Chapter Text
Shane Hollander was sitting by himself in a bar in Toronto, hundreds of kilometers and hours of driving away from where he thought he’d be tonight. It was New Year’s Day 2022, a freshly christened year as the clock on the wall read 12:21 am. A news station on one of the TVs in the bar was still covering the celebrations in Times Square. And Shane was spending it by himself.
He drank more often now, since he hadn’t needed his body to be in top physical shape for a long time. But tonight the burn of the alcohol in his stomach did little to soothe his nerves. He regretted starting that argument with his parents on Boxing Day. They were just trying to be helpful, to remind him that they still cared about him, but one Christmas holiday couldn’t fix years of broken promises and resentment. Shane had left the next day, gone back to his home in Toronto, and now he was here. Alone, drinking his third IPA at a bar he didn’t even know the name of, just one he’d wandered into.
The humdrum of the other bar’s patrons was getting on his nerves a little bit, but he was happy enough being sheltered from the cold, beer in hand. Even years later, the bite of winter’s chill still sent aches radiating from the pieces of metal that hockey had left in him as a parting gift.
A stranger accidentally bumped shoulders with Shane as they sidled up to the bar, which would’ve been more irritating if he hadn’t already been so tired and relatively drunk.
“Sorry,” the stranger’s masculine voice said in accented English.
“It’s fine,” Shane replied simply.
Shane was about to take another sip of his IPA when his entire body froze, the glass halfway to his lips. He knew that voice. It had been years since he last heard it, the grindstone of time smoothing the rough edges of the accent, but it was still unmistakably Russian. It was the voice of —
“Hollander?” The man asked.
Shane set the glass down and turned his head slowly, the stranger’s hood-covered face coming into view. He was looking at Shane with wide-eyed surprise.
“Rozanov,” Shane replied flatly.
[...]
Shane couldn’t believe that he was sitting in a booth in a bar with Ilya Rozanov, nearly eight years after the last time they’d spoken to one another. They’d mutually agreed to catch up over another round, yet in the past five - nearly ten, now - minutes since they’d moved over to this booth, neither of them had spoken. Shane had ordered another beer, something lighter than an IPA this time, while Rozanov was halfway through a beer of his own; Rozanov had put both on his tab. That was something neutral that he could talk about, right? To break up this awful silence.
“Surprised you didn’t order vodka,” Shane said, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“Mm. I would never, not here,” Rozanov replied. “They don’t have any good vodka on that shelf.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once or twice. I moved here just last month.”
Shane was about to ask Rozanov about why he’d moved to Toronto, maybe about how he was even in Canada in the first place, but found himself torn. It was just casual conversation, barely more than surface level, but at the same time Shane didn’t want to learn more about Rozanov than he already knew. Even if the Rozanov he knew was from back in 2014.
As if Rozanov read his mood, the way he could all those years ago, he steered the conversation away from that topic. Or maybe he just didn’t want to reveal anything more about himself at the moment either. That would make sense, too.
“You are drinking an IPA?” Rozanov said, gesturing to Shane’s glass.
Shane nodded, then remembered he wasn’t, anymore. “I was, earlier. This is just a dark ale.”
“You didn’t drink beer, in the past. I cannot imagine you drinking an IPA.”
“Well, things have changed.”
And if that wasn’t a conversation killer. Shane had never been good at this, at small talk. Most of the time he didn’t really understand what purpose it served, to talk about nothing. He hated having to do so with friends, coworkers, even his parents, although he could at least make an effort. In fact, one of the things that he remembered liking about being with Rozanov is how little small talk they engaged in.
He still couldn’t decide how much effort he wanted to put into this conversation with Rozanov. Hell, they might never even see one another again, after this.
“I’m glad to see that you look well,” Rozanov said.
Shane looked up at him, searching his face for any hints, any ulterior motive behind his statement. It was too open ended; Shane couldn’t tell if Rozanov was saying that because he was genuinely curious about how he was doing, or if it was meant in a mocking way, or if it was just something that he said to fill the space. Rozanov was looking at him with a casual curiosity, his eyes trained on him with an all-too familiar intensity despite his laidback posture.
He wondered if Rozanov could tell how miserable he’d been when they first bumped into one another.
“Sure,” Shane replied. “Work has been good, and I had a good Christmas with my parents.”
That was all true. Christmas had been good. It wasn’t until Boxing Day that Shane had managed to fuck everything up.
“Good,” Rozanov said, offering a slight smile. He paused, searching Shane’s face for something. “It has been different, living here. But not so different than Montreal, really.”
“Montreal?” Shane asked in surprise, before he could think about it.
Rozanov’s face twitched, just a little bit. The barest hint of a smile creeping into his lips, before he returned his face to something more neutral. Fuck. Rozanov knew, didn’t he? That Shane was purposefully trying to keep things vague and impersonal. And he still knew just how to drag more out of him.
“Yes. I moved there in 2018,” Rozanov continued. “The US was becoming not so good for Russians, then. Shame. I’d just become a US citizen, too.”
“But you’re living in Canada, now,” Shane said, as if it wasn’t obvious.
“Obviously.” A bit of the snark Shane remembered had crept back into Rozanov’s voice. “Soon I think I can apply for Canadian citizenship.”
“You, Canadian? Canada isn’t too boring for you?”
Shane wasn’t sure what he was doing. He should just leave.
Rozanov huffed. “Maybe you’re right. After I become Canadian citizen I’ll move to UK, try to become a citizen there. I can collect citizenships like trading cards.”
“I’m not sure you should broadcast your intentions like that. The embassies could always be listening,” Shane replied dryly.
He shouldn’t be doing this, letting Rozanov pull him into an actual conversation. Banter, even.
“That’s okay, if they find out I will escape into Canadian wilderness. They won’t find me deep in the woods.”
“I doubt you could go for that long without speaking to another person. You’d die without someone to annoy.”
Rozanov let out a lighthearted laugh at that, quiet, but sounding so real. Shane found himself smiling a little, against his will.
Even after all these years, Shane had never met someone who could get him to open up and talk as easily as Rozanov did. Why did he have to be so goddamn charismatic? It was more than that, he just felt…comfortable with Rozanov, infuriatingly so. He didn’t make him feel like he had to plan out and analyze everything he said before he said it.
Shane hadn’t really even wanted to have a conversation with him, and yet here he was, trading jabs and bantering with him like they hadn’t spent the past near-decade ignoring each other. It was just because Rozanov was charming, Shane told himself.
“Is nice to see you smile,” Rozanov said suddenly.
Shane froze up, the smile falling off of his face in an instant. Rozanov sucked in a breath, looking a little guilty.
“Sorry,” Rozanov said quietly. “Is just…when I first bumped into you at the bar. I didn’t think it was you until I heard your voice. You looked so sad.”
Shane cringed internally at the image. Of him looking so depressed and pitiable that Rozanov hadn’t even recognized him. He didn’t think he looked all that different; it’d been 8 years, not 80.
“I don’t look that different,” Shane said defensively, unwilling to touch on the topic of how he felt.
Rozanov raised an eyebrow. “You know that is not what I mean. But you do look a little different, you look –”
He stopped, apparently having correctly guessed that Shane didn’t really want to entertain the topic of how different he looked in his eyes. But Shane could still see Ilya shamelessly roving his eyes over his torso and face, taking in the details that didn’t quite match up with his memories.
Shane found himself doing the same. Rozanov didn’t look as different as he’d hoped, although he hadn’t had the time to analyze what his subconscious meant by that. His hair was a little longer, but more neatly cut. There were lines on his face that Shane didn’t recognize. He was still athletically built but had lost some of the heft that he’d needed to play hockey.
But there were things that were still the same. Things that Shane couldn’t have described if prompted but his brain picked up on anyway. The same hazel eyes, capable of both languid indifference and blazing intensity. The same curvature of his lips, supple and full. The same stunningly white teeth, on account of them being largely fake.
“I know. I look different too, yes?” Rozanov said teasingly, a small but toothy smile on his face.
Shane felt his face heat up as he had evidently been staring at Rozanov right back.
“You do. You got old,” Shane managed.
“Not that old. I could still be playing hockey if –”
Their conversation dropped from the air as Rozanov realized he’d stepped right in it. The forbidden topic. Shane tensed up, his grip on his glass tightening dangerously. His face probably did something uncontrolled and unseemly, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. At least Rozanov had the decency to look remorseful.
“Sorry,” Rozanov said.
Shane just nodded in response. He didn’t really want to talk about what exactly Rozanov was sorry for, because that would’ve meant having to continue talking about hockey.
The mood had soured significantly from the mere mention of hockey, their conversation drying right back up. Shane so badly just wanted to get up and leave, but he thought he should finish his beer first. Rozanov ended up beating him to it.
“I should…get going,” Rozanov said, as he slid out from the booth.
“Sure,” Shane replied. “Get home safe.”
Rozanov looked at him for a second before picking up his glass and going to the bar to close out his tab. He probably had intended to get more than one drink for himself but didn’t want to stay here, now. Shane watched for a second as he talked with the bartender, before turning his attention to one of the TVs opposite him. Thankfully, it didn’t have hockey on.
Rozanov walked past him on his way out. Then Shane saw out of the corner of his eye as he stopped and turned back around. He didn’t want to acknowledge the man again, but he came right up next to Shane.
Shane turned, half-ready to tell him to fuck off and thanks for ruining his mood, only to see Rozanov holding a napkin with something written on it, looking uncharacteristically uncertain.
“I have a new phone number,” Rozanov said, extending the napkin to Shane.
Shane blinked a few times, unsure of what to do. Things were still so awkward, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to reject Rozanov outright, even if he still didn’t know what his intentions were by giving him his number.
Rozanov sighed and put the napkin on the table in front of Shane.
“Here, you can do with it whatever you like,” he said. “I just thought…would be nice, to have familiar face in a new city.”
Shane nodded, but didn’t know what to say. Rozanov seemed to get the message, returning a curt smile before turning on his heels and heading towards the door. He watched until Rozanov turned the corner, disappearing from view.
He looked at the number scrawled on the small bar napkin in surprisingly neat font, considering the circumstances. Rozanov must’ve asked the bartender for a pen. The number was unfamiliar, of course, although it had a Montreal area code. Different from the Boston area code that Shane still remembered, somewhere in the back of his mind.
He set his glass on top of the napkin, before suddenly worrying that the possible moisture could render the number illegible. Shane didn’t know why he cared, when his first instinct had been to ball up the napkin and lob it at Rozanov’s head as he walked away. But the thought of losing this number, of possibly never seeing Rozanov again, made his heart ache in a way that he didn’t have the tools to deal with right now.
Maybe it would be nice, to have someone to talk to. A friend, and only that. Despite having lived in Toronto for years now, Shane hadn’t been the most social person, like always. His closest friend was Celine, whom he’d met while at University of Toronto and who now lived somewhere in Quebec. They hadn’t been talking much recently, either. Not since she’d met her current boyfriend.
Shane slipped the napkin into his pocket before finishing his beer, then ordered a Lyft back home.
[...]
Shane waited until he got home to put Rozanov’s new number into his phone. He’d stared at the number for far too long first, still deciding if he should just throw the thing away. But Rozanov had, as he so often did in the past, put the ball in Shane’s court. Shane’s number hadn’t changed, and although there was no way for him to know that, Rozanov hadn’t tried texting him first. Assuming he still had his number. Having Rozanov’s new number wouldn’t mean anything unless Shane texted first, then.
It was weird, having his number saved as “Ilya Rozanov”, instead of “Lily”. On impulse, Shane searched that old name in his phone’s messages and was surprised when their old text thread popped up. He’d had an iPhone for years, so maybe somehow everything had been saved in the cloud.
It took a second for the messages to load, but once Shane started scrolling, he couldn’t stop. Five years of this, of sneaking around in hotel rooms, checking around corners for cameras, and him buying an entire building just to have somewhere to meet with Rozanov in Montreal. Five years of waiting, wondering, hoping, that the months-long silences that stretched between their messages weren’t permanent, until one day, it was. Five years of something that had made him feel trapped and yet, hadn’t freed him at all once it ended.
Shane scrolled back to the bottom, finding messages which reminded him of the incident that had finally led him to ghosting Rozanov. How he’d called Rozanov for the first time ever, just to scream at him, vitriol flowing off of his tongue in a way he’d never felt before and hoped to never feel again.
Shane realized that he hadn’t even seen the messages after June. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to block Rozanov’s number completely, maybe some sick part of him even wanted to see him continue groveling, but had turned all of his notifications off. To be fair, he was pretty sure that at that time that he hadn’t been responding to anyone, not just Rozanov. He felt an indescribable mixture of emotions seeing that the last text Rozanov had sent was on his birthday.
There was something unsettling about the strangely properly-capitalized and punctuated messages in the middle of all of these, but Shane wasn’t quite sure if it meant something. Maybe the Shane of back then might’ve had an idea, but he hadn’t even seen the messages until now.
And reading these messages, Shane could feel something gnawing at him that he didn’t want to acknowledge. But his body knew, if the burning he felt behind his eyes was any indication. Shane turned his phone off and put it on his bedside table as the screen began to get a little blurry.
He turned off the light and pulled the covers up before closing his eyes. But sleep didn’t come easily, his mind racing with all of the what-ifs that he hadn’t wanted to think about in years. And when he did finally sleep, his mind continued to betray him, dreaming of golden curls sprawled next to a lakeside.
Ilya returned home to his suburban house a little while later. He’d gone to another bar after leaving Hollander but had barely made it through another beer before deciding he didn’t feel like being out anymore. He’d gone out to get his mind away from the deep-seated tiredness he’d felt all day and had managed to run into probably the only thing that could make it worse. He wasn’t really supposed to be drinking while taking his antidepressants, anyway.
He slipped off his shoes and made his way to the kitchen, feeling like a glass of cold water might help him feel a bit more normal again. He brought the glass to the dinner table and sat down, checking his phone. That was stupid. Hollander wouldn’t have texted him yet, if he ever did.
He thought he’d put Hollander in the past, finally gotten over the worst year of his life and all of the terrible shit that came with it. But of course, he had to run into him in a random bar. And of course Ilya couldn’t help but notice him first.
“You’re home later than I thought you’d be.”
Ilya choked on his water, not having expected Svetlana to still be awake, even though neither of them had work tomorrow.
“Ah, Sveta,” he said, still sputtering. “I didn’t expect you would still be up.”
She shrugged and sat at the table, across from him.
“Like I said, I thought you’d be home earlier.” She looked at the glass of water Ilya was holding. “You were out drinking?”
“Yes, I ran into…old friend. We caught up over a drink.”
“Mm. Only a drink?”
“Two. But only beer, Sveta.”
Svetlana leveled a look at him. “You do look fine, so I don’t have to worry, it seems.”
Ilya wanted to be annoyed with her for policing his alcohol intake, but he knew she was doing it out of love and concern for him. She’d been there for the times when he needed that policing badly, and no matter how much she hid it behind her frosty persona and her real concern, he knew that there was fear driving it, too.
“So…this old friend,” she mused. “They are so important that you took your wedding band off?”
Ilya set the glass down roughly in surprise before glancing at his right hand, where he’d indeed forgotten to put his ring back on. He’d recognized Hollander as soon as he set his eyes on him, although he hadn’t wanted to admit as such to him. And for some reason, that was enough to get him to take off his ring and slip it in his pocket. He wasn’t even expecting anything to happen - he’d half expected Hollander to tell him to fuck off or pretend that they’d never met.
“Ah, no, I…” Ilya trailed off.
“Ilyusha, you should know me better than that,” Svetlana said. “I don’t care who you sleep with. We both know that this,” she gestured between them, “has never been like that, yes?”
Ilya nodded. Of course he knew. She’d been the one to suggest it, when Ilya had been lost and didn’t know what to do. She’d been the one to save him, when things had come crashing down around him. When he’d had nobody to go to, she was the one who’d shown him love. And she’d expected so little in return.
“But I still love you,” Ilya said, his voice warm.
“I know. And I love you.”
Svetlana walked around the table to give him a kiss, which he reciprocated.
“I’m going to sleep now,” she announced. “Will you come to bed?”
Ilya knew that she already knew the answer if she was asking. She probably wasn’t expecting sex, or anything like that, but she could read his moods well. They’d looked for a house with at least one extra bedroom just so that they wouldn’t always feel like they were forced to be together, when that wasn’t really what they were.
“Not tonight,” Ilya said softly.
Svetlana gave him a knowing smile, warm and understanding, before heading to the master bedroom.
Ilya sat at the dinner table for some time after finishing his water, agonizing over the fact that he’d given Hollander his number. He didn’t know what he was thinking. The “familiar face” excuse he’d used was true enough - he hadn’t really had the time or energy yet to meet anyone other than his coworkers.
He kept checking his phone, as if Hollander was going to text tonight. He was probably already asleep, for all Ilya knew. He didn’t know if Hollander had a new number, too, or not, but he didn’t want to find his message thread with “Jane” to make himself feel even worse.
Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he would regret this. Even if he could never call it a mistake to have fallen for Shane Hollander, it very well may have been one to have given the man a key for the door to his heart all over again.