Work Text:
i.
Shane Hollander is eight years old, he’s just made his ice rink’s junior hockey team, and he’s discovering there’s nothing he likes more than being on the ice. Hockey just makes sense, and he’s good at it! He's the youngest on the team, by far, but he knows he’s one of the best. He knows the kids in his class think he’s weird for how much he likes hockey, and talks about hockey, and makes everything about hockey. But he thinks they’re weird too, and they play games that don’t make sense and have fake rules, unlike hockey. The rules to hockey don’t change, they stay the same no matter what. and everybody knows them, too, which Shane thinks is very fair and reasonable.
Shane tries to explain this once, when his classmates invite him to a game of tag at recess and then promptly kick him out for not following the rules. He didn’t even know there were more rules than tag, you’re it!, but halfway through the other kids decided that if your shoes were white you got an extra life, and if you spun around four times without falling over you could un-tag yourself. He tells them that this isn’t fair, you can’t just change the rules like that. They tell him that he’s boring and weird and a hockey freak and that he’s not invited to play with them ever again.
Shane also doesn't understand the rules his classmates seem to have outside of tag. Why it's okay for Julia, who sits at a whole different table from him at lunch, to come find him during recess and talk to him while her other friends are busy on the swings. But when he goes to talk to her at lunch, she turns fiery red and refuses to look at him. Tells her friends she doesn't know why he'd come over to talk to her, isn't he weird? She and her friends laugh at him until he leaves. Shane returns to his table, his ears burning and eyes stinging, wondering what rule nobody told him about that he broke this time.
Shane's classmates tell him if he loves hockey and its rules so much he should go play it on his own. Shane thinks that if this is how other people are, he's okay playing on his own. He doesn't want to deal with the stupid rules that other people have.
ii.
Shane is still eight, and he’s bored out of his mind at the grocery store. He's wandering around the pharmacy section, while his mom weighs the pros and cons of different cereals, when he sees it. It's a small box of band-aids, all covered in designs of cartoon bears. Shane picks it up and knows immediately that he needs it. He doesn't know how he's going to explain it to his mom, he doesn't even have a cut. And if he did, they have more than enough bandages at home. Shane doesn't even like bears. But he can't bring himself to put it down. He manages to hide it from his mom all the way until they check out, when he has no choice but to put it with their other items at the register.
Shane steels himself for his mom's reaction, because he knows she's going to say no and he hates fighting with his parents, but he also can't bring himself to lie to them. But when she asks what they're for, and he stutters out that he doesn't know why but he knows he needs them, all Yuna does is smile softly, kiss his forehead, and hand him the box once they've finished checking out. Shane cradles the bandages to his chest the entire way home.
He's not sure what to do with them once he's back in his bedroom, alone with silly bear band-aids he doesn't even want to use, so he puts them on a shelf in his closet, and tries to forget they're there.
iii.
Shane has just started middle school when he starts to hear the whispers about soulmates. He'd heard people talk about couples being soulmates before, but nobody had ever told him how they knew. He hears murmurs about how Emilia from language arts was caught buying decks of Pokemon cards when she's the kind of girl that would never be caught dead with anything like that—is she secretly a nerd, or does she have a soulmate that's into them? He hears stories about people's best friend's cousin's coworker, who got caught buying drugs and tried to get out of it by claiming they didn't even want it, it wasn't for them, it was for their soulmate, they were compelled to buy them.
Shane learns that if you’re one of the rare, lucky few that have a soulmate, at some point you will start to collect for them. Or at least, that’s what they say. For every one of Shane's classmates that do believe in the stories, in the fantasy of there being a perfect match out there that you're bound to collect for until—if—you meet, there's three more that say that it's all bullshit. It’s not common enough to be widely believed, but not rare enough to be never mentioned.
But if you do collect and you do believe, it's frowned upon to talk about it out loud. It's rude, they say, for people who get true love to rub it in the faces of those who don’t. Shane doesn’t understand how people can simultaneously not believe in soulmates and get offended that they don’t have one. You can’t play center and goalie at the same time, right? He doesn't know if his parents believe, and he’s starting to get the impression from his classmates that it’d be baby-ish of him to ask. So he doesn’t. And he’s left to wonder on his own.
Shane lies in bed at night and thinks about the box of bear band-aids on the shelf in his closet. Next to it, a bottle of hair mousse he couldn't stop himself from buying. His hair has never held a curl and likely never will. There's a box of hot chocolate up there too, that he had to add to his family's cart at the grocery store in the middle of August.
Shane thinks about the corner of his cubby at the ice rink, where he keeps a roll of extra stick tape from a brand he would never use (it’d be bad luck) shoved in the back corner. Just in case.
He's in class one day and hears the kids behind him whispering about how they heard a boy four grades above them got beat up because he told the wrong person that he was collecting for another boy.
A few months ago, Shane had spent his allowance on a pair of socks. They were covered in race cars and were a size too big. Shane told himself he would grow into them. But months have passed, they're still a size too big, and they still sit unworn in his closet, next to the band-aids. Shane listens to the kids behind him talk and doesn't think about how he doesn't know any girls with feet larger than him that are also into cars.
Shane goes home that day, takes the socks off the shelf, and stares at them. He decides that he doesn’t believe in soulmates.
He doesn’t throw the socks away.
iv.
Shane is twelve when one evening after dinner, he has to go find his mom immediately. He doesn’t know what’s going on, or what’s wrong, he just knows that he needs to see her. He finds her in her home office, and goes over to her desk chair, wraps her in a hug, and refuses to let go. It's only when she starts getting concerned that something's wrong that he reluctantly releases her.
He doesn’t know what she sees in his eyes, but she closes her work and asks if he wants to watch a game with her, instead. They wind up on the couch together, watching some farm teams play each other, ragging relentlessly on them. Shane’s not lying when he tells her that there's nothing wrong with him, that nothing happened to him, that he's okay. He just felt… like he needed to see her.
There's a note from his mom stuck to the fridge the next morning. She's already left for work when he finds it as he's getting ready for school.
I love you, and I'm proud of you no matter what!!
<3 Mom
Shane feels a little dumb reading it. He's twelve years old, he doesn’t need his mom to write him sappy notes like that anymore. He doesn’t even know why she wrote this one, he told her he was fine. But he’s also not going to pretend like it doesn’t make him happy to read. He does love his mom, after all. It's not the only note she's ever left him, and it's far from the last one, but it's the only one that makes it onto the shelf in his closet.
He's not sure why he puts it there, everything else he has up there is somewhat useful. This is just a post it from his mom. He has a whole separate box for sentimental stuff. Nonetheless, he places it on the shelf, gently smooths it down, closes the closet door, and carefully does not think about it.
v.
Shane’s fourteen and there's a bottle of men's cologne on the shelf in his closet now. He sprayed it once, after he got it, to try it. His bedroom had smelt like musk and pine and like the guys in his classes do when they're trying to impress the girls. Shane doesn't understand why they're all so obsessed with getting a girlfriend in the first place.
He tells himself that he doesn't want a girlfriend because he's trying to focus on hockey, on making history. He tells himself that if—when—he wants a girlfriend, he'll use the cologne, because that must be why he bought it. because if he had bought it for someone else, wouldn’t that make him the girl?
He’s not a girl. So the cologne has to be for him.
The boy who sits next to him in science class wears the same cologne. Shane thinks what if?, but James doesn’t like cars, or bears, or hockey. Shane spends the rest of the day after James said he didn’t know anything about hockey weirdly sad. Shane doesn’t know what he even has to be sad about. He doesn’t believe in soulmates, and if he did have one, it’d be a girl. Because he likes girls.
Shane still finds himself sneaking glances at James when he can. He doesn’t think about why.
vi.
Shane's sixteen when he bites his tongue so hard it bleeds to stop himself from asking the cashier at the gas station if he can get a pack of cigarettes. He walks out, the Gatorade he was planning on buying lying abandoned on the counter, and forces himself back into his car. He doesn't smoke. He never wants to smoke.
He's not even old enough to legally buy cigarettes in Ontario, what is he doing?
By the time he makes it back home, his knuckles are white from how tightly he's been gripping the steering wheel. He feels nauseous. He feels like he needs to go back.
He runs laps around his neighborhood that evening until he’s dizzy. He keeps going after that, until he's forced to stop and dry heave in his driveway. He can't take another step without feeling like his lungs are going to collapse. Shane thinks maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if they did.
Sometimes he feels like if his heart gets any heavier it's going to fold in on itself like a dying star. Create a black hole that will engulf him and everything he's worked for, swallowed by the magnitude of what he chooses not to think about.
Sometimes Shane wonders if it's not too late already. Sometimes Shane thinks he’s already collapsing under the weight of what he can’t be.
Shane does eventually get a girlfriend, the spring before he's set to get drafted. He doesn't use the cologne he bought when he's with her. he chooses not to think about it—besides, if she likes him without the cologne, why does he need to bother using it at all? He holds her hand and takes her to bed, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, and it’s fine. She's not his soulmate, because soulmates are a myth, and he doesn’t have one.
When Shane's at his weakest, he'll let himself wonder. Even when he does, he won't admit to himself that there's a person out there that he's collecting for. He tells himself he'll find a use for everything on the shelf eventually. But when it's been a long day of feeling alone on and off the ice—
(Because even though hockey is his home nobody has been able to keep up with him on the ice in years. It's long since become Shane and the rest of the team.)
He doesn’t think of anyone in particular, but they’d play hockey. They'd have to, because hockey is the most important thing to Shane Hollander, and always will be.
vii.
When Shane is seventeen, he meets Ilya Rozanov in a dreary parking lot in Regina. When Shane walks past him, after their stilted half-conversation ends, he catches a whiff of cigarette smoke and a scent he knows he could recall smelling before if he tried. He doesn't try. He has a championship to win.
He gets drafted second, finds Ilya Rozanov alone in a gym, and breaks up with his girlfriend. He turns 18 and moves to Montreal, and the second day he’s on his own in the city he buys a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Shane still doesn’t smoke.
He films a commercial. He falls into bed with Ilya Rozanov. He wins rookie of the year. He puts all of himself into the ice, and he loses some games but wins even more. He falls into bed with Ilya Rozanov again. He doesn’t think about it.
(One night he goes to the store to get shampoo. He gets the shampoo, but he also gets a knee brace. His knee feels fine. When he watches the Bears play later that week, Rozanov is out on IR with an injured knee. Shane doesn’t think about it.)
Shane goes to Russia, goes to the Olympics. Doesn’t hear from Lily. Loses the MVP award in Vegas. He loses a bit of himself in Vegas, too. He doesn’t think about it.
The thing is, things just make sense with Rozanov, on and off the ice. On the ice, playing against Rozanov, Shane experiences hockey in a way he hasn’t in years. It'd been so long since anyone was a real challenge, a real equal on the ice. Shane is motivated to practice harder, play better, because he has to if he wants to be able to beat Rozanov. He's not alone on the ice when he’s playing against Rozanov. and off the ice, well—
Shane’s face heats up just thinking about it. He knows he should end it. He knows what they’re doing is wrong, and can get them in so, so much trouble. but he can’t stop it. Being in bed with Rozanov makes him feel alive, and comfortable in ways that were foreign to him before.
In bed with Rozanov Shane doesn’t have to think about trying to follow rules, or being perfect, or anything. Shane doesn’t have to think at all, actually. It's addictive. It's going to ruin him. Rozanov is an asshole with no shame, but he makes Shane feel at ease.
Rozanov will call him boring, and make fun of his ginger ale. But he won’t call Shane a freak. He'll laugh when Shane wants to talk about the Admirals' offensive strategy a minute after they both cum, but will get just as into it as Shane will.
Shane still doesn’t want a soulmate. He's seen enough of his teammates' relationships fail to know that he doesn’t think it's for him. J.J. will come into the locker room complaining about how he likes this girl but can’t text her back too soon or he’ll seem too eager, but he can’t take too long or he’ll scare her off. Shane couldn’t take that amount of… pretending.
He and “Lily” respond to each other immediately, or hours late, or sometimes not at all. There's no made up rules or pretend posturing there. Shane knows what he’s getting when he sees Ilya Rozanov.
Sometimes before Shane falls asleep, he has the fleeting thought that maybe a soulmate wouldn’t be so bad if it was someone like Rozanov.
In the morning, he never remembers.
viii.
Two weeks after Shane starts dating Rose Landry, he finds himself at the store buying toothpaste he doesn't use. He knows he's seen someone use it before though, so he drafts a text to Rose as he's walking out of the store.
Shane: Hey. Weird question, but do you need any toothpaste? I accidentally brought an extra tube and don't want it to go to waste.
He takes a photo of the tube to attach, and then hesitates with his thumb over the send button. He doesn't want to ask her, he realizes. He doesn't know what he'll do if she says yes. He doesn't know what he'll do if she says no. He doesn't believe in any of this in the first place, so why is he even thinking about it at all? It's just a tube of toothpaste.
It takes him another week before he remembers where he’d seen the toothpaste before. In a bathroom in Boston, before Hollander became Shane and Rozanov became Ilya and everything went to shit. But Rozanov can’t be Ilya. Rozanov can’t be someone to Shane. Because Shane’s starting to suspect that if Rozanov became his, he might never want to let him go. And he can’t, Shane can't. He has a career. They both have careers.
He cannot jeopardize both of their futures because what, he’s catching feelings for the guy who dicks him nine ways to sunday, as Hayden would say? No.
So Shane doesn’t think about it. He has Rose, he’s happy! Maybe he can’t get it up sometimes when he’s with her but it’s fine! It happened with all his girlfriends in the past, so that means it has to be a normal thing to happen to men when they try to fuck women.
And none of the other guys talk about it happening because it’s embarrassing.
But it’s normal. Shane’s normal, he’s good at being normal, he can be normal for Rose.
He ignores that it was never a problem he had when he was fucking Rozanov. He ignores most of the things he thinks about Rozanov, these days.
(He sees Rozanov at the club. He takes Rose home, and doesn’t think about when Rozanov fucked him on his staircase. It’s… fine. The next morning, after she’s gone, he goes down to the corner store and buys a pack of cigarettes. It's a different brand than the one he bought years ago.)
He and Rose go out for wine and in the span of seven minutes he gets broken up with, comes out as gay, and then comes out as a bottom.
He’s just shot down her offer of Miles’s number and is making the mistake of thinking that the hardest conversation of the night (and possibly his life) is behind him when Rose takes another sip of her wine and raises her eyebrows at him.
“Sooo… now that we’re on the same page about the gay thing,” she starts, placing her wine glass back on the table. “Would it be too much for me to ask about what’s going on in the bottom drawer in your closet?”
He knows immediately what she’s talking about. When he moved from his parent’s house in Ottawa to his condo in Montreal, he left the majority of his belongings behind. It's not like there was a lot for him to take with him anyways, besides his books and the hockey gear that’d be coming with him regardless. And he figured he’d be visiting his parents enough that it’d make sense to keep stuff for when he stayed there.
When he had been packing up, he told himself he was going to leave everything on the shelf in his closet behind. He was an adult, moving on his own, he could leave this part of his life behind.
And he did!
For about a month, until the first time he came back and found himself packing a ten year old box of bear band-aids, among other items, into his duffel bag before he left. As soon as he had made it back to his condo in Montreal, he had shoved everything into the furthest drawer in his new closet, slammed it shut, and vowed to never open it again.
This becomes another promise to himself that he breaks. In the years since he’s moved in, the drawer has become increasingly full. And in the past few months, Shane’s been adding to it with a frequency that would scare him, if he thought about it too hard.
(The week before things had gone south in Boston, the Voyageurs had been playing an away game against the Pittsburgh Pelicans.
Hayden had dragged Shane to some tacky souvenir store, saying something about how the twins had been begging him for plushies of the team’s pelican mascot—Shane hadn’t really been listening, honestly. He had been distracted by a shirt on the wall that was truly the most disgusting shade of yellow his eyes had ever had the misfortune of witnessing.
Plastered across the front in a ridiculous dark green cursive font read “SANTA’S FAVORITE JAGOFF”. It made Shane nauseous to look at. He couldn’t turn away.
When Shane snatched it off the wall and bought it, Hayden raised his brows but didn’t ask any questions. Shane had felt so grateful for his silence that when Hayden heavily implied Shane should leave their hotel room so he could facetime Jackie that night, he didn’t grumble at all.
Shane even spent an extra forty-five minutes sitting in the lobby bar watching the Bears play the Monsoons, and didn’t think about who he had bought that shirt for at all. When he made it home he put the shirt in the drawer. And then googled what a jagoff was.)
Shane doesn’t think he can look at the drawer and what it means without collapsing. Shane thinks if he looks what it means in the eyes he’s going to wipe himself out.
When Shane thinks about the drawer, he thinks about Rozanov coming undone underneath him with a soft “Shane”. He thinks about being fourteen and finding out what happens if you’re a boy and your soulmate is a boy. Shane thinks about the things he’s heard people say in the locker rooms, on the ice. Shane thinks he can be okay with being gay. Shane doesn’t know if he can be okay with confronting the way he feels about Ilya Rozanov.
The panic must’ve been visible on his face, because Rose’s gaze softens and she gives him a soft smile.
“I'm sorry, I wasn’t snooping on purpose, I promise. I just opened it when I was looking for a sweatshirt when I was over the other day. I didn't touch anything and I won't tell anyone, I swear,” Rose apologizes.
Shane wants to stop her, to tell her that that’s not the problem, he’s not worried she touched anything. He knows it's taboo to talk about collecting but it’s even worse to go through someone else’s stash without them. But he doesn’t care about that, he doesn’t think she’s going to judge him. He can’t find the words. All he can do is silently shake his head.
As long as the only person who knows is him, Shane can tell himself it’s nothing. He's just hoarding junk. It doesn't mean anything. As long as it’s just him, it doesn’t matter. Rose putting eyes on it, recognizing it immediately for what it is, what he’s spent fifteen years telling himself it isn’t, is too much. It makes it real. It's a collection.
“You must’ve been collecting for a while, if you have a full drawer filled, yeah? Do you know who it’s for?” she asks, and Shane starts to shake his head again, but. But,
Yeah, Shane’s immediate reaction is to say that he doesn't know when it started. He doesn’t know who his soulmate is. This is what he’s been telling himself for years, because if he stops for more than a second to think about how long he's been collecting little pieces of Ilya Rozanov, he thinks he'll spiral out of control. Hit the deck like a firecracker dropped unceremoniously onto the sidewalk, burning wildly and spiralling haphazardly, until he's fizzled out with nothing left to show for himself but smoke, ashes, and the knowledge that his soul is bound to Rozanov's.
But Shane doesn’t know how much longer he has before he collapses under the weight of it all, condenses into a black hole or explodes into a supernova. He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep lying to himself. He never has been good at it, after all.
Shane nods, instead. Rose’s smile is real, but sad. She reaches over the table and squeezes his hand.
“You don’t have to tell me who he is. But I hope he knows how lucky he is,” she pauses. “And I hope he makes you feel lucky too.”
Shane thinks about the look on Ilya’s face as he walked out of his apartment, and doesn’t feel lucky at all.
ix.
Shane is definitely still loopy on pain meds when Ilya comes to visit him in the hospital. Even if he wasn’t drugged up, he thinks he’d still be just as happy to see the man, because c’mon, look at him. That's the most gorgeous man on earth right there.
Well, he’d be more gorgeous if he wasn’t sitting next to Shane’s bed looking constipated. Shane giggles at the thought, which somehow makes Ilya look even more like he has to shit. Shane attempts to lift his good arm to point at him, serious style.
“Don't look like that,” Shane slurs at him. If Ilya doesn’t smile soon Shane thinks he’ll have to call the police. because he’s being robbed of that smile. It occurs to Shane that if Ilya gets arrested then he’d get deported, and then Shane definitely won’t get to see his smile anymore.
And then he won’t be able to go to the cottage with Shane. and Ilya did just say that he would maybe go, so Shane’s not going to do anything to risk that, like calling the police on his beautiful grumpy man.
Ilya takes Shane’s hand in his and guides it back onto Shane’s lap. “Look like what? Is my face, Hollander.” But he doesn’t look nearly as upset as he did before, and now he’s holding Shane’s hand, so that’s a win for him. Unlike tonight’s game. but it’s fine because Ilya’s here now!
After what could’ve been either five seconds or five minutes of silence (Shane reallly can’t tell right now), Ilya hums and disentangles his hand from Shane’s. Shane makes a noise that’s not not a whine, which earns him a hint of a smile from Ilya as he reaches to get something off the floor. Shane hadn’t even noticed he brought anything in with him, but in his defense there were other, more important things to be paying attention to.
Like Ilya’s biceps in that shirt, for instance.
Shane is interrupted in his study of Ilya’s arms by Ilya placing a book in Shane’s lap.
“What’s this?” Shane asks.
“Is book, Hollander, you do know how to read, yes? Or did concussion make you boring and illiterate?”
“Fuck you,” Shane says, to hide the fact that he cannot for the life of him figure out what’s written on the cover of the book. After squinting at it fails to make words form, Shane resorts to glaring at it. If the book wanted to be read when Shane was concussed without his glasses then maybe its font should’ve been bigger!
Ilya takes pity on him for once and fills him in. “Is book on beginnings of hockey. For later, when you are out of hospital but need to stay away from screens. Went to bookstore and asked for most boring book on hockey, so it will be perfect for you.”
Shane is going to melt into a puddle of liquid in this hospital bed and there’s not going to be anything that can be done to fix it. The doctors will all come in and mourn his tragic passing and then name a disease after him. Because he doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to process the fact that Ilya got him a book! A gift!! Not that Ilya hasn’t given him gifts before, but this is different!! This is special! for Shane! He doesn’t even remember what Ilya said the book was about, that’s not what’s important.
“It's perfect, thank you, you’re perfect.” Shane smiles loopily at Ilya, who blesses him with a small smile in response. Shane adores this man. This perfect man who’s so beautiful came and visited him in the hospital and brought him a book and is Shane’s soulmate!! And Ilya brought him a book so maybe he’s Ilya’s soulmate too? Maybe he collects for Shane? Shane ponders just telling him. What's the worst that could happen? Surely not Ilya getting deported.
“Ilya, I-” is all Shane manages to get out before there’s a knock on the door and one of the nurses steps in. Ilya schools his face and puts some space between him and Shane as the nurse comes around to check on him.
They say their goodbyes and Ilya leaves and Shane is sad, but he can’t be that sad when he has a gift from Ilya and the possibility of the cottage on the horizon.
x.
Shane is twenty-six and things are looking pretty up, actually. He’s at his favorite place on earth, with his favorite person on earth, who also loves him back. They’re boyfriends. And although the circumstances weren’t ideal, he’s now out to his parents. Not only have they met his boyfriend, they even like him.
Shane knows there’s still many, many hurdles ahead of them. Scott Hunter coming out was a huge step forward, but he knows it's different when it’s another player in the league you’re being gay with. When it's your long-term rival you’re being gay with. When that long term rival is also your soulmate.
Not that Ilya knows that, yet. They confessed their love for each other, and Shane knows he was the one who said they should be honest while they’re at the cabin but it’s not dishonesty if it just doesn’t come up, right? And initially he plans to, he really does, because he wants to be open with Ilya.
Shane is halfway to dozing off, idly watching the rise and fall of Ilya’s chest as he sleeps next to him when the problem occurs to him. The problem is that Shane actually doesn’t know if soulmates are a mutual thing or not. He supposes he’s been assuming they are, that it’s a guaranteed two way street. But now, in the face of having to tell Ilya that he not only believes in the concept of soulmates but that he thinks Ilya is his, he’s not so sure.
He knows it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Ilya hadn’t been collecting for him. Ilya loves him, Shane’s sure of that, and the majority of the happy couples on planet earth aren’t even soulmates and they do fine.
Shane just… doesn’t know if he can handle it right now, okay? Maybe later, once things are more settled, he’ll feel more comfortable bringing it up. Besides, Shane tells himself, maybe Ilya will mention it. and then he doesn’t have to bring the one to bring it up.
Ilya does not bring it up.
On one of their last nights at the cottage, Shane is lying awake again. He’s sleepy and well fucked but his brain is stuck obsessing over the subject like he’s a dog with a chew toy he can’t put down. Except the chew toy is his boyfriend. Which, well. Shane glances at the fading bite marks marring Ilya’s shoulders. Isn’t a totally inaccurate statement.
Regardless, Ilya has not brought the soulmates subject up, despite having ample time to do so. Things with Ilya have been perfect though, otherwise. Shane will come back from his morning runs to find Ilya ready with a cup of coffee or a smoothie for him, generosity Shane is always more than willing to pay back with other means. They’ve spent their days alternating between lounging around and fucking vicariously, and it’s been phenomenal. Ilya even found two inflatable floating loungers, and they’ve wasted more than one afternoon lying together on the lake, just enjoying the sun and each other’s company.
Shane just wishes he knew. Especially with their impending separation and infrequent visits on the horizon. Of course the ever-present fear of being discovered and having to leave hockey hanging over his head doesn’t help either. He knows it doesn’t matter. All he can do is be careful. For now, he has Ilya, he has hockey, and that’s enough. It has to be.
xi.
Shane is twenty-nine and everything is going to shit. He gets such little time to spend with his boyfriend as it is and they’re spending it fighting over a stupid party. Shane doesn’t get why Ilya is so upset that he said no to going. It's not that Shane doesn’t want to go—as much as he’s not a social butterfly he would like to meet his boyfriend’s teammates. He knows it’s important to Ilya.
But Ilya might not have teammates if they get outed, which could very well happen if they show up to this party together. It'd put their careers on the line.
And then Ilya had the audacity to accuse Shane of picking hockey over him, if it came down to it. and of course Shane would pick Ilya, he would, he just doesn’t know why he can’t keep playing this balancing game where he can have both. Which Ilya doesn’t seem to get, since he keeps pressing the point. If they keep doing what they’re doing Shane doesn't have to pick.
So of course Shane throws it back at him, because he’s feeling angry and petty and tired of fighting with the man he loves. He winds up with his back against the wall, and Ilya in his face.
“You are my soulmate. I already chose you, Hollander,” Ilya whispers, and steps away.
Shane feels like he had been bodychecked by a million angry defensemen. He’s being pressed into the ice, all of himself compressed into everything and nothing. He had been making his peace with the thought that he wasn’t Ilya’s soulmate. Because all that mattered was that they had each other. And that they were working to keep each other.
To find out that he is? Like this? Shane is suddenly aware of every single particle of himself, feels his rage and shock and hurt coalesce into a well as dense as a neutron star in his gut. He stares Ilya down, searching his face for signs of a lie, or a joke, or something.
Shane manages to croak out a broken “What?”
It just can’t be true. Ilya would’ve said something. His boyfriend of multiple years would’ve said something.
You never said anything to him, a part of him whispers and is promptly ignored. It's not the same. Ilya’s always been the emotional one—it’s unfathomable Ilya would’ve known this and not said anything.
“You know this, surely.”
Shane can’t reply, can barely hear over the buzzing in his ears, in his skull. He is painfully aware of the beating of his heart and the panting of his breath as he stares at Ilya. Ilya stares back at him, hurt and rage still painted across his face.
“I have always been giving you gifts, yes? And even now, when you have skipped meals and do not tell anyone, where do you think protein bars in your bag come from?” Ilya pauses to compose himself. When Shane looks, his hands are trembling. He tries to reach out, but Ilya takes another step back. “I… know it is not the same for you. About me. It does not matter to me, but you do not get to accuse me of not choosing you. Not now. Not like this.”
“Ilya, I-” Shane tries to take another step forward, but Ilya shakes his head.
“Go home, please.”
xii.
Shane makes it back to Montreal, somehow. He doesn’t remember a second of the drive, his mind consumed with replaying the fight. He's desperately trying to make sense of what Ilya had said. That surely, Shane knew he was Ilya’s soulmate.
Ilya was generous, yes, but Shane had always taken that as just being who Ilya was, and not as a sign that he was his soulmate. Yes, Ilya did always know what to get him or when he needed it, but it was always with a quip about how boring or predictable Shane was. Which could explain a lot of it, frankly. Shane did love his routines, but the more Shane thinks on it less likely it sounds it was all coincidental.
Ilya knew he liked ginger ale before Shane told him, and Shane thinks if Ilya fucking Rozanov had been lurking around trying to get Shane’s drink preferences out of his teammates, they would’ve told him.
Ilya did always know when Shane had skipped a meal, even when there was no way for him to have actually known. Shane had just attributed that to Ilya knowing him and his moods, but for him to be able to do it without fail?
Shane thinks about one of the recent games they had played against each other. Shane had run out of tape for his stick, and definitely wasn’t panicking at the concept of having to use something other than his normal on it. He had gotten a text from Ilya midway through him going through his entire locker again to triple check that he didn’t miss a roll buried somewhere.
Ilya: come to back stairwell A6
Shane: Now’s not a good time, seriously.
Ilya: please?
Shane: Okay.
He had groaned at the time, thinking his boyfriend just wanted to get in a quick makeout session pre-game. Which he knew Shane hated doing in the arenas, because they were just asking to get caught doing anything with that many people around. Shane had shown up anyways though, because Ilya had said please and he did love his boyfriend.
Ilya greeted him with a quick kiss, and then asked what was wrong. When Shane told him that he had run out of his preferred tape, Ilya had just given him his normal smug smile and placed a roll of tape in his hand. Shane had been so relieved he’d pulled Ilya into another quick kiss, before sprinting back to the locker room to finish getting ready.
Again, he hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but as he thinks about it on the drive back to Montreal he can’t help but kick himself for his obliviousness.
Luckily for Shane, his brain was dedicated to playing Top Ten Shane Hollander Oblivious Boyfriend Moments on loop the entire drive back, so he had lots of time to ruminate on everything he had done wrong. Including letting his boyfriend go the entire duration of the relationship without knowing he was also Shane’s soulmate.
Shane calls his mother as soon as he gets back. She helps calm him down, and tells him to—for once in his life—be cool. And he tries to take the advice, he really really does. But he can’t stop thinking about Ilya saying he knows it isn’t the same for Shane. That he’s not Shane’s soulmate. God, Shane has fucked things up so badly.
xiii.
When Shane is seventeen, he breaks up with his girlfriend. He doesn’t even do it in person, because she’s in Ottawa and he’s at an away game. He calls her in the evening, after spending an hour pacing a hole into his hotel carpet rehearsing what he’s going to say.
“Hey babe!” she picks up on the second ring, and Shane immediately starts having second thoughts.
Things aren’t bad, yeah she didn’t come out for the draft, and yeah he’s been jerking off at night to blonde curls and toned biceps with guilt in his stomach but it’s not like he was jerking off to her even before he met Rozanov.
But contacting her is beginning to feel more like an obligation than anything else for Shane, and he doesn’t have time for unnecessary diversions if he’s going to have a record breaking rookie year. Shane can also admit, she deserves better than to have a boyfriend who doesn’t really care about her.
“Babe? you there?”
Shane realizes he was silent for too long, and takes a deep breath. “I think we need to talk.”
Shane wonders if he should feel an emotion other than relieved in the immediate aftermath. Shane still doesn’t believe in the whole soulmates thing, still can’t believe in the whole soulmates thing, but Shane can admit that if soulmates were a thing, she wouldn’t be his.
And he’s okay with that, because soulmates mean a relationship and a relationship means rules to follow and a constant performance, and more importantly a soulmate would want him to pick her over hockey.
And hockey will always be the most important thing to him.
xiv.
Shane recalls this breakup when he’s driving back to Ottawa as dawn begins to break. He got maybe three hours of restless sleep before giving up and going for a run, which helped him get his thoughts in order even if it didn’t help make him less tired. Now he’s back on the road, precious cargo in the trunk, driving with reckless abandon (5km/h over the posted speed limit, one hand on the wheel) to try and mend things with his boyfriend. His soulmate.
He thinks of when he ended things with that girlfriend, and how relieved he had been to be able to focus on hockey, and wonders if that’s what Ilya thinks of him. If that's who Ilya thinks he still is. He wouldn’t blame him, after last night. And Shane knows he should give Ilya space. but Shane also can’t live another minute in a world where Ilya doesn’t know how much he means to him. how much he always has.
Shane wants both Ilya and hockey. He will always want Ilya and hockey. And he thought he was doing what he could to keep both. He thought there was a line he could straddle that’d let him keep doing what he loved, and doing the man he loves. But that’s not what had been happening. Shane had been choosing hockey. Shane had been letting his fears about having to stop playing control his relationship with Ilya. Shane wasn’t balancing both. He was being an ass, frankly.
Shane thinks back to the seventeen-year-old him that would always, always, pick hockey. He didn’t want a soulmate because a soulmate meant rules and having to be fake and sacrificing performance for his relationship. Shane wishes he could go back in time and shake the seventeen-year-old him until he understood.
Those dumb curls you’re infatuated with are attached to the best thing that’s ever going to happen to you. You are going to find someone who you never have to worry about rules with, who can get you out of your own head, who you don’t have to be somebody else with. Who will challenge you on and off the ice. Shane wishes it hadn’t taken him this long. He's determined to not waste another minute.
Shane pulls up into Ilya’s driveway as the last of the pink of dawn fades from the horizon. He parks his car, and then comes to the sobering realization that he doesn’t even know if Ilya’s home. He knows they don’t have a game, or practice, but Ilya does go for morning runs. Or it's possible he didn’t even want to be at home last night, and went somewhere else.
Shane has a key, which he’d normally use, but he’s on thin enough ice as it is and doesn’t want to add breaking and entering to the list of (valid) reasons Ilya has to be mad at him. Shane slumps forward in despair and rests his forehead on the steering wheel.
Or at least he tries to, but somehow manages to honk the horn in the process. The noise scares a fuck out of him, and he takes a deep breath to try and settle himself before—fuck, is that movement he saw in the upstairs window? Shane can feel himself turning bright red as he abruptly realizes that Ilya now knows he’s here, and quite possibly thinks that Shane is honking the horn to get his attention like he’s a scumbag in an Uber. Fuck, he has to get out and fix this like now.
Shane scrambles out of the car and pops the trunk. He had dumped everything into the only container he could find that’d fit it all, a giant black plastic storage container, which was packed so full the lid was straining to stay on. Shane gives the lid a pitiful slap to make sure it stays on, and makes his way to the door.
Ilya opens the door as he approaches, and as Shane gets closer he can see just how wrecked he looks. It doesn't seem like he slept at all, dark circles heavy under his red-rimmed eyes, and his curls are even more of a mess than normal. He looks exhausted both physically and mentally, his stance guarded and defensive. Shane wants so badly to drop everything and give him a hug and apologize.
He knows he has to do this first, though.
Shane comes to a stop on the doorstep, and Ilya looks down at the storage tub in Shane’s arms and visibly flinches.
“Ah, you have come to give me my belongings from your home.” Ilya says, tone carefully even. “It may take me a while to get all of your stuff together. I did not—nevermind.” He cuts himself off with a sigh, rubbing his face with both hands.
“What? No, this isn’t—these aren’t your belongings—I mean they are in a way, but it’s not, I wouldn't—” Shane has to stop and take a deep breath to compose himself. “Can I come in and explain at least?”
Ilya seems to consider this for a second, before nodding and stepping back from the doorframe, leaving Shane space to enter. Ilya closes the door behind him without a word. Shane considers just dumping the contents of the box right there in the entryway, but instead decides to take it into the living room, and sets it on the coffee table.
Shane goes to sit on the couch, only to notice that Ilya is making no moves to sit down, and is still standing in the doorway to the living room. He looks scared, and wary, and hurt, and Shane hates himself for making him feel like that. Instead of sitting on the couch, Shane sits on the carpet next to the coffee table.
“Look, I'm sorry. I am. and I owe you a better apology than that, and you will get it, I swear.” Shane starts. “and I know I should’ve given you more space first and you probably don’t even want to see me right now, or maybe ever again, and if that’s what you want to do we can talk about it but I just needed to do this first, and—”
“Shane. Breathe." Ilya cuts Shane’s rambling off, stepping further into the living room. Shane flushes and hates that Ilya had to calm him down during his own apology, but nods and takes a deep breath. He does feel better having done so. He just needs to stop stalling and get on with it.
Steeling himself, Shane pops the lid off of the storage container and reaches in. He shuffles around until his fingers land on the package he’s looking for.
Shane’s kept this secret for over twenty years.
Shane takes another deep breath to steady himself and pulls out a package of band-aids, decorated with cartoon bears. The packaging has faded from age, but the box is otherwise free from any wear and tear.
“I bought these when I was eight years old. I was at the store with my parents and the second I saw them, I couldn't leave without them. I didn't even have any injuries at the time, I just… needed them.” Shane places the package on the carpet in front of him as he talks.
“That was the first time it happened.” He reaches back in the box. Pulls out a bottle of hair mousse. Sets it next to the band-aids on the carpet. “But it wasn’t the last.” It's joined by a pair of boys' socks with race cars printed on it, a bottle of cologne, a box of long-expired powdered hot chocolate. A knee brace and a wrist brace; three packs of cigarettes from different brands, all unopened; two lighters; a very dated panini press; a blindingly yellow shirt that reads “SANTA’S FAVORITE JAGOFF”.
Shane keeps pulling things out of the box, explaining as he goes. No less than six pairs of white socks, because Ilya is always losing them. Four rolls of stick tape in Ilya’s preferred brand. an unopened tube of toothpaste.
If Shane wasn’t already too scared to look up at Ilya he’d be averting his eyes as he pulls out the box of condoms, but he’s had his eyes glued to whatever it is he’s describing so he doesn’t have to see how Ilya’s reacting to his display. He knows Ilya wouldn’t laugh at him or make fun of him, he trusts Ilya, still. But he just can’t bring himself to look at the other man while he’s this vulnerable.
Shane miraculously makes it to the last item in the box before his voice starts to crack. The living room floor looks like it was a victim of a thrift store hurricane, with Shane at the epicenter of the madness. He keeps his eyes averted from Ilya as he grabs the last small box out of the big container. It’s a barely palm sized black box, and Shane knows it's immediately obvious what it is.
“This isn’t—I’m not—I don’t expect this to fix everything, or anything. I actually bought this the last year you were playing for the Bears. I was shopping with Hayden and his kids and we passed by a jewelers and I happened to glance and it was in the display case. The second I saw it, it was like the band-aids all over again. I couldn't leave until I had it. I didn't want to leave until I had it.” Shane knows he’s rambling again. He takes a shaky breath and flips the lid open. There's a gold ring nestled in the box. “This isn’t me—I’m not proposing, not officially, not while things are like this between us. I just. I need you to know that you’re it for me. You’re the most important thing to me. You always will be.”
Shane closes the lid of the ring box and sets it down in the chaos. He thinks the large container he brought is finally empty, thank god. At least it felt empty when he took the ring box out of it, but he feels like he’s missing something.
Shane sits up so he can lean over and glance into it just to double check, and he immediately spots it. Wedged in a corner in a ziploc baggie in order to protect it, there’s a bright yellow post it note. He carefully takes it out of the box and holds it out in front of him. He doesn’t know if Ilya can even read it from where he’s standing.
“And this last one is from when I was twelve. It's a, um, post-it note from my mom, it says ‘I'm proud of you no matter what’. And that she loves me. At the time I didn't know, obviously, why it was important for me to keep. but I guess in retrospect it makes more sense, because it wasn’t meant for me.”
Shane chances looking up at Ilya and sees him staring back at him, silent tears streaming down his face. Shane can feel tears welling up in his own eyes and rapidly attempts to blink them away before he continues. This is important.
“I'm sorry I ever made you doubt how much I love and appreciate you. I know I was being an ass and I'm still so, so, so scared of what could happen but. I haven't been fair to you. and I’m sorry I didn’t recognize sooner how much you’ve sacrificed and how much you’ve done and-” Shane pauses to rub tears from his eyes and sniffle a little.
He feels hands on his cheeks and opens his eyes to find Ilya, kneeling across from him on the floor. One of Ilya’s thumbs comes up to brush away the tears under Shane’s eye, which he doesn’t think is fair because Ilya is also crying, but then Ilya’s leaning in and Shane’s meeting him for what’s not the saltiest kiss they’ve ever shared, but it’s probably a close second.
Shane wraps his arms around Ilya’s neck, bringing him in even closer. He tangles a hand in Ilya's curls as they move their mouths against each other, passionate but not desperate. Ilya’s the first to pull away from the kiss. Shane opens his mouth to protest, but Ilya doesn’t go far, just rests his forehead against Shane’s.
“I love you. I'm sorry too,” Ilya says, quietly, between them. Shane opens his mouth again, because Ilya’s not the one that needs to be apologizing. But Ilya keeps going before he can say anything. “I had a lot of time to think. It was not fair of me to act like I told you this big secret, when I did not. I know you, Shane Hollander. I should have known to say it out loud but…”
Ilya chuckles before he continues, “I was scared. To say it. So I tried to show you instead. But that was cowardly way out. So I will say it now. Shane Hollander, I love you, you are my soulmate. I am sorry I did not say so sooner.”
Shane doesn’t know what to say to that. Everything in his head is a mess. He doesn’t know how to tell Ilya right now that he doesn’t know how he got so lucky, he doesn’t know how he could’ve ever thought he wanted anything other than this man.
He wants to tell Ilya how sorry he is, how he’s the one who fucked it all up, that he wants to work on making things better with Ilya, always and forever with Ilya. He doesn’t know how to say all of that right now, so he leans in for another kiss instead. Ilya meets him again, and holds him as Shane tries to convey a tenth of how much he loves Ilya to him with his lips.
Eventually they have to break apart again. They're slow to separate, their breath coming heavy between them as Shane presses one, two, three more kisses to Ilya’s lips before pulling himself off.
Shane knows if he lets it go on for any longer they’re liable to not get anything done the rest of the day. Which sounds nice in theory, but he’s starting to get stressed out by the war zone that is their living room floor.
Shane voices this to Ilya, and then figures putting everything back in the box isn’t a bad way to go about cleaning up. They can sort through it all later maybe, once it’s not all on the floor. He starts looking around to figure out what he wants to start packing away first.
He’s thinking maybe the old-ass panini press when he turns back to Ilya only to find him holding the box of band-aids. He’s staring at them like they wronged him, which confuses Shane because they’re literally for him.
“What’s wrong?” Shane asks.
Ilya glares at the box for another second before answering. “They are so cute. But I am not injured and do not want to break the seal on box. So I cannot wear.” He sounds so genuinely put out about not being able to wear the stupid band-aids with cartoon bears on them that Shane bought when he was fucking eight.
Fuck what he just said about cleaning, Shane wants to climb Ilya like a tree right now. He shuffles up to Ilya and rests his weight on Ilya’s thighs, bracketing Ilya’s outstretched legs with his knees.
Ilya (reluctantly) puts the bandaid box down and rests his hands on Shane’s hips. He tilts his head up to look at Shane, who smiles back down at him.
“Clean first, I thought?” Ilya questions, and Shane shakes his head.
“Later,” he whispers as he leans back in, one hand coming up to cradle Ilya’s jaw.
Shane Hollander is twenty-nine, and he is about to get fucked silly by his soulmate, surrounded by the proof of his love for him. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.