Preface
The Edges: AUs and Scenes from Tumblr
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at https://archiveofourown.org/works/91721981.
- Rating:
- Teen And Up Audiences
- Archive Warning:
- No Archive Warnings Apply
- Category:
- M/M
- Fandom:
- Heated Rivalry (TV)
- Relationships:
- Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau/Carter Vaughn
- Additional Tags:
- Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Kid Fic
- Language:
- English
- Stats:
- Published: 2026-08-31 Updated: 2026-10-16 Words: 7,849 Chapters: 5/?
The Edges: AUs and Scenes from Tumblr
Summary
Posted a few things on tumblr that aren't full fledged fics, but some folks seemed to enjoy and got requests to put them over here too.
Chapter 1: Mirror Soulmates AU
Chapter Notes
Ok, what if when two soulmates happen to be in front of a mirror at the same time they can see each other?
It starts almost immediately so Shane at three or four is sitting on his parents' bed watching his mother get ready and instead of himself he sees another little boy with a halo of curls. They stare at each other. Shane, confused, waves. His wrong reflection does not wave with him. The other boy tilts his head and blinks in confusion. His mother doesn't notice. After a beat, the other boy pulls a face at him and sticks out his tongue. Purely on instinct, Shane sticks his tongue back out at him. They both laugh and then the other little boy freezes and runs off. Shane's reflection returns.
"What's funny, baby?" his mother asks.
"Nothing." Shane says because he has no idea what that was.
It takes awhile for happenstance to strike again, and even then it's only glimpses for awhile. Then at ten, they move and Shane has his own bathroom with a big mirror. Sometimes when he's getting ready for school in the morning, brushing his teeth, the other boy is there instead, but he's dressed like he's going to bed. By now, Shane has heard about soulmates, he wonders if the other boy has too. So Shane mouths 'hi'. The other boy frowns and mouths back something else entirely. When Shane shakes his head, the boy wrinkles his nose. It takes a few tries before Shane painstakingly writes a message out backwards and show it to the mirror 'My name is Shane. I speak English. You?'
The other boy stares at the words, frowns and then runs off. Shane waits and even though he winds up almost missing the bus it's worth it because the other boy holds up a sign with weird lettering, but he's patient enough to hold it until Shane can take a picture with his Polaroid. It takes weeks of looking in the library (Shane doesn't ask his teachers much of anything usually and anyway, he doesn't ever know what to do with himself during library time, so it gives him a project). He determines the other boy is using Cyrillic. This explains less than he'd like. The school library doesn't have any books about Cyrillic. Defeated, he finally caves and tells his parents "I see a boy in the mirror, he uses this alphabet, can I get a book?" His mother hugs him very hard. Soulmates, he learns, are rare and precious. He also learns that maybe his parents were worried about him in ways that don't entirely make sense, but okay. Fine. Glad we squared that away. Can I have a dictionary now?
If it had been two years later, he might not have asked. He would have been too afraid of what it might mean to have a male soulmate. Lucky they moved. Lucky that they brush their teeth and the same time.
Shaky-handed characters and pantomime get them to 'Ilya' and 'Shane'. A lucky glimpse in a locker room bathroom gets them to 'hockey'. They start to use clocks to make sure they don't miss each other. When Ilya misses one of their schedule times, Shane can barely think about anything else all day. He knows they won't have a chance again until tomorrow, but when he goes to pee before dinner, he finds Ilya in the mirror, his eyes red-rimmed. For the first time, Ilya seems way too far away. Shane put his hand to the mirror and when Ilya put his hand up too and it's shaking, Shane wants desperately to be closer. That's how his mom finds him on top of the vanity which is not doing well with the weight of a preadolescent hockey player with his whole torso pressed to the glass. She doesn't make him get down. Maybe because he's crying too without any idea what they're both sobbing about. He won't for years.
It goes and goes. Shane interrupts Ilya getting ready to go out, finds him styling his hair. Shane mimics him with a smile and Ilya wrinkles his nose at him. Ilya watches Shane floss in bafflement, but takes up the habit too, seemingly so he can make fun of the faces Shane makes. When they happen to catch each other in hockey gear, they use their fingers to signal goals and assists. Shane keeps track in a little book that holds a lot of things. No one else can see Ilya, anymore than any one can see Shane on Ilya's side, but they learn to be careful in public restrooms, coming up with a clear subtle signal for 'not home' since they can't see the others location. They watch each other grow up. They learn how to write in each other's languages and backwards at that.
And finally, finally, comes the sentence that makes Shane's heart skip a beat. In Ilya's pretty handwriting (good even in his second language and backwards which makes Shane unbearably jealous and proud):
I will see you soon.
They meet at four sitting on their mother's beds across the world from each other. They meet at twelve, sharing a pain that doesn't need words to be clear. They meet at fourteen, Shane fresh out of the shower and Ilya shirtless, things wakening in Shane that he thought he would never understand. They meet at sixteen, hands pressed to the place on Shane's mirror that is always marred with fingerprints.
They meet at seventeen. Shane sees him across the parking lot and tries to stay cool, walking instead of running. He watches Ilya try to light his cigarette and gets there before flame touches it.
"You're not kissing me for the first time tasting like cigarette smoke, asshole."
"This is not romantic," Ilya protested. "This is not first time I hear your voice."
"I love you," Shane said irritably, "do not light that thing or I'll throw up."
Ilya's breath caught. "You do not know me. You do not love me yet."
"I do," Shane said stubbornly. Then he stuck out his hand, "I'm Shane Hollander."
With a smirk, Ilya took his hand. "Ilya Rozanov."
Shane didn't let his hand go. He held firm and Ilya didn't try to pull away.
"There, now we know each other. I love you. Kiss me."
"Shane. I have to go back. It is no good there if we..."
"I know. Mom read me a bunch of articles," Shane said with a shrug. "But there's no one else out here. Kiss here. Everything else later. Okay?"
"Okay," Ilya said.
They kissed in that terrible parking lot and Shane never wanted it to end. He pulled away with a soft sigh.
"Wow."
"Wow," Ilya repeated teasingly. "You will say this when we beat you too."
"Not happening," Shane laughed. He was still holding Ilya's hand, a circuit completed.
When Shane got back in the car, his mother asks, "How did it go?"
Shane has a number in his pocket and a promise for a mirror meeting tonight once Ilya's roommate goes to sleep that makes his ears burn.
"He's kind of an asshole," Shane said, delighted.
"Okay," his mother laughed. "I can't wait to meet him."
And it's not that it's easy. Ilya goes to Boston and Shane goes to Montreal. They will have years before they see each other more in person than through reflections. But when Ilya gets ready for game 7 of the Cup, he does it with Shane smoldering with lusty jealousy from twelve inches away. And when it's Shane's turn, Ilya wears his jersey alone in the privacy of his house so Shane can see it before he heads off to victory.
Even years later, when they're married and more often before a mirror together than trying to communicate through them, sometimes they do it anyway. If Shane is washing his hands, ready to go back out to a photoshoot, he'll look up to find Ilya flirting with him or holding up Anya to make her wave at him.
There is always a handprint on their mirrors.
Sometimes they are apart, but they are rarely alone.
Chapter 2: Met as Kids AU
Chapter Summary
I have been seized with a powerful need for a kidfic.
So just walk with me here.
Shane at four is very passionate about sandboxes. He loves to build small towns and plow roads for his cars. The sandbox at the park closest to his house is fine, but his real passion is for the enormous sandbox by his daddy's job at the really big playground. Especially on days when Daddy takes him to work and then they walk to the playground for lunch. It only happens once or twice a year, but then the big sandbox is usually empty. Just Shane because Daddy can't get sand in his suit. Daddy does make sure Shane always has a shovel though because he understands the need to have a the proper tools for the job.
Except this particular Wednesday, there is another little boy at the playground. He's not in the sandbox, but Shane is suspicious he might want to be because he's everywhere else. The boy swings all by himself, the woman he's with reading a book on a bench and barely watching him. Then he's running over the shaky bridge and going down the big kid slide that Shane both loves and fears, so avoids more than he tries. This boy doesn't care, doesn't seem to fear anything.
Shane builds a town, glancing up every minute or so, braced for invasion. Eventually though, he becomes engrossed in his work, trying to make one sand pile bigger than the others like Daddy's work building is bigger.
He should never have relaxed his guard because all at once, the other boy is there. He's squatting in front of the biggest building, eyeing it up. Sometimes, other kids have knocked down Shane's buildings. Not often, but it has happened.
The boy smiles brightly at him. He's got big wide eyes and wild curls from running around. His knees are dirty the way Shane's knees are always dirty.
"Hello," Shane says, the way he's been taught by his mommy. "I'm Shane. What's your name?"
The boy says something back that Shane can't understand.
Shane looks to his Daddy for an explanation, but Daddy is frowning at newspaper which means he'll be distracted for a bit. Daddy doesn't like newspapers, but he reads them every day.
"Shane," he repeats, then holds out his hand like he sees adults do.
The other little boy laughs and takes Shane's hand, holding it.
"Ilya," the boy says, pointing at himself with his other hand.
"Ilya?"
"Da," says Ilya. He says a few words Shane doesn't understand. But then he also scoops up some sand with his free hand and builds a little mound next to one of Shane's.
"That can be the hockey rink," Shane decides.
Ilya shrugs and maybe argues, maybe agrees. Shane has no idea. But for a little they make the town together. Then Ilya stands up and points to the swings.
"I'm working," Shane says very seriously.
Ilya frowns and holds out his hand to Shane. Bemused, Shane takes it and the big smile breaks out again. Ilya tugs at his hand.
The swings are fun.
"Daddy, can I go play on the swings?"
"Okay, stay where I can see you!" Daddy says, still looking at the paper.
The swings are very close by. Shane runs to them, Ilya's hand still holding his. They let go so they can get on the swings. It takes a little time to get going, but Shane is very good at pumping his legs. He never asks to be pushed anymore. He loves to fly without any adult help at all. Ilya must be the same way because he gets high too. They glance at each other, determination stealing over them. They fly higher and higher, each of them trying to out do the other.
When Shane gets as high as he's ever been, he laughs and Ilya laughs too. Then Ilya jumps off the swing, the way Shane always wants to, but has been told many times he shouldn't. Ilya lands and stumbles a little. Then turns to Shane with a dare in his eyes.
Shane doesn't even think about it. He leaps and goes farther than Ilya does, but goes to his knees in the woodchips. Ilya is still laughing and Shane's eyes feel hot. Except that Ilya comes over and pulls him up to his feet, then squats down and brushes woodchips off Shane with quick slaps.
Then he points to the shaky bridge and they're both off again. A very serious race is established that loops from one end of the play structure to the other. When Ilya trips, Shane stops, heart in his throat and gets him back up. Ilya doesn't cry, he just smiles wider at Shane and takes off again like a cheater.
Eventually, they reach the slide and Ilya makes to go down it, but when he sees Shane isn't following, he slows. He gestures at the slide wildly and Shane only shakes his head. Before, he's only gone down when one of his parents is waiting at the bottom. Ilya frowns at him and points again.
When Shane shakes his head again, Ilya stomps his foot and huffs. Shane turns. He can climb down and go build in the sand again.
Ilya moves fast to stand in front of him. Holds out his hand. Shane takes it because he likes holding hands with this strange wild boy more than he wants to go back to the sandbox. Ilya walks with him to the top of the slide. He sits and then he pats the space next to him. The slide isn't really wide enough for the both of them, but it's an enclosed tube, so no one will get shoved off. Carefully, Shane sits down next to him. Ilya squeezes his hand and then pushes off, going down with Shane half tumbling, half sliding down with him. They land in a heap together at the bottom.
Immediately Shane gets to his feet and points up. "Again." Ilya nods and they take off. Up again and down again. Over and over.
"Shane!" Daddy calls. "I said stay where I can-oh. Hello. You made a friend."
"Daddy, this is Ilya!" Shane says, pulling Ilya over to his father. Ilya doesn't seem to want to go nearly as much as he wanted to run over the shaky bridge.
"It's nice to meet you, Ilya."
Ilya says something and to Shane's surprise, Daddy can't understand it either.
"Sorry, very sorry," the woman who had been reading a book says. "My son has no English. I have little bit."
"Oh!" Daddy says. "Je parle Francais?"
She shakes her head. "Sorry. Little English?"
"Got it," Daddy says. "I'm David. This is Shane. My son."
"I am Irina. This is Ilya," she says. "Your son is very nice."
"So is yours."
Adults doing the thing where they talked like kids weren't right there is so boring. Shane nudges Ilya with his elbow and they're both off to the races again.
Four is old enough for memory, but rarely specifics. Especially not a single golden afternoon of a friendship.
Shane says goodbye to Ilya and promises to see him soon. Daddy doesn't say he won't. Shane looks for Ilya every time he goes to the playground for two years. He's never there. Shane makes other friends. He loses in interest in building towns. Ilya showed him the slide isn't scary and the swings are meant for jumping off.
Slowly, he loses the details of the memory, but he recalls the rush of being daring and the wind in his hair. He remembers a hand in his.
On the other side of the world, Ilya remembers that risk is more fun with a friend. He recalls the power of reaching out and being met halfway.
Time steals bits of the memory until all that's left is the feelings.
Even David forgets the nice young woman with her handful of English trying to make small talk to prolong a pleasant spring afternoon, before returning to a hotel room that will soon contain her husband too. Her oldest son wasn't even in the country, his schooling considered too important to interrupt for a trip like this.
They never remember. Or at least, they don't know what they remember. Because when Ilya takes Shane's hand in parking lot more than a decade later, his heart beats a little faster like he's been running. Shane holds on a second too long as if there was a descent coming that he can't stand to make alone.
And maybe, years later, in another sandbox in Ottawa, Shane squats down beside Amber and Arthur.
"Do you guys want to make a town?"
"Here," Ilya says and he has a plastic shovel in his hand. "It'll need a hockey rink."
"It always does," Shane agrees and tugs Ilya down to join them.
Chapter 3: Marley and Carter are Better at Hooking Up
Chapter Summary
kaijuerotica posted "cliff and vaughny had their own decade long situationship but were both just really normal about it" and I ran with it.
They clocked each other in their second and third seasons respectively. They're both in their mid-20s already (Carter was drafted out of college, Cliff paid his dues in the AHL). They make the right kind of eye contact over the line and Cliff asks the locker room if anyone has Vaughn's number. When the Raiders give him shit and ask why, Cliff is like 'he likes the same football team and all of you have wrong opinions'. A vet that played with Bennett does Cliff a solid and gets it to him. (Ilya does not hear any of this because he's texting Shane naturally and maybe disassociating a little for fun).
Cliff texts Carter about football, suggests they meet up at a bar to talk shit about [insert your least favorite American football team here]. Carter shows up, 80% sure of what's about to go down and is very glad to clock Cliff giving him a quick up and down. They talk about sports. They drink a beer. They get a room.
The sex is insanely, ridiculously good. The kind of thing that you write Penthouse letters about, if they took gay stories (Cliff says this pretty much verbatim to Carter, who has never read a Penthouse in his life because internet porn exists already, Marley, wtf?)
"We should do this again," Carter declared.
"Yeah, fucking obviously. See you in Boston in a few months?"
"Game on."
And that's...just it? If either of them are exclusive with some girl, obviously they don't meet up, but otherwise if they're in the same city and have time, they hook up, shoot the shit and sometimes go a second round. They text between sometimes, mostly about their mutual interests (turns out they're both into basketball too and they both swim over the summer as a change of pace to running, so they compare numbers a lot).
Like it's just chill. When asked, Cliff easily calls Carter one of his closest friends, but almost no one ever asks? Like they hang out pretty regularly before the hook ups too and no one even makes jokes about it because of course these two big friendly giants are friends. That's just logic.
When Shane and Ilya are outed and their timeline is somehow also outed (sorry guys), Cliff calls Carter spontaneously for the first time ever.
"Holy shit," Carter says instead of hello.
"Right?"
"Should we have like...fallen in love?" Cliff asks bemused. "Is that how this goes?"
"I dunno, man. I like you a lot," Carter says. "But it kind of didn't occur to me that that was even an option."
"Me either."
They both sit in silence with that for a minute.
"What now?" Cliff asks.
"I dunno, man. You want to meet up this summer? We could share a trainer. Scott is running off on me."
"Yeah, I've been going it alone since Roz left."
"Cool."
"Cool.
Summer is only a few months away. Cliff doesn't count the days. Carter doesn't book a place to stay in Boston months too early.
Lots of things can happen in the summer.
Chapter 4: Something Goes Differently at the Club
Chapter Summary
I asked for a few AU suggestions so I could write something short and quick. Anon suggested something different happening in the club scene and this little quick and dirty spec fic scenerio emerged. Minor TLG Spoilers.
Chapter Notes
Oh! I also keep forgetting to drop my tumblr, sorry: dragonmuse.tumblr.com My ask box is always open! <3
Shane lets Rose pull him out of the booth. He hates dancing, but she’s so eager and so kind. She smells good. Some of his girlfriends when he was younger over sprayed themselves so they smelled like the sweet inversion of Axe or something. But Rose smells mild and expensive. Her hair is pleasantly silky when it brushes his cheek. Her hands are soft and light on his arm.
He can dance with her. He can go home with her. They’ll have sex and they’ll date. The pillow next to his will start to smell mild and expensive too. The hockey player and the actress will stand next to each other in a photo, holding hands and no one will be able find a flaw.
He wishes he had time before that happens. He just needs some time. He feels like he can’t think anymore, can barely breathe. He needs time.
Shane gets up to follow her. Then everything stops.
Not Shane. Shane is still moving, still walking towards her, but Rose had gone still. The music elongates, no longer at the speed of dance, but instead molasses slow and heavy like a giant’s heartbeat. Shane lets go of Rose’s hand and instead reaches out to shake her out of her stupor. When he tries her to move her, she is impossible to shake, like a marble statue of herself. He tries Miles next and there is no give to him either.
The world has frozen.
“What the fuck?” he says.
Looking around for answers, Shane spots movement. He starts towards it, then freezes up himself. There is an imposing figure starts to move between the bodies. It’s going fast, flickering between the bodies of unmoving dancers. Shane watches it with sudden certainty that if it reaches him, he will die. He turns to run, but it’s too late. The shadow is faster than him. It reaches and grabs both of his shoulders. It’s strong and it has him and Shane can’t even scream.
It shakes him a little and says, “Oh! Shit. Okay! Okay. Circle breathing. Two in. Hold two. Two out.”
The voice is familiar and yet utterly foreign. The words make no sense.
“Please,” Shane says senselessly.
“Breathe in. Count two,” says this too familiar creature. Shane breathes in and counts to two in his head. “Good. Hold two. Then release two.”
Shane breathes. He does it five times. The slow throb of the music continues. Everyone around him remains frozen. Or maybe not frozen, he realizes. They are moving, but so so so slowly. Rose’s eyelids were at half-mast, caught mid-blink and now they are almost entirely lowered. Shane breathes again. In. Hold. Out.
“You can turn around,” the hands release him. “I’m sorry there’s no good way to do this.”
Shane turns. The monster is not a monster at all. Instead, he finds a hockey player in full gear standing inexplicably in the middle of a club slowed impossibly down. In the pink and blue lights, the black jersey makes the already bulky man a figure of shadows. His helmet shields most of his face, the terrible lighting does the rest. The number on his jersey is hard to read in the dark. The accents could be red or gold or blue, impossible to tell. In his skates, he’s a few inches taller than Shane and in his pads, much wider. Could be anyone. The anonymizing force of a uniform doing it's mundane work makes Shane’s stomach twists.
“Who are you? Did you do this?”
“Sort of,” says the player. “Mostly it's you, I think. I don’t really know how it works. It’s not something we can do on command. You’ve done it before though.”
“I would remember if I had,” Shane bites back. “I would know.”
“You do know. Dan’s fourteenth birthday party when they locked you in the closet with Sara.”
“No,” Shane protests out of sheer reflex, one of his most embarrassingly memories rushing viscerally back. “It was just a weird night. We all had that punch that they spiked and-”
“And you teleported out of a closet? Or did time slow down enough for you walk out and calm down?”
It had been…strange. Sara had thought it was a prank and screamed at him. Shane had called his mother and begged to be picked up early even though the guys just thought it was funny.
“No,” he says weakly.
“Listen. It happened. You happened. Sometimes when you panic hard enough, time does this. Not every time. Seems like it has to be at big crossroads. When you really need a second to think.”
“This is a good thing?”
“I think so,” the player says. “Sometimes time is good.”
“So what? I need time before I dance with Rose? It’s fine. I’m fine. I-”
The player took off one glove and raised his hand to point. Through bodies, through lights, through space and time. Ilya Rozanov stands at the bar, looking out over the crowd. He is insanely beautiful as the pink light bathes him. The shirt is so terrible and so him. His face is tight the way it is when Shane asks him too many questions. The way it is when Shane leaves him in a rush after saying he’ll stay the night.
Ilya does not smell mild or expensive. Ilya smells like the rink, harsh aftershave and leather seats in a new car. Ilya smells like sex, during and after, sweat and come and desire.
“You can wait a few weeks for her to tell you who you are, or you can figure it out right now. Spare both of you a pretty shit night. All three of you,” the player amends. “Or not. It works out, okay? It works out.”
“What works out?” Shane asks, an edge of desperation creeping in.
“All of it.”
“Who are you?” Shane demands. “I can stop time and you’re…what? Time police? Time therapist?”
The laugh is stilted and low. “Wow. Okay. I guess I really don’t know myself yet, huh?”
The bared hand goes up to the helmet and Shane almost stops him. Almost begs him not to lift it. Because he knows. He maybe knew from the second he realized it wasn't a monster at all. He knows the voice, even canned and not echoing in his skull the right way. The hair comes first, a fall of black silk. That’s strange. The face isn’t. The face isn’t strange at all.
He stares at himself, at the few strands of hair that stick to his face with sweat.
“What the fuck?” Shane breathes out.
“Yeah, I dunno either, man. This is a first.”
“So you’ve been me before? This happened and you were standing here or something?” Shane has gone too far into terror and confusion and now he’s somewhere on the other side, inexplicably calm.
“No, I think we didn’t do this last time. Or maybe I’m what’s different? No idea. There’s no clear rules. No one ever really believes us when we talk about it, so it's hard to even ask. Except Ilya. He believes us. He always says it just figures that Shane Hollander would be good at running away in a brand new way. Asshole."
“He believes us?”
“You want to know something crazy?” Older Shane smiles at him with a wide easy grin. “He believes everything we tell him.”
“He does not.”
“He does.”
“And he still talks to us. Even after the whole thing on the couch and us-” Shane frowns. “Wait. Is this like a time travel thing? Can you not tell me the future because then it ruins everything or something?
Older Shane looks off to the side. Smiles fractionally at the frozen Ilya.
"I don’t think you can ruin us,” Older Shane says with a reverence that makes Shane’s breath catch in his throat. “Maybe…maybe you can make it hurt a little less on the way.”
“On the way to where?”
Older Shane turns his focus back to him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
“I’m gay. You’re gay. We're gay? Whatever. You know what I mean.”
The words land like slap even though Older Shane says them gently.
“But-”
“It’s okay. I mean it’s not okay. People are as shitty about it as you always thought they would be. But not everyone. And there’s him. Okay? There’s him. And you could fuck around with Rose for a bit and go find him in a few months to work things out and that’ll be okay too. If you need to do that. I needed to do that.”
“I don’t understand,” Shane protests even though it does also make a cold kind of sense. He should take time. Process.
“He’s the love of your life. Your life could start tonight instead of in three months. It’s not a lot of time. It won’t upset the world. It would just be three more months where you would know that he’s yours and your his,” Older Shane said, a little dreamily. “Tell Rose, of course. She’s way more understanding than she should be. Hell, I think she’d be even more understanding if you didn’t try to fuck her beforehand.”
The love of his life. The love of their lives.
Shane moves through the crowd until he’s standing in front of Ilya. He looks tired. His jaw clenches and his eyes are cold. The moment feels free of consequence, the way Ilya isn’t even really breathing. So Shane reaches out and he cups Ilya’s cheek. It’s a little rough with a shave hours and hours behind him. It’s hard to see with the lightness of Ilya’s hair, but his five o'clock shadow is no joke. Shane has had the evidence of it between his thighs more than once. More than a dozen times.
Shane feels the presence of his older self move in behind him.
“We really love each other?”
“So much. It’s awful and amazing,” Older Shane says. “He only looks better as he gets older, by the way. Broader, stronger. He smiles more. A lot more. You’ll want to be there for that.”
Shane drops his hand away, trying to imagine it. An Ilya who smiles more. One who smiles more at him, maybe.
“What do I have to do?”
“Say sorry. Tell him you and Rose aren’t compatible. Take him back to your place. You’ll figure it out. He’s actually kind of easy once you get past that first layer of dickhead.”
“It’s a thick layer,” Shane mutters
“Thick, but fragile,” Older Shane says fondly. “Keep picking away at him and he falls apart in your hands.”
“Really?”
A sound trickles in over the thud of the slowed music. A crowd cheering.
“Ah. Shit. That’s my ride, I think,” Older Shane says.
“Were you playing before you came here?”
“Yep. Start of third period. Big game. I think that’s why it happened. You froze things here, I froze things there, but I wasn’t scared, just excited and trying to….I don’t know. Make it last.”
“Make what last?”
“That feeling right before you win big,” Older Shane says with a smile Shane recognizes. It's the one in both his Cup pictures.
The crowd grows louder. Slowed, but not as slow as the music. Shane can hear his name carrying through an arena.
Hol-lan-der, Hol-lan-der
The bright unforgiving blue-white light of the rink slices through pink and blue. It bathes Older Shane in cool tones. The highlights on the jersey are red as it turns out. His number is the same. He is entirely different. The same in face maybe, but Shane can’t think of a moment when he’s looked in the mirror and seen the cool, easy confidence that comes over his double’s face in that moment. Savoring. Satisfied. Behind him, a blur of other black and red jerseys. A voice ringing out,
“You are so hypnotized by my skating that you forget how it works? Let’s go, Hollander!”
Older Shane smiles even wider. “Fuck off, asshole! I’m coming!”
“Wait!” Shane calls out. He has a thousand more questions. A million more.
But the brightness fades and it was just him standing before Rozanov. The music returns all at once, the dull thud turning back to a thrumming beat that rattles his bones.
“Hollander?”
And he stnds in front of Ilya. Ilya stares at him.
“Hi,” Shane says weakly.
“You- how?” Ilya’s jaw-tight anger gets replaced with confusion. “You were not here and now you are here. I-”
They could argue. Shane could turn his back on him. Older Shane said it wouldn’t matter.
It doesn't matter. The future is set. Shane can’t fight it. He doesn't have to. It rushes toward him, inevitable and beautiful as the hollow of Ilya's throat.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice raising inadvisably loud over the music. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Ilya.”
“For what?” Confusion swept back out in favor of anger again.
Shane squares his shoulders. He thinks of the calm confidence. The breathing technique. The way he had been at home in his own skin. He can do that now. He can be better this time. Optimize.
“For running out like that. I got in my head about it. Freaked out.”
“Freaked out over nothing,” Ilya agrees. “And then Rose-”
“We haven’t done anything. Kissed. A little. It’s not- we’re not compatible, I think.”
“Compatible,” Ilya repeats. “You are here with her.”
Shane looks over his shoulder were Rose is watching him bemused. He mouths Sorry. I have to go at her and her shoulders sink a little. Then she glances at Ilya behind him and raises her eyebrows. A moment and then she laughs, throwing up her hands. Resignation of some kind. He’ll call her and apologize properly tomorrow.
He turns back to Ilya. “Okay. I was here with her and now I’m here with you.”
“That fast?”
“Sometimes when you know, you know. Come home with me?”
It’s insane. Obviously, Ilya will say no. They haven’t talked in weeks.
“Yes, okay. You go and I follow?”
Shane can’t repress the smile.
Holy shit. Ilya is easy.
“My car is down the street. I’ll head out. Give me a few minutes, come follow? I can drop you back at the hotel in the morning.”
The implication that Ilya will stay the night is not lost on him. Not that there is much of the night left. Still.
Ilya nods.
Years in the future, Shane glides into the faceoff. His husband watches from the bench. They’re tied. Game seven. Third period. Shane bends to the dot. He’s not worried.
Two sets of memories settle in him like snow. A bed in a hotel room in Tampa. The stairs of his old apartment in Montreal. The same conversations, five degrees apart. A few months. A lifetime.
The puck drops and Shane is gone, flying towards his next destiny.
Chapter 5: What if Shane Met Svetlana First?
Chapter Summary
Credit for this prompt to internerdionality, who knows exactly how to poke my brain into action.
Sergei Vetrov serves as a diplomat post-retirement, always bringing his talented daughter with him. She misses Russia when they go, but she loves to see the world. Instead of sending him to the U.S. when Svetlana is sixteen, they go to Canada. Svetlana is a hockey-obsessed teenager with a recreational interest in hockey players, so naturally she goes to whatever games she can. Her father takes her to some of the junior league games because he likes to see the up and coming talent (and maybe report back to his friends in Russia so they know what's coming for Junior Worlds).
After a game, Sergei talks with the head coach (they knew each other from back in the day) and she lingers by the ice.
That's when she spots one of the players quietly getting back on the ice in half the gear with a handful of pucks. He'd missed a goal early in the game and it's clear to her immediately that he's trying to figure out what went wrong.
"It is not something you can fix," she says when he happens to get close to where she's standing. "You did not make a mistake, the ref made a bad call."
He pauses and glances at her, "I know, but I want to see if I can make it clearer next time so he doesn't."
He is remarkably pretty for a hockey boy, all big brown eyes and serious expression. And look, she doesn't mean to exactly, but she points out some weaknesses on his team and he just...agrees with her? It's the best 'Yes And' hockey conversation of her life that wasn't with Ilya. Ilya listens to her too, but he likes to argue and act like he doesn't care. Shane Hollander locks in as soon as he decides she knows what she's talking about.
"Sveta," her father says and she's sure she's going to have to say goodbye, but instead she turns and finds her father holding up skates. "These are your size. Go and show him if you want."
His eyes are merry as they often are when he's encouraging her bold streak. She thanks him while trying to still look cool because 'Do not embarrass me in front of this hot boy' is an international feeling.
She obviously doesn't have any gear, so they don't run anything where she could get hurt, but they move around the ice as they talk and show each other a few things.
"You play?" he asks like that was a real possibility and it makes her heart sing though she keeps her face a neutral mask.
"Not anymore."
"You should. There's good women's teams around here."
There probably are. It's Canada, but what's the point? Svetlana is destined to be a politician maybe or something else as useful as it is decorative. She can't do that and play hockey. Can she?
"Do you want to hang out again?" she asks instead and Shane says yes with a blush.
Sorry, Jessica. Shane doesn't even look up to see her in his chemistry class anymore.
The thing is, Svetlana knows from the get-go that Shane isn't really attracted to her. She's unfortunately known the grease of men's attention on her for a long time. The first time she had sex was last summer with a beautiful boy, who turned out to be a real asshole. Ilya beat his face in for the things he said about her after and then they'd had far better sex about it. They're friends, not boyfriend-girlfriend, but she always knew Ilya wanted her to sleep with her. His attention isn't greasy, but it's still felt like velvet sliding along her body.
She lets Shane ask her out anyway. It's kind of nice to have a boyfriend that doesn't want sex all the time. She has no idea how long she'll be in Canada, so she doesn't have to worry about it being forever. Shane is always kind to her, happy to talk endlessly about hockey and seemingly relieved that she's content with his kisses. Showing up at his side raises his social cache too. She can feel the eyes of his teammates all over her and she's happy to drape herself over Shane to say 'yes, I like him and not you'. It's a symbiotic relationship. Shane gains all the points of having a hot girlfriend with a sexy accent and Svetlana has a hot boyfriend that treats her well, then leaves her alone.
And she joins a women's hockey team. The other girls are stronger than her. Svetlana's body hasn't been built for this over the years, but she's fast as hell and she has Shane Hollander to practice with. Her team is remarkably friendly too, embracing her as their new center. When she goes home for a few months over the summer, Ilya is shocked when she wants to take the ice with him. Even more shocked when she steals the puck and he actually has to struggle to keep with her.
"Fuck you," he panted, grinning like he'd won. "Again."
He tries to start something after and Svetlana does tell him 'I have a boyfriend' which he pouts over and then asks her a thousand questions about and so Ilya finds out all about Hollander before his coach even flags him as a person to watch. She's happy to brag about her beautiful man to her best friend and Ilya is both jealous and pleased and so so so curious.
So Svetlana drills with two of the most buzzed about juniors players in the world and when they go back Ottawa, she's ready to take anything.
Even having That Conversation with Shane.
"Hey, babe!" He greets her when they meet up again for the first time. He pecks her on the cheek and Svetlana sighs into it, giving him a more bone crushing hug then she could've managed at the beginning of the summer. Maybe she went to the gym with Ilya too and she is now all lean hard muscle. She has her own games to win after all.
"Hello!" She kisses his cheek back and snuggles in under his arm where she fits very well. She likes to slid her hand into Shane's back pocket which is both intimate and also kind of chaste because no skin touches. He has a nice butt. Sue her. He never stops her, but he never does it in return.
They eat at the Hollander kitchen table that night. Yuna and David like Svetlana and they're so kind to her that it makes her want to cry a little sometimes. Her father likes them too, often lingering when he drops her off somewhere to chat with them.
Eventually they're alone and Svetlana sits herself in Shane's lap and they kiss for a bit because if she doesn't touch him anywhere but his face, Shane always relaxes into it like it's meditation instead of making out. She's only 17 and greedy with it, but she doesn't like to make him tense.
"Shane, you're one of my favorite people," she tells him, "and I really like being your girlfriend."
"I like being your boyfriend," he says promptly.
"I look at girls sometimes," she says and she doesn't know how to say it right so she says it the only way she can, "I like boys, but I think I like girls too. Is that okay?"
"I- yeah, I guess? Do you want to break up?" he asks and sounds genuinely concerned that she might.
"Not exactly. I kind of have a selfish idea. You can say no."
He doesn't think it's selfish, but he does need time to think about it. A week later he calls her, both of them on landlines, whispering to each other like little kids.
"It isn't normal."
"Only we'll know that," she assures him.
They agree. They'll be together, be best friends who kiss sometimes, and keep each other company, make it look look good. But if their eyes skitter to someone else, they'll check in and figure things out. It's convenient, but also Sveta realizes as she hangs up that she loves Shane. Not in love, her heart won't be broken by this. If anything, it feels protected. He has big hands, her Shane, and he holds the things he cares about so carefully.
She doesn't know what she's setting the stage for. What she knows is she got into McGill and she stays in Ottawa, even when her father goes home to Moscow. She gets in a car with Yuna and David and gets to watch Shane play on the world stage. As soon as she spots Ilya, she latches onto him and drags him over to meet the Hollanders.
"I don't care about your boyfriend's fucking parents," he complained bitterly than went good as gold when confronted with them.
"You're an incredible player," Yuna says, eyeing Ilya up like a melon in a grocery store, uncertain if he's ripe or not.
"Thank you," he says stiffly.
"Why don't you sit with us for the Switzerland vs. Iceland game?" David suggests. "No tactical advantage there, right? And you can meet our Shane!"
It is a dream of Svetlana's to get Ilya and Shane beside each other, mostly because she thinks it will be hysterically funny. They do spar a little, but she sees the moment things spark. The way Ilya prods and Shane grins as he pokes right back. He's no meek and mild man, her boyfriend. He plays as hard as Ilya does and he's sharpened his wits with her for the last two years. It's catnip to Ilya, who is clearly grinding against the barriers of his English to keep up and Shane is in heaven, shit talking with someone who doesn't go for his softest spots immediately.
They play against each other like beasts. Talented, talented beasts. Shane is grim with the loss, but there is light in his eyes when Svetlana mentions that Ilya wants his email address.
She goes to McGill and plays on the women's team. A reputation builds around her, the strong sleek second line center, who can't be caught. Ilya and Shane get drafted and she's there, in the thick of things, standing with the Hollanders until she spots Ilya with his father and extracts him with the same moves she's used for years. She brings him to Shane like a cat producing a dead mouse and with just as much smugness. They chirp at each other, grinding against the hard edges of competition, but there are smiles hidden under their armor.
Shane doesn't ask and Svetlana doesn't tell. Ilya loves her too much to steal. So for years, they hang in a balance until Svetlana meets Eloise. Pre-med, fantastically tall, gorgeous Eloise, who wants her and wants her and it's time.
So Svetlana does the practical thing every college girl would. She gets Ilya and Shane in a room with her, pours liberal drinks and makes sure everyone necks them. Then she says,
"I think you two should make out for me."
Shane protests. Ilya doesn't. He puts a hand on Shane's knee and the whole house of cards falls. She watches because she thinks she's earned that, but when they finally part she says, "I think you boys have it from here" and only steals one last kiss from Shane before she flounces out to leave them to it.
Eloise has strict, conservative parents and an allowance. Svetlana stays Shane's girlfriend for a few more years and it's no hardship. She graduates from McGill and gets a job as a P.A. for a hockey scout, learning at his side as Eloise begins the journey through med school. At events, Svetlana gets glamorous on Shane's arm in beautiful clothes bought with his money and in private, she sleeps in his guest room when Ilya visits. Sometimes, they all pile into Shane's bed to watch games and she treasure the nights they laugh themselves sick over bad plays.
There will come a day when the truth unfurls for the world, but no one is in a rush to meet it.
Afterword
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