Chapter Text
entre la nuit, la nuit et l’aurore.
*
Do you think the universe fights for people to be together?
Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidence.
— Emery Allan, Become
*
This must be what a parallel universe is like, I thought.
Everything looked the same, but I suddenly felt like it wasn't.
Like everything had been taken apart, brick by brick, flower bed by flower bed, and put back together in the wrong order.
— Jordanna Fraiberg, Our Song
*
Here
April 3, 2022, Ottawa
When it happens the puck has just left his stick.
Shane dumps it over the red line into the offensive zone, aiming to give the Centaurs a much needed line change. His legs are burning, the Centaurs’ having been hemmed in their own end for much of the last two minutes of play before Shane finally gets his stick in the way of a pass. He manages to get possession of the puck long enough to skate clear of their zone and send the puck rattling down the boards. Job done, Shane turns, heading for the bench for a line change, but an opposing defenceman gets in front of him, coming in on an angle, presumably trying to block the dump and chase play.
It's a clean hit, but Shane takes it horribly, crumbling on impact and colliding with the boards. While he tries valiantly to keep his head up, he feels himself slide sideways and his last fully coherent thought occurs as his head cracks against both the ice and the bottom edge of the boards.
Immediately, the arena starts to wilt.
“… We just want a future.”
“I have only been in love with one person…”
Shane falls backwards and sinks, the ice turning to water beneath him.
“… Does it fucking kill you too?”
“Holy shit. I love you too…”
“I love you…”
The words—memories?— are swimming amongst him, angled and distorted; they consume him, they’re are all he can process, even as someone else—a medic, maybe?— on the periphery now, says, "Just stay still Hollander."
“… I do not want the problem to ever go away.”
“You want to get married, right? To a woman, I mean. You’re not… like me…”
Shane’s head is pounding, as if it’s cracked open and everything is flooding out. Blood, but everything else, too; a whole history spread thin on the ice. The edges of the arena soften, and everything begins to move very slowly.
“No, I mean, I know…”
“… Not Montreal.”
“You wouldn’t re-sign with Boston?”
He tries to keep his eyes open, tries to find Ilya in the bright, dancing, web-light patterns of the arena lights above him, startling bright and immediately disorientating. He knows Ilya’s there. He can hear him; he’s everywhere.
“… Yes. Same. But we have two weeks.”
“It’s kind of been awhile…”
Everything seems further away, the tones changing— all the contents around him being absorbed. The arena light seems to be bending oddly, fracturing into trembling bands; all the loud colours being ripped away, going from startling yellow, and fading, until everything is just shades of blue and green. His heartbeat is suddenly the loudest thing he can hear.
“I’m coming to the cottage.”
“… Can you belie—”
The world tilts on its axis. He loses sense of up and down and left and right, forwards and backwards. Here and everywhere else. Everything thins out, spreads out in front of him like a long, endless tunnel.
He sinks.
Slowly.
“Maybe. Maybe.”
“… We’d be completely alone. Together.”
“Hollander. You know we can’t do that.”
“Will you come to my cottage this summer? Don’t go to Russia…”
Everything compresses.
He tries to look up at the muddled voices around him, but everything has condensed into a circle of light directly overhead, a shiny sliver of a faint twilight above him. Everything else becomes a dark reflection, and it feels like he, himself, is being absorbed.
“Ilya, they can see us."
“Is he OK? Fucking tell me.”
It feels awfully like déjà vu as his eyes fall closed and he becomes suspended in a deep, quiet blue; everything else bending away into darkness.
*
Somewhere Else
Unknown
He wakes on the ice.
He finds himself directly in front of the net with a puck already rocketing towards him, coming off a huge shot taken from the point.
The rinks snaps into focus a moment before the puck collides with his inner thigh, right where the equipment is at its lightest, and, consequently, pain is the first real feeling that overwhelms him: his leg partially collapsing beneath him on impact. The rebound trickles off him and the sound of slapping of sticks against the ice suddenly roars into his ears, as the players around him fight for control before the goalie finally smothers the puck under his glove and the play is whistled down, cutting through the noise of the crease battle.
Shane’s not one-hundred precent sure what has happened.
He tries to review the play in his mind, like he normally does, but can’t pull the sequence into clear view. He has no idea how this play developed and that thought keeps him hunched for a second longer than he wants to, before he finally pushes himself to his feet, pressing his weight onto the other leg. The sting spreads out from the point of contact, dull and throbbing now; the kind of pain that tells him a bruise is already blooming under the sock tape.
“Nice shot block,” chirps someone.
Shane's gaze snaps up; the lights of rink burn his eyes, like waking up suddenly in a too bright room, disorientated and not quite conscious. Light is a spider web, and he blinks it away as quick as he can. When everything finally clears, he looks for the voice, recognizing the jibe as coming from a Buffalo defenceman.
He missed a tip-in shot then.
A simple play, one he's executed a thousand times. On most nights it’s muscle memory: plant himself at the top of the crease, watch the release, make sure the stick is free, angle the blade, soften the hands, and redirect, let the defenceman's shot do most of the work.
But tonight he’d been late reading the lane. Like the play had already been in motion when Shane had snapped into existence, like there was nothing and then there was hockey. He'd blinked and then he was in the crease, in traffic and unsure how he got there.
“Esti!” a frustrated voice laments, sliding up to Shane. “Mon Captain, you refuse to help me score?”
Shane turns his head slowly. The voice is familiar and yet terribly out of place, and it sends a tremor of confusion up his spine. When Shane's gaze finally meets the person, shock reverberates through his entire body because J.J. Boiziau has skated up to him.
A man, who, last Shane checked, was no longer his teammate.
Shane stares at J.J., blinks once, then twice, and then slowly gazes down his front to look at himself. Confusion ties itself to his bones when he looks down only to find himself wearing colours he thought he'd shed, but there it is: the Montreal Voyageurs emblem alive on his chest.
*
He has no idea what is happening.
Is this a dream? A nightmare?
Where is his life?
Shane can't get out of the arena— the Bell Centre— fast enough. He begs off press, skirting what are apparently still his responsibilities as captain, skips most of his post-game routine, receiving odd looks from the majority of his apparent teammates, and bolts.
For this first time in his life, he's not sure if he could recite the box score. He has no idea who won. He skated his way through the rest of the game in a daze, convinced he was dreaming and confused when each hit actually rattled his body, when he felt each impact. He flinched each time he caught a glimpse of the blue of the Voyageur jersey in the glass, pulled tight over his shoulders. If his parents are in the crowd, he doesn't know— or care. He just waves off a confused Hayden Pike and J.J., and abandons his team— his team?— and speeds, thankfully on autopilot, to what used to be his Montreal-area home, just across the river in the suburbs of Brossard. He congratulates himself on only having a minor panic attack when the door actually opens with a code he thought he'd forgot and he's able to slip inside.
Hoping the noise will scare him out of this, he lets the door slam behind him.
“Ilya?" Shane calls, when the noise changes nothing. His voice slices through silence.
The house is quiet in response.
Shane’s heart pounds, but ultimately, he’s not too surprised that there's no answer. Buffalo was in Montreal playing the Voyageurs, not Ottawa. There’s no reason for Ilya to be here— there’s no reason for Shane to be here.
Fuck.
But Shane just has to reach him. Talking to Ilya, wherever he may be, will snap Shane out of this madness, bring him back to reality, or, at minimum, help Shane sort through whatever the fuck is happening to him. Ilya is an anchor. Ilya keeps him still when Shane wants to drift; when Shane panics and threatens to get swept out with the tide, it’s Ilya that keeps him moored.
He needs Ilya.
The house is empty, so Shane opens his phone and scrolls down to Ilya to locate his husband’s number. But there's nothing there. No contact information to be found.
Frowning, Shane keeps scrolling, navigating to the letter L. Which is weird, because he long ago corrected Ilya’s name in his phone, but it’s fine. Among everything happening to him today, the fact that Ilya’s information is once again saved under Lily will be the least of his issues.
He nearly drops his phone when he gets to the row spelling out Lily, as staring back at him in his contact application are the words:
LILY ❌ DO NOT FUCKING TEXT ❌
A cold sense of dread curls in his chest, only tightening around his lungs when he tentatively clicks on the contact and opens their chat. There, staring accusingly at him, is the last text ever sent, having been sent by his own number a nearly three years ago: a simple question that threatens to stop his heart.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
You're really getting married?
The phone leaves Shane's hand in a split second of raw, horrible anger.
The device launches across the room colliding with a glass frame, sending shards into the air with a satisfying shatter. Shane raises his hands to his mouth, sucks in a long, shuddery breath through his fingers, and then screams.
*
In the end, Shane convinces himself that he just needs to sleep.
This is a nightmare. There’s no way it’s not a nightmare.
It’s a horribly, very lucid, unbelievably real-feeling, nightmare.
So, Shane will go to sleep. He’ll get some rest. He’ll clear his head. And then he’ll wake up tomorrow, have left this nightmare behind, and everything will be normal again. He’ll be back in his bed in Ottawa, and Ilya will be there right next to him, his body way too warm against Shane’s back and with his face half-buried in Shane’s hair, and everything will be okay again.
He’ll wake up from this dream, the strangest one he’s ever had, and the world will tilt back on its proper axis.
*
In Between
He hovers in that place where the brain burns with vivid activity and the body floats in tranquil paralysis. He casts off his anchor of consciousness and drifts through a surreal, private gallery of memory, a warm voice lapping just on the edge of it, dampened just enough so that Shane can’t focus on it.
“Shane... love, please. Shane…"
*
Somewhere Else
Unknown, Montreal
When Shane wakes, the first thing he does is reach blindly across the mattress.
There’s nothing there.
The sheets are cold, undisturbed and tucked too tightly around a body that was never in them. The ceiling above him is the same familiar one from years past, with the one scratch lying horizontally in the flat, white, plasterboard surface. For a moment, Shane just lies there, heart hammering, waiting for relief to arrive— waiting for the moment the dream dissolves and he finds himself back where he belongs.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, there’s a dull throb behind his eyes, the stale taste of sleep in his mouth and the quiet creak of an empty house settling around him. All of it stubbornly, terribly real.
The realization settles slowly: Shane hasn’t left the nightmare at all.
Absurdly, this might be terrifyingly, impossibly, real: him, in Montreal, with Voyageurs gear in his closet, and no traces of Ilya to be found, and the single soul-shattering memory of that text.
He doesn’t know what this is, and he’s paralyzed between two opposing forces, having to get himself out of here and just wanting to pull these now-unfamiliar covers over him, give in, and cry.
Slowly, he drags himself out of bed and into the living area of his old residence. It looks the same as it did a year ago when he sold it, except for the glass shattered on the floor, shards spread wide from where the frame was hit, thin slivers and jagged pieces fanned out like splash frozen in time. In the morning light the pieces gleam faintly, each edge catching the sun differently, so the whole mess ripples when Shane shifts his head, like a puddle stirred by the slightest movement.
The shattered glass is from the frame of a photo of Shane’s 1000th point celebration, which, in real life, happened a few months ago, early in the season and shortly into his tenure with the Ottawa Centaurs, but, in this nightmare, apparently, happened with the Montreal Voyageurs— the previous season.
What the fuck.
The date on the plaque marking the milestone is almost a full six months of regulation play earlier than Shane actually achieved it. This dates indicates the milestone occurred in the NHL season 2020-2021, instead of 2021-2022, like it actually did.
Bewildered, Shane stares at the shards for several minutes, catching glimpses of brown and gold reflecting in the pieces, before sighing and moving to the closet where he unfortunately and predictably finds a small broom and dustbin.
For a moment he just stares into the closet. This dream is uncanny, too much predictability to be entirely fake, and yet, everything feels off, like it’s been slightly shifted to the left.
He grabs the broom.
Once the glass is all in the dustbin, Shane picks up the puck and the photo and looks at his face. It’s clearly him; he still looks like himself, hair not quite as long as it was yesterday, but still curling around his ears, flattened by the helmet he had on for warmups and was forced to take off before the pre-game ceremony.
In the photo, Shane’s barely smiling, and the realization makes Shane’s stomach roll uncomfortably. In real-life, he couldn’t keep a smile off his face, beaming as the Centaurs’ coaches and owners had shook his hand, with Ilya on one side of him and his parents on the other.
They’d repeated the event a few weeks later, Shane having just barely beaten Ilya to the career marker.
In this photo, though, he looks like a shadow of himself, giving the patient media-friendly smile he’d perfected by the age of seventeen; the one that looks genuine, but isn’t, even if it’s a crowd-pleaser. But there’s no light in his eyes. No pride there. Just mechanics: just him processing the milestone like a machine registering a completed task, built for motion not for reflection.
Not for enjoyment.
This is a nightmare, Shane thinks again, because he doesn’t know who this person is in the photo, not anymore. It’s him, but it’s also not. It reflects who he is physically, but emotionally, this person is a shell.
Shane sighs and deposits the glass in a cardboard box, taping it up and marking it clearly, and placing it on the side of the kitchen counter and leaves it for hopefully another Shane to fucking deal with.
He then picks up his phone. The screen has a gnarly spiderweb crack in the upper right corner from being thrown across the room, but otherwise the device seems functional, so Shane taps it to light up the screen and holds it out in front of him, the phone unlocking when it recognizes his face.
In a way, he’s thankful the phone unlocks for him; in other ways, he’s even more panicked.
He checks the date first. April 4, 2022, his phone tells him.
“Fuck,” Shane whispers, because he’s lost no time.
It’s the day after the Ottawa Centaurs’ last home game, where he and Ilya were both playing, having arrived at the game together, driving from their house, with plans to go to Shane’s parents the next morning for breakfast, because Ottawa had an off-day at home, and then to spend the rest of it in bed, as Ilya had made some incredibly dirty promises.
He taps on the screen a few times, pulling up the Centaurs’ schedule with a few clicks in the browser. When it loads on his screen he blinks at it, confused, because these Ottawa Centaurs are on a west coast trip, playing in Los Angeles this very evening.
Is that where Ilya is? Shane wonders, navigating over to the Centaurs’ roster page and scrolling down the list. He already knows he won’t find himself, but he’s not mentally prepared to scroll down the list and find Ilya Rozanov missing from the roster list as well.
The feeling of unease and dread that’s filled him all morning grabs hold of his internal organs and twists as Shane slowly types in Ilya Rozanov, presses the enter button, and then waits for a few anxious seconds as the search results load.
Ilya Rozanov is a Russian professional ice hockey player who is a centre and captain of the Boston Bears of the National Hockey League, reads the overview text, right below two boxes of information, one with Ilya’s age, and the second with the words, Spouse: Svetlana Vetrova, m. 2019.
“What the fuck,” Shane whispers to himself, sliding down the length of the kitchen island, as his legs threaten to give out beneath him. “What the fuck is happening to me?”
Boston, not Ottawa.
Svetlana, not Shane.
Pieces of the puzzle, picked up and placed down differently. He’s not exactly sure of the picture being built here, but he doesn’t like it one bit.
*
Shane is in his car and is on Autoroute 10 before he fully thinks through what he is doing. It’s not till his phone rings and Hayden Pike appears on the call-display on the car’s dash, that he—he, Shane Hollander— remembers about the Voyageurs, and that— his— team’s own hockey schedule.
“Hi?” Shane says, tentatively, accepting the call.
“Where the fuck are you?” Hayden says over the car’s audio system, his voice a pitch between worried and angry. “Coach is pissed, man. Practice is about to start.”
“Oh,” Shane intones.
“Oh?” Hayden rejoins. “Dude, what the fuck.”
“Um.” Shane switches lanes without signalling and speeds around a car in front of him, leap-frogging a few slower cars in the right lane. He’s driving like Ilya does, fast and manic, but he can’t help it: it’s a five hour drive to Boston, and he’s determined to make it in less.
There’s a pause before Hayden asks, “Are you on the highway?”
“Er,” Shane says, continuing his streak of vocal disfluencies.
Concern laces Hayden’s voice, as he asks, unprompted, “Is everything okay with your parents?”
Shane taps his fingers against the steering wheel. He hates lying to Hayden, even if this might not be his-Hayden, exactly, but latching onto the excuse that Hayden is offering him seems simpler than trying to explain to his friend that Shane is starting to believe that his life has been erased. Or rewritten. Or that everyone has been replaced by aliens. Or something.
“Ah…” Shane spares a look at the trees on either side of the Autoroute. He’s about ten kilometres away from the border crossing into Vermont.
“Christ, Shane, if you don't want to tell me—" Hayden starts, concern morphing into frustration, and Shane interjects, rapidly, to lie: “I’m on my way to Ottawa now.”
“Oh fuck." Again, Hayden's tone shifts, sounding genuinely concerned, and Shane suddenly feels irrationally guilty. “I hope everything’s okay. I’ll cover for you. Give your parents my best.”
“Thanks Hayden,” Shane tells him, meaning it. Even if he’s lying, even if he can’t tell this-Hayden the truth, he appreciates that at least one thing is consistent here: Hayden Pike is still his best friend.
When Hayden hangs up the phone, Shane sighs. “Call Farah,” he orders the auto-assistant, and immediately her number pops up. Belatedly, with the call already dialling, Shane says a small prayer that Farah is still his agent.
Ilya would die laughing hearing it, but Shane needs to arrange himself some personal time away from his fucking team, the Voyageurs.
*
Somewhere Else
April 4, 2022, Boston
He passes the sign on the I-93 welcoming him to Boston in record time, a feat he’d generally consider reckless. But he can’t be bothered to care. For all he knows, this isn’t his life— he might not even really be here. History seems to mean nothing here, so the future might not either; so what if he plays a bit fast and loose with safety? Maybe if he crashed, he’d just snap out of wherever here is and back to his own life.
Shane pulls up to what was once Ilya’s house, stops the car and gets out too look up at the sterile, glass jewel box of a home. This house looks nothing like the home they share in Ottawa. This house, while architecturally stunning, is devoid of any warmth, all straight edges and cut glass; while their shared home in Ottawa is the opposite, soft lines instead of severe, rooms unfolding into others with easy familiarity. Warm and lived-in, where this one always felt carefully curated, but with no sense of self. Conversely, they've worked to make the Ottawa home theirs, a reflection of them both.
Straightening the jacket he’s wearing over his hoodie, Shane pushes his hair back from his face and walks determined towards the door, banging on the imposing silver slab several times in quick succession. Then Shane waits, heart beating out of his chest, and prays that Ilya answers the door.
“Hollander?”
The moment the door opens, relief floods through Shane so sharply he almost sags with it. He can’t help the breath that leaves him, the knot in his chest loosening just at the sight of his husband.
He’s so relieved that it takes him a moment to process that it’s an odd greeting. Hollander, not Shane. Not my love, not some random combination of Russian words for fruit or vegetables, or household appliances. Shane finds himself frowning, his brain too busy trying to make sense of the word Hollander, said plainly and not teasingly, a title, not a plea.
“Hollander,” Ilya repeats, when Shane takes too long to reply. Ilya’s brow creases as he holds the door open, fingers tense against the paneling. “What are you doing here?”
Shane looks directly in Ilya’s eyes and sees only uncertainty staring back, as if Shane’s presence makes no sense at all. It’s not until that moment, when he sees the confusion knitting Ilya’s brow together that it dawns on Shane that he doesn’t have a plan. He just drove here, all of his instincts screaming for him to get to Ilya, because he figured that once Shane saw him, everything was going to make sense again.
They can fix this, together. Ilya will help him. He will be able to tell Ilya that something weird and confusing and horrible is happening to him, and they’ll fix it. Together.
Whatever the fuck is happening is solvable: together.
Because Ilya still exists. He’s here.
Shane can touch him.
He reaches out to do so and, incredibly, Ilya pulls back, sharply. He takes a step out of reach—away from Shane— by backing into his house, his brow furrowing deeper and mouth setting in a firm line.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Hollander?” Ilya demands, once again, dropping his grip on the door and crossing his arms over his chest protectively.
“I needed to see you,” Shane tells him, finally finding his voice, and, for lack of a better plan, takes a step into the house, uninvited.
“What?—Why?” Ilya asks, sharply.
There sharp skepticism in his tone, like the idea that Shane might want to see him is impossible. At the same time, Ilya inches backwards, small and careful steps. Not much, just enough to register. Shane watches it happen in slow motion as Ilya creates deliberate space between them, as if he’s afraid Shane might reach for him again. Like he doesn’t want Shane to try. As if that would be the worst thing in the world.
Shane’s pulse stutters.
For the first time years he’s entered Ilya’s orbit and Shane isn’t being touched immediately. No hand on his arm, or around his shoulders, or threading through his hair, or pushing up under his shirt. No grounding pressure. No claim. The absence feels wrong, like missing a step in the dark, and it weighs him down with the implication of another atom being out of place.
The longer they stand like that, the more Shane starts to feel off balance, like he’s sliding out of alignment.
This isn’t how this works, he wants to cry.
It isn’t how we’ve ever worked.
A thin, insistent panic threads through Shane’s veins. He wants to reach out again. He wants to be touched. He wants to drop to his knees; wants to fold in on himself and press his head against Ilya’s legs and beg for him to anchor him there. Wants to plead with him to tell Shane this is a huge cosmic joke that the whole world is in on; for Ilya to hold him tightly and press his shoulders down and use his body to assure him everything is okay.
Tell me this is still where I belong, he wants to beg, Please— Please.
But he doesn’t. The sharp rejection of Ilya pulling back still raw, and there’s no way to bury it.
“Is she here?” Shane asks, instead, trying to keep breathing as he looks around the house. He takes a few steps past Ilya, ignoring the way he plasters himself to the wall, like he’s afraid for even the rippling air around Shane to make contact with him. “I’ll explain. But, maybe Sveta can help us too…”
He’s been here a few times, years ago, and the house still looks familiar, the same cuts of stone and washes of paint, even if there’s more clutter everywhere. Shane walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator without asking. It’s full, with containers labeled in careful cursive, cut fruit in glass bowls, sparkling water lined up like soldiers.
There, in plain view: evidence of Svetlana.
It’s one of the many things that Shane and Svetlana have in common, the meticulously packed fridge of food neatly arranged into carefully labelled containers. Something Ilya rolls his eyes at, even though he secretly aims soft smiles at them both. They visit her in Boston a few times a year and she always keeps the fridge stocked with things that Shane likes, ginger-ale and the-like, as well as containers of prepped-ingredients that meet the macros of his diet. It’s a kindness she’s always paid him, since the very beginning, even if the effort is mostly for Ilya; a quiet message to Ilya that says, yes, love, I accept your man, too. But it’s also for him, because he and Svetlana are friends; they have their own bond, even if built on the basis that they both love and adore the same man, if in entirely different ways.
But here’s proof of her, laid out in front of him. Confirmation that Svetlana lives here— that they’re married.
The other evidence is on Ilya’s hand, Shane catching a glimpse of glinting gold on Ilya's right hand, as he scoffs and pushes irritated fingers through his hair, saying, almost derisively: “None of your business. What are you doing here?”
Shane tries not to flinch at the tone. Or to let the feeling of Ilya’s eyes on him, tense and calculating, seep into his skin. The look is foreign to him: even in the most strained moments in their history, llya’s never looked at him like this, like Shane is something that slipped through an unlocked door. Ilya's never looked at him with this sort of skepticism, or resistance.
“Something is happening to me,” Shane starts, closing the fridge door and starting to pace in Ilya's kitchen. He just needs to push through this. "Something is happening to us," he amends.
“To us?” Ilya tracks Shane’s pacing closely. His brow furrows. “Hollander, there is no us.”
The words cut. It’s a sudden wound, unexpected, and it aches immediately. Shane’s gaze snaps up, looking at Ilya in shock because the idea is utterly impossible. For a moment, it’s like struggling to stay afloat on choppy waters.
“No, see,” Shane continues, hoarsely. He shakes his head, brings one of the strings from his jacket up and starts chewing on it, anxiously. His chest is horrifically tight, but he shoves down the shock. “That's the problem— there is an us. There has always been an us.”
“Not for years. You know this,” Ilya argues, tightly. He is already shaking his head.
“Ilya! Listen to me." Shane breaks in, frustrated.
“Hollander, you should leave,” Ilya continues.
Shane spits out the aglet in his mouth, protests: “No, please, listen—”
“You shouldn’t be here—”
“Ilya!”
“You can’t just barge in after—”
“Ilya!” Shane slams a palm down on the counter in frustration, colliding with a stray bottle of sparkling water. The bottle tips and the water pours out and both Shane and Ilya turn, startled into tense silence.
The water drips off the counter, each drop captivating Shane’s attention. The spill glints at him, sparkles and shines shades of red with a secret. In the water, he sees a movement, a subtle flicker of gold, moving through the droplets. He frowns at it for a few long moments, until Ilya makes a frustrated noise, breaking Shane's trance.
“Hollander.”
“Ilya,” Shane counters, slowly, dragging his attention from the water with great effort. “There is. There’s always been an us, even when we didn’t admit it.”
“Hollander,” Ilya replies, and there's anger slipping into his voice now. “There hasn't been an us for years.”
Shane shakes his head. “No, that's impossible.” He clears his throat, presses his hands against just face and then says, imploringly, begging Ilya to remember: “We have a life together. Ever since— You know. You came to my cottage. You said you loved me— and I said I love you. We agreed on a future. You met my parents”— with every admission Ilya's eyes get wider—“You signed with Ottawa. I signed with Ottawa. We got married.”
“Hollander.” Ilya shakes his head, a clear dispute of Shane’s facts.
“Shane,” Shane corrects, fiercely. He feels like he's drowning, his chest is way too tight.
“Hollander,” Ilya repeats. His face is pale. “None of that happened.”
“It did, Ilya,” Shane begs. “You have to remember. It was the beginning of everything, of us. Of a real us.”
Ilya rakes a hand over his face. The wedding band glints, taunting Shane.
“Hollander, none of that happened.” He looks a bit pained when his hand pauses, still covering his mouth. “I’ve never been to your cottage—”
“You have!” Shane insists, ferociously. “Twenty-seventeen. Marlow gave me a concussion during a game—”
For the first time, Ilya nods. He drops his hand from his mouth, but the line of it is still tense, a firmness that Shane wants to kiss away. “Da, I remember—”
“Okay!” Shane exclaims, excitedly, because they’re getting somewhere. He takes a deep breath of relief. “And then at the hospital, I asked you to come—”
Ilya shakes his head again, and Shane wants to scream. “Hollander, I know this, but I never went. I went home. To Russia.”
“You didn’t,” Shane argues, immediately frustrated again. He clenches his hands into fists, whacks one against his own chest. “You stayed with me—”
“Is nice dream," Ilya admits, and maybe Shane should cling to that, but there’s a note of hopelessness, of surrender, in Ilya’s tone that just makes him angry.
“It’s not a dream! This is a dream— this house, Boston, that wedding band.” Shane points to it accusingly, and Ilya at least has the good sense to shove his right hand in his pocket. “This place is a nightmare,” Shane corrects, waving a wild hand around Ilya’s house of sharp edges. “You came to the cottage. It was the best— it was the best two weeks of my life.”
“No,” Ilya tells him, his voice corded tension. “That didn't happen.”
“It did,” Shane insists. He feels like he’s flailing, like he’s falling. Sinking. “It happened to us.”
“No, Hollander, it didn’t."
Ilya shakes his head again, and Shane can't take it anymore. He crosses the space between them in a few quick steps, takes Ilya's face in his hands and kisses him, fiercely.
It's the worst kiss of their lives.
Ilya is stiff under it, his mouth barely opening and his hands don’t move to touch Shane back. He doesn't respond, even as Shane tries to put everything he has into it, trying to put into this kiss the memory of every kiss they've ever had.
It doesn’t work.
Just as devastating as his protests, Ilya places his hands on Shane's shoulders, pushes back, and shifts his face away from him.
“Hollander,” Ilya says, slowly, staring blankly at the ground to their right. “Stop.”
Fragments of Shane's soul feel like they're drowned. Shane keeps his hands on Ilya's face, desperate. He pushes his fingers into Ilya’s jawline, trying to turn Ilya’s eyes back to him. “Ilya... please. I love you.”
Ilya flinches, and applies pressure on Shane's shoulders, pushing him away, slowly and gently.
“Hollander,” he repeats, and the word feels like a warning.
Shane lets his hands fall away from Ilya’s face. “You don't remember?”
Shane asks the question so quietly, almost a whisper, and, for the first time, some cracks in Ilya’s composure seem to appear; curated stillness slipping away. Ilya’s jaw seems to twitch, his voice cracking, subtly, as he insists, “There’s nothing to remember, Hollander. None of this happened…”
Shane ignores him, utter dismay filing his chest.
He doesn’t know how to explain, how to make Ilya remember: How do I explain to you, love of my life, that I woke up and all the pieces of my life have suddenly been placed in the wrong order? That you, this person I love so much that it would be impossible to sing all the ways, is suddenly acting all wrong? That you, darling, have been stripped of every single memory of every thing we are?
“Hollander, where is this coming from? Are you feeling OK?” Ilya asks.
A pained sound escapes him instead of another protest, and Shane raises his hands to his head and pulls on his own hair as he paces away, back to the other side of the room.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” he begs himself, and he, once again, wants to scream. He wants to bang his head against something, until all this fades away.
“Hollander.” Ilya's voice is softer now.
“You came to the cottage. We made a decision,” Shane tells him, pathetically. Shane drags another vicious hand through his hair, fingers snagging as if he might rip strands out. “It happened. It did. I love you— you love me.” The words come faster, sharper, until the last part nearly breaks into a shout: “Ilya, you have to remember that!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ilya flinch, and the line of his mouth snapping back into tension. Shane just paces, one hand gripping his hair and the other one smacking his cheek with increasing force, as he begs himself to wake up.
“Ilya!” he finds himself pleading, a few frayed strands away from a total collapse in this kitchen. He pulls on his hair again and winces when the motion hurts him, instead of yanking him from this dream. “Ilya. Fuck. It all happened— I swear it did, you have to remember all of this— why don’t you remember?”
“Hollander…”
“Please, Ilya—”
“Hollander, you are scaring me,” Ilya says, slowly.
Shane pivots towards him. Stops pacing immediately. “I'm scaring you?” he demands. “Ilya, I don't understand what's going on— this isn't right. None of this makes sense. You’re my husband.”
“I get that you seem to think that… right now… But I’m not…” Ilya tells him, the words slow and halting.
Shane raises his hand to his mouth to stifle the scream he wants to let out. He paces the kitchen again, dragging his hands through his hair, pulling at strands, again chanting to himself: “Wake up, Shane. Wake up.”
He steals a glance at Ilya, who is studying him, carefully, but isn’t folding. Shane slaps himself, and the resounding crack rings out in the hollow kitchen.
“This isn’t real. Wake up.”
“Hollander, calm down. Please,” Ilya interjects.
Ilya— this other Ilya, who insists he isn’t Shane’s husband—places his hands out in front of him, placatingly, the ring mocking Shane as it glints in the afternoon light. This man takes a few, slow, steps towards Shane, starting to look more worried than angry. One foot in front of the other, while he repeats Shane’s surname in hushed tones, like Shane is a freaked-out wild animal that Ilya needs to be careful around.
“Hollander,” Ilya repeats, “Maybe just sit down.”
“Stop calling me that,” Shane insists.
“OK.” Ilya relents, and, ever so gently, adds: “Shane.”
Shane barely restrains a whimper before it can take shape. Shane’s name sounds wrong in this-Ilya’s mouth— stripped bare of its meaning, emptied of reverence. Just a name, just a sound: short, blunt and unadorned. Monosyllabic. Unremarkable, and containing none of the multitudes or the promise that it has always has. Shane’s knees weaken for all the wrong reasons.
“You remember, don’t you?” Shane tries again. A final plea, as his legs threaten to give out.
“Shane,” Ilya repeats, pitifully; gives a single, heartbreaking shake of his head.
Shane does the only thing he can think to do: he flees.
*
In Between
"My love..."
Someone is whispering, warm and comforting tones, but an undercurrent of tension. Shane reflexively reaches out for the voice. The words are just out of his grasp, tiny sparks of light skirting the top of a seemingly endless body of water. Shane tries to stretch, tries to propel himself upwards.
"Shane, love, I need you to wake up now. OK? My love, please."
The voice is breaking, lost in a liquid curtain, and Shane is too deep to comfort it.
*