonight, yes? No more chicken. And no more spaghetti. It is all you have in the pantry.”

“I like chicken,” Shane said defensively, but still didn’t protest when Ilya pulled out his phone and began to place a grocery order. 

It had been three days. They’d spent most of the first day in bed, and most of the second in the lake, even though it was still cold. Ilya didn’t seem able to keep his mouth far from Shane’s skin at any given moment, and Shane was relishing in the constant kissing, the teasing. They’d watched a Deadpool movie, and played rounds of cards on the back deck, and had done a load of laundry together, their clothes mixing in the washing machine because they had plenty of time to fold and separate them afterward. Shane was pretty certain he’d never been so happy in his life. 

“What are you doing?” Ilya came up behind Shane and eyed his laptop, pressing his mouth affectionately to the skin below Shane’s ear.

He took a second to relish in the touch before he answered. “Looking at next year’s schedules.” He had Boston on one half of the screen, Montreal on the other. They played each other twice— once in November, once in February. “I’m trying to see when we might have enough time to see each other.”

“Is very sweet, Hollander, but we have plenty of time to worry about that. It’s only June.”

“I know.” Shane sighed and leaned back in the chair, and Ilya immediately slid his arms around his shoulders, burying his face into Shane’s neck. “They’re just so far from each other. I wish it was easier.”

“You know,” Ilya said slowly. “I am free agent next year. I have been thinking about it.”

Shane turned his head a little, but was only met with a faceful of curls. “Thinking about what?”

Ilya tightened his hold, pressed a kiss to Shane’s neck. His voice was muffled when he said. “Maybe I will not resign with Boston.”

At that, Shane was turning himself around in the chair, out of Ilya’s grip so that their eyes could meet. Inexplicably, his heart was beating faster. “What do you mean? You don’t want to play for Boston anymore?”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal to say that he was going to leave the team he’d lead to several Stanley Cups and had been playing with for his entire career. “Like you said. Boston is very far from Montreal. I would like to no longer be a Russian citizen.”

“But—” Shane forced himself to take a breath. “Who would you play for?”

“Not Montreal,” Ilya said softly. He put his hands back on Shane’s shoulders, smoothed a thumb over his pulse point. “They could not afford us both. Would be too crazy. But we have time to think about other teams, yes?”

“Yeah,” Shane said faintly. He was beginning to feel a little dizzy with happiness, with fear, with the presence of Ilya Rozanov here in his home, so real and so impossible. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

***

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Nothing. Usually, I just spend the days off in Boston. I do not celebrate same Christmas as you.” Ilya set the barbell back onto the rack, his chest heaving with the effort. Shane took a step back from where he had been spotting the lift.

“You don’t?”

“No,” Ilya said like it didn’t require any further clarification. Over the last several days, Shane had become increasingly aware that there was a lot he did not know about Russian culture. He’d made a mental note to try to find a book about it when he got back to Montreal. “Why?”

“Um.” Shane wrapped his fingers nervously around the bar of the weight machine and twisted his fist around, letting the sliding of the cold metal against his palm ground him. “I was wondering if you might want to come back to Canada and meet my parents.”

Ilya, who had been in the middle of squirting water into his mouth, coughed. “What? You want me to meet David and Yuna?”

The way that Ilya insisted on using Shane’s parents’ first names when he referred to them always made him laugh a little, and this was no different. It loosened Shane up a little, and his next words were said around a smile. “Yes. I was hoping you would want to.”

Ilya took a step towards him, and Shane took a step back. Ilya took another step, and so did Shane, until his shoulders bumped against the wall. “You are going to tell your parents about us?”

The use of the word us sent a little thrill up his spine. “If you’re okay with it, yeah. I know it’s a lot to explain, but they’re soulmates, too. That’s what they’ll care about more than anything.”

He could never get over the look on Ilya’s face when Shane brought up the fact that they were soulmates— incredulous, like he almost couldn’t believe it (even though Ilya had known far longer than Shane had). In moments, Ilya was wrapped around Shane, pressing him into the wall. They were both slick with sweat, and Shane was worried they were going to leave smudges behind, but he could only use half his brain to think about that when Ilya kissed his neck, ran his hands up Shane’s abdomen.

“That is so hot,” Ilya said, and then there was not much else to say. 

***

The morning of the last day was a slow one.

Shane had woken up early to make them coffee. When he’d returned to bed, two steaming mugs in hand, Ilya had made a wounded noise like he was offended that Shane had left the sheets at all, tugging insistently on Shane’s shirt until he crawled back into bed and let Ilya stick his nose into his collar. The coffee had grown cold as they spent several hours just wrapped around each other, murmuring softly back and forth. Shane had started to cry a few times, and though he tried to hide it, Ilya was always immediately making soothing shushing noises, carding his hands through Shane’s hair and strumming his thumb soothingly up the back of his neck.

When Ilya’s stomach had growled, they’d made their stumbling way into the kitchen, still half-wrapped around each other even as they navigated cracking eggs and cooking bacon. Ilya liked his bacon so crispy it was practically burnt, and Shane didn’t even bother to complain about it as he sipped his smoothie.

They ate on the couch, Shane’s legs thrown over Ilya’s lap so he could enjoy the feeling of Ilya’s thumb, rubbing softly at his inner ankle. They watched the morning news together, and once their plates were discarded, Shane crawled further into Ilya’s lap, burying his face into Ilya’s neck and letting himself be held close. 

“We’ll be okay, moya lyubov. I know goodbyes are hard. But I’ll see you in a month, yes?”

Shane sniffled, but nodded. They’d already managed to fit in plans to see each other over a random weekend, some NHL conference they’d both volunteered to attend. Normally it was the rookies who were dispatched to do stuff like that, but the Metros had only responded with a cursory email thanking him for his enthusiasm. No one would question it. 

“I want you to stay here,” he said pitifully. “With me.”

Ilya’s sigh brushed coolly along the back of his neck. “I know, sweetheart.”

Every time Shane caught sight of Ilya’s bags, now neatly packed by the front door, hot tears pulsed in his eyes and his throat felt like it was beginning to swell shut. They’d booked the latest flight possible, but that still didn’t mean he had enough time.

“You will have a nice time with your parents, yes?” Ilya brushed his thumb gently against Shane’s undereye. “I know that you miss them.”

If Shane shut his eyes, he could pretend like this was just like every other day they’d had together for the last three weeks. They’d just gone for a swim. They were going to have sex, probably, and then take a long nap, and wake up hours before the sun even thought about sinking below the horizon so that they could cook dinner and watch a movie and have sex again and then fall asleep, waking up tomorrow to do the whole thing over again.

“I do miss them,” Shane mumbled. “But I’m going to miss you, too. It feels like I just got to have you, and now you have to go again.”

Ilya looked remorseful. “I know, sweetheart. I am sorry. One day, it won’t be like this. I promise.” He pressed a kiss to Shane’s cheek, smiling faintly when Shane squeezed him tighter. “Plus, I know you are getting tired of me,” Ilya mumbled against his forehead. “I don’t do the dishes as clean as you like them, remember? And the socks? You were just getting mad at me about the socks.”

“You need to pick your socks up,” Shane grumbled. “I’m not sorry that I made you.”

“I’m not saying that you should be,” said Ilya mildly. He pressed his cheek to the top of Shane’s head. “It’ll be okay, sweetheart. I promise.”

Shane let his eyes fall shut, and hoped that it was true.

Lunch was a somber affair. The ham and cheese sandwiches they’d made felt dry and flavorless in Shane’s mouth. Even with his knee pressed into Ilya’s, it felt like he was cold without being wrapped around him the way they had been all day. In front of them, the lake rippled and gleamed, and Shane watched miserably as a duck paddled its way across the water, a stream of yellow chicks following behind it. Birds were calling. The sun was shining. Shane was not able to enjoy any of it.

“Eat your apple slices.” Ilya nudged the plate closer to him. “Come on, I cut them special just for you.”

“I didn’t need you to do that,” Shane said, but he bit into one anyway. He wasn’t sure how Ilya had noticed that Shane preferred his apples as thinly cut as possible, but it was just one of the things that made him impossible not to love. It wasn’t fair. Sometimes, Shane wished Rozanov was less perfect. It would make his life easier.

“What are you thinking about?”

“The ducks,” said Shane.

“What ducks?” Ilya turned to look. The corners of his lips turned up. “Oh. Look at them, out for a swim with mama.”

Shane nearly slammed his head into the table, it was so endearing.

“You know that whenever you need me, I will come, right?” Ilya was looking back at Shane now, his smile fallen. He’d seen right through him. “I will sail the ocean to get to you, Hollander.”

Shane took another bite of fruit. “There is no ocean between Montreal and Boston.”

“Okay, well.” A teasing look entered Ilya’s expression. “I am trying to be romantic, Hollander. Would you shut up and let me?” He dug his hand into Shane’s side, and Shane cried out, ticklish. Ilya had found that out about him a few days before, while he’d had him pressed up against the dryer.

“No, no, Ilya, stop it,” he gasped out, but Ilya was pulling him closer, laughing into his neck. “I’m going to choke on my apple!”

Ilya eventually let him go, but not before he pulled Shane practically onto his lap until he could kiss him thoroughly. When they pulled apart, Ilya’s cheeks were rosy, his smile wide. 

They managed to keep spirits up for most of the drive. Shane kept getting quiet, his eyes misty, but then Ilya would remind him that he couldn’t see the road if he was crying.

“Imagine the headlines,” Ilya said. He propped his knee up against the dashboard. “Big drama, yes? Hollander and Rozanov, dead in car accident, secret soulmates.”

“Don’t even joke,” Shane said. “Also, they wouldn’t know we were soulmates.”

Ilya stared down at where their hands were intertwined over the console. He ran his thumb over Shane’s knuckles. “Oh, trust me. They would know.”

By the time they were pulling into the parking lot, Shane had mortifying, silent tears streaming down his cheeks. Ilya had stopped making jokes once the estimated time on the GPS had dropped below twenty minutes. 

“Pull in there,” he told Shane. He gestured toward a dark corner of the lot.

“What? No, we’re nowhere near your gate. You’ll have to walk forever if I drop you off there.” 

Shane surreptitiously pulled his baseball cap lower over his brow. It was late, almost nine on a Wednesday which meant the airport was quiet. Still, it wasn’t deserted. He felt very aware of the fact that anyone could recognize them.

“Shane.” Ilya pointed again. “Please. Park there.”

Confused, Shane steered them over to the corner of the lot. There were almost no cars, just an empty station wagon that seemed like it might have been left for several days. Still, Shane parked cautiously away from it.

It wasn’t until they sat for a moment, quiet, that Shane realized why Ilya had asked him to do it. There was no one around them— they were so far out that they were almost untouched by the fluorescent lights of the airport signs. When Ilya slipped out of the car and came around to the driver’s side, pulling the door open and wrapping his arms around Shane, there was no one around to see it.

He buried his face into Ilya’s neck. He could feel tears dampening his collar, both from him and from Ilya. His shoulders shook a little, and Ilya smoothed his hand up his spine. 

“My Shane. My baby. It’s going to be okay, yes?” His voice was choked.

“It’s going to be okay,” Shane told him. “We’re being silly. I’ll see you in a month.”

“You’ll see me in a month,” he repeated. “This was the best three weeks of my life. I love you. I am so glad you forgave me, and I’m sorry I kept secret for so long.”

Shane leaned back, just enough to use his thumbs to wipe the tears from Ilya’s eyes. “Of course, I forgave you. You’re my soulmate. You’re everything.”

A smile touched the edges of Ilya’s lips. “That is what you said. When I first told you.” 

“What?”

“That I was everything.” Ilya swallowed. “You’re my everything, too. You know this?”

Shane nodded, and pressed his mouth to Ilya’s. They spent probably ten minutes there, Shane’s car idling in the corner of the Ottawa International Airport parking lot, wrapped around each other. Each time one began to pull away, the other held them closer. 

Finally, Shane allowed himself one final kiss. Ilya’s hand cupped the back of his neck, his eyes damp and fond. “I love you. I love you. I love you,” he said, punctuating each sentence with a kiss to Shane’s cheek, his chin, his nose. “I will talk to you when I land, yes?”

He paused, then began to slip his backpack off of his shoulders. Shane watched in confusion as Ilya let it hit the ground, then began to pull his hoodie up and over his head, his shirt lifting partially with it to reveal a slice of muscled abdomen.

"What are you doing?"

Ilya finished tugging his sweatshirt off, his curls now mussed over his forehead. He handed Shane the sweatshirt. The fabric was warm in his hands. "You wanted my sweatshirt, yes?"

Shane blinked down at it. That felt like it had been so long ago— the weekend of the All-Star game something that they had dissected over and over in the last three weeks. He swallowed away more tears, thick in his throat, and nodded. Ilya waited while Shane tugged off his own sweater and pulled on the sweatshirt, sleeves falling loosely over his hands. Immediately, Shane felt soothed by the comfort, the smell of Ilya so close to him. Ilya reached out and fondly adjusted the hoodie strings, tugging it gently around his neck until it fell more comfortably. The soft smile on his face was one that Shane wanted tattooed onto the inside of his brain.

“You’re going to miss your flight," was what Shane said so that he didn't start sobbing. 

Ilya’s eyes flicked to the dash. “Hollander. I have three hours to make it through security. I will be fine. You are like mother hen, sometimes.”

“Go, then,” Shane smiled and pushed at his chest. “I love you. Fly safe.”

There was a crooked smile, one last lingering kiss. Then Rozanov was off, wheeling his suitcase down a very long stretch of parking lot. Shane watched until he disappeared behind the sliding glass doors of the airport, then let himself cry for another five minutes before he steered back out onto the highway. 

The sun had long set, and Shane didn’t bother to turn on the radio as he began the long drive home. Ilya had worried that he might be too tired to make it (you are like my grandfather, he had teased, always asleep by ten o’clock), but Shane felt wired, his brain buzzing over the events of the last few weeks.

It was only when he finally made it home, more fresh tears in his eyes as he locked the doors behind him and processed the fact that his house felt so empty, so quiet now, that he caught sight of the mark on his wrist. 

He pushed up the sleeve of Ilya's sweatshirt and flipped his wrist over to see it better. There, on the smooth skin below his palm, words were scrawled.

I am thinking of you always. Ilya’s handwriting was surprisingly loopy— because he’d learned to write in Cyrillic, he’d explained to Shane a few weekends before. Below the sentence was an inky heart, very carefully drawn.

Shane smiled, his face wet with tears. He thought of himself when he was seven, watching in awe as his first soul mark appeared on his knee. Somewhere across the world, Ilya had probably fallen and scraped it on the sidewalk (he’d not been able to remember the specific injury when Shane had brought it up). He thought of himself when he was twelve, in algebra class, writing on the crook of his elbow, and when he was sixteen, trying it again and being ignored. He knew, now, that he’d been writing to someone who was scared and lost and swimming in grief. He knew, now, that he’d been writing to Ilya. 

When he picked up the pen and rolled it between his fingers, he wasn’t yet sure what to say. There was so many possibilities. There was so much time.

What he was sure of, and what caused a wave of relief to roll through him, was that he knew that when he wrote to his soulmate, his soulmate was going to write back.