Chapter Text
January 2021
The first time Ilya time-traveled, he was twenty-nine and bracing for impact on a flight to Tampa Bay. What should have been an uneventful flight between games quickly turned for the worse. The steady hum of the engines gave way to violent turbulence that rattled the cabin and sent oxygen masks swinging loose from the ceiling. Overhead bins groaned. Somewhere behind him, someone screamed. Ilya's hands shook as he unlocked his phone, desperately typing out his last words to Shane in his Instagram direct messages, thumbs slipping over the screen as the plane dropped hard enough to steal the breath from his lungs.
With his palm pressed flat to his chest, holding his mother's crucifix tightly against his heart, Ilya squeezed his eyes shut and prayed silently to himself. Do not let this be it. Please don't let this be it. The words looped in his mind, frantic and unpolished. He wasn't ready to say goodbye. Not like this, suspended between sky and ground, with no control over the ending. He couldn't bear the thought of Shane mourning him, of grief hollowing him out over questions that would never be answered. Especially not when they had left so much unresolved. Not when they were still standing at the edge of something real. Something fragile and unfinished. Before they'd even had the chance to begin their lives together in a way that felt solid.
Ilya was vaguely aware of everyone's cries and shouts around him. He shook his head to himself, trying to focus his mind on Shane. Years flashed by in mere moments, and Ilya savored every one of them. Shane's shy smile, the gentle squeeze of his hand on Ilya's thigh as he drove, his passion and heart for hockey, his undying love for the people in his life. Their talks of plans for the future. Quiet summers at the cottage, sitting lakeside with the sun setting ahead of them.
Ilya's throat was tight. Tears were dampening the corners of his eyes. Please let me have more time, he begged silently. I need more time with Shane.
One moment, he was falling apart, counting heartbeats and prayers.
The next, the world cut out beneath him.
No sound. No motion. No plane.
Silence and stillness enveloped him. Hesitantly, Ilya blinked his eyes open. With blurry vision, he realized he was no longer sitting on a plane with his teammates. Instead, he was crouched on the floor of a dark room he did not recognize. Squinting, Ilya stood slowly and examined his surroundings as his eyesight adjusted.
He found himself standing just inside a doorway, the door closed firmly behind him, with no memory of entering the room.
It was dark inside the room. Night, he realized distantly. The walls were painted a muted shade that might have been blue or green, their color muddled by the poor lighting. To his left, a sliding closet door left partially open. Inside, clothes hung low on the rod, their silhouettes smaller than he expected.
Ahead of him, a narrow desk was tucked beneath a window, its surface cluttered with loose papers, a pencil cup tipped on its side, and what looked like workbooks or magazines stacked haphazardly. Thick curtains were pulled tight, blocking out the night.
The room felt… younger. Smaller. Lived in by someone who hadn't finished growing into it yet.
In the opposite corner sat a twin-sized bed pushed against the wall. The comforter was patterned with faded shapes, bunched around a small body curled tightly beneath it. One socked foot stuck out from the blankets. Dark hair spilled across the pillow, the sleeper turned away from him.
Something in Ilya's chest twisted painfully. The room tugged at him with a sense of wrongness and familiarity all at once.
An unexplainable pull drew Ilya forward, his steps slow and careful as he moved toward the sleeping figure in the corner. He dimly wondered where he was and what he was doing, but the thoughts felt distant, unimportant. It was as if something else had taken hold of him, steering him where it wanted him to go.
He reached the foot of the stranger's bed and anxiously craned his neck, leaning over just slightly to get a glance at their face. It felt as though an unseen hand guided him, turning his body where it wanted him to look.
Recognition hit him before understanding did. Ilya could not control the sharp exhale that left his mouth, eyes widening.
Lying before him was a face that Ilya recognized from pictures—a freckled face, with dark lashes gently resting against round cheeks, and jet black hair. Ilya recognized the soft exhales that left the person's mouth too well.
Shane.
Ilya swallowed harshly, nearly choking. It was Shane, but he was impossibly young.
What is going on, Ilya wondered. Am I dead?
No.
The thought came instinctively, violently. This couldn't be it. He couldn't be dead—not here, not now, not when everything between him and Shane was still unfinished.
His chest ached as if something had been torn out of it. If this was the afterlife, it was cruel in a way he hadn't imagined. He'd been dropped into Shane's childhood bedroom like some kind of joke.
Ilya stumbled over his own feet as he stepped backward, desperate to put space between himself and the bed. The movement was clumsy and unthinking. His heel caught on the edge of the rug and he stumbled. He wasn't silent or careful in his haste, and the sharp sounds echoed too loudly in the small bedroom. On the bed, the young Shane Hollander shifted beneath the covers, a soft groan leaving him as he stirred.
Ilya froze.
He brought a hand to his mouth, pressing his palm hard against his lips as if that might undo the noise he'd already made. His heart hammered violently in his chest. For a split second, he considered bolting—running straight through the door and never looking back—but it was too late.
Shane shot upright where he lay, blankets sliding down to his waist. His eyes blinked open, unfocused at first, before landing squarely on Ilya standing in the middle of the room.
"Ilya," Shane said.
The sound of his name landed like a blow. The voice was different. It was higher, softer around the edges. Younger. But there was no fear in it. No shock.
"I'm sorry I fell asleep," Shane continued, rubbing at one eye with the heel of his hand. "It must have gotten late."
"Wh—what?" The word slipped out of Ilya before he could stop it. His mind scrambled uselessly, trying to catch up. This Shane—this smaller, impossible version of him—knew who he was?
"I was waiting for you," Shane went on, sheepish now, a small smile tugging at his mouth. "But I guess I fell asleep. It's past my bedtime."
Confused beyond reason, Ilya shook his head slowly, like the motion alone might reset reality. His chest felt tight, his lungs struggling to pull in enough air.
"You know me?" Ilya asked. The question sounded thin even to his own ears. His thoughts spiraled wildly. Is this the afterlife? Is this some cruel trick? Did I really die on that plane? How else could this exist?
Shane snorted, clearly amused, as if Ilya had just asked the most obvious question in the world. "Duh." Then, more seriously, he added, "But I know we don't have long. You're only here for a few minutes today."
"Today?" Ilya echoed faintly.
Shane was already moving, scooting to the edge of the bed and kicking the blankets aside. His feet reached the floor, and he stood, steady and certain. He wore plain blue plaid pajama bottoms with a mismatched Batman graphic tee that had clearly seen better days. The sight of it—so ordinary, so real—made Ilya's throat ache.
Ilya remained frozen where he stood. "What do you mean?" he asked, still stuck on the idea of time. On minutes. His gaze drifted to the digital clock on the bedside table. 1:43 a.m. Late, especially for a kid. And yet Shane had spoken as though he'd been expecting him all along.
"Hurry," Shane said suddenly, eyes lighting up. "I wanna show you something cool."
Before Ilya could respond, Shane crossed the room and slipped his hand into Ilya's. His fingers were small and warm, wrapping around Ilya's pointer and middle finger with a gentle, trusting grip. He tugged once, impatient but excited.
Ilya went with him.
He moved as though through fog, his body obeying without question, letting Shane lead him to the closet. Shane dropped to his knees, pushed the door open, and reached inside. After a moment of rummaging, he pulled out a pristine pair of ice skates. He held them up proudly, one in each hand, grinning so wide it bordered on reverent.
"Skates?" The word came out like a question, but there was no surprise in it. Shane had been young when he first started skating. Ilya knew this. He'd always known this. Hockey had been born into him early, stitched into his bones before he even understood what it meant.
"Brand new ones," Shane said, glowing. "For hockey camp. My parents just bought them for me."
Ilya could see the pride in Shane's smile, bright and unguarded, and it made his chest ache in a way he hadn't expected. There was something painfully familiar in it. The innocence, the eagerness, the way joy sat so close to the surface. It was the same spark he saw in his Shane now, softened by years but never truly gone.
"They're nice," Ilya said, his voice gentling without his permission. "Shane… how old are you?"
"I'm ten," Shane answered easily.
The words hit harder than Ilya thought they would. His heart clenched, sharp and sudden. Vaguely, unhelpfully, his mind drifted to his own ten-year-old self, still in Russia. Still small and skating on rough ice with borrowed equipment and big dreams. His mother had been alive then. She had watched from the sidelines, bundled against the cold, smiling like nothing in the world mattered more.
"That's a big age," Ilya said. He managed a smile, though it wavered at the edges. He wondered if Shane could see the tears gathering in his eyes, blurring the room, softening the edges of everything. He blinked hard, trying to force them back—
—and everything changed.
He was back on the plane.
The dim bedroom vanished. The closet, the skates, the quiet hum of the house. It had disappeared in an instant. The roar of engines filled his ears, loud and overwhelming, as the tires slammed against the runway. The impact jolted through his body, the plane shuddering violently before finally screeching to a halt.
Outside the windows, bright red lights flashed and emergency vehicles crowded the tarmac. Around him, passengers cried, prayed, laughed shakily in relief.
Ilya sat there, breath unsteady, his hand still clenched around the crucifix at his chest.
He was safe.
And as the truth settled in, another thought followed, just as certain.
He would get to see Shane again.
His Shane.
◆◆◆
Ilya chose to chalk it all up to a hallucination. Trauma-induced, stress-induced. Something along those lines. The kind of thing that happened when the body had been pushed too far and the mind filled in the gaps with nonsense. Maybe he had blacked out on the plane, slipped into some half-conscious state and experienced a fever dream born of fear and adrenaline.
He didn't tell anyone about it. Not his teammates. Not even Shane. He tucked the memory away carefully, like something fragile and unexplainable, and convinced himself it didn't mean anything at all.
◆◆◆
The second time Ilya time-traveled was less traumatizing.
One second he had been lying on his back in his hotel room in Tampa, his mind reeling from the events on the plane. The next, he was standing upright, his feet planted firmly on solid ground, a rush of warm, recycled air brushing against his face.
He blinked hard, instinctively squeezing his eyes shut before opening them again, his vision struggling to adjust. It was not to sunlight, but to bright fluorescent lighting overhead. The ceiling stretched high above him, glass panels fogged faintly at the edges where the cold pressed in from outside.
He took a breath.
The air smelled faintly of coffee, melted snow, and something metallic like ice and steel. Unmistakably real.
Slowly, he began to make sense of his surroundings. The dull echo of voices carried through the space, overlapping in a steady hum. Somewhere nearby, skates scraped against ice. A buzzer sounded distantly, followed by the muffled cheer of children's laughter bouncing off concrete walls.
He was standing inside a large public atrium, its wide floor tiled and damp from tracked-in snow. Along one side, tall windows looked out onto a whitewashed cityscape, snow piled high against benches and railings. To his left, a man walked a corgi bundled into a tiny red coat, the dog's paws clicking against the floor as it strained at the leash. Along the perimeter of the space, a woman in a bright pink puffer jacket held a phone up to her ear, speaking indistinctly into the receiver.
No one paid Ilya any attention. No one seemed to think his sudden appearance was strange.
Behind him, a familiar voice spoke his name.
"Ilya?"
He turned quickly on his heels.
Shane stood a few feet away.
He was young, clearly younger than the man Ilya knew now, but not that young. Gone was the softness of childhood. This Shane was a teenager, all long limbs and awkward angles. His face still carried traces of boyhood beneath something sharper, more self-aware. He looked close in age to the first time Ilya had met him in Saskatchewan in 2008.
Ilya stared, his chest tightening as recognition settled in. This wasn't a dream.
"Where am I?" His voice sounded wrong to his own ears. Thin, like it might disappear if he pushed it any harder.
Shane offered an empathetic smile. He slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels, a gesture that Ilya recognized immediately. The familiarity of it hit Ilya harder than it should have. Shane was nervous. That didn't make any sense. If anyone should be nervous right now, it was him.
"Ottawa," He paused, swallowing. "How are you feeling today?"
Ilya nearly laughed. The question felt absurd in the wake of everything else.
Disoriented. Strange. A little scared.
He swallowed them all back. "Confused. A little."
Shane's smile didn't falter, and somehow that made it worse. Like this answer was expected. "It's okay," Shane said gently. "We have about an hour today, so I have time to answer some of your questions."
An hour.
The words echoed unpleasantly in Ilya's head. As if this had a schedule.
What the hell did that mean?
"Come on," Shane gestured toward a quieter corner of the atrium, away from the rink doors. "Let's sit."
Again, Shane was moving first. Deciding first. Ilya felt himself being carried along by momentum he didn't understand. He followed without protest.
The walk was short. Too short to give him time to think, or panic, or do anything but notice details he hadn't asked for. A bench sat tucked against the wall beneath a set of frosted windows. Shane shrugged out of his jacket and sat at one end of the bench comfortably.
Ilya hesitated, then copied him, lowering himself down next to Shane. He leaned back, his palms pressing into the cool metal of the bench. It was solid, grounding, and real enough to make his chest tighten.
"I know this is the second time this has happened for you. Traveling," Shane said.
Ilya's head snapped up. "Traveling?"
The word didn't belong to him. It sounded rehearsed. Like something Shane had practiced saying out loud. Shane cleared his throat, eyes down in his lap. "I know this is going to sound crazy."
That earned him an impatient look, and Ilya didn't bother softening it. "Shane. Come on."
Shane exhaled hard, lips fluttering as if he were bracing himself. "Seriously, don't freak out."
Ilya pressed his lips into a thin line, the closest he could get to restraint. His pulse thrummed loudly in his ears.
"I'm trying to find a way to say this that doesn't sound stupid. Or like it's from a comic book," Shane hesitated, then met his eyes. "Our working theory is time travel."
The words landed wrong. Heavy. Unreal.
Our.
Working theory.
Time travel.
Ilya stared at him, waiting for the punchline that didn't come.
When Ilya didn't respond, Shane spoke again. "I said it would sound crazy. I don't really get it either. But ever since I can remember—ever since I was a little kid—you've been visiting me."
The air seemed to thin around them.
"From the future," Shane added quietly. "Apparently, we know each other there. You've told me about it. About us."
He swallowed.
"But I haven't met you yet. Not in my timeline."
That finally did it.
Ilya's breath hitched, his hands curling against the edge of the bench as if he needed to anchor himself to something solid.
This couldn't be real.
And yet, Shane was looking at him like it was.
They sat in silence for a moment, the ambient sounds of the building settling back in around them. Internally, Ilya swung wildly between believing this was true and convincing himself he was still trapped in some elaborate, vivid dream. But the questions pressed in regardless, piling up faster than he could stop them.
Carefully, he formed the first one.
"You said we have an hour?" he asked.
Shane nodded. "Yeah."
"How do you know that?"
"Oh," Shane shifted, reaching behind himself and pulling a folded sheet of paper out from the back pocket of his jeans. "There's a list we created together."
"Let me see this," Ilya said, the words coming out sharper than he intended as he leaned forward and held his hand out. He wasn't sure what he expected the list to contain, only that his chest felt tight with the certainty that whatever was written there would make things worse before they made sense. He already had too many questions and nowhere near enough time. Something in his gut told him an hour wouldn't even come close to being sufficient.
Shane didn't hesitate.
He shifted closer and unfolded the paper, the creases worn soft from use. He smoothed it out as he went, then placed it into Ilya's waiting hand unquestioningly.
The paper felt thin and fragile beneath Ilya's fingers.
The left side was numbered neatly down the margin, all the way from 1 to 25. Ilya flipped it over quickly, his pulse spiking when he saw the continuation on the back—26 through 50—before flipping it back again. The numbers alone made his stomach drop.
Fifty.
Swallowing hard, Ilya forced himself to focus. His eyes went back to the top of the page.
1. Shane — 3 y/o. November 21st, 1994. 10:55 a.m. 34 mins.
The air seemed to leave his lungs.
There was a vertical line drawn cleanly down the center of the page, splitting it into two columns. His hands began to shake as his gaze drifted to the right side, dread curling low in his gut.
His own name stared back at him.
13. Ilya — 34 y/o. November 21st, 2025.
The dates lined up. The day. The month. But the years didn't.
Shane, three years old, barely more than a toddler. Ilya, thirty-four, older than he was now. Older than he had ever been.
His eyes flicked back to the numbers. 1 beside Shane's name. 13 beside his own.
Understanding crept in slowly, reluctantly, like something his mind was trying to protect him from.
This wasn't a shared timeline. Shane's life moved forward, clean and linear. But Ilya was arriving out of sequence. Jumping years. Skipping around.
Which meant when Shane was three years old… That had been the first time Shane ever met him.
And the thirteenth time Ilya had traveled.
Ilya's grip tightened on the paper, his pulse roaring in his ears. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to Shane.
"How many times have I been here?" he asked quietly.
Ilya tried to ignore the way Shane's own hand shook as he pointed to line 19.
19. Shane — 16 y/o. January 10th, 2008. 12:40 p.m. 67 mins.
20. lya — 29 y/o. January 10th, 2021.
It was 2008. The January before Saskatchewan. Before a frozen parking lot and a first meeting that, for Shane, had never really been first at all. The thought settled uneasily in his chest. This might be the moment where Shane's timeline finally caught up to him.
In Shane's timeline, this was already underway. Years of brief encounters and borrowed hours. A relationship built in fragments, while Ilya had been stumbling through it blind, assuming he was ahead when, in reality, he'd been lagging behind.
"Wow," Ilya murmured, the word barely leaving him. He lifted his eyes and finally looked at Shane.
Guilt followed. He remembered the way he'd acted when they met, sharp and careless. And how easily that version of himself had lingered.
"What have I told you," Ilya asked carefully, "about us?"
He knew better than to say too much. Time travel had rules, even if no one had ever written them down. Or at least that's what he knew from movies and TV.
"Not much, honestly," Shane said. "We become friends. I know you play hockey too. I figured that's probably how we meet, but you've always kept the details vague."
Relief loosened something in Ilya's chest. He nodded, mostly to himself. "One of the future Ilyas warned me you'd have a lot of questions today. I came prepared."
"You always are," Ilya said, fondness slipping into his voice before he could catch it. He saw Shane's smile, small and pleased, and felt the familiar ache that followed moments like this.
"If you want," Shane continued, "I can explain a bit more. Apparently, your third visit is still ahead of me." He tapped the list between them. "That one should be interesting."
Ilya glanced down, his eyes finding the date almost immediately. June 2012. A year that sat heavy with memory, even out of order. At least he had time.
He looked back up and nodded once. "Okay," he said. "Tell me."
Shane spent the rest of the visit explaining how Ilya's time travel looked from his side of things.
The first time Ilya visited, Shane had been three years old, too young to remember. It was possible Ilya hadn't revealed himself at all, cautious of frightening a child who wouldn't understand why a stranger had appeared out of nowhere.
Shane's first clear memory of Ilya came at age six. He'd been in a neighborhood park, sprinting after a ball a friend had kicked too hard. The ball rolled to a stop at Ilya's feet. He'd been sitting on a bench a short distance from the swings, watching Shane's group play. Shane couldn't remember whether they spoke or what was said if they did. He only remembered the moment lingering longer than it should have.
Months later, he recognized Ilya again, standing in his bedroom.
What struck Ilya most was that Shane had never been afraid. Not of the man who appeared in parks or quietly in his childhood room. By eight, Ilya had finally told him the truth. Time travel. Shane had accepted it immediately, more impressed than alarmed.
That was when the list began.
From then on, Shane planned their meetings with care. He chose places, times, angles that wouldn't draw attention. Once, at twelve, he built a fort in his bedroom to keep his parents from noticing anything unusual. That visit lasted seven hours, deep into the night. They whispered into their palms and talked about hockey until their voices gave out. Somewhere in there, without either of them naming it, they became inseparable.
A sudden beeping broke the quiet.
Shane's expression shifted as he pulled his phone from his pocket. A timer blinked insistently on the screen. He stopped it with a frown. "One minute left."
Ilya had never hated time more.
"When do you see me next?" he asked.
Shane checked the list. "Not for a while. End of the year. December."
Ilya nodded, keeping his face carefully neutral. December. The same month, Shane would finally meet his Ilya, in order, in the same timeline. Fate had a sense of humor.
They held each other's gaze, sharing a small, resigned smile.
"I'll see you then."
Shane's grin was brief but real.
Then Ilya was gone, back in the dark of his hotel room, alone, while time continued on without waiting for him.