Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Rose Landry, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike, JJ Boiziau, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alternate Universe, LITERALLY, (spoiler), (sort of)

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-05 Completed: 2026-02-23 Words: 37,213 Chapters: 10/10

transitions

Summary

Shane wakes up one morning in the cottage where he spends his summers with his husband. Except his husband isn't there, and everything is wrong.

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

It was a morning like any other summer morning, except it wasn’t.

Shane woke up to the faint sound of birdsong, and light streaming in through the floor to ceiling windows. He was an early riser, normally, and it was brighter than he was used to. Maybe that’s what set him on edge, to start with, along with the faint sensation of a building headache. He was also alone, which was odd, because Ilya always slept in. On the rare occasions that he didn’t, Shane would wake up to coffee, or a blowjob, or both: Ilya was never patient enough to let him sleep in too long. His husband knew how to make the most of their summers together.

But this morning, Shane was alone. He rolled over to check the time; he kept a clock beside his bed, always leaving his phone to charge in the other room. It was good for sleep, and when he had Ilya, and a few weeks of freedom stretching ahead of him before their hockey camps started, he could afford to be mostly unplugged. It had just gone half nine. He was usually up by seven, if not earlier, but half nine wasn’t unheard of. Still, something about it set him on edge.

Stretching, Shane stood up and wandered out of the bedroom, towards the kitchen, where he could make himself an espresso, a smoothie, and an egg white omelet. The cottage was eerily quiet. Maybe Ilya had gone out for a run. There were a number of trails near the cottage, meandering through woods and around the lakeside. During their summers there, they both spent a lot of time exploring, mostly together, but it wasn’t completely out of character for Ilya to need to clear his head and disappear for an hour or two. Shane made a mental note to check his phone once he’d woken up a bit more, to see if he’d be back soon and wanting breakfast.

The first proper sign that something was wrong came when he opened the fridge. It was well-stocked, which it had been yesterday, but the food was different. He felt insane as soon as he thought it, but it was true. The door was lined with two rows of ginger ales – okay, that was normal. But the leftovers from dinner yesterday were nowhere to be seen. The chicken, which he had been planning to roast at the weekend, had disappeared. Even food items that had been there had changed, somehow. It took him a while to find eggs, in a green – not pink – carton, and the milk, still skim, was in a glass bottle, not a carton.

Not quite knowing how to deal with it, he closed the door again, abandoning thoughts of food for the time being, and turned to coffee. The espresso machine was the same as he remembered it, thankfully – and then he was annoyed himself for even thinking that, why wouldn’t it be the same? Still somewhat bleary-eyed, he grabbed a pod, a cup, and got it going. The familiar hum brought him some strange relief. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Ilya had made them dinner last night. Maybe he’d just moved things around. Shane knew he was lying to himself, but didn’t have another explanation that made sense.

At that moment, he heard the door opening and closing, and breathed a sigh of relief. Ilya always knew what to say when he was spiralling about something. Shane would turn to him and say, an edge to his voice, “Is the food in the fridge different from yesterday?” and Ilya would look at him with a mix of confusion and fondness and probably make some quip about Shane being an old man going senile. He’d been making a lot of those jokes recently, since they were both approaching the halfway mark of their thirties (Shane kept reminding him that 34 really wasn’t that old, at the same time as privately worrying there was some underlying anxiety about his father that Ilya wasn’t addressing, and maybe he should prompt him to talk to Galina about it, but really that was a conversation for another time).

He was wrapped up in these thoughts when a voice snapped him out of it. “Hi, honey! I’ve just been for a swim – the water is incredible. Do I smell coffee?”

Shane turned around, and something lurched in his stomach as his eyes met those of Rose Landry.

…

Rose was beaming at him, her hair still wet, swimsuit still on, with a towel wrapped round her waist. She ran up to him and, in case there had been room for ambiguity about “honey”, kissed him in a way that came down decisively on the side of not-platonic.

Shane panic-reciprocated and then stared at her, wide-eyed, as she set about making her own coffee. “Rose, what are you doing?”

She looked at him, confused and then, seeing the look on his face, genuinely concerned.

“Babe – are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Shane felt like he was buffering. Part of his brain was screaming at him to ask questions. What are you doing here? Why are you kissing me? Why are you calling me babe? Where is Ilya? Where is my husband? His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and none of the words came out.

Rose, humming to herself under her breath, had gone back to unconcerned relatively quickly. “I might take this upstairs and have a bath,” she said, grabbing her coffee. “Are you sure you’re okay? Have you still got that headache you were complaining about yesterday? Maybe you should sit down.”

Shane nodded, weakly. She gave him another kiss, this time on the cheek, and then headed upstairs. He heard the sound of the bath running.

With Rose gone, he could feel himself beginning to properly panic. Although seeing her had been the cause of it – well, not seeing her, he loved Rose, but seeing her like this, when he was expecting to see Ilya – without her in the room, and alone with his thoughts, the creeping sense of unreality and confusion felt worse. She was right, Shane did need to sit down.

He stumbled his way over to the couch and forced himself to go through some breathing exercises. In. Out. In. Out. Hands either side of him. Focus on what you can feel. What you can see. You’re okay. You’re okay.

It worked a little bit, but not much.

He needed to find his phone. Call Ilya. Find out what was happening.

Shane normally left it charging by the couch, in the corner by the light, so he looked there first. Thank god he was a creature of habit. Hands shaking, he unlocked it and went to his recent calls. Rose. Rose. Hayden. Rose. Mom. Rose. Rose. Rose. JJ. Rose. He scrolled and scrolled and no Ilya, nowhere. What the fuck.

It’s okay, he told himself, even though by this point it quite obviously wasn’t. Navigated to contacts instead, and down to I. Nothing.

Shane felt something heavy spreading through his whole body.

It occurred to him to check L and there, for the first time in years, was Lily. He couldn’t remember when exactly he’d changed it – around the time they’d announced the foundation, when it wasn’t weird for Ilya to be in his phone anymore. Had he travelled back in time? That was an insane thought. And it was summer – he and Rose had been together for two months in the middle of winter, and she’d never come to his cottage.

His thumb hovered over the call button for Lily, but something made him click on their text conversation first. When had he and Ilya last spoken?

What he could see of the conversation, without scrolling, was brief. Alien. It wasn’t like how they had spoken to each other before and it was a world away from how they spoke to each other now.

12 September 2022

21:26   Lily: Heard about the wedding. Congratulations.

14 September 2022

11:03   Shane: Thank you. I hope you had a good summer.

29 November 2023

23:39   Lily: I really think we need to talk.

30 November 2023

05:32   Shane: There’s nothing to talk about.

24 June 2024

01:25   Shane: I miss you.

02:13   Lily: Shane? Where are you? Is everything ok?

06:49   Shane: Sorry, I sent that to the wrong person.

Three years of messages in a single page. He didn’t scroll any further, afraid of what he’d see. His own tone was so cold. None of this made sense.

Before he could freak himself out any more and talk himself out of it, he returned to “Lily’s” contact page, and pressed call.

There was a long wait, and for a moment Shane thought it was going to go to voicemail, before he heard a click. Silence, but breathing on the other end of the phone told him someone was there.

“Ilya?” Shane started. “Where are you?”

“What are you talking about?” came Ilya’s reply. He didn’t sound angry, but there was an edge to his voice. Hurt, maybe.

“I’m at the cottage,” Shane heard himself saying, “and you weren’t here this morning.”

Ilya drew in a sharp breath on the other end of the phone, and Shane heard him say something to himself in Russian. Then, “Shane, what the fuck is this about?” That same tone, not quite anger, more like defeat.

“Ilya?” For a second Shane didn’t know what else to say. Then he tried, “I feel like I’m going insane, but Rose is here and you’re not and I have no idea what is happening. Have you gone somewhere?”

“What are you talking about Hollander? Are you having some kind of mental break?” Ilya’s tone had shifted now, to a mix of exasperation and concern.

“Maybe!” Shane retorted, unable to help himself sounding annoyed. “Jesus Christ Ilya is this some kind of joke? Was I too relaxed this summer so you and Rose teamed up and decided I needed to be stressed the fuck out instead? Because it’s working!”

Ilya laughed nervously. “Shane, you are not making sense. Why would I be in your cottage? What is this about?”

“Because you’re my husband!” Shane said, angry now. “You made me dinner, and we went to bed, and I woke up, and you’re not fucking here.”

“Now is your turn to play joke,” Ilya snapped. Anger had crept in now. “We don’t speak in over a year and now you are calling me to ask why am I not in your cottage and tell me I’m your husband? What is wrong with you.”

Shane’s whole stomach dropped. His brain still couldn’t accept what was happening, but it was getting harder and harder to pretend that Ilya was joking.

“I don’t understand,” was all he managed, sounding pathetic even to himself.

Ilya made a weird noise on the other end of the phone, accompanied by more Russian. “I don’t have Rose’s number,” he muttered. Then louder, “Where is Rose? Is she with you?”

“She’s having a bath, upstairs,” Shane said.

“Okay well assuming you are not just being cruel,” Ilya said, “because for some reason you sound actually upset, and apparently I have no fucking self-respect.” Shane flinched at that. “Rose is your wife, Shane. You got married three years ago, remember? I text to congratulate you, you send good media friendly reply. I am not your husband. We are not anything.”

Shane felt lightheaded. The whole room seemed to warp around him, nothing felt solid. “That isn’t true. That can’t be real,” he said.

Ilya sighed heavily. “I don’t know what to tell you Shane. This is what you wanted.”

Chapter End Notes

This probably won't be a super long fic but I'm working out the exact structure atm hence this is 1/? chapters currently. I just love break-up and reunion angst, apparently.

Chapter 2

Shane came off the phone to Ilya promising to talk to Rose and maybe go to a doctor. He couldn’t face doing either. There was wariness and hurt behind Ilya’s voice, but this Ilya evidently still cared about Shane. He’d picked up the phone and listened, and seemed genuinely concerned for what, Shane realized, probably sounded like he was having some kind of serious delusional episode.

He knew, on some level, although he still didn’t completely believe it, that here, Rose was his wife and that meant she cared for him and would probably listen if he did try to talk to her. He couldn’t bring himself to actually do it though. Instead, he smiled and made light conversation while she packed a suitcase and rushed round the house before a car arrived to pick her up, as it turned out she was heading back to Montreal for some last minute reshoots. It wasn’t difficult – he’d always found Rose easy to talk to and be around. She rolled her eyes at the movie and Shane found himself smiling too. They kissed goodbye – just a peck this time – and then she was off.

Once Rose had left, Shane found his laptop – same password, thankfully – and spent the next 24 hours trying to piece together as much of his “life” as he could. Scrolling through text conversations. Scouring his photos app. Stalking his own instagram and reading into everything. He felt like his own jealous ex.

Here is what he established:

He had been married to Rose Landry for just under three years. On 10 October 2022 he had posted a carousel of photos captioned “09.10.22 ❤️ One month married to the love of my life, here’s to infinity more.” A year later, in September 2023, a photo of the two of them on a beach somewhere, with “Happy anniversary darling 🌴”. His feed was otherwise pretty empty, mostly hockey stuff and the odd brand deal. From what he could tell from the combination of his phone and google, he and Rose had broken up back in 2017 but had got back together sometime in early 2021. Which confused him even more: had he come out to her as gay when they first broke up – surely not? What had happened in the years in between to make them pick things back up again?

Ilya still played for Boston. That discovery had felt somehow worse than uncovering his own marriage. Ilya was in Boston, hours and miles away, and they were “not anything” to each other. He couldn’t figure out from their text conversations what, if anything, had happened between them, although there was some kind of a shift in 2020. At that point the messages became more stilted, and sparser, and they seemed to have stopped hooking up. Unlike in his life, his real life, there had been no cottage trip in summer 2017, no I love yous, nothing resembling an actual relationship for him to cling onto. Ilya had made a handful of attempts to reach out which “Shane” seemed to have mostly shut down – but then “Shane” had texted Ilya that he missed him. Whatever his other self had said afterwards, walking back the words, Shane had no doubt he’d meant them.

From what he could tell, Ilya wasn’t seriously involved with anyone – at least not publicly. He had been best man at Svetlana’s wedding last year. Shane supposed in this timeline the two of them had never met, which was a shame – he liked Svetlana. Shane spent too long zooming in on the photos Ilya had posted – Ilya looked good in a suit. And he had a dog, based on the amount of dog content now all over his instagram, although it wasn’t Anya. Dogs, hockey, cars. Beyond that, he could gather very little about Ilya’s personal life from what was online.

His parents still lived 10 minutes away. Shane had already texted his mom to ask if he could come for dinner the following evening. With Rose away, he had an excuse for wanting the company. He hadn’t really settled on what else he was going to say to them. “Hi mom, dad, how’s your summer going? Are you missing your son-in-law as much as I’m missing my husband?”

Apart from Rose his own life seemed still pretty sparse. He was still playing for Montreal, which he felt weird about now. He saw Hayden and JJ fairly regularly but didn’t seem that close to anyone else on the team, which is how it had always been, and considering everything that had happened – or hadn’t happened, for this Shane – he had little interest in changing that.

By the next morning, after he’d been up half the night pouring over anything he could for clues, his life made a sort of sense to him. It was the future he’d once dreamed of. A personal life that didn’t raise questions. Playing for Montreal – and still at the top of his game. But everything about it was so wrong.

He worked out in the morning – ran, swam, stretched – and felt significantly better for it. After a shower and some food, he was almost beginning to feel like himself again. Except that was the problem, he wasn’t.

His phone buzzed with a text.

11:32   Lily: are you feeling better today? you really freaked me out yesterday.

Shane thought about whether to lie and say yes, sorry, I don’t know what came over me. But he hadn’t lied to Ilya in years and didn’t want to start now. Especially when this Ilya, despite what he imagined had been a painful end to whatever they had, and years of distance, still cared about him.

So he replied:

11:33   Shane: Yes and no. I realize how insane I must have sounded.

11:34   Lily: that is understatement.

11:35   Shane: But I really don’t recognize this as my life.

11:36   Lily: did you talk to rose?

11:39   Shane: No, I haven’t had the chance. She’s in Montreal for work.

11:41   Lily: oh

11:42   Shane: And to be honest she’d probably just think I was crazy too.

11:44   Lily: so you’re on your own?

11:46   Shane: I am seeing my parents tomorrow.

11:49   Lily: that is alone. you should not be alone. you might be having a medical issue? did you hit your head?

11:52   Shane: I’m fine.

11:53   Lily: this is fine for you?

11:56   Shane: I mean, I haven’t hit my head. Or anything. I don’t really have an explanation for this. But I am fine, like medically.

11:59   Lily: I don’t think calling me your husband is “fine”

Shane didn’t know what to say to that, because it was fine, so he said nothing.

12:01   Lily: when is rose back from work?

Shane realized he hadn’t actually asked.

12:03   Shane: She said a week, I think. But it’s fine, Montreal isn’t that far. I can always drive over if I really need to see her.

12:06   Lily: but you won’t

No, he wouldn’t. Even without the added strangeness of the situation, Shane was never good at admitting when he needed support, and seeking it out. Ilya was the first person he’d ever really been able to do that with.

12:15   Lily: ok, I have made decision that is probably stupid. I am coming

Shane’s heart lurched.

12:16   Lily: someone needs to make you go to doctor and you are so stubborn you will not do it yourself

This Ilya still knew him, then.

12:18   Lily: unless you give me the phone numbers of your parents, I will be on next flight to Ottawa

Even if Shane had wanted to involve his parents, there was no way he was doing anything to stop Ilya getting on that flight.

So he said:

12:19   Shane: You don’t have to do that. I am fine.

12:22   Lily: yes, Shane, unfortunately I do. see you tomorrow evening

Chapter 3

Chapter Notes

Shane lived his life by simple pillars. Hockey. Family. Friends. Ilya. Hockey gave him purpose, drive, a routine. His parents and friends – support, laughter. Ilya – too much to put into words. It had taken him so long to fully come out, years ago now, because of his fear of losing the other pillars holding him up, but in the years since, he’d come to realize how much he relied on Ilya above the others, how impossible it would be to live without him.

He had been without Ilya for forty-eight hours now and it felt like dying.

It wasn’t as if they never spent time apart, even now they played for the same team in Ottawa, but his husband was never more than a phone call away. The Ilya he had encountered on the end of the phone over the past two days sounded like his husband, probably looked and moved like his husband, but he wasn’t him. Shane missed his laughter, his teasing, the ease with which they communicated after so long together. Even so, the thought of seeing any version of Ilya this evening felt like a lifeline. An opportunity to breathe, when he’d spent the past two days gasping for oxygen.

Ilya was arriving late, and then had to make the drive from the airport, which would take a while. Before that, Shane had dinner with his mom and dad, and the rest of the day stretching out ahead of him.

His mind wandered back to the phone call two days ago.

“I don’t know what to tell you Shane. This is what you wanted.”

“What I wanted?”

“Shane, I don’t want to get into this right now.”

“Why the hell would I want this?” Shane spluttered. “I love you.”

“Are you trying to tell me you have no memory of…”

“Memory of what?”

“You are freaking me out Hollander. Has something happened?”

“Apparently I’ve been transported to another fucking universe where nothing about my life makes any sense!”

Ilya let out a sharp breath.

“I know I sound crazy,” Shane huffed, before Ilya could say what he was probably thinking. “I am extremely aware how insane this sounds. I am not making things up. We’ve been married for four years. I went to bed with you last night. You were here.”

“Shane,” Ilya spoke carefully, sounding like he was trying not to spook him. “You have very stressful job. You’ve been… dealing with a lot, I think. Lot of pressure. I don’t know, but…” Something was left unsaid, but Shane didn’t have enough context for this version of his life to know what. “Is it possible that this is some kind of…” Ilya searched for the words. “Nervous breakdown?”

“Where I, what, hallucinate an entire four-year marriage?! An entire other life?”

“Is possible,” Ilya countered, although he didn’t sound totally convinced. There was a pause, then he said, “Shane, I think you should talk to Rose about this. And maybe to someone else too. A professional. They will be able to help you.”

“I don’t need to see a professional,” Shane grumbled. “This isn’t a problem with my mind. This is a problem with everything else. What I need is to get my life back.”

“Please, Shane.” Ilya sounded exhausted now. “Please can you just promise me you will talk to Rose at least? I think someone with you should know this is happening.”

“I –” Shane began to argue, then caught himself, the reality of the situation hitting him. This Ilya hadn’t spoken to him in over a year, had barely spoken to him over multiple years. And it was apparently Shane’s fault, Shane’s decision. How would he react to a call out of the blue from his – ex? – telling him they were married. Whatever he felt for the real Ilya, this one didn’t deserve that kind of whiplash. So he folded. “Okay, yeah, I’ll talk to her. I’m really sorry for bothering you.”

“It’s okay Shane,” Ilya replied, the note of concern still there. “I, uh. Look after yourself, okay?”

Shane had nodded, to no-one, and hung up the call.

He had not counted on, less than twenty-four hours later, Ilya booking a flight to be with him. Well, not to be with him, Shane had to remind himself. This wasn’t his husband coming to rescue him. But it was Ilya, and it was a sign that this Ilya cared about this Shane, and that was something.

He had told his parents seven o’clock. At quarter to seven on the dot, he pulled away from the cottage – this Shane drove the same car, and kept his keys in the same spot, which had made life a lot easier, especially since the possibility they might be somewhere else had only occurred to him five minutes before he had to leave.

The rest of the day had passed in a blur while also seeming to drag on forever. Shane had no idea what he’d done with himself, except sit around, somewhat pathetically, and wait for it to be over. He had done some more digging online, but not found much to add substance to this other life he found himself swallowed up by. For the first time in his life, he wished he’d gotten into the habit of keeping a diary. Some insight into the inner workings of this other Shane would probably come in handy right now, even though he imagined that they couldn’t be too different. Except they had to be different, because how on earth had he ended up in this position?

He arrived at his parents’ house five minutes early. Yuna pulled him into a hug the moment she opened the door. Squeezed him tight and buried her face in his hair. It was a bit full on, even for his mother, who could probably serve in place of a dictionary definition for “full on”. She pulled away and appraised him, holding him by the shoulders. He thought her eyes looked a bit teary, which was odd.

“Your dad’s just finishing up dinner,” she said. “Making spaghetti.”

She guided him inside, hand on the small of his back. Shane caught the smell wafting out of the kitchen and was reminded of an evening here eight years ago, that had started so scared and finished so unbelievably happy. This Shane, he guessed, hadn’t experienced that.

“We’re so pleased you texted,” Yuna continued. “I was starting to get worried we wouldn’t hear from you all summer.” His mom was using that voice she used when she was trying to sound light and unbothered but was clearly extremely bothered and a bit worried.

“Sorry I, uh, haven’t texted in a while,” said Shane, not sure what else to say.

Yuna gave him a brief quizzical look, but then dropped it. “You said Rose is away in Montreal for a while? That’s a shame honey, she’s been travelling so much this summer, you two have hardly had any time together.”

“Right, yeah.” Shane wasn’t sure how to respond to this, had no idea how much Rose had been travelling, or where she’d even been. He hoped they didn’t ask. “Hopefully when she’s done with reshoots…” He trailed off, not convincing himself.

Yuna grimaced sympathetically. “You haven’t made it easy for yourselves, either of you! Rookie error not just falling in love with the first nice normal boring man you met when you were a teenager.” Shane knew she was referring to herself and David, but wondered if Yuna was hinting at something she suspected about his sexuality. (“I think we thought maybe you were gay.”) And how ironic that, apart from nice, normal, or boring, she wasn’t technically off the mark.

“You know I adore Rose.” Yuna patted his shoulder and smiled at him again, but she still looked concerned.

“I know you do,” Shane said. “But yeah. The, uh, scheduling thing is hard work.” Was this what his and Rose’s relationship was like?

“It makes it hard to settle down and start a family,” said Yuna, and Shane panicked, definitely not wanting to have this conversation, about a life and a marriage and a future that wasn’t even his.

Thankfully, at that point, David emerged from the kitchen and pulled Shane into a hug. “Hope you’re hungry,” he grinned. “I’ve made enough to feed an entire hockey team.”

Once they eased into dinner, Shane let himself relax a little. It felt so nice to be back with his parents, in his home, in some kind of familiar landscape, that Shane could almost forget what a mess he was in. Except when his mom started talking hockey, and he stumbled his way through discussing a season of play with the Metros that he had no memory of, had never happened, and felt the weight of his mother’s eyes on him, trying to figure out who this stranger was sitting across from her in place of her son.

“Sorry, I haven’t been sleeping well,” Shane said, by way of excuse, when he failed to conjure up yet another stat from the season that Yuna wanted to dissect.

Both of his parents looked concerned, but mercifully dropped the subject. Not before Yuna got in a dig at Ilya, though. “You know, I hope Rozanov retires soon.”

“We’re the same age,” Shane bit back. “You want me to retire?”

“You’re not getting in fights all the time,” Yuna said. “That kind of impact adds up. And wouldn’t you just love to have a season or two to yourself, without all the comparison?”

So the public rivalry was still a thing then. No foundation, no move to Ottawa, to help put it to bed a little.

“He could easily have another five years or more in him,” Shane said, irritated. “And I like the competition. It makes me play better.”

“Well I’ve always been proud of how you’ve been able to reframe it into such a positive,” Yuna said, as if that was Shane being magnanimous, and not just the truth. “And I think your track record speaks for itself.” Shane stopped himself from rolling his eyes at that. A decade and a half later, his mother apparently still hadn’t forgiven Ilya for being number one draft pick. How odd it suddenly seemed that in another life, Ilya Rozanov was her other favorite son, and just as much of a source of pride for Yuna as Shane.

David, perhaps sensing that, for once in life, Shane didn’t want to talk about hockey, changed the subject. “How’s Rose?”

“She’s good,” said Shane. “I think she’s excited about her current movie.” He wasn’t sure if that was true. The Rose he knew loved to call him and bitch about on-set drama and the latest script rewrite that made no sense for her character. She’d been moving into more indie projects recently which she did seem to be genuinely passionate about, but he had no idea if this Rose was following the same trajectory. “But I guess reshoots are always frustrating. You feel like you’ve already done it.”

David and Yuna nodded sympathetically, although none of the three of them had a clue what they were talking about when it came to the film industry. Shane wondered if he knew any more as Rose’s husband rather than just her gay best friend.

“It’s a shame she’s had to go away again,” David said. “I know you were looking forward to a couple of weeks together.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

His parents exchanged a look. “Have you spoken to Hayden much recently? Or JJ?” Yuna asked.

Shane didn’t know. From his deep dive into his texting history yesterday, he seemed to be in regular-ish light contact with both of them, but he wasn’t sure when he’d last properly spoken to either.

“I’m seeing Hayden and Jackie for dinner soon,” he lied. “I’ll try and see JJ too, when I’m in Montreal.”

“That’ll be nice,” said David.

Shane had a feeling they were both trying to direct the conversation somewhere now, without really knowing how.

“You don’t want to come here for a few days, do you?” Yuna asked. “Just while Rose is away. It’s a long time to be alone.”

A week didn’t seem that long to Shane. He said that: “It’s just a week. I’ll be fine.”

Another look passed between his parents.

“It just seems like you’ve been spending a lot of time on your own recently. I know you had that meditation thing but… Well, we’d love to see more of you while you’re down here. You wouldn’t be bothering us. Really. We’d love to have you stay.”

“I know that,” said Shane. They were talking to him like he was a teenager and not a thirty-four-year-old man. “I like alone time.”

“Things are okay between you and Rose?” Yuna asked, quickly, like the words had left her mouth before her brain had had a chance to authorize them.

Shane did not enjoy being interrogated by this version of his parents any more than by his real ones. “Is that what all this is about? You think my marriage is in trouble or something?”

“No no!” Yuna protested. “You just haven’t seemed like yourself for a while now honey. We just want to make sure you’re okay while we have you here.”

“I’m, uh, I really am fine.” Shane couldn’t speak for his other self, but every part of that was a lie when it came to him.

“You know you can talk to us about anything,” she said, looking to David for reassurance, who nodded.

“I know that,” Shane said. Then he remembered the conversation he’d had with her, eight years ago (“I’m sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me”) and suddenly his heart ached for both of them, sat across from him, trying to be chill and completely failing, but being just like his wonderful parents in every way. “I love you guys, and really, I’m okay. I will talk to you if I need to, I promise. I think I’m just tired and… it’s been an intense season and I’m not as young as I used to be. I really just need some R&R. That’s what the cottage has always been for me.”

Yuna seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and nodded to herself. “Okay honey. I’m sorry if I’m being intense! I worry about you. I’m just a mom.”

“I know you are.” Shane couldn’t help smiling.

She gave him a squeeze as she passed him to head into the kitchen with the plates, and came back with a glass of wine. “I know you’re driving but just a small one. We so rarely get to see you these days! Let’s watch something and hang out for a bit, you don’t have to head back straight away.”

“Okay.” Shane nodded and accepted the glass. While both Yuna and David headed into the kitchen to clear up, refusing Shane’s offers of help, he settled himself in the corner of the sofa, and checked his phone. Nothing from Ilya, after the text he’d sent a few hours ago.

17:02   Lily: at airport. flight on time. see you later. don’t do anything crazy

Ilya’s flight was scheduled to land at 20:45, about fifteen minutes from now. He wouldn’t be with Shane until probably eleven. There was so much time between now and then, and it was good to have a bit of extra time with his parents. Yet every part of Shane wanted to drive home now and just wait on the porch like an abandoned puppy.

He forced himself to sit through a movie, The Mighty Ducks, because his family apparently couldn’t let the hockey thing go for more than a few minutes at a time. Maybe his mom thought a childhood classic would cheer him up, and she wasn’t entirely wrong. It meant they could talk over the film a bit too, having seen it enough times not to miss anything.

“This reminds me of little Shane,” Yuna gushed at one point.

“I thought I was good at hockey?” Shane laughed.

Yuna shoved him playfully. “You know that’s not what I meant! But you were so adorable. You just loved it so much from the first time you got on the ice.”

“Not that there’s anything to show for it now,” David added with a wink. It was his turn to receive a Yuna-shove.

“Shut up both of you. Let me be a mom!” She turned to Shane. “You’ll understand when you have kids of your own.”

“What if my kids are rubbish at hockey?” Shane said, laughing again. “Will you disown them?”

“No chance of that happening,” Yuna smiled. “But hey, I think that’s the first time you’ve responded to a comment about kids with anything other than an eye roll.” She turned to David. “I call that progress. Maybe we will be grandparents after all.”

Shane groaned. He should – and did – find this line of conversation frustrating. Especially considering the fact that he probably wasn’t going to have an easy journey to fatherhood, not that he fully understood the nature of this Shane’s relationship with this Rose. Something pulled at his heart, a memory of the conversations he and Ilya had been starting to have, back in his real home, about parenthood, adoption, retirement. Ilya had been ready for a while, and as usual it was Shane holding them back, terrified of any change, disruption to routine, the loss of control which children seemed inevitably to bring. Maybe, he thought darkly, this was some kind of cruel punishment for all the ways he’d held himself and Ilya back over the years through his rigidity, his inflexibility, his fear. You thought having a toddler would mess up your life? How about the entire thing vanishing into dust before your eyes?

At the same time, it was nice to laugh and joke with his parents, and see some of the worry that had been passing between them at the dinner table dissipate. And the thought of little hockey players was undeniably adorable, though Shane wasn’t sure how he felt about putting that kind of pressure on his kids. Which was another reason why the idea of becoming a father terrified him… There were so many ways for it to go wrong.

He must have been making a weird face because he sensed Yuna looking at him, and made an effort to readjust to a more neutral expression, relaxing back into the film.

By the time the credits rolled, he could almost have convinced himself he’d imagined the past two days. Maybe he’d get home and Ilya would be home wondering where he’d been. The image of it – the hope of it – was almost painful.

Yuna offered him a cup of tea, clearly keen to stretch out this visit as long as possible, but Shane politely refused. It was gone ten o’clock now, and he needed to get back to the cottage, to give himself time to process the fact that he was about to come face to face with Ilya. He hugged both of his parents goodbye, thanked them for dinner, promised to come round again next week, and then made the ten minute journey back to his place, trying not to think too hard about what was waiting for him.

When he got home, he saw that Ilya had texted again.

20:38   Lily: just touched down

21:19   Lily: got car now. will drive fast

Shane checked his watch. It was 22:23 now. Even factoring in Ilya’s attitude towards speed limits, he would still be a while away. Shane wasn’t really sure what to do with himself in the meantime. He paced up and down, full of nervous energy. It then occurred to him to check one of the guest bedrooms was made up, because he’d almost forgotten that he and Ilya wouldn’t be sharing. He went and found towels and folded them on the end of the bed the way he’d seen it done in hotels.

Was it wrong, inviting Ilya here? he wondered. He was an ex, in this version of his life. Did Rose know about him? Would she feel weird about it? What if she came back for something?

What about his Ilya? Would he be betraying his husband if he found this other Ilya attractive, if he thought about kissing him, about fucking him, about being close to him? It was almost an inevitability that he would have those thoughts, Shane figured. That thought almost made him feel better, that it was an inevitability, not something he could control. He imagined Ilya finding it funny, anyway. “Why are you apologizing for this? I would have to take you to the doctor if you did not find me hot, I am hottest man alive.” And, when Shane pretended to pout at that, he would add, “And you are the prettiest man alive, мой помидор. Not everything is a competition.”

God, Shane missed him.

He was snapped out of it by a sharp knock on the door. He checked the time. 22:55. Had he really disappeared almost half an hour hovering in the doorway of a guest room daydreaming about his own husband? Apparently so.

Swallowing his nerves, Shane headed back downstairs, and opened the front door, to… Ilya. Just the sight of him made Shane’s entire body feel numb.

Ilya looked him up and down. “You look like shit,” he said, helpfully, pushing past Shane into the cottage.

“Thanks,” Shane grumbled.

“Where can I put my bag?”

“Oh, I made up the main guest room for you,” Shane offered.

Ilya looked at him blankly and Shane remembered that he had probably never been here before.

“Upstairs, first door on the left,” he managed.

“And bathroom?”

“Across the hall.”

Ilya nodded, and went upstairs to deposit his bag and use the bathroom. Shane went back to pacing. Then, because he needed something to occupy himself, located a bottle of vodka and poured them both a drink. Set them on the table. Paced a bit more.

“So.” Ilya had returned, making him jump. “We talk now, or tomorrow?”

Chapter End Notes

I probably won't keep updating as regularly as this but I'm enjoying writing this and apparently have too much time on my hands this week! A lil bit of Hollander family fluff to ease off on the (light) angst

Chapter 4

They settled on the couch, at opposite ends. Shane downed his vodka. Ilya did not, taking careful sips, not taking his eyes off Shane.

Even after only a few minutes in the same room, Shane could see the subtle differences between this man and his husband. This Ilya reminded him of the man he’d known a decade ago, more than the man he knew now. Reserved. Defensive. Ilya was studying him from the opposite end of the couch and Shane wondered if he was having similar thoughts, noticing things – whether Ilya was prepared to trust them or not – that suggested this Shane might not be the same Shane he knew. If he was having those thoughts, Shane supposed it would make their conversation easier.

“Is very strange to be here,” Ilya finally started, giving his surroundings a once-over. “I don’t really know what I expected.”

“Yeah, it must be odd,” Shane replied. “Especially if… You said you guys – we – hadn’t spoken in over a year, right? Before I called you, I mean.”

Ilya nodded slowly. “Not since June last year.”

Shane remembered the texts. I miss you. – Is everything ok? – I sent that to the wrong person.

“Was it that text conversation? Was that the last time?”

“No, that was not really... It was MLH awards before that, when we last saw each other. You really don’t remember?” Ilya sounded sceptical, but Shane thought less incredulous than before.

“No, I don’t,” Shane said, then clarified: “It’s not an amnesia thing. I just didn’t have those experiences. In my life. I have different memories. Not no memories.”

“In your life,” Ilya repeated, slowly. “Not this life.”

“Right.” Shane cleared his throat. “I know you think I’m crazy.” He sighed.

“I should, probably,” Ilya said, and Shane felt his chest constrict at the implication that he didn’t.

“But you don’t?” Shane tried not to sound too desperately hopeful.

“I really don’t know what to think. I didn’t really think at all, about coming here.” Ilya swallowed. “I needed to make sure you were okay and I didn’t let myself stop and question that instinct long enough to talk myself out of it.”

Shane was surprised by that level of direct honesty, but grateful for it. “It means a lot that you came,” he said. “Really. And that you’re not… I don’t know. Trying to put me in a straightjacket.” He tried to laugh.

Ilya responded with a small smile. “Wouldn’t fit in my carry-on.”

“Of course.”

Ilya looked at him again. “So, you have… different memories.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, “and I am as freaked out as anyone by whatever seems to have happened. It is like waking up in a parallel universe. Honestly a part of me thinks that might be what’s happened.”

“And in your life, I am your husband?” Ilya sounded neutral, almost disinterested, in a way Shane could tell masked whatever he was really feeling.

“Yeah,” said Shane. “We got married four years ago. Summer 2021.”

“Wow,” was all Ilya said.

Shane waited for Ilya to say something else, to express disbelief, or laugh at him, but he didn’t, so Shane continued, “I’ve been trying to figure out where things went so differently… for you guys. Google kind of helped, a bit, but not really. And the texts and stuff… I’ve read back over those. It seems like we don’t talk much these days?”

“You could say that,” Ilya sounded like he wasn’t sure how much to share. Then he said, again with managed neutrality, although this time he wasn’t able to stop a note of bitterness creeping in, “You marrying Rose probably had something to do with it.”

“That was three years ago, right? Just under?”

“Right.”

“But before that…” Shane tried. He wasn’t really sure what he was asking, lacking so much context for this other version of his life that he couldn’t fully figure out where to begin. “I mean something must have changed before that, to get to that place?”

Ilya shrugged. “How am I supposed to know what was different? I don’t know anything about the alternative.”

“I can try to fill you in,” Shane offered.

“Okay, sure,” said Ilya. “I am not saying I believe you about this,” he added. “But you can tell me and I’ll listen.”

“Okay,” Shane agreed. He adjusted his position so that he was sat up a little more. Twisted his hands together in his lap. “So I guess some of this will be familiar to you. We met at World Juniors. 2008. I introduced myself to you.”

Ilya nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

“And then the CCM commercial? After the draft. Was when we first started something.”

Another nod.

“And then we were just hooking up, for years. And I guess falling in love at the same time but it took me a long time to admit it to myself, and I think the same for you too.”

Ilya didn’t respond to that, just looked at him.

Shane continued, “There was that time in Boston, when I freaked out, and left. I think that happened for you too? The articles about me and Rose from December 2016. They seem to be the same here?” He’d found a bunch of them in the footnotes of his own Wikipedia page.

“Yes,” said Ilya. “That happened.”

“But then Rose and I broke up. Shortly before the All Stars game.” This, Shane guessed, was where things must have diverged, or begun to, so he made himself look at Ilya while he spoke, for signs of a reaction. “She took me to dinner and asked me outright if I was gay. She was really kind about it. I hadn’t admitted it to anyone at that point, not even to myself. It was hard but I think it started to change things for me. This thing I’d been scared of for so long, that felt like a failure – like I could never be “normal”, never be just another hockey player – I finally had to confront it. I think that’s when I realized that you were it for me and I couldn’t run away from that any longer. I just had to find a way to make it work.”

Ilya’s expression did something, Shane thought, but Ilya was fighting it hard enough for Shane not to be able to figure out exactly what.

“We didn’t really work anything out for a while, but then your father died and I guess – I mean we’ve talked about it since – it allowed for a break with Russia, in a way. And I had this idea that I was going to invite you here, to my cottage, that summer, so that we would get a chance to properly talk about things – figure out the future. Even then I didn’t think you would say yes, but then Scott Hunter came out. And you came. And you told me you loved me, and called yourself my boyfriend. So then we were together.”

Shane was rushing through things now.

“And you moved to Ottawa, so we could be closer, and we started a charity, and then we got outed, and it was horrible, and so many of my worst fears came true, but it was also such a relief. We got married, and I moved to Ottawa. The team, I mean. We both play for the Centaurs now. And it’s really really good, actually. I mean, not all the time. People can be fucking assholes. But it’s better than I think I ever hoped it could be.”

That was it, then. That was the last decade and a half of his life distilled into a few minutes worth of rushed exposition.

“That is different,” Ilya said.

“What about here?” Shane asked. “I’ve been struggling to make sense of how things are so different here.”

“I don’t have all the answers,” Ilya said slowly, running a hand through his hair. “You – or other you, whatever – made a lot of decisions that I do not understand. Or necessarily agree with.”

“I see.”

“You were with Rose for a while the first time. I think still together at the All Stars game.” Given neither he nor Rose had ever confirmed their relationship for the media, Shane hadn’t been sure of the timeline, and he noticed that Ilya wasn’t clear on it either. “By then I guess I felt resigned to it. She wasn’t there, but we didn’t really speak properly all weekend. So I just thought, okay, it’s not like we were friends, really. It was bound to happen eventually. Get on with it, you know.”

Shane felt oddly guilty, somehow responsible for the actions of this other him.

“Every time we played each other the rest of that season it felt horrible. It wasn’t ever as bad as the first time –” Shane remembered how badly both of them had played, before that awful club night. “– but it was pretty shit. I was pretty angry at myself for a while.”

Ilya paused.

“I don’t actually know when you and Rose broke up – we never really spoke about it – but the media either got bored or it fizzled out. That was something. I could better avoid it, managed not to think about it all the time. I spent the summer in Boston, so, no cottage invite. But no Russia either. I guess your Ilya and I are not so different. My father dying changed something.”

Shane had so many questions, but held his tongue, letting Ilya speak.

“After the summer, our first game was in Montreal. We hadn’t spoken at all, not for almost a year, but then you texted me before the game. I guess I really do have no self-respect, because I went over after, and we hooked up again. It was different, though. Worse. Not the sex I mean –” Ilya had been looking down as he spoke, but his eyes shot up to meet Shane’s. Shane felt a shiver go down his back. “– but something had shifted between us I think. You were more closed off. And I was too scared of spooking you again to push it. Maybe I should have… but it didn’t occur to me that I could ever have more of you than that. And I was too weak to give up what I did have. So we just carried on like that.”

Ilya sounded so sad. It made Shane’s heart break.

“We had started talking again more, and then…” Ilya paused. “This is where I think I fucked up. I don’t know if you know Svetlana. I spoke about her to you a few times, but you never met.”

“I’ve met her,” Shane said quietly. Sveta was the closest thing Ilya had to family, real family, outside of Shane and his parents. It had taken a while at first for Shane to get past his fear of their closeness, to stop feeling threatened by it, but she was like a sister to him now. He said none of that, aware that he had already said so much, and unsure how to broach the weight of the differences between their two lives.

“I had this idea to marry her, for citizenship,” Ilya said. “It was never a romantic thing between the two of us, but we love each other. I wanted more security than I had, with everything, and I knew she would do it for me. We had actually talked about it, she was open to it. I mentioned this to you, one time, and you freaked out.”

“I did?”

“Yes, and it was worse than the first time. So much worse. It was barely an idea, but I wanted your approval, I think. We had been drifting back towards… being something. Not just fucking. I wanted you to know it wouldn’t mean what it might look like it meant. And maybe a part of me wanted you to tell me not to marry her, that there was another option.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Ilya still sounded upset, but there was an openness to the way he was speaking. Shane wondered if he had spoken to anyone else about this. “You didn’t tell me not to marry her. You just got up and left. You didn’t even say anything. I was trying to talk to you, get you to stay, so we could talk about it. But it was like you shut down, you were just on autopilot.”

“I do that sometimes,” Shane said, even though it wasn’t him who had done this.

“I’ve noticed,” said Ilya.

“So that was it? Again?”

“For a while, yeah.” Ilya took another sip of the vodka. “I tried texting you a couple of times after, so we could talk, but nothing. I don’t know if you blocked me, you might have for a while. It felt like next thing I knew you were engaged to Rose Landry.”

Shane couldn’t believe he had done this to Ilya twice.

“And then what?”

There was a pause, and something almost imperceptible shifted in Ilya's expression. He shrugged. “That’s it really. We haven’t seen each other much in the past few years. Not outside of work stuff.”

The openness was gone. Shane wanted to ask, but what about those texts? What did we need to talk about in November 2023? What happened at the MLH awards to make me text I miss you last June?

It was getting late though, and Ilya was looking at him in a way that said, please don’t push me on this right now. So Shane didn’t. He had already learned more than he had expected to. He had been expecting a fight to even convince Ilya to take anything he said seriously. Tonight, he would take what he could get, and not demand more.

So instead, Shane said, “It’s getting late. Maybe we should talk more in the morning.”

“I think so,” said Ilya. “I would appreciate a good night’s sleep.”

“You're not gonna kidnap me in my sleep and make me go get tested?” Shane asked, trying to add a bit of levity back into the conversation.

“We'll see,” Ilya said with a wry smile. “But no. Probably not. I don't know. This is all very confusing. But I don't think you're crazy. I don't know what I think. But not that.”

“Okay," said Shane, more pleased than he wanted to let on. “Then I'll see you in the morning?” He stood up and took Ilya's now-empty glass from him. He put them both in the dishwasher.

Ilya had got up at the same time. “See you in the morning,” he nodded to confirm. “Good night Shane.”

“Good night, Ilya.”

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

slight tw for internalised homophobia and general mental health stuff, but it isn't super heavy

September 2022

The morning of his wedding, Shane threw up three times. This was normal, he told himself. As he forced himself to drink a glass of water (with an electrolyte tablet, because Shane took dehydration seriously even in the midst of a pre-wedding vomiting episode), Hayden told him, in a reassuring tone, about how he’d gone into fight or flight mode five minutes before Jackie walked down the aisle. “And she’s my soulmate. It wasn’t even slightly that I didn’t want to marry her. It’s just such a huge day. It’s normal to be out of your mind nervous! You’ll be alright, man.”

Shane nodded stiffly, grateful for it, even if it wasn’t really helping.

“Jackie tells me Rose looks beautiful,” Hayden added.

Shane didn’t need to be told. He knew Rose would look stunning. She’d told him a little about the dress she’d had custom made, unable to help herself from sharing her excitement with her fiancé. She always looked gorgeous, Shane thought, but today she would be radiant.

He tried to feel excited about that, and failed. The nerves were, in that moment, swallowing him whole.

Just nerves, he told himself. You’ve been looking forward to this day for months.

That wasn’t a lie. Shane was excited to be married. He loved Rose. Apart from Hayden, she was his best friend. They could talk about anything, for hours. She helped him take his mind off hockey. She understood the demands of his schedule during the season, not taking it personally when they barely managed to keep up a monthly date night. She loved his cottage, when she had enough free time to be there in the summers. She was great company as a date to events, even if it drew in more media attention than Shane was, even now, used to. She slotted into his life perfectly, and he had been told enough times what a great couple they were, how happy they looked together, how lucky they both were to have found each other. He was lucky. Really lucky.

He was broken out of this train of thought by Hayden, saying “I still have no idea how you bagged Rose Landry. And after dumping her once! You need to let the rest of us in on your secrets.”

“I didn’t dump her,” Shane protested. “It just didn’t work out the first time, with our schedules.” It sounded like a lie, even though it wasn’t really. And it still didn’t work that well now, with both of them so busy all the time, but Shane didn’t say that. “And you already have a wife!”

“No harm in upping my game to keep her,” Hayden teased.

Shane smiled. He really did appreciate having Hayden here. If he was left entirely alone with his thoughts, he wasn’t sure what he would be doing right now. Maybe running away.

David popped his head around the door, caught Shane’s expression, shared a look with Hayden, and said, “Fifteen minutes to go, alright? I need to go – your mother is having an aneurysm about the flowers. But you know where you’re going!”

Rose had picked the venue – a vineyard just outside of Montreal. It was beautiful without being overly imposing, and it gave them a chance at some privacy. They had had offers for a media feature, but neither of them wanted to be in the spotlight. This day was about them, as people, not as an actress and a hockey player.

There was a knock on the door and JJ, his co-best man, wandered in. “You ready capitaine?” he said, clapping Shane on the back. “Let’s go get you fucking married!”

Shane allowed himself to be led out of the room by Hayden and JJ, towards the area out back where everything was set up for the ceremony. They’d lucked out with the weather – it was warm for the season, but far from the oppressive heat of the middle of summer. There was a light breeze, the late afternoon sun hung low in a relatively cloudless sky.

Most of the guests were milling around nearby. Shane smiled and waved at people awkwardly as he passed them, but didn’t stop and talk to anyone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yuna engaged in a very passionate discussion with the string quartet, gesticulating about something. Rose had had the idea to ask Yuna if she wanted to help plan the wedding, and Shane’s mother had taken to it like a fish to water, so much so that they had politely let go of the wedding planner they had initially contracted. Yuna, in consultation with Rose, had done a brilliant job. Shane on the other hand hated how far he’d slotted into the stereotypical mold of the man, unopinionated and thus unhelpful in most aspects.

He stood nervously at the front. Shane hated being the centre of attention. They had the rehearsal the day before, which put him somewhat at ease – it took out an element of uncertainty about how everything would go – but a big part of him couldn’t wait for it to be over. He wanted a wife, not a wedding. That wasn’t a bad thing, he figured. Lots of people invested way too much in the wedding and not enough in the marriage. No harm in doing it the other way round.

Apart from Shane and JJ as his best men, most of the Metros were in attendance. Shane’s family was small and, he hated to admit, he didn’t really have a life outside of hockey, so he’d extended the invite and most of them had been delighted to attend – if as much for the chance to gawk at Rose as to hang out with Shane. On Rose’s side were a bunch of actors who Shane had met in passing, when Rose managed to drag him out with her, as well as her parents, brothers, and a few aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was apparently a small wedding but, as Shane looked out at the sea of faces now taking their seats in front of him, it didn’t feel small.

“Five minutes,” Hayden said, nudging him. Shane nodded. His heart was hammering in his chest now. That had to be good, right? This was how you were supposed to feel when you got married.

In the back of his mind, there was something he had been spending all morning trying extremely hard not to think about, even though at points it seemed like everything was conspiring to remind him of it. When his mom suggested adding lilies to the flower arrangements, Shane had felt like he was going to pass out. When Rose suggested eastern Europe for their honeymoon – “it’s a bit more off the beaten track, people might actually leave me alone” – even though none of the places she’d suggested were actually anywhere close to… Well, he wasn’t going to think about it.

Except the whole getting married thing itself kept flashing him back to a conversation almost two years ago now. “You know my friend Svetlana? We have been talking about maybe getting married. For citizenship.” Even now, the memory made panic course through Shane’s body and a scream rise up and strangle itself in his throat. He tried not to let himself think about why.

He was getting out of the habit of refreshing Rozanov’s Wikipedia page, staring down the personal life section. It had been weeks since the last time he’d checked it. It was still bare, although maybe that meant nothing. If Rozanov wanted to get married and not advertise it, maybe he could.

Fuck. Shane was instantly annoyed at himself for thinking about this less than five minutes before he was marrying Rose. Familiar feelings of self-hatred flashed through his mind. He pushed them down.

The ceremony was everything it should have been. Rose looked, as he’d suspected, radiant walking down the aisle. He really did think she was beautiful. She was beaming at him, her smile reaching her eyes. Shane felt emotional as they read their vows. We’re really doing this. He was excited to spend the rest of his life with her, he told himself. He had so much fun with her. It was just feeling overwhelming now because of all the eyes on them, and everything that people projected onto weddings and marriage. And it was normal, probably, to be thinking about the only other thing approaching a serious relationship that he’d had in his adult life. It didn’t have to mean anything other than that he was processing the significance of the life stage he was embarking on.

When they headed back inside, after what felt like forever taking photos, Rose pulled him into a side room, one of the spaces where they’d been getting ready a few hours ago, and Shane felt an enormous sense of relief at the opportunity to have a moment alone together.

“I hate all the formality of weddings,” Rose said in a low voice. “I’ve been missing you all day! The whole not seeing each other before the ceremony thing is a lot.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Shane said.

She smiled at him, and kissed him. He kissed her back, trying to return her enthusiasm, and wrapping his arms around her waist.

“I can’t believe we’ve really done it though! And that’s the worst part over. Now we get to have fun.”

“Your idea of fun,” Shane teased her. “I can’t believe you managed to get me to agree to dance lessons.”

“Oh you loved it,” Rose smiled. “And don’t pretend you’re not a little bit excited to see the looks on everyone’s faces when we whip out a full ballroom routine.”

“Full ballroom is going a bit far,” Shane replied, but he didn’t mind it really. This was going to be the easier part of the day. Dinner, speeches, dancing, sleep, and then he could get on with his life and forget whatever weird feelings had been gnawing at his insides for months.

“Okay,” Rose said, extracting herself from his arms. “I need to run to the bathroom before we sit down for dinner. We’ve got – what, ten minutes?” Shane nodded in affirmation. “I think I’m gonna need all of them. Extracting myself from this dress is such an ordeal.”

Shane laughed, she kissed him again on the cheek, and disappeared in search of her maid of honor.

Suddenly alone for the first time all day, Shane allowed himself a moment of nothing. Relaxed his face, tried to let go of some of the tension he’d been carrying in his body. Idly, he checked his phone and, without realizing he was doing it, scrolled to his conversation with Lily.

13 November 2020

10:03   Shane: On my way over. See you soon :)

14:22   Lily: Please come back so we can talk.

15:48   Lily: You can’t just shut things down like this again.

18:02   Lily: Are you seriously just gonna walk out like that and say nothing???

29 November 2020

11:12   Lily: Are you ready to talk now?

16 December 2020

13:16   Lily: Please, Shane. Tell me what I did wrong.

1 January 2021

00:02   Lily: Happy New Year.

00:03   Lily: I am here if you want to talk again.

He turned his phone off, annoyed at himself again for opening that door. It made him feel a series of emotions he couldn’t name and didn’t want to try. Shoving his phone in his pocket, he headed through to the room they had set up for dinner, and resolved to enjoy the rest of his wedding. He was married! Married. That was real, and legal, and it meant everything. He needed to stop letting ghosts from his past have such an effect on him.

Two days later, “Lily” texted him. Heard about the wedding. Congratulations. It caught Shane off guard, when he was brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed. Instead of a proper honeymoon straight away, he and Rose had returned to the cottage for a week, with plans to travel properly the following summer. Shane didn’t have to be back on the ice preparing for the season until the following week, but he didn’t feel up to a big trip right before the season started. He hadn’t expected to hear anything from anyone in that time; he’d seen pretty much everyone he spoke to semi-regularly at his wedding. Ilya must have seen the wedding reported on, he realized.

Shane didn’t reply until two days later. Rose was swimming and he was sat outside with a coffee, watching her and reading his book. He hadn’t texted Ilya since that morning in November, but he felt weirdly guilty about leaving this text unanswered, even as he struggled to formulate an appropriate response. It was an olive branch, he thought, and he wanted to take it. Give them a chance to get to a place where they didn’t avoid making eye contact on the ice, shy away from talking about each other in interviews.

Thank you. I’m sorry if it was weird to find out from the news. Shane immediately deleted that. He couldn’t acknowledge any weirdness. Maybe there was none, so much time had passed.

Thank you. How are you? he tried, then felt panic at the thought of initiating an actual conversation and deleted it again.

Eventually he settled on Thank you. I hope you had a good summer. That was good, polite, neutral. Didn’t invite a response, but didn’t seem like he was shutting the conversation down either. He pressed send, turned off his phone, and returned to his book.

Married life, as it turned out, wasn’t that different to regular life. Shane sold his apartment in Montreal and they moved out to a house in the suburbs. Rose spent as much time there as she could, but she was away for months at a time shooting, and Shane himself travelled so much during the season that it took a while for it to start feeling like home. It was getting there, though.

Their sex life didn’t change much. Shane was always self-conscious of his own performance, but he went down on her a lot, and even if it wasn’t his favorite sensation in the world, he figured he was pretty good at it from the reactions he elicited from her. When she was away, which was often enough, he could use his dildo. A few times, he’d almost worked up the courage to ask if she’d peg him, but each time his nerves failed him. It wasn’t that he thought Rose would judge him, she wasn’t like that at all, but the idea of opening up about his sexuality to anyone terrified him. He barely let himself think too much about it, let alone finding the words to articulate to another person what he wanted and needed. It was fine though. He wasn’t unsatisfied. What he’d had with Ilya had felt so rare and so dangerous, he couldn’t expect to find that in a relationship that was actually healthy.

On the ice, he went from strength to strength. He could admit to himself that there was a fire lacking, that competition with Ilya had given him. But he was competitive enough on his own to make up for it. The Metros won the Stanley cup for the third time in 2023, after a tight final game against Toronto, and Shane almost felt like he had everything he wanted. He was at top of his game in hockey. He had a beautiful wife, and a personal life that he didn’t feel that he had to hide. They could go on double dates with Hayden and Jackie, he could bring her to his games or to events, introduce her to his parents. It was perfect. Almost.

Then it all came crashing down.

November 2023

Shane still thought about Ilya more than he liked. Up to a point, he had to, he reasoned with himself. The rivalry had died down a bit – the media was less invested in keeping it up the further and further away they got from being rookies, and both of them, Ilya especially, had given them less to feed it with over the past five years or so. Nonetheless there was no getting away from the fact that they were each other’s biggest competition on the ice, and that Montreal-Boston games were the ones Shane most anticipated and dreaded, in equal measure.

Montreal were playing Boston, at home, on 29 November. For whatever reason, Shane always found this harder than the other way around. Knowing that Ilya was somewhere in his city bothered him. He imagined that they had flown in the night before, and slept restlessly that night. It didn’t help that Rose was away on a promotional tour for her latest film. He remembered she was on one of the American late night shows this evening, so put it on in the background to try and help himself sleep. He found her voice comforting.

The game was good. The tension that had stopped him sleeping made him play better, but Boston fought hard against it being an easy win. The 4-3 to Montreal felt satisfying, earnt. He made brief eye contact with Ilya as they shook hands, and it sent shivers through him.

He wasn’t sure what made him go out that evening. Maybe he was sick of going home to an empty house. Maybe JJ just caught him at the right moment, cornering him as he emerged from the shower and announcing that they were having a team night out, because it was one of the rookie’s birthdays, and he hadn’t been to Ciel yet, and really it was Shane’s job as captain to be there and set an example. Maybe it was that particular rookie, who two months into his first season, still seemed homesick and nervous in a way that made Shane feel particularly paternal.

Whatever the combination of factors, Shane found himself in Ciel, beer in hand, at 11pm on a Wednesday night. He wasn’t feeling out of character enough to actually dance, so he was stood awkwardly at the bar when out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar shape picking its way across the room. Looked up. Made eye contact. Panicked and ran to the bathroom.

Shane didn’t drink often, and during the short walk to the bathroom, he discovered that he was drunker than he realized. Not least because he had made direct eye contact with Ilya, and abandoned any attempt at subtlety and playing it cool, instead fleeing on sight.

Maybe that would have been fine – a little embarrassing, but fine – if Ilya hadn’t followed.

Shane heard the door open and knew it was Ilya before he turned to look at him. But the sight of Ilya knocked the wind out of him. This was the closest they had been in years.

“Running away? Really?” Ilya said, accusatory.

“I didn’t,” Shane said weakly. “I needed to use the bathroom.”

“Bullshit,” Ilya said. “You’ve been avoiding me for years. Why?” He took a step closer to Shane. Shane smelt the alcohol on his breath, and realized that they were probably both dangerously drunk, too drunk to be in this kind of proximity, with no one else around.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” Shane retorted. “We just don’t have any reason to see each other.”

“You never answered my texts,” Ilya said. “You barely make eye contact when we do see each other.” He was angry. “Are you afraid? Is that what it is?” He took another step closer, so that they were almost touching. “Afraid you won’t be able to stay away if you let me anywhere near you?”

“I don’t need any help staying away from you,” Shane snapped. “What we had was nothing.” You made that clear. “And I’m married now. I assume so are you. What is there for us to talk about?”

“I am not married,” Ilya said, surprised, forgetting to sound angry. Then his expression shifted. “You think I married Svetlana.”

“I don’t care whether you did or didn’t,” Shane said, although he knew he was lying. He did care, very much. So much that he hadn’t been able to handle even the abstract thought of it, the acknowledgement of the reality – that he and Ilya did not belong to each other, never would, would end up with other people no matter how much he might want it to be different.

“I think you do care,” Ilya said, reading his mind.

“What does it matter?” Shane replied. He registered, too late, that he hadn’t denied it.

Maybe it was the lack of denial. Or maybe it was the proximity, the alcohol on their breath mixing together, every nerve in Shane’s body set on edge. But one minute they were staring at each other, and the next, Ilya’s tongue was down his throat, and Shane’s hands were in Ilya’s hair, and clutching onto fistfuls of his shirt, pulling him as close as possible, wild with desperation for him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind an alarm bell was going off. This is a terrible idea. Someone could walk in. How could you do this to Rose? But he couldn’t pull himself away.

He felt Ilya’s hands all over him as they kissed, sliding underneath his shirt, warm on his bare skin, pushing him up against the wall. He felt himself getting hard, harder than he had been, if he was being honest with himself, since the last time they’d done this. Shane let out an involuntary moan, as Ilya pressed against him and reached a hand under the waistband of his trousers. Shane was already so close, hadn’t been touched like this in longer than he couldn’t remember. How could he have given this up? How had he lived without it? When even a messy fumble in a bathroom felt like the best sex he’d had in years.

It didn’t take much for Shane to come – he had always lost control at the slightest of touches from Ilya. As the sensations subsided, he pulled away, sudden and sharp. Ilya stared at him, looking like he was also coming to, from whatever madness had taken over both of them.

God they were lucky nobody had walked in on them.

Shane felt shame and disgust at himself flooding in. He broke eye contact, cleaned himself up, then ran.

“Shane, please wait!” he heard Ilya call after him, but he couldn’t look back. Fighting back hot angry tears, he practically ran out of the club. He flagged down a cab, managed to say his address without his voice shaking too much, then sank down into the seat. He didn’t look back, didn’t know whether Ilya had followed him, tried not to think about it.

How could he do this? To himself, yes, but to Rose? Beautiful, sweet, kind Rose, who loved her husband and had never done anything to deserve this. Shane felt like he was going to be sick.

His phone buzzed. Ilya. I really think we need to talk.

Shane couldn’t reply, couldn’t even make himself open it.

The cab pulled up at his house and he stumbled out in a daze, leaving a wad of bills behind that he thought included a generous enough tip, though he couldn’t clear his head enough to count them.

And then he was alone. It took everything in him to get himself through the door, up the stairs, into bed. His whole body hurt, every hit he’d taken in the match earlier suddenly weighing heavy on his bones.

He remembered to text JJ. Headed out. Sorry for bailing early! He figured he wouldn’t get a reply til the morning, that JJ probably didn’t care where Shane was right at that moment, but it was polite to let someone know he’d disappeared. Then he sank into an uncomfortable, fitful sleep.

He managed a few hours before he was awake again. His alarm clock read 03:31. He checked his phone. No text from JJ but – his stomach flipped – three missed calls from “Lily”. Ilya hadn’t texted again, though, and the last of the calls had come in over two hours ago now. Ilya had probably given up and gone home. Or found a girl and gone home with her. Maybe that would be better.

Shane dragged himself out of bed and got a glass of water. Then, because he didn’t fancy his chances of getting back to sleep, he turned the tv on and navigated to the most mindless thing he could find. Lay down on the couch. Let shame turn to guilt, turn to fear. What was he going to do? He had to talk to Rose about this. He couldn’t lie to her. They would get divorced. How could he explain it to everyone? To his family? I fucked up my marriage because I can’t keep my hands off Ilya Rozanov.

Two hours passed, and then his phone buzzed again. Another incoming call from “Lily”.

Fuck.

Shane opened their text conversation and, before he could think better of it, typed out a response. There’s nothing to talk about. Press send. Wait. Breathe. Nothing.

December 2023

Two days before Rose was due to fly home, Shane worked up the courage to text her: Hey, there’s something I need to talk to you about when you get home.

She replied almost instantly. Sure! Is everything okay?

Shane didn’t know what to say to that so he said Yeah don’t worry!

He was a wreck the day Rose arrived back. He didn’t have a game to distract him, so he had her flight tracker open on his laptop while he made dinner, refreshing it every five minutes to check she was still due to land on time. The plane landed at seven, which meant she’d be home by eight. Shane would have dinner ready for then, and they could talk.

Rose looked exhausted, and she flung himself into his arms as soon as she was through the door. “Remind me to never agree to do anything like that again,” she sighed into his chest.

“You mean make a movie?” Shane said, taking her hand and leading her through to the kitchen.

“Yes, exactly that,” Rose replied. “I want to give it all up and become a stay at home wife. Or a professional WAG.”

“You would kill me within a week,” Shane said.

Rose laughed. “Mm, probably.” She pulled up a chair and looked appreciatively at the giant bowl of winter salad he’d made them. “This looks amazing babe. I don’t deserve you.”

Shane silently agreed – she didn’t deserve him, but not the way she meant.

He waited until they had finished eating, and he had cleared away the plates, before he sat back down and looked at her in a way that he hoped said, I’m extremely sorry for what I’m about to say and I hope you don’t hate me. He probably wasn’t conveying all that with a look, but he could try.

“Are you okay?” Rose asked.

“Yes,” Shane replied instinctively. Then, “Actually, no. You know I said there was something I needed to talk to you about?”

“Yeah I remember,” she said, having clearly forgotten about it until just then.

Shane put his head in his hands. “I have no idea how to say this. I feel absolutely horrible about it. I would understand if you never want to speak to me again, if you never want to see me. I’ve never been more angry at myself.”

“Shane, you’re scaring me.”

“Please just know how horrible I feel about this. I’m so ashamed.” Shane forced himself to look at her.

“What’s happened?”

Shane had to just bite the bullet. “I kissed someone. On a night out. It was a few weeks ago. JJ invited me out, it was for one of the rookies, I don’t even know why I went. I was drunk and I don’t think I realized how drunk, and then I kissed someone, and I should have pulled away, but I didn’t, not when I should have. But I left, afterwards. I went back home. On my own,” he added, when he saw the look on her face. “Oh my god Rose I am so sorry. I would completely understand if this isn’t something you can forgive me for. I feel awful.”

Rose looked how he’d expected her to look. Shocked. Upset. But she didn’t look angry.

She took a deep breath and then spoke slowly. “That’s really hard to hear. But it means a lot that you told me.”

“It does?”

“Yeah, it does. I don’t think… I don’t think this is something we can’t recover from. If you don’t want it to be, I mean.”

“You don’t?”

Rose sighed. “Shane, we’ve barely seen each other the last year and the past few months especially… We had the summer and then we’ve been like two ships. I should have seen something like this coming. I’m not saying that makes it okay. I’m hurt, it will take me some time to get my head around it. But, it didn’t mean anything?” She looked up at him.

“No, it didn’t mean anything,” Shane lied.

“Then we can figure this out. If you want to.”

“I do want to.” Shane felt an immense wave of relief wash over him, although the guilt and shame didn’t fully subside. “I am so sorry Rose.”

“Maybe we should get couple’s counselling or something,” Rose suggested. “I have felt a distance between us. It’s so hard with our schedules. But I want this to work. You’re my best friend and I love you.”

“I love you too.” Shane really did mean it. He tried his hardest to mean it the way he should mean it.

June 2024

Shane and Rose had been having monthly counselling sessions – sometimes over zoom when they couldn’t be in the same place for long enough – and he thought it was helping. They could talk about the demands of their jobs, the difficulty of prioritizing time together. Those were easy problems, in some ways. Concrete. Solvable. They made time for date nights. They called and facetimed each other more often. Their counsellor commented on their progress, what a pleasant, easy couple they were to work with.

There were things Shane couldn’t talk about in their sessions, but he was working on them himself, which was almost as good. He could go a week or even more without thinking about Ilya at all. He stopped going out of his way to look him up, to check in on how he was doing. He had to deal with him as an opponent but it wasn’t like they played Boston every week. He could compartmentalize. He was good at compartmentalizing.

Despite what felt like progress, Shane was more anxious than he’d ever been for the MLH awards in June. Rose would normally come with him, but something had come up last minute and she wasn’t able to make it. He could have asked his parents if they wanted to come, but they had treated themselves to a rare holiday. So here he was in Las Vegas, alone in his hotel room, psyching himself up to go downstairs and face Ilya Rozanov off the ice for the first time since November.

He managed to avoid Ilya for the best part of the evening, although he couldn’t help catching glimpses of him out of the corner of his eye, of being aware at every moment of where he was in the room and where Shane needed to be to avoid him. But that was fine. He could do that.

It was the end of the night when he was heading back to his room, feeling like he was safe, that things went wrong. He was waiting for the elevator, headed back to the twelfth floor, when he felt someone next to him. He didn’t have to look to know that it was Ilya.

“Hi,” Ilya said gruffly. “Busy night?”

“Uh, I guess. Always lots of people to talk to at these things.”

Ilya made a noise of agreement. “Not going to an afterparty?”

“No, I think I’m just gonna head to bed. I’ve got an early flight tomorrow.”

Shane didn’t return the question, but Ilya answered it anyway. “Me too. Got to get my beauty sleep.” Ilya was keeping his voice carefully neutral. Shane imagined he was angry at him, but if he was, he wasn’t here to fight, which was a relief.

“Congratulations on the season,” Shane said, changing the subject. The Raiders had been cup finalists, narrowly beaten out by the New York Admirals. “You guys were playing really well.”

“Mm, thanks,” Ilya said. “Would have been nicer to win, though.”

“There’s always next year.”

“Yes, true. Another chance for us to beat you.”

“Or for us to beat you.”

“You wish.”

The elevator doors opened at that moment, and both of them stepped in. Ilya pressed floor twelve, then looked at Shane expectantly. “I’m the same,” he said sheepishly.

Ilya raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. There was none of the electricity brought about by their proximity the last time they’d been this close, but both of them were on guard this time, and Shane, for his part, was incredibly sober.

They got out together at floor twelve, and stood awkwardly across from each other in the empty hallway. Shane put his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but couldn’t make himself be the one to break contact. Eventually, Ilya moved. “I’m gonna head to bed I think. Night Hollander.”

Shane nodded, watched him go. “Night Rozanov.”

They headed back to their rooms, in opposite directions. Shane let the door close behind him, kicked off his shoes, folded up his clothes, and got into bed.

He felt almost worse than he had after they had hooked up in November. He realized, with a strong surge of shame, that he was disappointed it hadn’t happened again. He had built the evening up so much in his head, agonized over how he was going to avoid Ilya, what he would say to him if they did have to interact, how he would deflect it if Ilya made an advance on him.

And in the end, nothing. They had been alone together, they had made a few minutes’ worth of small talk, and they had parted ways. Ilya had been polite; if he was angry or hurt, he hadn’t shown it.

It was, Shane thought, the worst thing he had ever felt. Worse than a fight, worse than a breakup. The thought that they might, one day, just be vaguely acquainted colleagues, who saw each other at events, who could hold a polite, if brief, conversation, who didn’t need to avoid eye contact or run away from their feelings, because those feelings just weren’t there.

The thought that Ilya Rozanov might be over him, Shane realized, made him feel like he was dying.

Shane dreamed of Ilya that night. They were in bed together. It felt vaguely like a memory but he couldn’t quite place it, and when he tried to get a better grasp of it he felt it slipping away. Ilya was on top of him, inside him, planting kisses all over his back. моя любовь, he was saying. Я тебя люблю. Shane wasn’t sure if he had heard those words before – was he remembering them or was he imagining things? They were bathed in light, the two of them. Hands twisted together against the bedsheets. Shane felt himself saying it back. Я тебя люблю. Я тебя люблю. He felt safe, happy, loved.

He woke up sweating, heart racing, half an hour after his alarm and on the precipice of being late for his flight. At least that was a distraction.

Shane found he couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. The more he thought about it, the less he could connect it to any real memory of their time together. He couldn’t explain why it had lodged himself in his mind the way it had.

Almost two weeks after the MLH awards, in the cottage for the summer, Shane woke up from what felt like a nightmare, although he couldn’t remember the details. He fumbled about in the dark, found himself reaching for Ilya, but the other side of the bed was empty. Half-asleep, he fumbled for his phone, found his conversation with Ilya, typed out a bleary I miss you. Where are you? He found himself thinking. Why aren’t you here? His mind was full of those thoughts as he fell back asleep.

When he woke up again, it was half six. The sun had risen, but was still low in the sky. Shane loved the way the morning light flooded through the windows of his cottage. If he didn’t feel like shit, if he hadn’t slept so badly, he might have dragged himself out of bed for an early morning swim, or a run. As it was, his head hurt, and the vague memory of unpleasant dreams unsettled him.

He reached for his phone. To his alarm, he had a missed call and a text from “Lily”, both sent around two in the morning.

Panic shot through him. He remembered texting someone in the night. Waking up and wondering at the absence of Ilya. His dreams must have been worse than he thought.

He was hesitant to open his text conversation with Ilya, afraid of what he might have sent while half out of it, but forced himself to look.

01:25   Shane: I miss you.

02:13   Lily: Shane? Where are you? Is everything ok?

Fuck. Though, he reasoned, it could probably have been worse.

He sat up, and tried to think of a good response. Eventually he settled on a somewhat pathetic, Sorry, I sent that to the wrong person. He expected that Ilya would not reply.

Shane put his phone away again and stared out of the window, at the reflection of the sun on the water. He was more at peace here than anywhere else, but he still felt heavy, weighted down. His life, he realized, felt increasingly wrong. Like somewhere along the way he had made some fundamental mistake and now everything was off-kilter.

It had been almost four years since he had broken things off with Ilya, a decision that at the time he thought was for good. A few months later he had reached out to Rose, asked if she wanted to grab dinner when she was next in town. If Ilya was settling down, then maybe so could he. It had been nice. It was always nice with Rose. They had so much in common. An easy chemistry that he could almost convince himself was a romantic connection. He was attracted to her, he thought, even if it wasn’t quite the same as with Ilya – he thought she was gorgeous and he wasn’t completely turned off by the idea of kissing her. That was something.

And yet he couldn’t let go. The further away he travelled, the worse it seemed to get. Now he was dreaming of Ilya, waking up in the night convinced that Ilya should have been beside him, feeling his control over himself slipping away. Shane was terrified.

August 2025

It had taken a while for those closest to Shane to notice something was really wrong. The first to pick up on it was Hayden. The two of them spent a lot of time together on the road, sharing rooms, in close proximity. Shane should maybe have realized that Hayden would notice things, even if he wasn’t always the most perceptive.

Even then, it wasn’t until around December that Hayden turned to him, as they were unpacking their bags in a shitty Florida hotel, and said, “Hey man, I don’t want to overstep, but is everything okay?”

Shane had looked up, startled. “Everything’s fine, why?”

“I don’t know man. You’ve seemed really withdrawn lately. Like, more than usual. You’ve barely even been coming to breakfast.”

“I’m fine,” Shane insisted. “Maybe a little tired. But fine.”

“You know you can talk to me,” Hayden offered. “If you need to. I know it’s not always the easiest but I’m here for you.”

“Thanks.” Shane had finished sorting out his stuff, and lined his suitcase up against the wall. “But I am fine.”

They both knew that Shane was not fine, and after that, he felt Hayden watching him more closely, looking for signs of whatever might be going on with him. Shane tried to close himself off more in response, made an effort to come to more team things. He could tell he wasn’t convincing anyone.

The next to pick up on something was Rose. Even though they were still spending a lot of time apart, when they were together, they saw as much of each other as possible. Rose had a stretch of time off around February, and made the most of it, cooking every day, insisting on trying new restaurants together when they had the time, and when Shane had a full day off, gleefully suggesting a bad movie marathon, loading up on snacks – popcorn and chocolates for Rose, cucumber and carrot sticks with hummus for Shane. It was the morning after this that Rose turned to him in bed, and said, “I think I’m probably going about this the wrong way, but I’m worried about you. I know we’ve had our rough patches before, and it felt like things were better, but this doesn’t feel like an us thing. It feels like something is up with you.”

The same as he had with Hayden, Shane knee-jerk deflected. “I’m really tired,” he tried. “I guess I’m not as young as I used to be. Maybe I just need to take it a bit easier on the extra training bits.”

“And eat more carbs?” Rose suggested playfully.

“And eat more carbs,” Shane indulged her.

“But seriously,” she said. “You haven’t felt like yourself for a while now. I wonder if it might be worth restarting counselling, but just for you?”

Shane promised to look into it, with no intention of actually doing so.

It wasn’t until later that spring that his parents tried to intervene. They were having lunch in one of their favorite restaurants before a home game that he’d got them both tickets to.

His mom went about it with her usual subtlety. “It’s a shame Rose couldn’t make it today.”

“I guess so,” Shane said. “You know she comes to games when she can.”

“Don’t you wish you could see each other more often?”

“Yeah, sure I do. But it’s not that bad. She had a month off in February. I’ll only be playing for another five or ten years.”

Yuna looked at him pointedly. “Even five years is a long time to be lonely.”

“I’m not lonely!” Shane protested. “I’m just as busy as Rose is.”

Yuna and David shared a glance. “You should come home more,” his mom said. “When you two are apart. We can make you dinner.”

“Ottawa is like two hours away,” Shane said. “I don’t always have time for that.”

“It would be nice to see you more,” David offered.

Shane sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. It would be nice to see you guys more.”

A part of him was relieved to be back at the cottage, mostly alone, for the summer. Rose joined him from mid-July, but she was leaving again soon to do some reshoots in Montreal. He could tell she wasn’t enthused by the idea, was desperate for a proper break, but her career had really taken off in the last few years, and he was proud of her. Shane made sure that he told her that.

The two of them had always co-existed happily when they were able to get proper time together, but something about this summer felt different. The sex felt especially difficult to go through with, and Shane was anxious that Rose was noticing, although she didn’t say anything. He could tell she thought he was depressed, and so maybe she was attributing it to that. Guilt flooded through him, again, alongside something else that he couldn’t let himself think, was too terrified to admit.

Every night since they had arrived at the cottage, he had dreamed about Ilya. He had had the odd dream over the past year that fit the same mold, unnerving lucidity paired with a sense of slipping just out of reach, blurring at the edges. Now he was here, though, the dreams grew steadily more vivid, until he was almost convinced he was seeing – living – snapshots of another life. He dreamed that Ilya was his husband. He began to picture their routines, how their days together unfolded in the summer. He felt like he was losing his grip on his own reality, a feeling that had been building in one way or another for months, if he was honest with himself.

In response, he had felt himself withdrawing, for months now, from his own life. He was running on autopilot, except the system was faulty, and the cracks were all too visible. He cycled through the familiar guilt-shame-disgust pattern, mixed in with despair, frustration, resignation. He became increasingly convinced that he needed to go back somehow and change things, but couldn’t, and he couldn’t figure out where he had gone wrong in the first place. He missed Ilya so much it hurt, but what could he do about that? They now hadn’t spoken in over a year. Ilya had made no effort to talk to him, even small talk, at this year’s All Star game, or at the MLH awards. And a part of him still badly wanted his marriage with Rose to work, because somehow, apart from his career, it was the one big thing in his life he hadn’t managed to fuck up yet. In the back of his mind, screaming at him to be heard, was the Thing that he knew would fuck that up forever. Worse than his attraction to Ilya, worse than his many shortcomings as a husband, this thing was fundamental and irreversible and once he’d looked at it there would be no going back. So he couldn’t. He couldn’t bear to look at it.

These were the thoughts still running through Shane’s head when he woke up one morning, in a bed that wasn’t his, next to a husband he didn’t remember marrying.

Chapter End Notes

This is a long one but hopefully moves the story along a lot after a few chapters of set-up. I have a plan from here to the end, so now I just have to write it. I have loved reading comments on this and hope people enjoy!

Chapter 6

Chapter Notes

Shane barely slept; neither his mind nor his body would relax. Part of it was the feeling of having Ilya close to him again, even in different rooms, after only a few days apart. But it was also the distance between this Ilya and the man he was still missing like his life depended on it. Shane realized, staring at the ceiling in the early hours of the morning, that a part of him had expected seeing Ilya to fix everything. After everything they had been through together, it was as if his brain had refused to accept the idea that they would not also share this experience, both at sea in a strange world and searching for each other.

Instead, seeing Ilya had been the final nail in this new version of reality. The man upstairs was not his husband.

Letting this thought dawn on him and slowly sink through his body, Shane jolted out of bed. He couldn’t sit still with the feeling, the absolute hopelessness of knowing that wherever his husband was, he was unreachable, somewhere else, somewhere beyond the boundaries of Shane’s current reality.

Stumbling into the kitchen, Shane poured himself a glass of water, and took a few deep breaths. His first thought on waking up here a few days ago, wherever here was, had been to talk to Ilya. And now Ilya was here and they had talked. He needed to find a new goal. Find a way to get home.

“Shane?” A voice from the darkness startled him, and he spilt the last of his water down his front. Drying himself with a tea towel, he walked towards the couch, where the voice had come from, to see Ilya lying flat in the dark. “I couldn’t sleep,” Ilya said, by way of explanation.

“Me neither,” Shane said sympathetically. “Do you know what time it is?”

Ilya sat up. “I think three o’clock. I’m not sure.”

“Do you mind if I turn a light on?” Shane gestured towards one of the lamps as he approached the couch. Ilya nodded, and Shane seated himself across from him. He was suddenly aware that he was only in his boxers, though Ilya was also shirtless.

Ilya looked him up and down, making no effort at subtlety. Then his eyes widened. “You have a tattoo?!?”

Shane glanced at his shoulder, where the outline of the Centaurs logo had been etched around the date when he and Ilya had won their first cup, together. He wasn’t surprised at this Ilya’s shock – it had taken his Ilya a week of persuasion and some very good sex before Shane had agreed to the idea of a matching tattoo to commemorate the milestone. He had then freaked out five minutes before the appointment and almost bailed, but his therapist – a new thing for Shane, who refused to be one upped by Ilya on mental wellness alongside physical wellness – had told him that getting out of his comfort zone was good for him, and that obsessing about his body never changing was bad for him, so this seemed like the epitome of being a good student. And it would make Ilya extremely happy. And Shane, in his own way, had grown extremely fond of the tattoo, of the memories it was connected to, and the way it tied him to Ilya.

At the same time as he remembered this, it occurred to Shane that this version of him, the Shane who still played for Montreal and had ended things with Ilya, had no reason to have a tattoo tied to the Ottawa Centaurs, and to a cup he’d never won.

His eyes widened. “I shouldn’t have this tattoo. Your Shane, I mean, he wouldn’t have it.”

“What makes you so sure?” Ilya asked.

Shane explained the story behind it and Ilya nodded slowly.

“So you haven’t just… swapped consciousness,” Ilya said, thinking out loud. “You’ve travelled… physically somehow?”

“I guess so.” Shane traced the tattoo with his fingers. “But I don’t remember anything. I went to sleep and then I woke up, in what felt like the same bed. Surely travelling between universes would have woken me up a little.”

Ilya gave him a small smile. “You are happy to believe you are in an alternate universe, but the thing that is a problem for you is the fact you slept through getting there?”

“Okay, fair point,” Shane grumbled. “None of this makes sense.”

“It does not,” Ilya agreed, “but I think I am believing you.”

“You are?”

“Yes,” Ilya nodded. “I thought I would take a lot more convincing too,” he added. “But, I don’t know. Shane and I have not been close in a long time… but even then, I can see you are not him. I can’t explain it, but I know.”

“You’re not my Ilya,” Shane agreed. “I think a part of me was hoping you would be.”

“Me too, I think,” Ilya said, sadly. “A crazy Shane would have been easier to deal with than whatever this is. And it felt…” He trailed off, avoiding eye contact.

“It felt like what?” Shane asked gently.

“It gave me something like hope, that I was the person he thought to call. That he thought I was his husband. I know that’s stupid.”

“That’s not stupid,” Shane said emphatically.

“No it is stupid,” Ilya said. “I should move on. I don’t know why I haven’t.” Shane made what he hoped was a sympathetic noise, and Ilya looked up at him. “I don’t want you to think I’m pathetic. It is not like I sit at home every day crying and hoping he comes back to me. I still go out and have sex and live my life. But… it is hard to forget.”

“He hasn’t forgotten you either,” Shane said insistently.

“How can you know that?” Ilya asked sadly.

“Because he is me,” Shane said. “We’re not the same, but there’s no world in which I could have moved on from you. Not really.”

Ilya looked like he was going to cry, and Shane had to fight the instinct to crawl over to him, snuggle into him and kiss him.

Instead, he made himself keep talking. “When I was with Rose, even though it was just for a couple of months, there wasn’t a single day where I didn’t think about you. I was already so in love with you then, even if I couldn’t admit that to myself. If she hadn’t told me I was gay, I don’t know how much longer I would have gone on pretending to myself that it was nothing. Maybe too long.” He felt, for the first time, real sympathy and sadness for the other Shane. “But lying to yourself doesn’t stop the truth existing. And the truth is that I’ve only ever known how to be in love with you.”

Ilya took a deep, unsteady breath, and just said, “Fuck.”

“All the fear and self-hatred… I had so much. Too much. And I wasn’t even wrong. We were outed and my team turned their backs on me. The commissioner basically threatened us. Some of the fans were vicious – still are. But I never questioned if it was worth it. I just regretted taking so long.”

As he was saying this, Shane realized these were things he had never said to his own Ilya, and found himself wishing, above anything, for the chance to do so. That it had all been worth it. That his only regret was making them hide for so long.

In front of him, Ilya looked like someone had run him over. When he spoke, his voice was shaking. “Shane cheated on Rose with me.”

“What?” Shane couldn’t disguise the note of horror in his voice. Of all the things he had to feel guilty over – and leading Rose on was one of them – he had always felt strongly about the fact that he had never crossed that line. Never knowingly hurt her or betrayed her trust.

Ilya looked wretched. “It was over a year ago now. It was after a game. I was out in Montreal, and he was there. I wasn’t expecting to see him. And when he saw me, he panicked. His eyes went wide and he ran away. So I followed him into the bathroom. I was angry. I don’t know what I was thinking. And then, I don’t know. We were arguing and then I kissed him. And he kissed me back. And then…”

“Did he tell Rose?” was all Shane could think to ask.

“How the fuck would I know.” Ilya sounded angry.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I thought you would,” Shane said. “So nothing happened… after that?”

“No,” Ilya said. “I tried to talk to him. I called and texted. But he said there is nothing to talk about. I didn’t push it. I was so… defeated.”

“And then what?” Shane asked.

“And then nothing. We see each other at games, and I feel like my heart is on the ice, being sliced to pieces. We make small talk at the MLH awards, I think about inviting him to my room and then remember he is still married and hate myself. He texts me I miss you and then pretends it is a wrong number.”

“You’re in love with him,” Shane said bluntly.

“Yes, obviously.”

“You never tried to tell him how you feel?”

“I was going to,” said Ilya. “When I brought up marrying Svetlana, I thought it was obvious that I wanted citizenship so we could maybe… be together. That if there was another way for that to happen I would take it. But then I didn’t have the chance.”

“I wouldn’t have taken it that way,” Shane laughed. “I can kind of see why he freaked out. Though getting married is a pretty high level freak out.”

“There is probably so much I could have done differently,” Ilya said sadly.

“Maybe,” Shane said. “But there are always things to do differently. The only thing you can control is now.” His therapist, he thought wryly, would be so proud of him.

“Ah yes, now, when Shane Hollander from another universe invites me to his cottage. Very in control.” Ilya at least seemed cheered up by the insanity of that statement.

Ilya wasn’t wrong, though. Neither of them was even remotely in control of the situation in front of them, and Shane’s go-to mantras – take it one day at a time, the only thing you can control is you – were about as effective as pissing on a forest fire. He needed to figure out what had caused him to switch places with this other, sadder Shane and more importantly, he needed to figure out how to switch back.

Shane looked at Ilya, bolstered by a sudden sense of determination. “I have an idea.”

Chapter End Notes

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Chapter 7

Chapter Notes

Almost four days earlier, in a different universe, a half-asleep Ilya was trying and failing to calm Shane down. He stared, bleary-eyed, at the man he still thought was his husband, who had been alternating between pacing up and down, and crouching on the floor with his head in his hands, for somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes. It had taken Ilya about half that time to wake up enough to process what was going on.

Shane was, in other words, freaking the fuck out.

Waking up next to Ilya Rozanov, in his cottage, was probably his biggest and most secret dream. He thought about it more than he was prepared to admit, and suddenly it was actually happening, and Shane did not have the tools to process this.

He also had no idea where Rose was.

“Shane?” He heard Ilya’s voice somewhere above him. “Has something happened, моя любовь?”

“Shit shit shit,” Shane heard himself saying, his voice sounding disembodied, far away. “What the fuck is happening to me?”

“Shane,” Ilya tried again. “You are having a panic attack?”

“Of course I’m having a fucking panic attack!” Shane’s voice came out high and uneven. “Where’s Rose?”

“Rose…?” Ilya sounded confused.

Had Shane lost his memory? Had Rose left him?

“What day is it?” he asked.

Ilya sounded even more confused at that, but answered, “It’s August 3rd. What is going on, Shane?”

August 3rd. It had been August 2nd yesterday, so that was expected. But that made no sense. Had he lost years of his life, then?

“What year?” Shane demanded, frantic.

“2025.” Worry had replaced confusion in Ilya’s voice. “Shane…? Maybe we should sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

He felt Ilya’s hands on him, lifting him up off the ground and guiding him over to the couch. The touch soothed him, even as his brain was going into overdrive trying to take in everything that was happening around him. Ilya brought him a glass of water, made him take a few sips, and then set it down on the coffee table so that he could take Shane’s hands in his. For a moment they sat there just like that, in silence, Ilya running his thumbs slowly over the backs of Shane’s hands.

“Deep breaths,” Ilya said. “In. Out. In. Out.”

Shane, despite himself, did as he was told, and felt some of the complete utter panic subsiding. He was still low level panicking, though. That wasn’t going to go away any time soon.

“What are you doing here?” he eventually managed, once he’d calmed down enough to speak.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Ilya asked, giving Shane a weird look.

“I mean… when did you get here? Why have you come here? Why were you in my bed this morning? Where is Rose?” Shane stopped himself there, even though he had a million other questions.

Ilya said something in Russian.

Shane looked at him blankly. “What did you just say?”

“I – You didn’t understand that?” Shane had no idea why this was surprising news to Ilya, who had never seemed to expect him to speak Russian before.

“Why would I understand that?” Shane said, irritated enough at whatever game Ilya was playing to momentarily forget the sheer volume of panic still coursing through his body. “I don’t speak Russian.”

Ilya’s eyes widened and he looked at Shane as if he was going mad. Then he started feeling around his head. Shane pulled away and glared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Checking for a bump or a gash,” Ilya snapped back. “Did you fall in the night or something?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Shane glared harder. “Where’s my phone? I need to speak to Rose.”

“It’s probably charging over there.” Ilya gestured to the corner. It was where Shane had left it, then, which was something. He reached over and grabbed it, about to unlock it, but was stopped in his tracks by the lockscreen. It was a photo of himself and Ilya, both in – was that Ottawa kit? – on an ice rink. Shane was smiling at the camera, while Ilya had both his arms around Shane and was planting a kiss firmly on his cheek. What the fuck?

Hands shaking, he unlocked his phone and found his contacts. Found Rose. Still in there, thank god. He sensed Ilya’s eyes on him, but avoided looking at him.

“Shane –” Ilya was suddenly right next to him again, and taking the phone out of his hands.

“Give that back!” Shane demanded.

“I’m not sure you calling Rose right now is a good idea,” Ilya said, holding the phone out of Shane’s reach.

Shane lunged for it. “Give me my phone back! I need to speak to Rose.”

Ilya wriggled out of his grip and looked at him, alarmed. Eventually he said, “Okay look, I’ll call Rose, and you can speak to her. But I think I should talk to her first, okay? Just give me a minute.”

Not waiting for permission, Ilya stood up and walked just out of Shane’s earshot. Shane heard him speaking in a low voice, then Ilya returned with the phone, and handed it over.

“Hi Shane?” said Rose, sounding uncertain. “Ilya said you wanted to speak to me, is everything okay?”

Shane had expected the sound of her voice to comfort him, but it just made him feel worse. Why was she calling Ilya Rozanov Ilya? There was no reason for them to be on first name terms. Why didn’t she sound panicked about the fact that her husband was apparently hanging out with his arch rival at their cottage?

“Did you go somewhere?” Shane asked.

“Um, I don’t think so,” Rose said, a little too brightly. “I’m still in the same old apartment in L.A.”

“I thought you were heading to Montreal this afternoon?”

“No, my flight’s not for another two weeks,” Rose said slowly. “But I’m so excited to visit you guys. I wish I could get away from work sooner.”

Shane looked helplessly at Ilya, who was watching him take the phone call with a strange, guarded expression.

“But you were here last night.”

“No… I’ve been in L.A. for the past few months. Is everything okay Shane? Ilya said you aren’t quite feeling yourself this morning.”

“But we’re married,” was all Shane could think to reply. “We live together.”

“Who? You and Ilya? I’m sorry Shane, I’m a bit confused.” Rose’s tone was still carefully light, but she sounded concerned.

“Me and Ilya are not married!” Shane looked at Ilya with horror, expecting him to react, but Ilya just looked like he’d been slapped in the face.

“Could you maybe pass the phone back to Ilya for a second?” Rose said.

Shane complied, feeling panic start to spread through his body again. Ilya took the phone and disappeared with it for a few minutes, but he could hear him just out of sight, talking to Rose. When he returned, they’d obviously ended the call.

Ilya sat down again, facing Shane. His brow was furrowed and he was chewing on his bottom lip. Shane felt a rush of affection at the gesture, which freaked him out further, and he tried to squash it.

Ilya put a hand on each shoulder and rubbed his hands comfortingly up and down Shane’s arms. The touch, as it had earlier, involuntarily soothed Shane, even as every muscle in his body was trying to send him in a thousand different directions.

“Shane,” Ilya said, cautiously, looking into Shane’s eyes. “You said just now that we are not married. What made you say that?”

“The fact that we’re not married,” Shane snapped.

Ilya took a deep breath, continuing to hold Shane. “Okay, so what is the last thing you remember?”

“Going to bed last night, with Rose.”

“When you were dating eight years ago?”

Shane frowned at him. “No. When we are married, now. That’s the last thing I remember. Going to bed, here, with my wife.”

Ilya had that same look again, like Shane had slapped him. He broke the eye contact, looking off to one side and biting his lip harder, but he kept his hands on Shane’s shoulders.

“Rose isn’t your wife, Shane,” he said. “You are married but… I am your husband. Do you remember? We’ve been married four years.”

Shane felt like the ground was giving way underneath him. If Ilya hadn’t had his hands there, steadying him, holding him in place, he thought he might genuinely have collapsed. There was, he was realizing, no rational explanation for this. Rose on the phone had been friendly, confused, a little concerned. She was in L.A. She was coming to visit in two weeks. Visit. She wasn’t at all perturbed by the fact that she wasn’t with Shane in the cottage, or that Ilya was there instead. And Ilya… Ilya was here, in front of him, holding him, looking at him like… like he loved him.

And the lockscreen. He had no logical explanation for that. Not only had it changed, but it had changed to a photo Shane had never taken. How was that possible?

Shane wanted to throw up.

He was too caught up in these thoughts to notice that Ilya had taken his hands off him and put some distance between them.

He stared at Shane. Then said, coldly, “Where is your tattoo?”

“My… my what?”

“Your tattoo. On your left shoulder. The centaur. Where is it?”

Shane looked at his own body, not sure what he was expecting to find. He was just in his boxers – he hadn’t had time to get dressed while panicking. Ilya had said left shoulder. He looked at his arms, his shoulders, at the bare skin there, and looked back at Ilya.

“I don’t have a tattoo.”

Ilya stared at him. “But that makes no…” He trailed off. “A tattoo doesn’t disappear overnight.”

“I’ve never had a tattoo.” Shane had no idea why this seemed to be life-altering information to Ilya.

Before he knew what was happening, Ilya was pushing him up against the wall, all heat and anger. “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck have you done with my husband?”

Shane felt pathetic, startled tears in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill over. Then he shoved Ilya off of him. “I haven’t done anything to your husband! I went to bed last night, here, and I woke up, here, except every fucking thing around me has changed and I have no idea why! You think I would’ve done any of this deliberately?”

Ilya stared at him, then abruptly backed away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have– I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you either,” Shane mumbled, before he could think about what he was saying.

They stood like that for a second, both breathing heavily, a few feet apart.

Then Ilya said again, but quieter, more resigned. “You are not my husband.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Shane replied.

Ilya gestured for Shane to sit, and himself slumped back onto the couch. Shane settled himself on the other end.

“So who are you?”

Shane told him. Filled in as much of his life as he could without exposing all the ways it had gone wrong. He was Shane Hollander. He played for the Montreal Metros. This was his cottage, where he came every summer. He knew Ilya as his rival, Ilya played for the Boston Raiders. Since they were rookies, they had hooked up every now and then, but it had ended, and then he had married Rose Landry.

Ilya watched him with fascination. “You’re Shane, but you’re not Shane,” he eventually said. “So… is this a parallel universe thing or something?”

“Uhh, maybe.” In the midst of his panic and confusion, it hadn’t occurred to Shane to come up with much in the way of ideas about what might be happening to him. But that sort of made sense. In a nothing-about-this-situation-makes-sense-so-fuck-it-maybe-I’ll-believe-anything kind of way. But that wasn’t nothing.

Ilya let out a slow whistle. Then something shifted in his expression, something a bit closer to amusement. “So, you’re married to Rose Landry?” His accent curled around Rose’s name.

“Uh, yeah, I am. We were together for about a year and a half and then… married for three years, like I said.”

“So, how does that work?” Ilya raised an eyebrow.

“It’s, uh, I mean we’re really happy.” Shane wasn’t sure why he felt such a need to prove himself to this version of Ilya, but he felt oddly defensive. “We both understand how busy things can get, the pressures of the spotlight and a demanding job. It’s nice to have someone who understands that side of my life. And she’s my best friend.”

“Must be nice,” Ilya said. “But how does it work? Seeing as how you’re, you know, super gay.”

“I am not gay,” Shane said, feeling himself flush. “I mean, obviously, I’m not straight either. But I like women. I like Rose.”

“Wow, okay,” Ilya said. “You know you are still a really bad liar.”

“I am not lying!” Shane protested.

“You are cute when you lie.”

Shane couldn’t believe, minutes after they had practically been at each other’s throats, Ilya was now, what, flirting with him?

“My Shane doesn’t lie to me anymore. I think I’ve scared him. Or maybe he loves me. I forgot how flustered you get. Is cute, really, I mean it.”

Shane glared at him.

“So my Shane, he is what, in your cottage now, playing househusband to Rose Landry?” As the implications of that settled on Ilya, some of the amusement was replaced with clear annoyance.

“I don’t know,” Shane said, exasperated. “I have no idea what your Shane would do in that situation.” Then his stomach dropped. His first instinct upon arriving in this unfamiliar version of his life had been to call Rose. Other Shane would probably have done the same thing. Except in his case, that meant calling Ilya.

It was one thing to be face to face with this version of Ilya. Now Shane had accepted that this was some kind of weird universe-swapping situation (and to be honest, he was shocked at how easily he’d accepted that), he could see all the differences between this Ilya and the Ilya he knew. This Ilya was more relaxed, lighter. He was calmer, slower. He inhabited this space – Shane’s space – with an ease and familiarity that felt frighteningly close to Shane’s most shameful fantasies.

It was another thing to think about his own Ilya, confronted with a version of Shane that would be – oh God – calling him his husband and maybe telling him I love you and… Shane felt sick again. He really thought he was going to be sick this time.

Since the kiss in the nightclub bathroom a year and a half ago, Shane had put what felt at the time like a lot of effort into getting over Ilya. He’d made a list of all the reasons why they were incompatible. He’d reminded himself of the fact that Ilya was probably going to marry Svetlana, even if it hadn’t happened yet. He’d made another list, of all the reasons why he and Rose were compatible. He’d bitten back the shame and looked up pictures of other men to get himself off to, when Rose was away, instead of relying on his memories of Ilya. He had tried extremely hard not to think about what that meant.

None of it made seeing Ilya any easier. Whether across the rink, or studiously avoiding running into him at the All-Stars game (thankfully they hadn’t been put on the same team since 2021), or in the lift at the MLH awards, every piece of contact hurt. Every piece of contact was a reminder of the thing he wanted, was trying so badly not to want, and could never have.

Two months after the MLH awards, after that I miss you text that Shane himself couldn’t even fully explain, he’d been alone at the cottage one night, a little lonely – Rose had been gone for almost a month – and given into the temptation to look at Ilya’s Instagram. The most recent image – he could see without even clicking on it – had been Ilya, in a suit, laughing with – Shane’s entire body went cold – a beautiful woman he knew, from previous Instagram-stalking, to be Svetlana.

Shane had immediately closed the app, deleted it off his phone, gone to the fridge, poured himself a large glass of wine, and downed it. He felt numb, sick, lightheaded. He remembered Ilya’s words in the nightclub: “You think I married Svetlana.” Why had he said it like Shane had been wrong, when he had been planning to do it the next summer? Were they in love, Shane wondered? Ilya had called her a friend, had said they were thinking of getting married “for citizenship”. But Shane knew they had slept together. Could see that she was beautiful. And Ilya had looked happy in the photo, even from the all-too-brief glance Shane had allowed himself. Maybe that was why Ilya had been so polite at the MLH awards. He no longer felt anything for Shane.

Shane had been married for two years and still couldn’t shake Ilya. Ilya had been married for – what, a month or two? – and actually had a future.

The thought of the future had terrified him – of another ten, twenty, thirty years having to pretend he enjoyed sex with Rose, that he could love her the way she deserved to be loved, and hating himself for the fact he couldn’t. It had only got worse since then. He didn’t let himself look at Ilya’s Instagram again, couldn’t bear the thought of seeing snapshots of his happily married life. That didn’t stop him thinking about it near-constantly though. He swung between absurd jealousy of Svetlana, for getting to marry Ilya, getting to see him every day, getting to know what it felt like to be loved by him – absurd because Shane could never have that, even if Ilya had wanted to give it to him, which he didn’t. When he wasn’t jealous of Svetlana, he was jealous of Ilya, for being able to have what Shane knew, on some level, he could never have. Because this Ilya was right, he realized, as he sat on the couch with these thoughts racing through his mind. The thing that Shane had been so terrified to admit to himself was that he was gay, and that the life he had always thought he should have, the life he so badly wanted to be able to have, with Rose, was impossible. Even thinking that now felt overwhelming, when he had been convinced for so long that to even slightly open the door to thinking about it would bring his world crashing down around him.

Ironic, really, that his world had collapsed of its own accord before he’d had the chance to test that theory.

And now he was somewhere else. And back in his world, this other version of Shane – a version of Shane, who was, apparently, happily married to Ilya Rozanov and had been for four years – would be confessing his love to a married Ilya and fucking up, in blissful ignorance, the last remaining dregs of Shane’s life and dignity.

He could imagine Ilya and Svetlana’s shock dissolving into laughing together at how pathetic he was, how sad that he and Ilya had barely seen each other in four years and Shane was still hopelessly, desperately in love with him.

“Shane? Shane!” Ilya’s voice cut through his spiraling. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Oh, uh, no, sorry.”

“I was asking you what you would do if you were Shane. You are him, yes? A sad version who is not married to me, but still him.”

“I would…” Shane forced himself to say it out loud. “I would probably call you, I think. Especially if we are married here.”

“Your version of me,” Ilya said. “What is he like? Is he as sexy as me?”

Shane couldn’t help but smile at that. “He’s a lot like you. Maybe less… at ease.”

Ilya narrowed his eyes. “I will be very angry if your Ilya seduces my Shane.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Shane said. “He’s married too, actually. To, uh, his friend Svetlana.”

Ilya looked surprised. “He is?”

“Yeah, I saw the wedding photos on his Instagram. It was actually why I ended things between us, originally. He said they were thinking about getting married. I couldn’t cope with the idea, I guess. I don’t know. I sort of just ran away, we didn’t really talk about it. But they got married last year.”

Ilya gave Shane a long, studying look, then said, “He is like me, yes?”

Shane nodded.

“Then I don’t think he will have married Svetlana.”

“I saw photos,” Shane argued.

“Maybe you saw wrong.” Ilya shrugged. “Svetlana is a good friend. My best friend, before I had Shane. I love her with all my heart. But I am not in love with her, and I do not think I ever could be.” He paused. “I also had an idea to marry her for citizenship once. It seemed like a good idea, and I think she would have agreed, at first. But neither of us wanted it, not really. And,” his lip curled upwards, “the idea made my Shane very angry anyway. Too angry to let me do it.”

“How do you know that other Ilya thinks the same?”

Ilya shrugged again. “I find it hard to believe there is a version of me that exists that is not just stupidly in love with you.” He looked at Shane intently now. “If you could go back – when you go back – you will fix things with him?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Shane sighed. “I mean, I’d have to get divorced.” He almost wanted to laugh, especially since he was probably going to have to get divorced anyway, considering the whole I realized I was gay while in a parallel universe thing. “And even if I’m wrong about Ilya and Svetlana, he doesn’t want me. He made that clear when we last saw each other. And I’ve pulled away from him so many times. He would have to be an idiot to take me back after everything.”

“Maybe true,” Ilya said. “But I am always an idiot when it comes to you.” He looked Shane up and down. “This has been a very weird morning. But maybe not a bad one. If I can figure out how to fix your love life and get my husband back.”

“Oh, so just a small to-do list for the week then?” Shane offered him a slight smile.

“I will get you back to your Ilya,” Ilya said, firmly. “Because there is no way in hell I am not getting my Shane back from over there.”

Chapter End Notes

It is my headcanon that Shane just needs to be told explicitly that he's gay and will then accept it pretty quickly, even if it's difficult for him.

Chapter 8

Chapter Notes

This was meant to be a section of a chapter but I actually think it works better as a short standalone - the final two chapters will be a bit longer and so will take me a little bit more time to edit, but I have been so appreciating all the comments/reactions to this, and hope you enjoy!

The bar was quiet. It was a Tuesday night; that was par for the course. It was long past midnight, and the few remaining patrons were each alone, drowning their mid-week woes in silence. They were mostly regulars, the same ragtag group of people who showed up on a weekday to get drunk alone in a shitty bar otherwise frequented by neither locals nor tourists.

Except, on this Tuesday, for one newcomer, who was well-dressed and handsome enough to stand out from the rest. He had come in just after one in the morning, alone, and after stumbling through ordering a drink (almost a beer, but then after a change of heart, a double vodka), he was now sat at one end of the bar, staring off into the middle distance.

Alongside the fact that he was a stranger, and too put together on the surface to make sense as a customer here, something about his eyes caught the attention of the woman behind the bar. The look in them could only be described as haunted. It was also apparent, after he’d been sitting there a while, that he was absolutely fucked, in the way that some people can almost get away with, only apparent to the people that know them best. But she was perceptive.

All the other customers settled with their drinks and no-one demanding her immediate attention, she made her way over to him, and bent to his level, resting her elbows on the bar.

“What brings you to Boston?” she asked.

He looked at her, and she had broken some kind of reverie; she could see the surprise that he was being spoken to, that he was even in a place where other people were.

“Work,” he replied. He was wary of her, but she felt increasingly confident in the gut feeling she had, that he needed someone to talk to.

“What do you do for work?”

He weighed up the words. “I’m a professional athlete. We had a game today.”

She didn’t ask what sport. “Did you win?”

“Uh, yeah.” He sounded surprised at his own answer, as if he was learning the information for the first time as he said it.

“That’s good,” she offered. “And now you’re here to, what, celebrate?”

“Something like that.”

She looked him up and down. Now that she was closer, she could see how handsome he really was, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a constellation of freckles across his cheeks. But he also had deep bags under his eyes, and almost looked like he had been crying.

“Is this your first time in Boston? For work?”

He hesitated again before he spoke. He was careful with everything he told her. “No, I’m usually here a couple of times a year.”

“I’ve never seen you in here before.”

“I don’t usually go out.” A small sad smile to himself. He was thinking about something she couldn’t get at.

“What makes this evening different?”

He raised his eyes to look at her properly, studying her. Sadness was so plainly spelt out on his face, in a way that went beyond whatever might have happened this evening and was rooted somewhere much deeper.

“I needed to distract myself, I guess.”

He had finished his vodka, she realized. Without asking if he wanted more, she poured him another glass, and he took it with a small nod.

“Something in Boston you’re running away from?” she tried.

“You could say that.” He sighed, and she felt some of his wariness leave his body with the breath, a small release of tension. He looked at her again and braced himself to be honest. “I think… I’ve fucked up somewhere. I just don’t know where. I did everything I thought I was supposed to, but it’s all wrong. I’ve lost… I think I hurt someone I lo– who I care about. But there's no way to fix it without hurting someone else. And I love her so much, I can’t do that to her. I can’t –” He choked on his words, and a tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away absent-mindedly.

“You want things to be different?”

“That isn’t possible.” He was looking down at his drink now. “I have to just… find a way to keep moving forward.”

She watched him, weighing up whether to offer what she was about to offer. She didn’t do this often, was strict with herself about when to risk it, who truly needed it. But everything about this man told her this was one of those times. So she said, “What if they could be? Different.”

He opened his mouth to repeat the same hopeless sentiments, but the way she said it stopped him in his tracks and made him pay attention. Their eyes met again.

“What do you mean?” He spoke slowly.

“If things could be different, if there were a version of your life where you made different choices – better choices – would you want that?”

He looked at her incredulously. Then said, sadly, “Of course I would.”

She felt the truth behind his words. The man in front of her was desperate, but a stranger was offering him a lifeline, and he was prepared to take it.

“Then you can have it,” she replied quietly, so quietly she wasn’t even sure he could hear her. He didn’t need to. With those words, she was setting something in motion that would happen whether he knew it or not. It was a strange thing, having the power to do something so big, and never getting to see the consequences. She could only hope now that she was making the right choice, that her instincts about this man were correct and that he had been guided to her bar for this reason.

As she had done before, the few times a conversation had gone this way, she slipped something in his drink that would make sure he remembered none of this in the morning.

The woman did not really know how it happened, only that she had the ability to make it possible.

In fact, it was months, almost a year, before the conditions were right for the swap to occur. It worked like this: the two people had to be in the same place, they had to be asleep, and they had to have been thinking about the same thing when they closed their eyes.

Considering the potential for divergence between lives, this meant that even when the woman set the dominoes in motion, sometimes the final piece never slotted in. A lifetime of possessing these strange gifts had given her an instinct for when she was meant to use them, but in the end the universe always had the final say.

For the Shane Hollander who walked out of that bar around three in the morning, stumbled into a cab and finally back into his hotel bed across from a sleeping Hayden Pike, things were complicated by the fact that neither of them lived in his old apartment in Montreal anymore - one had bought a new house with Rose; the other had long ago moved to a different house in the suburbs, and now lived even further away in Ottawa.

It was not until Shane - both Shanes - arrived at the cottage for the summer that the wall between their two realities started to properly thin. The memories of one filtered into the dreams of the other. But even then, one Shane went to sleep each night with a head full of regrets, wracked with worry about everything he couldn’t change and everything he wanted to. The other Shane drifted away content, loved and happy and safe in the arms of his husband. The two universes passed over each other, never quite touching.

It went on like that for a month and it might have gone on like that forever.

Except for that fact that, on the night of August 2nd, as Shane tossed and turned and stared at the ceiling next to his sleeping wife, he had a moment of weakness. It was barely a thought, certainly not something he could control or choose for himself. But as he ran through his now-nightly roster of self-flagellation, the image of Ilya leapt unbidden into his mind. Not as a regret or a punishment, but the memory of Ilya laughing, smiling, flying across the ice and glancing over at Shane with pure joy in his eyes. Another memory: the two of them in bed together, holding each other after, stolen moments that neither of them wanted to look too hard at; Shane pressing a kiss to Ilya’s forehead. Another: Ilya across from him in the daytime, the fridge open behind him, the ingredients for tuna melt in front of him; the domesticity of the scene and the effort he had put in. Shane ran through these images, and before he could stop himself, shut it down and banish it to the furthest corner of his mind, the words, sudden, abrupt, and horrifying, forced their way in: I love you Ilya.

Somewhere, a reality away, a different Shane snuggled into his husband’s arms, content after another perfect summer’s day, and thought to himself, as he closed his eyes: I love you Ilya.

Chapter 9

Chapter Notes

Over Here – August 3rd

Ilya made up the guest bed for him. It was odd, being a guest in his own house – Ilya’s guest, at that. Odd was in fact an understatement. It was entirely disorientating.

At the same time, it wasn’t that different. Apart from the addition of a dog, but even Anya, as Shane learned she was called, was fairly unobtrusive – Ilya took care of walking and feeding her, so Shane could just pet her every now and then.

Shane found that he knew where everything was, so he made himself at home as much as he could, grabbing a towel so he could shower, and then the clothes he kept upstairs so he could get changed. It occurred to him as he headed back downstairs that he hadn’t thought through the etiquette of taking your other self’s clothes without asking, and he wondered if Ilya would be bothered by it. But when he rounded the corner to the living area, Ilya just raised an eyebrow and said, “I see being married to Rose hasn’t made you any more fashionable.”

“These aren’t my clothes,” Shane protested.

“No, but you picked the outfit.”

Truthfully, Shane had just grabbed the first things he found – a faded grey T-shirt and a pair of black joggers – but he didn’t really see the issue with it. It was comfortable, practical. He felt a bit more like himself, even in what were technically somebody else’s clothes.

Ilya didn’t attempt any more small talk about what Shane was wearing; he was sat hunched over his laptop, and had returned to staring intently at whatever was on the screen.

Shane moved past him to get to the couch. He’d grabbed a book from upstairs – one he was pretty sure he also owned and had therefore probably read before, though he didn’t really remember it. But he needed something to occupy himself, and he felt weird about going on other Shane’s phone or laptop, especially with Ilya there watching him. So he sat down and tried to find it in himself to care, in that moment, about Coast to Coast: Hockey in Canada to the Second World War.

He found it pretty difficult to focus on the words in front of him, and was annoyed at himself for picking up such an academic book. Maybe he needed to go back upstairs and get something a bit lighter, but he also didn’t want to disturb Ilya or draw too much attention to the fact that he had no idea what to do with himself and was probably being extremely awkward right now.

Instead, his mind wandered. He hadn’t really had time to process the whole situation beyond his initial panic and freakout – although now he had a second to think about it, there was a reasonably high chance he was just going to start panicking again. Which would help no one, least of all him. So he tried to open the box up slowly, let the thoughts in one by one, so he could look at them without it completely overwhelming him.

The problem was that even one by one, each thought was pretty fucking overwhelming.

To begin with: I am probably in a parallel universe. The other option was maybe some kind of weird time travel changing-the-past situation, which when he thought about it now, didn’t really make sense, because how, then, would he have his memories of his former life? Realistically, neither option made sense, but he was more comfortable with the former, because it meant there was probably a way back. Which was… good, right? The thought of going back to his old life made Shane feel a bit sick right in that moment. It wasn’t exactly like he could stay here, Shane reasoned. This other, married Ilya didn’t seem exactly likely to turn around and go, hey, you know what, forget about my husband, you’re close enough. Though maybe, the cowardly part of Shane’s brain thought, they could get the other Shane back without swapping them, and he could start fresh as, like, a long lost twin or something. That would be fine, he thought, despite knowing that it wouldn’t.

So, worst case scenario, I am stuck in a parallel universe and can never get back. But a parallel universe with hockey in it. He could make a life here. And he wouldn’t have to… well, do all the things that he had been avoiding for almost five years, maybe longer.

That brought him to thought number two: I think I might be gay. Or “super gay”, as Ilya had put it earlier. Of course, just because the other Shane was gay, or identified as gay, didn’t mean he had to as well. But in the pit of his stomach, Shane knew that it was true about him, too. It put a name to the thing he’d been trying very hard not to name when it came to Rose. Who was beautiful, and his best friend, and perfect for him in every way imaginable, and still, somehow, not right. He had told himself for a long time that it was just Ilya who was different – not because he was a man, but because their fucked up thing was exciting, and dangerous, and always almost out of reach, and that’s why it made him feel so much more alive. What he felt for Rose was just what everyone felt in a long-term relationship – it was safe, it was easy, it was maybe a little boring, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t what he wanted. It had been a comforting and well-practiced lie, and all it had taken, apparently, was for someone to directly challenge him on it. Shane didn’t know when he’d got so good at lying to himself, but it turned out he was pretty bad at lying to other people.

So then, thought number three: My marriage is over. He’d tried to come to terms with that once before, after the incident at the club with Ilya, bracing himself to confess to Rose and expecting her to turn around and walk out on him there and then. Shane wasn’t really sure what he’d been thinking then, cycling through self-hatred and self-destruction and a feeling of the inevitability of it all. Except it hadn’t been inevitable; Rose had forgiven him, had still loved him, and they’d worked through it.

This was different. This was a fundamental incompatibility that they could never work through, no matter how much they loved each other. And maybe it was for the best – it was probably good not to be married to a woman when you’re gay, he supposed – but he did love Rose, and he liked having her in his life. It was a big change and not one he felt fully ready for; maybe he never would.

Thought number four, though, was even harder to face up to: I am probably in love with Ilya Rozanov. If the prospect of going back to his old life made Shane feel a little bit sick, then the thought of seeing Ilya again – his Ilya, the one who he had hurt and pushed away, and who had hurt him – made him feel like he was going to die. Even if Ilya wasn’t married to Svetlana, he had no idea what he could even say to him. “Sorry I ran away from this almost five years ago and then married someone else. Sorry I cheated on my wife with you. Sorry I haven’t been able to get over you. Sorry I’m only just now realizing I’m in love with you.” And what would Ilya say back? “I love you too”? Even if that wasn’t already unlikely, certainly more unlikely than Ilya slamming the door in his face and blocking his number, what would they even do if they did feel the same about each other? Come out and lose their careers? Continue in secret forever? Nothing felt like a real option.

“This is stupid.” Ilya’s voice from the kitchen snapped him out of it. “Google is not helping.”

“Not helping with what?” Shane managed.

“Tried googling parallel universes. How to travel there, how to get back, whatever. Is not helpful. Just stupid science fiction. Nothing useful.”

Shane noticed that Ilya’s accent still got stronger and his sentences shorter when he was stressed.

“Sorry,” Shane said, not quite sure what he was apologizing for.

Ilya said nothing, but continued glaring at his laptop.

“You’re married,” he heard himself saying, suddenly. Ilya jerked his head up and looked at Shane, almost suspiciously.

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“To me. Or not me, but.”

“Yes,” again.

“How did that… happen?”

Ilya was obviously trying to figure out what the angle was. “Which part?”

“I don’t know, sorry, it’s probably stupid.” Shane returned to the book, opening it at random to an article on ‘Organizing Hockey for Women: The Ladies Ontario Hockey Association and the Fight for Legitimacy, 1922–1940’. That did sound vaguely interesting, he thought, and he tried to settle his thoughts enough to read it. He was concentrating hard enough on doing that that he didn’t notice Ilya moving to sit across from him.

“It’s not stupid,” Ilya said, gently. “Is probably strange to get your head around.”

“You could say that,” said Shane. “I guess I just… it all seems so impossible, from where I’m standing. The MLH, the rivalry, the fans, our teams, everything. I can’t understand how you guys have made it work. Wait – are you even out? Is this a secret marriage?”

Ilya laughed. It wasn’t a completely uninhibited laugh – the underlying stress was still there – but he was at least not stressed at Shane. “We are out,” Ilya said. “Not a secret marriage. Not everyone is happy about it, though.”

“Wait – Ottawa!” Shane remembered the phone background. “It wasn’t – Boston and Montreal – did they kick us out?”

“Boston, no,” Ilya said. “I moved to be closer to you.” That, Shane thought, was almost more shocking than the thought of Boston forcing him out. “Shane stayed with Montreal for a few more years, and it was not so much his choice to leave.”

“Shit,” Shane said. “I think that’s actually my worst nightmare.”

“It was not easy, but it was a relief, I think,” Ilya said. “And is fine now. And Ottawa is the best team now it has us. Mostly down to me.” Seeing Shane’s surprise, he added, “We won a cup.”

“So you just… got married, and moved to Ottawa, and you’re still playing hockey?”

Ilya nodded. “It was eight years ago that we really started to figure things out, after Scott Hunter came out. I came here for the first time. After that, it was just about when, not if.”

Shane thought back to that summer. He’d broken up with Rose a few months earlier, and hadn’t seen Ilya since the previous fall. It was the first time he’d felt unhappy, and lonely, while at his cottage. It had been one of his least favorite summers. But for this Ilya and Shane, it had apparently been the opposite.

Instead of expressing any of that, he just asked stupidly, “Who is Scott Hunter?”

“New York Admirals?” Ilya looked at him expectantly, and Shane pulled a face that said, nope, nothing. “Ah, well, that made a difference too. In our world he is a very old, very gay hockey player who kissed his boyfriend very publicly on the ice after winning the cup.”

Shane processed that for a moment. An out gay hockey player. He couldn’t imagine what a difference that might have made to him, even if it still hadn’t been enough for him and Ilya to figure everything out.

And even with an out gay hockey player, Shane had still been forced out of Montreal. He had no doubt Ilya was downplaying some of the other negatives for his benefit.

He tried to ask directly. “The bad stuff… How did you get through it?” Shane couldn’t even imagine the vitriol some fans must have thrown at them, especially if they’d both left Boston and Montreal for a rival team. The MLH was hardly an accepting place for gay athletes, let alone gay athletes that were dating each other.

Ilya gave him a long, serious look. Then he said, “We had each other,” as if that was the only thing that mattered in the world.

Over There – August 8th

Shane was not a religious man, but something about waking up in another universe had inspired him to try praying. It became his nightly routine: as he lay there in the dark, hands clasped together, he tried to focus his thoughts onto Ilya, his Ilya, and picture himself getting back to him. Please, he whispered, to the universe, to a god, he wasn’t quite sure who or what he was asking. I’ll do anything. I just want to go home.

It didn’t seem like anyone was listening.

For the past six mornings he had woken up, first to an empty house, and then to a groggy Ilya, sleeping in the upstairs guest room and still a little uncertain of the fact he was here.

Despite his lack of success, Shane refused to believe that he was stuck here. If he had made it here in the first place, he could make it back. It was only a matter of figuring out how.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, contemplating the situation with Ilya, Shane had had an idea, which by the following evening had fully taken root in his brain. This was the other Shane’s fault. He knew himself. He didn’t entirely know or understand the decisions that had led another version of himself to this place, but he knew how fixed he could get in his thinking, how difficult he could find it to divert course once he’d set himself on a particular path, and he could imagine how desperate that might make him. He had done something – the other him, that is – and he now just needed to figure out what that something was, so that he could reverse it.

Despite his certainty of this fact, Shane was no closer to finding any answers. He had gone back through other Shane’s phone, except this time instead of scouring his messages, he had poured through his notes app, his search history, his emails. He had done the same on his laptop, with an equal lack of success. When none of that had worked, he had turned the house upside-down, looking for anything that might resemble a clue to his other self’s actions or mindset.

Ilya had watched all of this with a mixture of alarm and amusement.

“I do not think this counts as an idea, Hollander,” he said eventually.

Shane looked up from the floor, where he had somehow ended up covered in cushions, while trying to get a look under the couch. As he moved, they rolled off his back, and he momentarily saw himself how Ilya must have been seeing him, and could admit it probably looked pretty stupid.

“There has to be an answer here somewhere,” he replied. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

“Some braincells, probably,” said Ilya, but there was no bite to it. There were limits to how far Ilya could make fun of the situation, considering he was the one who had flown hundreds of miles to talk Shane down from a ledge and, instead of marching him into a doctors office, had ended up believing him about being from another universe.

Shane sighed, stood up, and set about putting the cushions back on the couch.

“There has to be somewhere I haven’t looked,” he muttered to himself.

“What exactly are you expecting to find?” Ilya asked.

“I have no idea,” Shane admitted. “It just feels like there has to be something. I don’t know. Call it a hunch.”

“A hunch,” Ilya laughed. “Okay, sure, we will call it that.”

But he had helped Shane search the kitchen.

Despite the combined effort, they had turned up nothing. So here Shane was, lying in bed, again; alone, again; praying to no-one, again. Please let me get back to my life, my Ilya. I’ll do anything. I just want to go home.

Over Here – August 8th

Co-existing with Ilya wasn’t terrible, even if the two of them were a little awkward around each other. For one thing, Ilya spent most of the day glued to his laptop, breaking only to have meals, which they spent mostly quizzing each other about their respective lives. Ilya was interested not only in Shane’s personal life – actually, he had pretty quickly called it “too depressing” and seemed to bristle every time Shane came even close to mentioning his marriage to Rose, and Shane was happy not to dwell on all the ways his life differed from this Shane’s, so they mostly avoided the subject after day one – but in the other ways their two universes diverged. There were a number of random differences which wouldn’t have occurred to Shane as significant, including the fact that in his universe there was no Scott Hunter, or certainly not one who had made it as a professional hockey player. But other differences too, from big to small: the Berlin wall had come down on a different day; Hayden had two boys and two girls, rather than three girls and a boy. Finding these differences was interesting enough to occupy both of them for an entire evening and take their minds off the fact that neither of them were where they were meant to be.

Shane wasn’t entirely sure what Ilya spent the rest of his time researching, especially since googling parallel universes clearly hadn’t turned up anything, but during the days, he mostly left him to it, and tried to focus on his own routines. He had spent so many summers at this cottage – and this cottage really wasn’t so different to his cottage, in the fundamentals, even if there were signs of Ilya all over it now that he noticed them – that he knew how to pass a few days there, aimlessly. He ran, he did yoga, he swam, he read the books this Shane owned that he didn’t.

In the evenings, lying in the guest room, staring at the ceiling and trying to will himself to fall asleep, the thought he felt most guilty for crept into his head. Please don’t make me go back to my life. Not yet. I can’t do it. Each morning, he woke up with a sick sense of relief, to find himself still in that guest room.

Over There – August 9th

Shane awoke to a text from Rose, which shocked him into full consciousness.

08:13     Rose: Shooting finished early, so I’ll be back first thing tomorrow! Looking forward to seeing you <3

Shit. Shit shit shit. Strangely enough, in the midst of everything, seeing Rose again was something Shane had not prepared for. He knew how to be around her, but not as her husband. He certainly wasn’t going to have sex with her – he wasn’t sure he even could, at this point, and if he’d felt conflicted about the possibility of even being attracted to another version of Ilya, he was pretty sure doing anything with Rose (beyond the panicked kiss they’d shared on his first day here) would thoroughly cross the line into actual cheating. At the same time, he figured he probably had some kind of duty to the other Shane not to fuck up his life without his permission. Since they definitely would be swapping back.

Sorry, while you were away I told your wife I was gay and couldn’t sleep with her and probably ruined your marriage.

Or maybe that was exactly what Shane needed to do. Maybe he had been sent here to fix the things other Shane couldn’t. How was he supposed to know which option was right? Why was there no manual for this?

More importantly than resolving that conundrum, Ilya needed to leave. Today.

Shane got out of bed, his heart racing. Ilya was already up. Ilya wasn’t usually such an early riser; he hadn’t been sleeping much at all since he’d arrived here, Shane thought.

“Morning,” he managed.

“Morning,” Ilya returned, doing his best to sound energized. “We do more tearing the house apart today?”

“Actually,” Shane felt horrible saying it. “You need to leave today. Rose is coming back tomorrow.” Ilya’s face fell. “I didn’t realize it would be so soon,” Shane added, by way of apology. He was about to fuck things up with this other Shane’s wife, and now he was probably also fucking things up with this Ilya. Sure, just cross the country for an alternate version of the man you’re in love with and then get kicked out again because his wife is on her way home. Way to make a guy feel special.

But Ilya just said, “Of course not. I’ll look at flights. I didn’t book a return so, it makes no difference.”

Shane nodded. “You hired a car, right? Otherwise I’d offer to drive you.”

“Thanks, but yes, I have a car.”

There was an awkward silence while Ilya looked at flights on his phone. Then he said, “There’s one at 16.30 this afternoon. Montreal. Booking it now.”

Shane watched him input his information, pay for the flight. Then Ilya leaned back. “Okay, all done. I’ll pack up and leave in a few hours.”

His voice was as neutral as he could get it, but there was an edge to it that hadn’t been there yesterday. It wasn’t anger exactly. Shane couldn’t even begin to imagine the mix of emotions that must be running through Ilya’s head in this moment. He felt like he had let them both down, somehow, by not being able to figure out how to get back to his universe before Ilya had to leave – before Ilya had a chance to be reunited with his Shane, to talk to him. At the same time, Shane had no idea whether other Shane would even want that. Knowing himself, he had to admit that there was every possibility that he would swap back and, over here, Shane would shut down again, and everything would return to how it had been before. Ilya had to be wondering the same thing right now.

In that moment, he vowed to himself that if he woke up in this bed again tomorrow morning, he was going to be honest with Rose. As honest as he could be, considering the circumstances. His other self maybe deserved better than having that decision taken out of his hands, but fuck it, he clearly needed the help.

Shane said none of this to Ilya, though. Seeing the look on his face, he didn’t want to give him anything resembling false hope.

Over Here – August 9th

Shane woke up ready to start another morning the same way as before. He got dressed on autopilot into his running kit, pulled on his shoes, and let himself out of the front door before Ilya had woken up. He moved without thinking about where he was going; he knew every contour of the routes around the cottage like the back of his hand. He often ran without music, so he didn’t notice the absence of his phone. It helped him think.

When he got back to the cottage, Ilya was up and making coffee. Shane couldn’t see the laptop this morning, but he nodded when asked if he wanted coffee, and showered quickly while Ilya let it brew.

Back downstairs, he perched on the edge of the kitchen island while Ilya made them both some breakfast. They ate in comfortable silence.

Then, as Ilya cleared the plates, he said, as if it was the most casual thing in the world, “I am going out today.”

“Okay,” Shane said, not sure how else to respond.

“You will be okay here, alone?”

“I’m thirty-four years old,” Shane said, exasperated. “I can look after myself in my own house for a day.”

Ilya looked like he was considering whether or not this was true, but eventually he nodded. “Okay.” Then he added, “Look, I should probably tell you. I am going to see your parents.”

“Oh,” said Shane.

“I told them you are very sick. Like flu, nothing serious, but you can’t come. I don’t think I know how to navigate this dynamic in front of other people.” He gestured between them. “And I think maybe you could use some time on your own. And no offence, but I could use some time with people from my real life. So, I hope that’s okay.”

It was extremely weird, the thought of Ilya Rozanov going to spend the day with his parents without Shane. But Ilya was right, there was no way they could go round as a pair without it becoming extremely and quickly obvious that something was wrong.

So he said, “Of course, you should go.”

Ilya nodded. “Okay, good. Well, I won’t be far away. Obviously, you know where they live. So if you need anything, just text me.”

Shane nodded.

Ilya nodded back. “Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”

He grabbed the car keys off the side and left; Shane heard the engine and the sound of him pulling out of the drive.

At first, Shane had to admit he did feel a sense of relief at having some alone time, a moment to stop feeling like a guest in his own home. He allowed himself to sneak a peek into his actual bedroom, or the version of it here. It was mostly familiar, the furniture was the same, but there were photos on the bedside tables that he didn’t recognize. On one side, himself and Ilya, close to the camera, lying down in some grass with their heads touching, wide smiles across both of their faces. The lines around their eyes told him that this was a relatively recent photo.

On the other, was a photo he’d never seen before, but one that could have been from his life. It was the two of them at the CCM commercial, but it wasn’t one of the official photos that had been released as part of the campaign. In this image, the two of them were looking into each other’s eyes and laughing. Shane could remember that moment so clearly, even now. Everything had felt so overwhelming and so serious at that point in his life, as if he could make one wrong move and everything would come tumbling down. He supposed not as much had changed between now and then as he might have liked.

It was odd, now, to think about how even breaking during that photoshoot had felt like something to be deeply ashamed of for nineteen-year-old Shane. Fifteen years later, he felt only compassion for the boy in that photo, and warmth at the moment it depicted. He wished he could go back and tell him everything would be okay – he would have the career he dreamed of and successes beyond even his wildest hopes. And yet. Would a part of him not be lying? Had he not given up some of the innocence of the boy he had once been? Was everything really okay?

Shane felt overwhelmed again, and had an urge to get out of there.

He needed distraction, so he went back upstairs, to find another hockey book to busy his mind with.

Over There – August 9^th

Ilya was leaving just after lunch. Shane felt horrible about it, but didn’t know what he could do to change things. Both of them knew Ilya being here when Rose arrived was a bad idea. And Ilya needed to return to his life at some point.

When both of them had finished eating, Ilya got up to leave. His bags were already in the hallway, by the door.

Shane followed him. They stood there, neither of them quite knowing what to say.

Eventually, Shane said, “I know he loves you.” He hoped he wasn’t being too intense. “Don’t ask me how I know. I just know. Please don’t…” He stopped himself. He couldn’t ask Ilya not to give up on Shane, that wasn’t fair, when he had no idea if Shane would even allow himself to be fought for. So instead he said, “Please don’t ever believe that you’re not worthy of his love. I’ve never loved anybody but you.”

Ilya looked like he was biting back tears. He pulled Shane into a rough hug. “Thank you for having me,” he said, as he pulled back.

And then he was gone.

Over Here – August 9th

Shane finished reading Cold War: The Amazing Canada-Soviet Hockey Series of 1972, a book he had definitely read before. It was the evening and he had no idea when Ilya would be back. He was finally starting to get a bit fed up of sitting around reading hockey books, though, and he’d already worked out in the gym, done yoga for an hour and been for the run first thing. He could always work out more, but his muscles ached.

His phone – Shane’s phone – had been sitting on the side table the entire time he had been here. He had been too scared to touch it, since that first morning when he had tried to call Rose. It had felt like an invasion of privacy and he also wasn’t sure he was emotionally prepared for what he might see on there.

But he needed to text Ilya to ask when he would be home anyway. So he reached for it. Input the password. Stared at the screen. Opened their text conversation.

Looking at it made his heart feel heavy.

Shane:   Stopping by the store, do we need anything?

Ilya:        Don’t think so. Don’t take too long, I miss you.

Shane:   It’s been two hours!

Ilya:        Yes, too long.

Shane:   You’re ridiculous. I love you.

Ilya:        Я тебя люблю <3

It was so domestic, so settled. He didn’t scroll up any further, just typed out What time will you be back?, pressed send, and closed the app.

Something stopped him putting the phone back on the side table, though. Instead, he navigated without much thought to the photos app.

In his real life, he had absolutely no photos of him and Ilya together, apart from those released on official channels, and even those he barely allowed himself to look at. Which meant he had almost nothing.

This Shane’s phone was full of snapshots of his life with Ilya, though.

The two of them playing for Ottawa together. Photos with the team. Holding up the cup. Grinning together on the ice. Messing around in practice. Grabbing a drink or dinner after a session. There were candid shots mixed in there too, obviously taken by a teammate or someone working for Ottawa. The two of them on the ice, their heads bent closely together, maybe talking strategy. In the locker room, Ilya whispering something in Shane’s ear, and Shane’s eyes widening, his cheeks flushing red.

Photos of their home life together. The two of them with Anya. Selfies of the two of them snuggled up on the couch. Ilya messing about in the water. Photos of Ilya sleeping that Shane must have taken because he thought it looked cute – which it did. Shane had never really seen Ilya sleeping before.

Photos with his parents. David and Ilya cooking together. Ilya and Yuna asleep side by side on the couch in his parents’ living room, Ilya’s head drooping onto Yuna’s shoulder. His parents wearing matching Hollander and Rozanov jerseys to an Ottawa game.

Even Ilya and Hayden seemed to hang out from time to time in this universe. There were photos of the two of them in Jackie and Hayden’s garden, with the kids climbing all over them. Teaching them to play hockey, with Ilya crouched down to get on a level with – he couldn’t remember the names Ilya had told him they had in this universe, but the two girls. I bet he’s really good with kids, Shane thought, before he could stop himself. It hurt to think it.

When Ilya got home an hour later, Shane was curled up in a ball on the couch, tears covering his cheeks.

“Shane?!” Ilya’s voice was full of concern. He knelt down beside him. “Has something happened? Are you okay?”

Shane couldn’t make himself speak.

“Have you eaten? I’ll make you something.”

“I’m not hungry,” Shane mumbled.

“Just some toast,” Ilya said, firmly. He was back a couple of minutes later with buttered toast and a glass of water. He sat Shane up and took his hand in his, doing the thing he’d done that first day, rubbing his thumb back and forth in a motion that Shane found inexplicably soothing. “Eat,” Ilya instructed him, and Shane did as he was told.

When Shane had had some toast and water, Ilya sat back down beside him, and took his hands again. “Okay,” he said. “Now tell me what happened.”

“Nothing.” How could he possibly explain that he had been curled up in the fetal position, sobbing, over the photos app on his other self’s phone?

Ilya wasn’t letting it go, though. “It’s not nothing,” he said.

“I –” Shane didn’t know where to begin. “I went through your photos. His photos. After I texted you. I was curious.”

“Okay,” Ilya said slowly. “That’s okay. You were curious. Is not a crime.”

“It’s not that.” God, he felt so pathetic. “I just… Your life looks so happy.”

“It is happy,” Ilya said quietly.

Shane started crying again. “I don’t think my life is happy,” he said. “Not like that.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “And that is why you are crying?”

Shane nodded.

“Oh, Shane.” Ilya pulled him into a hug and held him, letting Shane cry into his chest. Shane was too comforted in that moment to be embarrassed, although that would surely come later.

They stayed like that for god knows how long, but Shane eventually stopped crying, and pulled himself away. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what…” He trailed off.

“Don’t be sorry.” Ilya used the corner of his t-shirt to wipe away the last of Shane’s tears. “I am sorry. I hate to see any version of you sad like this.”

Shane didn’t know what to say to that.

“Maybe we should get some sleep?” Ilya offered. “Is very late. You might feel better in the morning.”

Shane nodded weakly. Then, because he had already been incredibly pathetic that day, so what difference did it make, he said, quietly, “Could I sleep with you tonight?”

Ilya’s eyes widened.

“I don’t mean like that,” he quickly clarified. “I’ll wear pajamas if you want. I just… I don’t want to be alone.”

Ilya thought about it for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Yes, okay. I think that is okay.”

Shane felt relief wash over him. Something about seeing everything he’d missed out on had made him feel so raw, so completely broken apart. He didn’t know how to go back up to that guest room and lie there alone, descending into what could only be madness – the madness of regret.

Ilya found them both a pair of pajamas and led Shane into the bedroom.

They both lay down, not touching, and Ilya turned out the lights. Shane could hear him breathing, and focused on the noise, a balm to his racing thoughts. He tried to match his own breathing to the rhythm. It occurred to him that this, too, was new. The first time he had ever been in a bed with Ilya for something other than sex.

Out of the darkness, Ilya’s voice drifted over to Shane. “It upset you because it is what you wish you had.” Shane didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. “But I think you could have it.”

Could he have it? If he went back to his old life, the life he had felt for so long that he had damaged beyond repair, could he really? Shane thought about the man lying beside him, listened to the sound of Ilya’s breathing change as he fell asleep. He thought of his own Ilya, of the last time he had seen him, and suddenly found himself missing him with an ache in his chest so strong it almost physically hurt. Could he have all of that, with his Ilya? A few days ago it had seemed so impossible. But he had seen it. Seen a version of it. Held it in his hands. That was real, wasn’t it?

As he slipped into sleep, he thought, for the first time, Please let me get back to my Ilya. I want to go home.

Chapter End Notes

One chapter left to go. Let's get those sad boys back together <3

Thanks so much for all the comments/interest in this fic! I've had so much fun writing it

Chapter 10

Chapter Notes

Shane woke up in his own bed and knew immediately that he was somewhere else. His body had processed the change in his surroundings before his mind could catch up, but as it did, he took in the lack of photos on the bedside tables, the sheets in a slightly different shade of blue, and the absence of Ilya Rozanov. So he was back. It was what he had wanted, but now he was here, he was also, he had to admit to himself, absolutely terrified.

Shane scrambled for his phone, which was, thankfully, on the bedside table right beside him instead of on the other side of the house. His lockscreen informed him that it was just after eight in the morning, August 10th. He silenced most notifications during the summer but he had a message from Rose waiting for him: hoping to be back for lunch! He clicked on the message thread to see that her final day of shoots had been cancelled so she’d be back earlier in the day. A heavy feeling settled itself in the pit of his stomach.

Without thinking, he navigated next to his text thread with Lily, which, because they had clearly texted recently, was just below Rose.

The last message was just one word: Home. Before that, an hour or so earlier: I’ve landed. Before that, from Shane: Safe flight. Text me when you land?

The feeling in his stomach got heavier as he scrolled back to see more of the messages. Ilya had been here. For several days, by the look of things. His mind raced through different possibilities. Had it just been a welfare check? Did Ilya think he was crazy? Or had he left because he had satisfied himself that Shane was okay? Had they figured out the whole universe-swapping thing? Did Ilya now believe that there was a version of their lives where they were married?

Amidst all of that, a small voice in the back of his head wondered if anything had happened between Ilya and his other self. Had they slept together? Unjustified jealousy twisted in his chest, and immediately and instinctively, Shane pushed it down. If he was going to make it through the next twenty four hours (and he couldn’t let himself think beyond that), he had to take things one at a time. Rose was getting home in only a few hours, which meant their situation was the more pressing of the two. Ilya was a problem for later.

Rose had said she would be back for lunch, so Shane had somewhere between three and four hours to figure out a plan of action. Searching for something to cling onto, Shane settled on the idea of lunch. Rose would be back for lunch, so Shane would make lunch for both of them. He would put effort in, attempt to show her how much he cared about her, so that when he had to break her heart, she would see that it wasn’t because he didn’t love her – he loved her so much – but because he couldn’t love her in the way she deserved.

Holding on to this idea, Shane opened the fridge. There were things in there to work with, but he didn’t think they were going to cut it. He needed to go to the shops. He had a few hours, he could spend the morning cooking – which, as a plan, also had the advantage of taking him out of his head – and surprise Rose with a gesture of care.

An hour later, he returned to the cottage with the ingredients to make coq au vin. He had made it a few times before and so was relatively confident he knew how to do it, and it was one of Rose’s favorites. Perfect, then. He set about prepping the chicken.

It was good, doing something with his hands. Distracting.

As he prepped and set about cooking, Shane thought about the situation he was in. He had accepted that he was gay almost immediately. Really, he had always known, but he was very good at not opening boxes he didn’t want to open. But there was no boxing it back up now, which meant, of course, that his marriage was over. It was one thing to know that intellectually, though, and another thing to make it happen. He had no template for how to have that kind of conversation or make that kind of life decision.

It probably wasn’t the kind of thing you could just come out and say, he figured. “Hi babe, hope the reshoots were fun! I’m gay and our marriage is over.” Not the best starting point.

He hadn’t come any closer to figuring out a better one when he heard a car pulling up and the sound of keys in the door.

“Honey I’m home!” Rose called out.

“In the kitchen,” Shane called back. Rose rounded the corner and her eyes widened appreciatively at the signs of Shane cooking. “I thought I’d make us a proper lunch,” he said, by way of explanation.

“It smells amazing!” She beamed at him. “And oh my god, I could die for some home cooking after a week of hotel and trailer food. When will it be ready?”

“Not long – five or ten minutes?” Shane guessed.

“Perfect! I’ll go dump my stuff and set the table.”

Rose disappeared into their bedroom and returned without her bags. Their bedroom. She moved around him in the kitchen as he finished off the food. It was unsettling, returning to this easy domesticity. Despite the familiarity of the setting, he hadn’t been able to stop feeling like a guest in the other Ilya’s home. Here, with Rose, he was at home. And he was about to blow it all up.

Shane wondered if Rose could tell how on edge he was as he served up the stew, but if she could, she wasn’t making a point of letting him know. She had poured them both a glass of water and also grabbed two ginger ales out of the fridge.

Rose filled him in on her week as they ate, while Shane evaded her questions in return, in a way that he hoped wasn’t obvious and just made it seem like he’d had an incredibly uneventful week – which was probably more believable than the truth.

Once she’d finished telling him about her costar who still couldn’t remember his lines, even after they’d filmed the same scene what felt like a hundred times (Rose had decided she blamed him, personally, for the reshoots) they fell into a comfortable silence, punctuated every now and then by happy little hums from Rose.

“That was incredible,” she said, once they were both finished. “What did I do to deserve such a perfect husband?”

Shane wanted the ground to swallow him up.

That thought must have been all over his face, because Rose put her spoon down and looked at him properly, with a furrowed brow.

“Shane, is something wrong?” she asked him. “You look like someone’s died.”

Shane took a deep breath. He told himself it was now or never, even though, a part of him wanted to reason, there would be other opportunities to have this conversation. But he owed it to both of them not to drag it out any longer than necessary.

So he took a deep breath. “Actually, yeah, there’s something I need to talk to you about. It’s, uh, pretty serious.”

“Ah, okay.” Rose sounded apprehensive, but calm. “This feels a bit like déjà vu. Is that why you went so over the top making lunch?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Shane said. “I mean, no, I wanted to do something nice for you. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again and I know how much you hate the shitty food you end up eating on set. But I guess… I wanted to do something to show you I care about you. So you know that, when I say what I’m about to say.”

“I know you care about me,” Rose said softly.

She didn’t mean it to, but it hurt Shane to hear that. He closed his eyes for a second and tried to focus on what he needed to say. He couldn’t back out of this. It wasn’t fair to either of them.

“I think I’m gay,” he heard himself say. He didn’t open his eyes until a few seconds after. Rose was looking at him wide-eyed.

“You’re gay…?” she repeated.

Shane responded with a small nod.

“When…? How…?” Rose was speaking slowly and Shane couldn’t read the exact emotion in her voice. “How long have you known?”

“Not long,” Shane said. “I mean… part of me has known for a long time, maybe forever. But I’ve been fighting it for so long, it’s hard to know for sure. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I really knew.”

“Have you been with a guy before?” Rose’s voice came out small.

Shane nodded again.

“Was it…” Her voice was even smaller. “Two years ago, was it a guy who you kissed?”

“I –” Shane tried to answer her but the words died in his throat. Instead he said, “I am so, so sorry Rose.”

“Why did you…” She was still speaking slowly, but her voice came out clearer again. “Why did you marry me? Was it… did you want a beard?”

“No,” Shane said forcefully. Why had he married her? He had been so nervous on his wedding day, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself thinking about Ilya. But he hadn’t known, and it hadn’t been transactional or calculated. He knew that much.

Shane looked at Rose and tried to convey how much he meant everything he was saying. “I love you, Rose, I really do. I know it’s not… I’m realizing now that I don’t think I love you the way I should. But I do love you. I think you’re beautiful and kind and funny and you are my best friend. That’s why I married you.”

Rose looked as if she was about to cry.

Shane continued, “I wanted our marriage to work, I really did. It wasn’t just… it wasn’t just about hiding the fact I was gay. I’ve been doing that my whole life anyway. You were the first person I ever felt I had a chance at building a life with. I should have known myself better but I didn’t. I never wanted to hurt you and I’m so sorry.”

Rose was looking down as he spoke, but she raised her eyes to meet his again, and said, “You know I love you, too, Shane. I always will.”

The words were so unexpected that Shane couldn’t formulate a response.

Rose gave him a small smile. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. And this… I can’t even imagine how hard this has been to come to terms with.” She took a deep breath. “That doesn’t stop it hurting. I don’t know. I think I need a bit of time.”

“Of course,” Shane said. “I can – do you want me to go to my parents’ place? Or – I can go back to Montreal. Or –”

Rose cut him off. “No, stay, we need to talk more – I want to talk more. I just need… I think I might go for a walk. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Shane said again. “Just… tell me what you need from me.”

Rose didn’t say anything else, but she got up, pulled her coat back on and left. Shane slumped back into his chair. He didn’t quite feel relieved – he thought he actually felt worse than he had this morning. But it was out there now. He had done the wrong thing again and again, and he would probably be dealing with the consequences of that for a while now, but this was the beginning of trying to make things right.

***

Rose returned a couple of hours later. Despite knowing she needed space, Shane had had to stop himself from calling or texting her, especially after an hour had passed and the irrational part of his brain had started to worry that something might have happened to her. He tried not to let that show, keep his face neutral, let her be in control.

She came to sit down on the couch across from him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” Shane replied.

“Thanks for being patient with me,” Rose said earnestly.

Shane felt, again, that Rose was probably the worst possible person he could have done this to. Here she was, thanking him for being patient with her after he had wasted three years of her life.

Instead of saying that, Shane just asked, “Did it help?”

“Yeah, it did help. I feel… I don’t want to say better. But I think I’m ready to talk properly now.” Her voice was steadier than before, and she didn’t sound on the verge of tears.

“Okay, me too,” Shane said, and was about to launch into another speech about how sorry he was, but Rose cut him off before he could start.

“Before you say anything, can I talk for a minute?”

“Of course, sorry, I’ll just listen.”

“Okay.” Rose settled herself into a more comfortable position, cross-legged and surrounded by cushions. “First of all, I am angry and sad. I need you to know that, and I can’t help it, and I’ll probably feel that way for a while. I wish you had realized this a year and a half ago when you kissed someone else – a man – I mean why didn’t you at least tell me you were bi? – and it hurts that you couldn’t be honest about that with me, and that you were obviously confused, and you’ve been keeping this huge part of yourself from me. It makes me feel like the trust and the honesty I thought we had between us hasn’t been real.”

Shane had promised to listen, so said nothing. She was right, though. He could have – should have – at least been honest with her that he was into men, even if he hadn’t been ready to address the fact that was into just men. Maybe they could’ve talked about it, maybe everything would be different now if he’d been brave enough to do that.

“But I’m also sad for you, Shane. I was thinking about whether I’ve ever heard of an out gay hockey player. There aren’t any, are there? And I know what it is to grow up around that culture. Even in film, which, hello, theatre kids, you’d be surprised at how many people are still in the closet. In 2025! It’s not something I understand, really, so I can’t know what it’s like, but Miles and I have talked about it before, and I actually called him for a bit, while I was walking.” Rose must have seen Shane’s eyes widen, because she said, “I’m sorry, I know maybe I should’ve asked your permission, but I needed to talk to someone and I know he’ll be discreet. He was mad at you on my behalf,” she added pointedly. “But he also helped me understand a little, what it must have been like. Having this whole realization about yourself and how long it’s taken you to get there. I meant it when I said it earlier, I love you, and that means even though I’m kind of pissed off at you right now, I also care about you, and it hurts me to think of how painful all of this must have been for you.”

Shane still said nothing, but kept his eyes on her, willing her to talk more.

“But I also need you to know… You’re my best friend too. Or maybe one of them – this might have got you demoted. But, I have loved being married to you. Even when we barely see each other – or maybe not then. Maybe then it’s kind of sucked, and maybe that’s another reason why it might not be the worst thing to let go of this. But… I don’t think I regret our time together, Shane. I don’t think I’d regret it even if you do.” She looked at him, then, with something like defiance. “Okay, that’s what I needed to say.”

“I don’t regret it either,” Shane replied quickly. “Or I mean – I regret so many things. I regret that I wasn’t more honest with you. I regret that I wasn’t more honest with myself. But –” He found himself reaching out for her, and she gave him her hand, and they both squeezed. “I could never regret spending time with you.”

“We’ll get through this, then,” Rose said. “I can’t – I don’t want to hate each other. I’d find that so exhausting.”

“Me neither.” For the first time, Shane felt genuine relief. “But you can be mad at me right now. I’d understand that.”

The corner of Rose’s mouth twitched into an almost-smile. “Lucky me to have such an understanding soon-to-be ex-husband.” But there was no bite in her voice. There was a way to go before they’d be anything approaching properly okay, but sat there, with their hands clasped together on the couch, Shane knew they would make it happen.

***

As it turned out, getting divorced, even when you’re trying to be as amicable as possible, and can both afford expensive lawyers, was a pain in the ass. Shane kept the cottage and they sold the house in Montreal; Rose was no longer shooting in Canada and decided she only needed a place in LA, which also offered her a fresh start. Shane bought himself another house in the city, and set about making it his own.

He tried to ignore the headlines.

ROSE LANDRY AND SHANE HOLLANDER SPLIT AFTER THREE YEARS OF MARRIAGE: EVERYTHING WE KNOW

ROSE LANDRY SPOTTED WITH MYSTERY MAN IN LA AFTER SPLIT FROM MLH-STAR EX

SHANE HOLLANDER LOOKS HEARTBROKEN AS HE'S SEEN FOR FIRST TIME SINCE LANDRY SPLIT

The last one had irrationally annoyed him – who doesn’t look tired and low energy on their way to morning practice from time to time?! But he’d mostly tried to tune them out, and to tune out the chirping of his teammates about how badly he’d managed to fumble Rose fucking Landry.

Only Hayden and JJ had sincerely checked in, and Shane had initially given both of them versions of the PR statement he and Rose had prepared together. We are sad to announce that we have made the decision to end our marriage. This is not a decision we take lightly, but ultimately balancing the demands of our careers with our personal lives became too difficult. We remain friends and continue to love and respect one another, and we will always cherish our time together.

Both Hayden and JJ had accepted this (in a “fine, you don’t have to tell me” way, rather than an actually accepting it way), but then Rose had found out. “I thought coming out as gay and divorcing me was meant to mark a new phase of self-acceptance?”

“I’ll tell them eventually,” Shane had protested. “It’s just so intense at the moment. I need everything to calm down a bit and then I’ll deal with it.”

“Shane.”

“Rose.”

“You can’t stay in the closet forever.”

She was right, unfortunately. So, near the beginning of the season, Shane had invited Hayden and JJ round to his new place, on the pretense of housewarming, and told them the truth. After they’d finished talking about it (“How long have you known?” “Do you have a boyfriend?” “We need to get you a boyfriend! I think my friend Dan is gay…?”), as the conversation drifted back to hockey (because, it turned out, Shane being gay wasn’t actually that life-changing or interesting for either of them), Shane realized he felt physically lighter.

He had told his parents too, at the same time as he told them he and Rose were getting a divorce. The two of them had waited a few days to let everything settle, and then driven round together, because Rose thought it would help for them to put up a united front (and because she wanted to make clear to Yuna and David that even though she was divorcing Shane, she still wanted them in her life). Both of his parents had sensed that things weren’t perfect between them, as it turned out, but the news still came as a shock. Shane knew Rose still wasn’t completely okay with it at that point, but by being there, and holding his hand, she did everything she could to reassure his parents that she was okay, and allow them to focus on supporting their son in that moment. Shane would love her forever for that.

Yuna had, predictably, gone into planning mode not long after and had already lined up a list of potential sponsors should Shane decide he was ready to come out more publicly. He had told her, pointedly, that he was not.

Rose was back in Montreal for a few days over Christmas, visiting a friend she’d met while filming there. She’d texted Shane: Let’s get dinner, and when he’d agreed, followed up with a prompt reservation and a See you soon! xxx

Shane knew she was putting a lot of effort into building back a friendship, and he was grateful for it, because he certainly didn’t have the ability to navigate that kind of thing on his own.

Rose had booked them a private table, and she was already sat down when Shane arrived. They ordered, and shared a bottle of wine, and she caught him up on her life in L.A. She was working on a pilot which she was genuinely excited about, and had been dating – casually – a nice man called Simon who she’d met in a coffee shop. “I can’t jump into anything serious this soon,” she sighed. “But he’s pretty great.”

Shane was genuinely happy for her.

“What about you?” she asked, pointedly.

“Oh, you know, same old.” Shane shrugged. “Hockey’s been going alright. I don’t know if we’re in shape for a cup run this season but we’ve got a couple of promising rookies, and I’m doing my best to at least get us close.”

Rose raised her eyebrows. “That wasn’t what I was asking.”

“I haven’t been seeing anyone,” Shane said.

“Is there anyone you’d… want to be?”

Shane thought about Ilya, and said nothing.

Rose must have seen that in his expression, and she continued, “Look, you don’t have to answer this, but, the person you kissed while we were married… Did that really mean nothing?”

Shane opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out.

“Yeah, I had a feeling,” Rose said.

Shane looked at his hands, which were twisted together in his lap. “I’m sorry I lied about that.”

“You were lying to yourself, really, weren’t you?” She was looking at him sympathetically. “I can’t hold on to anger about that kind of thing.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Shane said, half-incredulous, but completely meaning it.

“You’re not a bad person, Shane,” Rose said sincerely, meeting his eyes. “Everyone’s fucked up.”

“I know, but I wish I wasn’t.”

“Oh, shut up, stop being so self-flagellating.” Rose gave his shoulder a friendly punch. “So what about this guy? Is he… I mean, does he still mean something?”

Shane thought about Ilya. How could he even begin to answer that question?

***

The evening after Shane told Rose he was gay, his phone buzzed with a text from Lily.

21:19     Lily: was it ok with rose?

So other Shane must have told Ilya that Rose was due back. Shane realized that Ilya probably still thought the Shane he was texting was the other Shane, which meant that he was probably just being a decent guy, and checking in on the version of Shane that was married to Ilya and very much did not know how to be married to Rose. He wondered if Ilya would be happy to find out they’d managed to swap back, or whether he would be disappointed.

He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of telling him.

That said, he also felt weird about leaving Ilya’s text unanswered, when it was, he thought (or did he hope?), a sign of care. And when he had spent the best part of the last week being looked after by a version of Ilya, even if it wasn’t quite the same man.

It took him over half an hour to settle on a response he was happy with.

21:51     Shane: Hi Ilya. You should probably know, we’ve managed to swap back somehow. So it’s me again.

Ilya didn’t reply until the next morning, and Shane was frustrated at himself for how much he found himself anticipating it, checking his phone every few minutes even though the silence told him he had no new notifications, and jumping out of his skin at every new notification he did get.

11:13     Lily: thanks for letting me know. you ok?

11:34     Shane: I’m okay

Then he added, before he could stop himself,

11:35     Shane: Are you?

11:42     Lily: ish. been a weird few days. probably for you too?

11:43     Shane: Weird is an understatement

11:49     Lily: I think maybe we should talk?

Ilya had asked to talk multiple times over the past few years and Shane had shut him down every time, far too scared of where a conversation would take him. He didn’t want to do that again, but he also didn’t know how to navigate everything with Ilya while everything was happening with Rose, and he hadn’t even told his family he was getting divorced, let alone that he was getting divorced because he was gay, and it was still all a bit much right now.

He figured he could at least try being honest.

12:26     Shane: We should, and I want to. Things are a bit complicated for me right now, though. So I don’t know when I’ll be able to.

Then, he added,

12:29     Shane: I don’t expect you to wait. But I need time.

There was another long break before Ilya replied again.

20:02     Lily: will try

Ilya had promised to try. That was something, but it was also open-ended. Shane couldn’t ask for more than that. He had no idea when he would actually be ready to confront everything he felt for Ilya and everything that meant – for their careers, for their lives. And Ilya deserved to be more than a rebound from what was turning out to be an embarrassingly public divorce. Shane had no idea where to begin with everything he wished Ilya could be.

***

Boston was their first game of the season, and Shane and Ilya took the first face-off. It was nothing new; they had been facing off for years, through all of their hooking up and then through all of their not-hooking up. Except this time was different, because Shane knew he was in love with Ilya, and he wondered if Ilya knew that too, and yet he still hadn’t managed to reach out to him. Not properly.

He had wondered if Ilya would reach out when the news of his and Rose’s divorce started breaking everywhere, but he hadn’t.

Or as their first game against each other approached, half of him had expected a hotel room number, or a text asking for Shane’s new address.

But he had told Ilya he needed time, and Ilya was respecting that. Or, Shane thought grimly, maybe the kind of we should talk Ilya had meant wasn’t the good kind, and so Ilya wasn’t upset about being able to put it off. Maybe Ilya had seen the news of Shane’s divorce and felt nothing except sorry for him. He wanted to believe Ilya could love him, like the other Ilya loved the other Shane. But maybe that wasn’t possible here.

So Shane didn’t text, and they didn’t exchange any words at the face-off. Shane could feel Ilya’s eyes on him, insistently, searching for something. He tried to reciprocate something, but he wasn’t sure what he even wanted to say. Not yet.

They played Boston again a few weeks later, this time away, flying out the night before with an early return flight the morning after. This time, Shane contemplated initiating, texting Ilya something like: Can I come over tomorrow morning? But they had practice, and he wasn’t convinced Ilya would say yes, and he still wasn’t ready.

They faced off again, and Ilya’s eyes were on him again, and Shane was a coward. His heart ached with how much he wanted to reach for Ilya and pull him close and never let him go, while his body went through the motions on the ice.

He barely registered the score of either game.

After their November game, they wouldn’t play Boston again until February, so the next time he would see Ilya would be at the All Stars game. Shane decided, on the flight back from Boston to Montreal, that it would have to be then. He couldn’t see Ilya again and keep avoiding him – it wasn’t fair to either of them. So he had just over two months to figure his shit out.

What was he so afraid of? He knew he was gay. That had felt like life-shattering information, until it wasn’t – until it was simply a fact, and almost everyone he presented it to reacted as if it wasn’t even a particularly interesting fact.

He knew he was in love with Ilya, which was maybe even more life-shattering information, but really what Shane struggled with more than anything was uncertainty, and so this newfound certainty about how he felt made him a sort of calm.

Not only did he know these things, but he had what many people could never have – a vision of what it might one day look like. And, okay, maybe aspects of that terrified him. He couldn’t imagine people reacting any better here to the fact that he and Ilya were together, especially if the media could run with the headline that it had anything to do with the end of Shane’s marriage. He might have to leave the Metros. He had no guarantee of a safety net in Ottawa, could only hope that the same conditions which had existed years earlier for his counterpart might be replicated for him (and Ilya) now. And. And. And.

But none of these things were really holding Shane back. He had been living a lie for most of his adult life, and he was sick of it. He was sick of being everything he thought he should be instead of who he actually was. He was so tired. He wanted to come home at the end of the day to a man he loved and collapse into his arms and stop hating himself. If the media reacted, fuck it. If his team couldn’t handle it, fuck them. Shane was done being unhappy.

No, it wasn’t any of those things that scared him.

If anything, it was the opposite.

Shane had seen how happy it was possible for him to be, and he was terrified that it was too late for him to ever have it here. He was terrified that getting close might have ruined him. What if he turned up on Ilya’s doorstep and Ilya didn’t want him? What if Ilya loved him but couldn’t forgive him for all the years that Shane had wasted? What if he had to spend the rest of his life living with the knowledge that he could have had everything if he had only been a little braver? These thoughts were almost too terrifying to let in.  

***

When Rose said, “Does he still mean something?”, Shane tried to answer honestly. Not just for her, but for himself.

In the end, “I think so,” was as close as he could manage to the truth.

“Then,” Rose said softly, “what are you waiting for?”

Shane gestured at the air around him. “This. Everything. I don’t know. I’m so fucked up. You know that better than anyone. How can I… How can I ask anyone to take a chance on that?”

***

In spite of all his protests, by the time Shane was hugging Rose goodbye, he was booked onto the next flight to Boston.

The flight wasn’t until the following morning. He would get in about midday. He could get a cab from there, and hope that Ilya hadn’t moved house in the years since he’d been there, because it suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t been there in years. At the same time, he refused to let himself text Ilya for fear of making it too real and chickening out. He had booked this flight after several glasses of wine, with Rose staring him down across the table, and it was taking every part of the sober anxious Shane of the following morning to even get himself onto the plane in the first place.

Shane also realized, as he maneuvered through the airport, that it was almost Christmas. Would Ilya even be in Boston? Where did he spend Christmas these days? After Ilya’s father had died, Shane remembered him going back to Russia less and less. But that didn’t necessarily mean he’d be staying in Boston during the holiday season.

So many things about this made it a terrible plan. Shane simply could not think about any of them.

The flight arrived in Boston on time, and Shane was one of the first off the plane, nervous energy coursing through his entire body. He got a cab as soon as he could, threw his suitcase in the back, and gave the driver Ilya’s address.

It felt like barely any time had passed before the car was pulling up, and Shane was jumping out, and grabbing his suitcase, and punching in Ilya’s gate code – which, thankfully, he hadn’t changed. Really, Ilya? Shane thought. It’s been five years. It was a miracle he hadn’t been robbed.

It was at this point that Shane’s plan came to an abrupt stop. He forced himself to keep moving, anyway. Walk to the door. Knock. Wait.

There were footsteps on the other side. Shane was pretty much convinced he was going to have a heart attack.

The door opened. And there was Ilya.

It was a cliché, but the sight of him took Shane’s breath away. His hair was golden and still slightly damp from the shower. His face was covered in light stubble. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms slung low over his hips, and no shirt; Shane tried not to stare. The other Ilya had been undeniably handsome, practically identical to this Ilya in every way. And he’d seen Ilya, recently enough, across the ice, albeit in contexts where Shane had been avoiding paying too much attention. It had been years since Shane had allowed himself to feel this completely mesmerized by Ilya’s presence.

“Shane,” Ilya said, startled.

“Ilya.”

“What are you…?”

“You wanted to talk. So I’m here.”

Ilya gave him a look that made clear that was not a satisfactory explanation, but moved aside so that Shane could come in.

“Did you, uh…” Ilya followed him back inside, searching for the right words. “Are you in Boston for something?”

“I’m here to see you,” Shane said. “I came straight from the airport.”

Ilya seemed to notice his suitcase, then, for the first time. “You are staying somewhere?”

“Oh, I haven’t figured it out, but I can find somewhere if I need to.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Instead, he opened the fridge and offered Shane a ginger ale. Shane took it gratefully, and not without a little flip of his heart at the fact Ilya had those stocked in the first place. Ilya grabbed one for himself, as well.

He shut the fridge, but carried on standing there. Shane hovered nearby, half leaning on the counter.

Ilya looked at Shane. Shane looked at Ilya.

“So, I hear you are divorced now,” Ilya said eventually.

“Right, yeah,” Shane said. “Or, not completely yet. It takes ages to get finalized, even though we really haven’t argued over anything. But almost.”

“What happened? You decided Rose Landry wasn’t hot and famous enough for you?” Shane couldn’t tell whether there was a real edge to that or whether Ilya was just teasing him.

“Actually, I realized I’m gay.”

Ilya choked on his ginger beer.

Shane continued, “Turns out that’s a bit of a dealbreaker when you’re married to a woman.”

“No shit.” Ilya laughed, which made Shane laugh.

“So you’re what, on the market now?”

“Sort of,” Shane said. “Not really.”

They had been drifting closer together as they spoke, so that they were now within touching distance of each other, but neither of them reached out.

“Not really,” Ilya repeated slowly.

“Ilya,” Shane put his ginger beer down and steeled himself. He had no idea what he was going to say, but he needed to say something, so he let the words come tumbling out of him. “I need you to know, I made a huge mistake five years ago. I should never have let you go. I think I’ve regretted that every second since, even though I haven’t always let myself feel it. And instead I’ve been pushing down every part of myself trying to make this go away, trying to be somebody different. I’ve been so scared. I’m still scared. There’s so much that could go wrong here and we both know that, we’ve both known it forever. But I don’t want to be scared anymore. I can’t be. If I lose my career, if I have to move teams, I think I’d do that. And I’m so sorry I haven’t known how to mean that before. I’m so sorry for all the hurt I’ve caused both of us. I just… I wish I hadn’t run away from us like that. I don’t want to run away anymore. I don’t want to –”

Shane didn’t get to finish the sentence before Ilya’s mouth came crashing down on his.

***

Later, in bed together, tangled up in the sheets and each other, not knowing where Shane ended and Ilya began, Shane pressed a kiss again Ilya’s forehead, and said, “Я тебя люблю”.

Ilya turned to stare at him. “What did you just say?”

Shane repeated it. Then he said, “It means I love you, doesn’t it?” He remembered the dream – the dream that he now thought was probably more than a dream – and something in him knew.

Ilya looked away from him, and Shane panicked. They had only just found their way back together, had he already fucked it up?

But when Ilya turned back, his eyes were wet with tears, and he was pressing kisses to Shane’s cheeks, his forehead, his neck, his lips, and whispering those words back to him. Я тебя люблю. Я тебя люблю.

“I love you so much,” Shane murmured into Ilya’s hair.

They kissed for a while, and then pulled away to look at each other again.

“What happens now?” Ilya asked, and he sounded so vulnerable, uncertain.

“I don’t know,” Shane admitted. “And I know it won’t all be easy. But Ilya, I’ve seen what our lives could look like together. And it was beautiful.”

***

A universe away, Ilya and Shane were lying together in their house in Ottawa, moments away from falling asleep.

“Do you think we’ll ever know?” Shane mumbled sleepily into Ilya’s neck.

“Know what, моя любовь?”

“If they worked everything out? The other Ilya and Shane.”

Ilya pulled his husband in closer to him, holding him tight. “I think we already know.”

Chapter End Notes

and finally the angst gives way to HEA ❤️ thank you for all the lovely comments on this, I'm not able to reply to all of them but I read every single one and really appreciate them