Chapter Text
The hardest part to swallow is that—when he accidentally forgets about it, when he just gives himself over to the pace of the hockey or the flow of team practice or the cacophony of team dinners in the Village, when he wakes up in the morning a few minutes before his alarm with a weight of fur and lean muscle pressing down against his chest, when he’s falling asleep and his thoughts have gone fuzzy and slow, each tail end of them trailing off into static—it really doesn’t feel all that different.
Serafima, that is. Having Serafima next to him in the Canada dorms, on the bench during practice, in the daemon suite of the rink up high before the semi-final game. She feels like Evren, when Shane lets himself forget that she’s not.
It isn’t what he expected, is all. He hadn’t been expecting to just be able to forget. How can something that has the power to ruin his life not be at the forefront of his mind, all the fucking time?
For the most part, it is. Of course it is. He thinks about it a lot, almost every hour of the day. Ilya Rozanov is his soulmate, definitively. End of story. This category, this column of his life that Shane’s never thought much about before, has suddenly been filled out in something more permanent than ink. Ilya Rozanov is his soulmate, and Shane knows this because Rozanov’s daemon is by his side and Ren is somewhere out in the world, by Rozanov’s.
Of course Shane thinks about it. He’s fucking—agonizing over it, pretty much all the time, because it’s fucking dangerous and disconcerting and a mindfuck and the biggest risk of Shane’s life, every time he’s out in public with Sima next to him and a camera turns and gets trained on them.
No one can know. He’s pretty sure he and Rozanov are on the same page regarding this, despite the fact that they haven’t talked about any of it yet. He’s pretty sure Rozanov appreciates exactly what it’ll do for their careers and their lives and their futures if people find out that Shane’s spent the last few days with the wrong snow leopard on his heels. That Rozanov has too.
No one can know; it would be so easy for someone to find out. So easy for someone to look too closely at Sima, to hear her speak and recognize the strange lilt of her accent. To clock the way that Shane can’t stop himself from hesitating before he reaches for her, every damn time. He doesn’t mean to, it’s just—it’s new. It’s dangerous. It makes him feel like a fire’s been lit in his chest every time he touches her with his bare hands, and he doesn’t know how to brace for that kind of impact, doesn’t know how to hide the way the blow of it knocks the breath out of his lungs.
It would be so easy for someone to find out. It’s only a matter of fucking time, probably, and Shane’s so fucking scared about that that he forgets to be scared about Team USA’s defensive line until he’s halfway through the fucking game, one assist to his name and the gold medal in sight.
But what’s worse is when he can forget. When he does. When he’s eating breakfast in the lounge and he puts his free hand on top of Sima’s head the way he would with Ren. When he’s sitting on the floor at the foot of JJ’s bed, shoulder to shoulder with his lineys from the team, pushing his feet out until he can push them up under Sima’s side. When he’s flushed from the 3-1 victory against Team USA and he holds out his arms in the locker room so Sima can jump into them so powerfully that both of them almost go careening into his stall.
It’s worse when it’s easy, because he’d thought it’d be hard the whole time and he doesn’t know what to do with it when it’s hard but he definitely doesn’t know what to do with it when it feels natural. When being Ilya Rozaov’s soulmate feels—natural. Easy as breathing. Easy as running his fingers through the tufts of fur behind Ren’s ears. Easy, simple. World continues on. Shane hadn’t been sure it would, when he’d ended the call with Ilya, Sima on the bus seat next to him.
He doesn’t know what to do with that either.
“What do you think they’re doing,” he murmurs, so early in the morning it’s probably criminal to be up at all. The room is quiet for once, Tanner and the deafening snores of his wild hog daemon having crashed with Fletcher despite all the ways that broke the curfew. Gray light seeps in through the cracks in the curtain, and it turns the edges of Sima’s fur into the soft blue of deep ice.
“I do not know,” she says, scratchy. She butts her head up against his shoulder. “Sleeping. Probably.”
Shane blinks up at the ceiling and lets out a breath. It’s not the first time he’s asked her this question over the past few days, and it’s not the first time she’s refused to engage with the thought experiment.
What do you think they’re doing right now? after he’d climbed into bed two nights ago, Tanner in the shower and his daemon asleep in the corner of the room.
I don’t know, Shane. I think Evren must be telling Ilyusha your most embarrassing childhood stories, Serafima had said, like just the idea of that wasn’t enough to keep him from sleep for the next handful of hours.
What do you think they’re doing? quietly, on the bus back from practice the morning of the semi-finals game.
I don’t know, Shane. Looking at wedding rings, Serafima had murmured before she’d let out a gravelly, choking huff of laugh at the look on his face.
What do you think they’re doing? whispered into the fur of her neck late last night after the movie in JJ’s room had run its course and he’d walked back to his room and laid in bed alone except for the soul in his arms that wasn’t his but felt so close to it that his mind was getting confused. Like. Right now.
I do not know, kotik, Sima had said, curled up within the tight band of Shane’s arms, tail resting across her front paws.
Guess, Shane’d said because he wasn’t above pleading when it came to Ilya Rozanov, so long as Ilya Rozanov was not around to hear him. Just—what do you think?
And Sima had said, slow and syrupy with sleep, I think Ilyusha is probably saying something very stupid that he thinks is the truth, and Evren is trying to decide if she believes him or not.
Shane hadn’t said anything after that; neither had Sima. But now they’re both awake and the early dawn of the Sochi morning cannot be kept from the room. Sparks jump along his veins like campfire wood crackling up from every part of skin that brushes up against Sima’s fur.
Today, Rozanov will be back in the Village with Ren, and Shane will meet up with him somewhere. They’ll trade their daemons again and then Rozanov will fly back to the States, probably, and Shane will get ready to face down Switzerland for Olympic gold tomorrow.
Beside him, Serafima shifts and then gets to her paws, stretching out the length of her spine and turning to face Shane completely. One of her ears twitches down. The fur on the left side of her face is flattened from sleep, the way a human’s face holds onto pillow cases for the first few minutes after waking up. “I think is not the right question,” she says, batting her paw against Shane’s chest even though he’s already listening. “Is not what they are doing that matters, kotik.”
Shane blinks at her and thinks about all the things Evren could be telling Rozanov and all the things he could be saying to her in return. “I mean, I think it matters a little bit,” he says.
“No,” Serafima insists, final. “What you will do is most important question right now, kotik. What you want to do. Is morning now. Is over soon.”
“That’s not fair,” Shane says, putting his arm over his eyes so he doesn’t have to look directly at her. He doesn’t pretend to not know what she means though. Of course he does. “What about—Ilya? What about what he’s decided to do?”
He trips over the name in his mouth as it comes out. It feels wrong to call him Rozanov, like, to the guy’s soul, so he’s been trying to use his first name with Serafima. He’s scared shitless he’s gonna slip up, accidentally say Ilya to Rozanov and have to, like, walk into the ocean or something, but it’s whatever. Sima’s right. This whole thing is over soon.
Shane’s been irrevocably changed by it, of course, can’t pretend his life doesn’t look different, hasn’t been thrown off the rails by the last few days, but. It’ll be…easier. With Ren back. It’ll be easier to sort through his emotions with Ren next to him, figure out what parts of the heaviness in his chest stem from his anxiety over someone realizing who Serafima belongs to, and what parts of his fear are just—his.
Permanently.
“I know what Ilyusha will want to do,” Serafima tells him, with a very dramatic sigh. A beat later, he lets out a startled oomph as her weight lands squarely on his chest. “I am hoping you are less of idiot,” she says, and Shane raises his arm so he can peek down at her form.
“What does Ilya want?” he asks with little hope of getting an actual answer from her. This is another thought experiment Serafima refuses to engage in. Every time Shane asks her about Ilya—a story from his childhood, an anecdote about Moscow, a clarification about a rumor he’d heard from Boston—she’s said that same thing. Ask him yourself.
Fucking—useless. Shane’s spent almost two days with Ilya Rozanov’s soul curled up in his lap and yet he doesn’t know anything more about the man than he did before the Olympics. It’s frustrating as hell; it’s not even that surprising.
“You are seeing him today,” Serafima says like Shane knew she would. “Ask him this.”
“Ugh,” Shane says and lets his arm cover his eyes again. “I can’t just—decide for the both of us, Sima, that’s not how this works. It’s not as simple as—me knowing what I want.”
“Hm,” Sima rumbles, which is her version of a purr. It sounds half-like a growl and Shane thinks—when this is over, he will miss it. Her. “But deciding for yourself is first step, no?”
He opens his mouth, instinctive denial ready, but before he can say anything, the phone on the bedside begins to ring. Before he even gets his hands on it, he knows who’s calling. Who it has to be.
Incoming Call: Lily.
“Think about it,” Sima tells him, nudging the back of his hand with the tip of her nose. I have been, he doesn’t say because he can’t imagine the words coming out as anything other than a whine.
But seriously—what does she think he’s been doing other than thinking about it? He can’t fucking escape it. How can he focus on anything else when Ilya Rozaov’s daemon has been within eyesight for the past forty hours, minus the length of one hockey game, feeling like his?
The problem is. Like, the heart of the problem—deep at its center, everything else stripped away for a second, peeled back til the bone is visible—is, well.
Sometimes Shane still wonders what it would have been like if Evren settled into a form that was too big for ice hockey. He thinks about it and he isn’t—sure. Can’t decide how he would have felt with an—an elephant as a daemon. A horse. Likes to think he would have figured out how to keep loving Ren, even if it meant losing hockey, but he can taste the lie on his tongue every time he holds the words in his mouth.
Ice hockey has always been the greatest love of his life. Everything he has ever worked for, everything that he’s dreamed of, every injury his body’s sustained, every family obligation he’s missed and made his parents miss for the sake of it: it’s only worth it for as long as he can play, as long as he can hold onto hockey. Otherwise, it’s just—CTE, maybe and a knee that aches when it rains and a grandmother he wasn’t there to bury because his coach told him that there’d be MLH scouts at the tournament, watching him. Lose hockey and his entire life goes up in flames. A tailspin of destruction he isn’t sure he has the tools to survive.
He’d have given up anything for hockey, back then when Evren was still unsettled. Any part of himself he could toss overboard to lighten the load. He would have given up more, if he’s being honest with himself, and he’s already—well. He’s already given up a lot.
And it’s all been fucking worth it, hasn’t it, because he’s twenty-three now and on Team Canada, at the Olympics, gold medal just out of sight but his already, hopefully. He’s twenty-three and the Captain of the Montreal Metros. The Calder’s got his name on it. The Cup—one day, it’ll say Shane Hollander too. And beyond that, he’s playing this game he loves every day. He’s still in the locker room, still out on the rink, putting in his hours, loving ice hockey with everything he’s got.
He’d been so fucking worried. That Evren would settle into a form that would make the scouts hum amongst themselves and jot down notes on their clipboards. So worried he’d be barred from hockey, which has always been the thing he loves most, because of something he couldn’t change about himself. The one thing he didn’t get a say in, the one thing he couldn’t control or hide away.
He’d have changed—so much about himself. He has. For hockey. To be good enough for it. People like to joke, like to say, oh she’ll never love you back, bro, but Shane’s always thought that was stupid.
Obviously the people who said it have never been first out on the ice after the zamboni’s smoothed it over. Obviously they’ve never drawn back and then slammed the puck past a goalie’s glove, seconds before the final buzzer. Obviously they’ve never deked a puck around two defensemen, kept control of it on a breakaway, skated so fast and so hard that the entire game’d bent to their will.
Obviously they’d never loved hockey enough to make that joke in the first place. People who did, people like Shane, knew it didn’t matter if hockey loved them back. They loved it anyway. They gave it everything they had. Compromised every line, every part of themselves someone else deemed necessary to give up, hide away, change.
So what if he—so what if he never had the college experience, the awkward moments of fumbling around with someone in the shadows of a house party that everyone’s pretending to enjoy? So what if he never let himself think about—soulmates, about having one, about testing it, about trying? So what if—so what if he watches romantic comedies with the team and finds himself getting hung up on and aching at some of the things depicted? So what if no one’s ever stroked his hair away from his forehead and cleaned him up after sex, bought him flowers just to see him smile, stolen his sweatshirt because it fit better on them than their own clothes did?
He’d never wanted—like, dating girls who could do that stuff would come later. After. After the hockey, because the hockey came first. And sure, everyone else on his team was capable of balancing women and their careers, but Shane just. Shane’s just never liked the idea of a girlfriend enough to try it.
And that was the only option he had. Women. He couldn’t—
Men weren’t—
A relationship with another guy wasn’t—
He’s given things up for hockey, obviously. Everyone has. All the fanatic players, sure, but also the ones who were more easy-going about it. They all led the same lives, had the same sort of schedule. They all gave things up. They all skipped holidays with their families, they all ate their weight in chicken pesto pasta even when they were sick to the backs of their teeth of it. They all knew a guy who knew another guy who had a friend in peewee who had so much promise until there was something about himself he couldn’t change, an inconvenience so big he couldn’t hide it away, and then no coach past the high school level wanted him.
Shane wasn’t that guy. Ren settled when he was fourteen years old, and she settled into the form of a snow leopard. Big cat, but on the small enough side that his world kept spinning and he got to keep hockey. Keep playing. Keep getting knocked to the boards, keep getting teeth knocked out, keep getting blood on the ice. Keep slicing off pieces of himself for the sake of the game, like when a cute barista with a piercing through his lip had slid his cappuccino over the counter with his number written along the side, and Shane had thrown the cup out the second he’d left the store and then never gone back just in case he’d been—sending signals or something he hadn’t known how to shut down.
When you love someone so much you’re stupid with it, nothing they could ask you to do is too much. It’s not just a game. Hockey’s a lifestyle choice. It’s all Shane knows. It’s always been everything he wants.
He imagines the feeling’s similar to how some sailors must have felt, back in the day, the ones who climbed aboard tall-masted ships to set sail for places they’d never even seen before. Who spent most of their life on the ocean, only ever came to port when they had to and never stayed for long. My lady is the sea and all that jazz. That’s Shane, just with hockey. There’s a whole life those sailors gave up for the one they got in return, but that’s just how love works when it’s bigger than yourself. When it’s selfish and demanding and all-consuming.
It’s just—Shane had thought he’d passed. That he was done, hurdle disappearing behind him. Evren settled and she was small enough that all the coaches and MLH staff that’d been interested in him stayed interested.
And everything else that would make them hesitate—flip shut their little notebooks—leave the stands—-that was all in Shane’s control. Things he could give up. Hide away. Cut off or stuff so deeply inside he’d forget about it until years and years after his retirement.
He’d thought he was done. That hockey was his, that he’d made the cut, fooled everyone into letting him play. That if he ever had to stop early it would be because of something external. A bad blow to the head, a fucked up back, a blown out knee. Something that happened to him, not something that came from him internally.
Except.
Except now he has a soulmate and his soulmate is a guy. Another hockey player, at least, one who must know as much about giving things up as Shane does. But it’s still—it’s just not in his control. It’s not what he wants, what he’d envisioned. He hasn’t wanted to find his soulmate since the moment he admitted to himself, in the dead of night, Ren asleep on his legs and his apartment quiet around him, that his soulmate would—it’d probably be—there was a non-zero chance, that is. That his soulmate would be a man.
And he doesn’t even know, still, sometimes, when he thinks about it, if he’d have forgiven Ren if she’d settled into a form that forced him to give up hockey. And she hadn’t, thank Christ, but he’d thought that was the end of it, if he just kept everything else carefully managed and pruned back. And now he has a soulmate, who is a man, who is Ilya Rozanov.
Shane’s never loved anything more than he loves hockey. He’s never wanted anything more than he wants to play hockey. That hasn’t changed, just because apparently he and Rozanov are soulmates.
It’s just dangerous. It’s a risk. It’s something else to be hidden away, something big. If someone finds out, if the league finds out, if Shane’s team finds out—Shane doesn’t know what would happen.
But it feels—
Shane can’t decide.
It feels a little bit like how sailors must have felt back then, when people thought there was an edge of the world they could fall off of and they’d boarded the boat anyway. Shane thinks about Rozanov, about soulmates, and his stomach feels like it’s dropping away from him, off that edge, while the fear races up through his chest and threatens to consume him.
But the idea of it, of soulmates, of Ilya the way Serafima speaks of Ilya, feels—also, a little bit, in the heart of him—like how a sailor could have felt seeing the faint outline of land after months at sea. Like a—like a yearning sensation that aches so much it’s almost physically painful.
It’s not seeing land and recognizing it as oh, home. That’s home. It’s—more like loving the ocean with everything you have, catching sight of land off in the distance and thinking, oh. You could have been home for me. If I were different or if you were.
Ilya tells him to meet them on the beach, so Shane dresses up in jogging clothes and catches the first bus from the team dorms to the Olympic campus. It’s almost seven in the morning now and the Village is already bustling with people. Not necessarily athletes, but all the people that surround them during events like this. The pressers, the events staff, the bushy-tailed fans. The agents, the officials, the set-up crew, the street cleaners.
The knot of people loosens the further that they walk away from the main circle of stadiums and rinks that make up the Village. It’s cold outside, gray and silver, the sun making a half-hearted attempt to pierce through the blanket of clouds before seemingly deciding it’s not yet worth the effort. The beach is deserted, a pale scratch of sand and stone running into a writhing mass of dark water.
Shane stops along the line of the concrete seawall, at the very edge of the steps leading down to the beach. Sima stops with him, tilting her head up to stare at him with eyes that are too knowing. The salt smell is strong. The tide is going out, Shane thinks, though it could just as easily be coming in. The line of ocean water is receding into itself or it is coming back. Distance can be measured like that sometimes, Shane knows. Not by how close or far away you are, but by the direction you choose to go next.
“Why did you do it?” he asks, looking away from Sima. He leans his arms up against the rough concrete of the low seawall and stares out over the ocean. It’s not exactly windy, but there’s a chill in the air that shifts against itself and cuts deep across the exposed skin of his face and his hands.
Further along the beach, at the very edge of the area the public is allowed to go, there is a figure, standing alone along the line of the surf.
Not alone. There’s another figure, a four-legged silhouette that comes up to his knees, standing next to him.
“Evren wouldn’t have thought of it,” Shane says, almost to himself. Sima is quiet next to him. Maybe she is thinking about her answer. Maybe she is thinking about not answering at all. “She definitely wouldn’t have done it. Me and her, we’re not…we don’t take risks like that.”
They’re cowards, is what he doesn’t say. Shane is a coward. He has spent too many years hiding to be anything else.
“She did though,” Sima points out gently. She has been so—stubborn, this whole time. But so gentle too. So overflowing with affection. “Maybe she did not think of testing your connection, but she did not need any convincing either.”
Shane shakes his head, and his hands tighten around each other. He thinks, probably, Evren likes Serafima enough to do whatever she suggests. Simple as that. They’re both idiots, then, when it comes to Ilya Rozanov and his soul. At least there’s consistency there.
“Sima,” he says. “Why?”
Sima doesn’t say anything immediately, but he thinks that is just the kind of daemon she is. She weighs her options, she weighs her words.
In front of them, the surf crashes up against the rocky beach and then withdraws. The water must be freezing. Mid-February in Russia, it can’t be anything else but icy cold. Shane looks out at the horizon and wonders how long it would take to reach land on the other side. He’s never been much of a swimmer. Or a sailor. He’d probably drown first.
“Love for me,” Sima says finally, slowly. “It has always been about protection, kotik. And there are some things I cannot—that he will not allow me to—” she breaks off, lets out something that is half growl, half sigh. “I thought maybe a soulmate would have more success.” She pauses, huffs, and adds, “at least they would have opposable thumbs. More weight to hold him down.”
Shane blinks down at the concrete beneath his hands. He feels, wildly, like crying. Or laughing. “What, you think he’d let me protect him? He doesn’t even want me to talk to him. He doesn’t even—” stay.
Which isn’t even fair, really, because Shane’s never wanted Rozanov to linger post-hookup either. That’s not what they do, that’s not within the bounds of what he’s allowed himself when it comes to fucking Ilya Rozanov.
If hockey is the great love of his life, Rozanov is like his dirty little secret. An extramarital affair he indulges in because he knows, deep in the heart of him, that his wife will never love him back and even though he knows he shouldn’t—even though he knows his entire life could come crumbling down if the wrong person looks at his text messages even just one time, he can’t bring himself to stop because—it’s nice. To be held.
It’s just—the movie last night. It’d been a romantic comedy because Jordie was missing his soulmate even if he had her raccoon daemon curled up in his lap, and the male lead had tucked a strand of hair behind the woman’s ear and Shane’s heart had felt tender all over. Tenderized; pounded thin. Nothing sweet about it.
He’d thought, quick, before he could stop himself: I will never have that. I will have hockey instead and sometimes Rozanov will fuck me in a hotel room and that will be enough. But Ilya Rozanov will never touch me like that. Neither of us is capable of it. Me, holding still. Him, being gentle.
So it’s just—it’s a little funny. That Serafima wanted so badly for Rozanov’s soulmate to be Shane, as if that would mean anything. As if Rozanov hadn’t already told him to get lost, that they were nothing, only a few minutes before their daemons traded humans. Protect him? Protect Rozanov? Rozanov wouldn’t even answer Shane’s stupid fucking text.
“Shane,” Serafima says, and she pushes her head up against his thigh, insistent and solid. He wants to drop his hand down and stroke along her fur, but he knows it’ll make him feel warmed through, just touching her, and he can’t have that. Not now. Not when he is going to have to give her back soon, in a matter of minutes, and he may never feel that warmth again.
Depending.
“I’m just saying,” Shane mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face instead. “I don’t think being soulmates necessarily means…” he trails off, can’t figure out how to end the sentence. Truth is, he doesn’t know what it means, being soulmates. What Ilya will let it mean. What Shane can survive it meaning. What hockey and secrecy and shame will whittle it down to. The great love of your life is supposed to be your soulmate, bar none. No one tells you what to do if you find your soulmate after you've already committed your life to something else that you love with everything you have, bar fucking down.
“I have spent four years watching him reach for you, Shane,” Serafima says quietly. “I grew tired of pretending that meant nothing. I know him too well for this. I had to see. I wanted it to be true.”
“Why?” The word bursts out of him before he can stop it, but if she wanted truth, then there’s not much more he can offer her than the stretched thin and razor sharp word. Why. Why. Why did you want it to be true. Why does he reach for me. Why do you make it sound like that’s important when it’s always just been sex?
“Because,” Serafima murmurs, rusty and honest and familiar. Already so familiar. “I have also spent four years watching the way you love, kotik. And I am a selfish daemon tied to a selfless human. I want Ilyusha to have the best, even if he does not want this also.”
Shane blinks, looks down at her and then away before she can begin to pinpoint whatever emotions are splashed across his face. “You could have been wrong,” he tells her weakly, and she preens, ears flicking down and eyes half-closed in the self-satisfaction of someone who is going to bring this up for the foreseeable future.
“But I was not,” she says, and she’s never sounded more like Rozanov—Ilya. She’s never sounded more like Ilya and Shane feels something in his chest ease at that, even if it doesn’t make sense.
“Guess not,” he tells her, and his eyes catch on the figure further down the beach. Rozanov. Of course it’s Rozanov. It’s always been—
“Shane,” Sima says, and she bumps her head up against his knee. Shane moves, descending down the steps to the black pebbles of the beach. “Shane,” Sima says, insistent now. Unhappy, maybe. Just as stubborn as Shane is. As Ilya is.
But Shane doesn’t want to do this. Do, like. Goodbyes and shit. Doesn’t want to feel that golden-fire-safety warmth rush through his veins if this is going to be the last time he gets it. And they’re—no one’s around, but they’re in public now. Someone could see. Someone could know.
“You can’t—when you see him,” Shane trips over his words, fumbles them. They’re heavy in his mouth, tied together in strange ways. “You can’t touch him or anything, you have to—I don’t know. Do something with Evren first. In case. Just in case someone’s….”
Sima lets him trail off without interrupting, lets the silence linger for a moment before she sighs and says, “I know, Shane,” like he’s disappointed her. Which is just—such a shit feeling that he can’t even focus on the way sand gets into his shoes the moment he leaves the safety of the seawall stairs.
They pick their way across the beach slowly but steadily until the moment that the figure at its end solidifies into Rozanov, recognizably. He’s wearing a long black coat that’s probably way too expensive for the fucking beach. A toque’s pulled down over his hair, gray like the ocean and the sky, but loose blond curls are sticking out around his ears and against his forehead, shifting against the wind. The collar of the coat is pulled up and his gloved hand is holding a half-finished cigarette that he lets fall to the ground and die against the sand the moment he sees Shane approaching.
Sima tenses for a second and then bounds forward with a growl, a bullet released from its chamber as she races towards Ilya and then past him, colliding with Evren and rolling the both of them over into the wet sand and sea spray.
Shane winces even as Evren yowls back. It’s a playful sound, one that’s paired with her scrambling to climb on top of Sima. Weight and size, probably, she’s bigger, but Sima’s wily and slippery. It’s not an easy fight and they tangle together in the sand in a way that would look violent if Shane couldn’t feel the joy radiating from some part of his soul. The joy that could be Ren’s but could just as easily be Sima’s.
“Hey,” he tells Rozanov when they’re within a few feet of each other. “Uh, Ilya.”
Rozanov’s mouth twitches, dimple flashing for a moment before he smoothes his face out, expressionless again. His eyes are very green today. “You sound like you’re in pain,” he says. “Shane.”
Ilya’s tongue wraps carefully around the word. It’s not as if he makes it sound easy either, saying it. Shane’s name, without the Hollander tagged onto the end, rings out strange in Ilya’s voice. Maybe he doesn’t sound like he’s in pain or anything, but he doesn’t sound normal either. He sounds like—like a delivery driver, handling a package labeled FRAGILE without knowing what’s inside it. Like he’s exercising heretofore unknown levels of caution and there’s still a fifty-fifty chance he’s gonna fuck it up.
Fifty-fifty’s a pretty good ratio, if you think about it for long enough. If you come out of the gate expecting worse. It’s all about managing expectations.
“You can call me Rozanov,” Rozanov says, sounding magnanimous. “I do not mind.”
Shane purses his lips. “Don’t tell me what to do, Ilya,” he mutters, which is the kind of stupid teenage boy shit Ilya Rozanov drags out of him sometimes, but it’s not like he can just go around calling his soulmate by his last name for the rest of his life. Shane’s got no idea what they’re doing, where this is going, what’s going to happen, but that feels like a pretty good starting point. Serafima’s Ilyusha is Shane’s Rozanov; but Shane can compromise. He can meet in the middle. He can call Ilya Rozanov Ilya.
Ilya’s lips twitch again and he looks away from Shane, turning his body to face the ocean. They’re standing just far enough back from the tide that the water can’t reach them. Shane shoves his hands in his pockets and glances towards their daemons. Evren’s chasing Serafima through the surf, fast and powerful, no holds barred, the way she can never play with other daemons.
A perfect match. When he looks at their daemons, he can believe it.
When he looks at Ilya, though—
Beside him, Ilya kicks at the pebbles beneath his feet, scuffing along the edge of his discarded cigarette. Shane frowns automatically at the litter, but it’s not like there’s a trash can nearby. And he figures bitching at Ilya about smoking isn’t the best way to start the conversation they probably need to have.
Not that he knows a better way to start it.
Not that he knows what he wants to say either.
He said Ilya at least. That feels like progress.
“I am not going to hold you to it,” Ilya says abruptly, eyes fixed out onto the horizon. His body is a long line of tension, back too perfectly straight, shoulders raised, jaw tight.
“What?”
“Being—what we are. I am not going to…hold you to it. If you want others. If you want time. If you don’t want….”
Ilya trails off, inclines his head. His hands are tucked neatly into the pockets of his fancy coat. His expression is cold, stiff, giving away nothing.
Shane stares at the side of his face, but it’s like trying to glare through a brick wall to see what’s going on inside the house for how far it gets him.
“Is that what you want?” he asks, and Ilya shrugs. One shoulder, up and then down, a jerking movement like someone else is controlling his body.
Ren’s managed to pin Sima down against the sandy beach, but she doesn’t get further than a lick across her muzzle before Sima’s up again and rolling her back onto the ground. The water rushes around them and then recedes.
The tide is coming in, Shane thinks. At least, the ocean feels like it’s getting closer even though Shane hasn’t moved his feet. Funny how some things can be inevitable and some things can be avoided if no one holds you to them.
He lets the words form in his head. Ilya Rozanov is my soulmate, he thinks. He lets them settle down on his tongue, thinks about saying them. You are my soulmate.
They are very far from the ice rink. If he says the words, very quietly, very quickly, maybe hockey will not hear them. Maybe they can just be for Ilya’s ears alone. You are my soulmate. I think that means something we can’t ignore.
“Are you—” Shane starts and then stops. The question is half-formed in his mind and ugly. He wants to ask Ilya if he’s giving Shane an out because he thinks that’s what Shane wants or if it’s what Ilya wants. If he’s, like, disappointed in it being Shane. If he wouldn’t want to ignore the soulmate thing if anyone else had been the one he could trade daemons with.
It’s too heavy of a question. Too transparent.
He thinks about Ilya sleeping with someone else, now after they know, and he feels a sickening lurch in his stomach like he’s just found the edge of the world and tumbled over it, ship and all. Stupid and selfish. Ilya can sleep with whoever he wants, if he wants others.
He swallows, changes course.
“—okay?” he asks, and Ilya’s head snaps to look at him, thick eyebrows furrowed down over his face.
“What?”
Shane shrugs and stuffs his hands further into his pockets. He looks away and then back because he can’t help it. If Ilya were just a little less magnetic, Shane’s life would probably be a thousand times easier. “Are you okay?" he asks again. "Sima sort of said, like. It might have been rough. These last few days?”
Ilya’s jaw clenches, teeth grinding together and lips tightening into a thin white line as he digests the words. “What else did Serafima say?” he demands, eyes dark and attention fixed fully on Shane.
She said you were selfless, Shane doesn’t say. She said she wanted you to have the best. She said it like she thought that was me, even though I have no idea where she got that fucking impression. She said you were probably saying stupid things to Evren that you believed were true. Is that one of them? Saying that. About others, about time. Is that something stupid? Is that something you believe?
“Nothing, man,” Shane says. He holds his hands out, palm up when Ilya narrows his eyes at him. “Seriously, nothing. I kept asking things, but she kept telling me to just—ask you instead. She wouldn’t even tell me your favorite fucking color.”
Ilya grunts. He digs out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and flips it open before he shuts it just as quickly with a frustrated curl of his mouth. The pack goes back into his coat and Ilya glares out at the sea.
“Orange,” he says finally, like the word’s been ripped out of him. Like it’s his deepest fucking secret, his favorite color.
“Huh,” Shane says.
“What,” Ilya snaps, turning his glare back onto Shane, who shrugs.
“Nothing, nothing,” he says. “It’s just—kinda ugly, isn’t it?” and he doesn’t even know why he says it. Has fucking nothing against the color, it’s just—they can do this. He knows how to do this, how to get under Ilya’s skin and prod at him, make him look at him the way he’s looking now, like Shane’s the most interesting thing in the room, like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
Arguing with Ilya Rozanov, that’s something Shane knows how to do. Everything else—it’s all murky, unclear instructions, unknowns and uncertainties. But this? They can do this. This is common ground.
“At least it is not green,” Ilya says, voice sharp but the tension in his shoulders unspooling because Shane’s right. Shane made the right play. They can do this. They know how to do this, at least.
“Green’s great,” Shane tells him happily. “Color of the trees and shit. Eco friendly.”
It makes Ilya scoff, which makes Shane grin harder.
“You been watching my interviews? That’s sweet,” Shane adds, pushing for more. Getting greedy with it. Getting hungry.
Ilya’s face does something complicated. It cracks open for a second. His hand reaches for his cigarettes again, but he stops himself before he can draw out the pack.
“Know thy enemy,” Ilya finally says, which—it’s so fucking funny, given the context, given their daemons, given the last few days and all the revelations they’ve had that Shane has to bite down on his lip to stop himself from laughing.
When he huffs out a small laugh anyway, unstoppable, uncontrollable, Ilya’s body relaxes. Just slightly.
Shane clears his throat, feeling strangely charitable when faced with this version of Ilya. The one who can make him laugh. “You can smoke, if you want,” he hears himself say, glancing down at the way Ilya’s fingers are hovering near his pocket. Shane doesn’t know exactly how it works, hasn’t ever gotten into the habit himself for all the obvious reasons, but he knows some people smoke in stressful situations to take the edge off them. He can give that to Ilya, he thinks, if Ilya needs it.
“No,” Ilya says, voice and spine suddenly stiff again. Fucking—one step forward, five steps back sort of thing. He hesitates, and Sima’s loud, playful growl fills the silence between them, mixes and blends with the sound of the waves and Evren's responding chirp. “Is bad for you,” he finally adds.
Shane blinks. Bites his tongue. Waits.
Is rewarded, a handful of seconds later, when Ilya says, begrudgingly, “The smoke. Is bad for others, too. Secondhand. And you play for gold tomorrow.”
Shane stares. Ilya’s back to glaring out to the horizon again, hands returned in his coat pockets and shoulders raised like he never dropped them at all. The tension’s back in the air between them like it never left. It’s like pulling fucking teeth, trying to talk to this guy. Like trying to solve an encrypted message, but the cipher keeps changing.
It’s stupid, obviously. Ilya’s refusal is fucking stupid. One cigarette he isn’t even smoking isn’t going to kill Shane and it’s not going to, like, damage his lungs before the gold medal game tomorrow either. Especially not when they’re on a fucking beach in the open air like this. The risks are so low they’re negligible, and that’s coming from Shane.
Still, it’s—stupid. But it’s sweet, too. It’s—
It reminds him of Sima, looking up at him from the seawall steps and telling him that the only kind of love she knows is the kind that’s synonymous with protection. She must have had a teacher, he realizes like a punch to the gut. She must have learned that from watching someone else.
For Shane, his love has always been about honesty. Who he can share himself with. Who gets to see what parts of him and who doesn’t. It’s a survival thing, maybe. It’s the result of so many years trying to hide bits of himself from everyone so he doesn’t lose the thing he loves the most.
He has never been under any delusion about this: he knows hockey will never accept all of him. He’s never spent much time thinking about if anyone else would. It never seemed important. Or, it had, but it’d always seemed like—like that sliver of land a sailor who has married the ocean sees from the crow’s nest. Landfall, not homecoming. Someone else’s home but not his.
You are my soulmate, he thinks. Ilya Rozanov. You are my soulmate. I want that to mean something. That is the truth. I don’t care if it doesn’t have to mean anything. I want to show you every part of me, maybe. Some day. If you think you could stand to see them. I want it to mean something, being soulmates. Even though it scares me. I want you to hold me to it. I want us to keep this promise something else made for us in the first place. I know that's not fair. But if you're really as selfless as your daemon made you sound, then I can be greedy enough for the both of us. I'll hold you to this too, if you let me. I can hold you, too. If you let me.
“Ilya,” he says, and Ilya’s eyes are on him again. Under the weight of his gaze, he hesitates. He should probably start—like, figuring out what he wants to say before he opens his mouth. That would probably be a good thing to start doing.
“Shane,” Ilya says, arching an eyebrow and matching his tone because he’s an asshole who might never give Shane anything more than exactly what Shane gives him first. Or maybe he will. Maybe he’ll give Shane a lot. Inches and miles and anything he asks for.
Shane doesn’t know. Shane knows what it’s like to kiss Ilya Rozanov and desire him and feel his exhales, wet and hot against his skin, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to be Ilya Rozanov’s soulmate when they both know the truth. Maybe there are no balance sheets involved, maybe no one’s keeping score. Maybe it won’t matter who texts who last, who forgets to text back, who breaks first and apologizes, who holds out their hand for the other to accept.
Maybe they both give and they both take, push towards and pull away, both at the same time depending on the day.
“I want it to mean something,” he says, very, very quietly. So quietly the roar of the ocean almost steals his words right out of the air. “You’re my soulmate.”
Ilya looks at him fully. His eyes are so green that Shane thinks stupidly that if green weren’t already his favorite color, it would be by now. “I am,” he says. Agrees. Promises. He’s not smiling, but there’s—a strange, tender joy in Shane’s chest that feels new. Not his, not Ren’s, not even Sima’s.
The tide is coming in, Shane thinks. But it could just as easily be going out. It’s a simple matter of perspective, really, if you think about it. Push away, pull to. Push towards, pull away.
“Does that scare you?” Shane asks, and he thinks—if he were braver, he’d reach out across the space between them and brush his fingers over the bare skin of Ilya’s neck. He wants to know how it’ll feel to touch Ilya now that he knows. Now that he’s touched Sima. Will it feel just as warm?
Then he thinks—hasn’t it always, a little bit? Hasn't it always made him feel warm and golden, Ilya's touch? His attention?
“So much,” Ilya whispers like a confession, and Shane grins at him before he can bite it back. “And you?”
“Yeah,” Shane says honestly, swallowing down a burst of laughter that bleeds into his words all the same. “Fucking—scared shitless. Fuck.”
Ilya nods and ducks his head. He’s smiling too. It makes him look five years younger. It makes him look like a different person. Still beautiful, still so fucking gorgeous. But…different. Transformed.
The happiness in Shane’s chest shifts, crests like a tidal wave. Some of it is his, he thinks. Some of it stems from this moment, from the relief of it, from just—not being left alone in this.
In front of them, Sima tackles Ren into the surf with a yowl that scares a seagull off the water with a warning screech. It takes flight, beating its wings up into the wind and letting it buffer it through the sky. At the edge of the tide, it’s impossible to tell which daemon is which as they tussle against the sand, a blurry mess of identical shades of black and gray and white, tumbling round and round again until it is like they blend into one eight-legged, two-tailed creature before Shane’s very eyes.
Beside him, Ilya shifts and brushes their shoulders together. It’s such a small movement that it could almost be an accident except for all the ways Shane knows it is not.
“Ugh,” Shane mutters as he watches Evren try to shake her fur dry again. “You know, we just needed you to switch back. You didn’t need to wrestle in the water.”
Evren tosses her head and tries to shake herself again, but her pelt isn't a dog’s pelt. It’s way too thick for such a trick to be effective. Shane’s going to have to spend either the rest of the day hearing her bitch and moan about her fur being wet or he’s going to have to spend the next two hours drying it with Fletcher’s shitty hair dryer.
“Seriously,” Shane says, grimacing down at his daemon, who rubs up against the leg of his joggers to smear the remnants of sand and salt water against him too.
The Village is bustling now, full of athletes and their minders and their fans and everyone else. It’s later in the morning, easily nine now, and Shane can feel his phone buzzing against his leg as Team Canada wakes up. The only thing they have on today is afternoon skate, something simple to keep them focused and game-ready for tomorrow. Shane has time to grab a coffee, get back to the hotel, dry Ren off if he’s feeling kind, and probably meet up with some of the guys to see another event before then.
They’d left Ilya and Serafima on the beach fifteen minutes ago, and Shane’s only glanced down at the daemon by his feet to make sure it’s the correct one a handful of times since then, which he thinks is demonstrating incredible self-control.
Fool him once, etcetera.
“You are so boring,” Ren declares and she rubs up against him again with a flick of her tail.
“Ugh,” Shane says, but he can’t stop himself from smiling. Can’t bite it back, can’t stop the way the harmless joy bubbling up in his chest spreads itself across his voice and over his face. “You’re starting to sound like him.”
Evren purrs like this is a compliment.
Maybe it is.
A line’s already forming in front of the Village’s largest coffeeshop, so Shane dutifully shuffles to the back of it and stands with his hands in his pocket as he waits.
They’d agreed on Boston, in March. They’d see each other then. Roughly a month away. That gives them time they can both use to get their heads on straight and their thoughts in order.
Being in Russia grates on Ilya, wears him down—Shane can see it now that someone’s told him what to look for. He needs to catch a flight home, recover. Sleep.
Shane doesn’t have the same reaction towards Russia, obviously, but he needs time too. Without the Olympics and all the attention that comes with being a member of Team Canada. It’s impossible to be here, in Sochi, in the Village, without thinking about hockey. And he can’t think about hockey if he wants to honestly examine this soulmate shit. They’re separate things. They need to be—separate things.
And, sure—Ilya is going to go back to Boston, but he’s still going to be Russian, with a Russian family tying him to this country. And sure, Shane is going to fly back to Montreal, but he’s still going to be thrown back into the regular hockey season. Neither of them can actually separate themselves from the things that they love, even when the things they love hurt them. Neither of them is lucky enough for that.
The best they can do is Boston, after the Raiders-Metro game in March. Shane has no idea if that’ll be enough, if their best will be worth shit when stacked up against everything else, but it’s a start. Before this morning, he hadn’t had Boston in March.
A week ago, he hadn’t even known to want it.
The line in front of him inches forward, and he moves with it. When his phone buzzes in his pocket, he pulls it out to read the messages from his team. But the very first one is not from anyone on Team Canada.
It’s from Lily.
Shane opens up the message thread with a furrowed brow, casting a sideways glance down at his daemon just to make sure it’s really, actually Evren at his feet.
Evren blinks up at him innocently.
Hi, yes. Thank you for reaching out. Ilya has sent. I am feeling okay.
Shane has to read the text three times before he sees his own text above it and everything clicks into place. He bites his lip so he doesn’t laugh out loud at his phone screen, feeling like a giddy teenager with his very first crush when he realizes that this is Ilya answering the text he’d sent two days ago, before he’d approached him at the rink. Before the daemon swap. Before everything had changed.
Well, Shane thinks. Better late than never.
Glad to hear it, Shane types out. I’ll see you in Boston.
This time, with this text, he doesn’t hesitate to press send.
And, this time, Ilya’s reply comes before he can even close his phone.
Yes, Ilya says. But before this I hear you have gold medal game to win.
Maybe, Shane replies, because he doesn’t particularly believe in hockey superstitions but even he knows better to count his chickens before the eggs have hatched.
Good luck, Ilya sends. Then, break their knees ))))
Shane blinks down at his phone. You’re supposed to tell me to break my leg I think.
He waits as Ilya begins to type and then stops. Then starts again. Ren has to butt at his thigh with her head to get him to move forward with the flow of the line.
I am trying to be nice, Hollander, Ilya texts back after a few seconds. Why would I tell you to break your leg when I am trying to be nice?
Shane bites at the tip of his tongue and begins to type back—it’s an expression, asshole—but Ilya has already sent another text before he can finish his own.
Lily:
I am telling you to win. Broken legs are bad for gold medal hockey.
Broken knees of Swiss players….ok for hockey
Shane lets out the bark of laughter that has been bubbling inside his chest for ages now. Evren peers up at him with her ears flicked down, confused maybe. Suspicious. He doesn’t blame her. Last time they were here, in this coffeeshop, Shane had felt something completely different when looking at his phone.
But that version of him did not have a soulmate yet. At least not one he knew about. That version of him did not know Ilya Rozanov’s daemon’s name, didn’t know how it felt to say Ilya Rozanov’s given name. Didn’t have Boston in March to look forward to. Didn’t know it was an option at all.
“Evren,” he says, sliding his phone into his pocket without answering Ilya’s last message. She blinks at him, ears twitching. He rarely uses her full name. She probably thinks he’s upset or something. “Why did you do it?”
The line moves forward. They’re only three people from the counter now. The barista working the espresso machine has a bat daemon on her shoulder, head tucked beneath its wing.
Ren doesn’t pretend she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She also doesn’t pretend to be apologetic, which Shane isn’t surprised by. They’ve never pretended with each other. Everyone else—yeah, maybe. Off and on. Situation dependent. But with each other, they’ve always tried to be honest before everything else.
She sits down and leans against his leg, front paws beginning to knead carefully at the tile of the floor beneath her feet. “I thought—” she says, then stops, considers, starts again. Hesitant but not apologetic. “Eventually," she says slowly and carefully, "you’re not going to be a hockey player anymore. Even if—even if nothing bad ever happens. You’re still…it’s not going to…you’ll get….”
Shane waits. For her to finish a sentence. For the knee-jerk defensiveness to hit, the same cornered-animal you don’t know that he’s felt every time someone’s tried to talk to him about the same thing. He waits and he waits.
It doesn’t come.
“I want you to know who you are when you can’t be a hockey player anymore,” Evren tells him very quietly. “I wanted you to have something. For then. I thought—it was worth a shot. And if we didn’t try, we’d never know.”
Shane nods thoughtfully. “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take,” he recites, and Evren nods quickly, eagerly, ears flopping up and then down from the force of the movement.
“Exactly,” she says plaintively, and Shane reaches down to brush his fingers over her head to let her know he isn’t mad. He should be, maybe, but he’s not. People and daemons both have probably done worse out of the same love that pushed Sima and Ren to act.
And, in the end, it was a good call. Solid play. High risk, high reward. Now he has March to look forward to, and he’s already done the math. Counting tomorrow’s game, he has seven more games to play in before Montreal meets the Raiders on ice in Boston. Seven more games to get through before he makes landfall.
That's nothing, big picture wise. Just a bit of hockey.