Hollanov Time Travel AU: Latest | Chronological
They ration out their meetings. Starving, but too afraid to risk more.
Being caught together back in 2017 could have ruined their lives, but being caught now, in 2008? Neither of them has savings or a contract to protect them. Their reputations here are all about their potential, and potential goes to waste all the time for much smaller reasons. When the competition ends, Ilya will be going back to Russia, to his father's house. The idea of it already sits in his stomach like a brick. He can't think about how it would be if he returned home amid whispers his coach would repeat to Papa about Ilya sneaking around with another boy. The measures his father would take to correct this ultimate disgrace.
But they can't deny themselves that little reassurance, those few snatched moments alone together. Even if Shane weren't the person Ilya loves most in this life, the only person to see all of him and ask for more, they would still need it. To meet eyes and reaffirm that this is really happening, they really are in this impossible situation. A shared elevator at the hotel. Five minutes in the parking lot again while Ilya smokes, enduring the disapproving pinch of Shane's eyebrows. A brief moment paused in the access route up to the stands during the Slovakia vs Sweden game.
They fabricate proximity in stranger ways, too. Ilya hopes that the undercurrent of mutual obsession in their actions is only evident to them— Shane copying the path of Ilya's warmups when Canada takes the ice after Russia, skating the same circuit only a scant twenty minutes apart; Ilya coming into the breakfast room at the hotel just as Shane and his teammates are getting up to leave and taking the same seat at the same table as Shane had used. It leaves him giddy and starved for the real thing.
After the Russia vs Finland game, they 'happen' to go to the hotel's gym at the same time, arranged by covert whisper on the way to the team buses that morning. It's safer than the stairwell if they're spotted together, but there are CC TV cameras surveilling the whole room and there's no way to know if they're monitored or if the footage is saved. Even without the cameras, the whole hotel is full of athletic boys fighting jet lag and the pressure of an international competition. They can't count on privacy lasting. Even talking feels too dangerous when they're so exposed.
Ilya feels a little crazed from it. He'd risk so much just to be in the same room together, not even able to touch.
Going silently through their separate workouts, circling each other as they change machines, it reminds him of their draft day. The very first time he got to have Shane Hollander properly alone. He hadn't thought Hollander had changed much over the years, except to grow a little broader as the muscle settled on his frame. Now, with Shane's twenty-six-year-old face so abruptly replaced by his seventeen-year-old one, the changes are obvious. His jaw is a little rounder, his eyebrows finer. His five o'clock shadow fills in more sporadically. The fringe of his schoolboy haircut falls onto his sweaty forehead and it makes Ilya feel absurdly protective, as if this really were the same unknowing boy he met all those years ago.
This strange week has also been the first time they've ever met up alone like this without having sex, and it's becoming a challenge to keep it from eating into his focus on the ice. The teenage hormonal melodrama of this all will be the end of Ilya.
Shane stills on his machine, eyes flicking to the doorway. "Stairs again tomorrow?" He asks, barely more than a whisper as he climbs off.
"Eleven thirty," Ilya replies, head carefully angled forwards for the cameras while his eyes meet Shane's.
It earns him a little smile and a barely-there nod.
"Goodnight," Shane tells him.
It won't be. He'd forgotten how Demyan Vasilyev snored.
"You too."
It won't be for Shane either. Ilya can see the shadows under his eyes, the unresolved questions putting tension in his shoulders.
They need time. Real time, where they can really talk. The memory of the cottage presses at him—endless sun-drenched days and fire-lit nights without another soul for miles.
The stairwell will have to do.
+
Shane is waiting for him already when he reaches the top of the stairs, three steps down from the roof access door. Ilya had briefly thought about trying to sweet talk one of the hotel staff into giving him the door code, but it's nearing midnight on December 30th, (2008, he has to make himself remember again) and whatever comments he might make about Canadian winter being nothing to a Russian, there's only so long he can spend outside when it's ten below.
And... as much as he might wish they had real privacy... he doesn't want to lose a minute of this time he can steal with Shane. For years, he could never get his fill of Shane Hollander, but four or maybe as many as six times a year they would meet, and he would glut himself on Shane's body and pleasure and tell himself it was enough. That it was all he wanted from him. This softer, fuller intimacy is so new that it made him feel seventeen all over again just to hold Shane's hand in the car when Shane picked him up at the airport. And now he really is seventeen again, and it gives his body a flush of happy adrenaline just to see Shane's face light up at the sight of him, so transparently glad at his simple presence.
He wants him, but he wants this, too.
"Any trouble getting away?" Shane asks, scooting over on the stair to make room.
Ilya ignores the attempt at equitable stair-division and sits down on Shane's half, crowding into his space just to see him smile again and feel the heat of his body.
"No," he answers. "My roommate sleeps like the dead and snores like a saw. He will not know I'm gone this time. You?"
"Nope," Shane said. "I was coming up with excuses all afternoon, but Quincy was out like a light before I even left. Hopefully he doesn't wake up or something—I thought they had us living out of each other's pockets in the MLH, but this is crazy. I forgot how strict everything was all the time, and how much they made us watch each other."
"Yes," Ilya has to agree. "Is maybe even worse with Russian team, because the coaches are always a little bit afraid one of us will wander off and cause international incident in a fit of teenage barbarity. They watch us every minute."
"Barbarity," Shane echos, eyes soft. Then his brows pinch in concern. "Your English is so much better now. Has anyone said anything?"
"No, no one notices these things, I am sure. And if they do, the first guess will not be time travel or whatever the fuck. They will think I studied harder than they thought but was shy, or was faking so that no one would make me translate or talk to media."
"Right," Shane says, but the soap bubble joy of being alone has burst. The worry is sitting tight in this shoulders as he leans in and kisses Ilya softly, three quick little kisses and one that clings. Ilya extricates his arm from the press of their bodies and brings it around Shane's back, holding them snugly together. When the kiss breaks, he urges Shane's head down against his shoulder, petting the soft tufts of his hair.
"I'm worried," Shane says earnestly, little warm puffs of breath tickling Ilya's collarbones.
No shit. He tries to be good, he doesn't even say it out loud, but with Shane pressed up against him, the silent little hitches of his laugh are obvious.
"You asshole." But Shane's voice is too warm to even pretend they're arguing.
"I am worried too. Is natural thing to be."
"Uh huh."
"I am also thinking that you would be less unhappy if the hockey was better."
"Definitely an asshole," Shane tells him, but he kisses Ilya's shoulder through his shirt. The sheer aimless affection of it sends a little zip of happiness down to Ilya's fingertips. "The hockey isn't—bad, for what it is, but it's so weird. To go from being on a cup-contender team to... high school kids, doing great work for their age. They're all so green, you know? And their heads aren't really in the game the way I'm used to now."
"I know. Seven years of the best hockey in the world makes even talented kids feel like they aren't pulling their weight. And this I think we won't be able to hide."
"Yeah. After our first game, the head coach singled me out to talk about playmaking and making sure I was setting things up at a pace the others could keep up with. I tried to dial it back, but he's still talking about how far my game sense has come in this competition, so I think it's showing anyway."
"Seven years of MLH conditioning is gone like nothing, but we can't unlearn experience," Ilya agreed.
"I can't bring myself to dumb it down either," Shane confesses. "I don't know how to hold back on, like, decision-making. Even if I'm playing differently than I could when I was really seventeen. It would feel scummy, to use my what, third best judgement?"
Ilya has to laugh at him. Shane Hollander, who can't bear to give hockey an A- effort.
"This is only a problem now," he reminds Shane. "And is barely a problem at all. I think you forget how crazy things were. All the 'generational talents, hockey prodigies, future hall of fame, most epic rivalry in living memory' talk was a lot for two kids who hadn't gone the distance yet. If they say crazy things about us again, it will not be so different in the end."
"I was thinking about that," Shane said, lifting his head from Ilya's shoulder. He pulls him in close to make up the distance, and Shane pushes his shoulder against Ilya's no-longer-bruised ribs. Call and answer, no words needed. They may have lost the physiques they'd built through years of effort but they haven't lost the easy way their bodies speak.
Ilya leans in, lips close enough to brush Shane's as he speaks.
"Thinking. Mmm."
"Pay attention," Shane laughs at him, but lets himself be drawn into a long, questing kiss, his own hands finding their way to Ilya's shoulders and the back of his neck, fingers weaving into the messy curls there.
A door bangs open several floors down, and laughing voices spill into the stairway. Men and at least one woman, English words, rowdy volume.
It's like being doused in ice water. Instantly, they pull apart, Ilya scooting noiselessly to the other half of the stair for the first time, wiping at his wet mouth, hasty fingers straightening Shane's collar where he's pulled it askew while Shane's hands pat Ilya's curls into order. Then he's gripping onto Shane's knee, trying to tell if the footsteps are going up or down. If they should try to get off the stairs rather than be trapped up here.
A door creaks open, and the voices trail off before there's another bang of the door shutting again.
They wait another few moments, hearts racing, ears pricked for more footsteps. Sound carries so badly in the stairwell, all concrete and metal. They can't chance even a whisper. But it's quiet, apart from their own shaky breathing.
"Fuck," Shane says, so softly Ilya can barely hear it from his half-step distance.
He eases himself gently back into Shane's space, pulls his head back to his shoulder. They're living on borrowed time like this. And it's worth it, every moment he can have Shane. But it's only worth it until they get caught and destroy each other. He can't do that. He can't be that.
They need to get away from this fucking competition, except that means being so fucking far from each other. Six months. Ilya really doesn't want to think about it, not when he's here, playing hockey and seeing Shane Hollander every day. But with the flood of fear, it won't fade into the back of his mind again.
Shane wriggles out from under Ilya's arm and scoots himself up a stair, swinging a leg out onto the other side of Ilya and pulling him back to lean against Shane's stomach, head resting against the inside of his leg. It puts him vividly in mind of that night at the cottage by the fire pit. The way Shane cared for him with such gentle attentiveness. Careful hands that carded through his hair, words that blended into the fire's hushed crackling and coaxed out thoughts Ilya barely knew how voice. Hard, powerful muscles held loose to make his lap a soft cradle for Ilya's head.
He could drown in that yielding care, its total absence of edges. Never surface from its steady warmth.
He hasn't felt such violent homesickness since that first year in Boston, before Sveta moved to the city for her business degree (and also, he knows, for him.) He wants to be at the cottage with Shane again with a useless, beating desperation.
Less than a week before he's back in Russia instead.
He kisses the inside of Shane's knee.
"You were thinking," he says.
Shane curls down around him, brushes his mouth against the side of Ilya's forehead. "I was thinking," he echos, still a little shaky. "There might be one silver lining in this."
"Yes, the clouds full of metal. I remember this idiom."
"Okay, I know it's a silly phrase." Shane tugs gently at a curl, but there's a tremulous little laugh in his voice, so Ilya's got what he wanted.
"There is no crazy rivalry story yet. No one thinks we hate each other. No one's putting millions of dollars into marketing us as those guys who'd fight anytime, anywhere and could never get along."
Ilya tips his head back to meet Shane's eyes, intrigued. "You want to be friends with me, Shane Hollander?"
"Yeah, I really do. Let's be friends. Let's be so blatantly friendly they can't start in on us hating each other because there's no point."
Brazening things out is more Ilya's preference than Shane's. "You think you can do this?" he asks seriously. "You are a terrible liar, zaychik."
Zey-check, he just barely hears Shane mouth back, eyes narrowing. Ilya grins. The idea that he can sweet talk Shane and call him pet names and only wind him up, all suspicious that he's being insulted, appeals greatly. Teasing Shane Hollander is one of the great joys of his life.
"I don't have to lie," Shane says, breaking eye contact to glare down the stairs instead. "We just have to be careful. I don't know what my face does when I let myself look at you, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be doing it in public."
"No," Ilya has to reluctantly agree. "Everything you feel shows in your eyes. This is a dangerous idea."
"If we pull it off, we'll be so much safer, though. We'll still have to be careful and keep our meeting up at, like, hotels a secret, but if we get caught, we can just say we were hanging out, and not have it be weird. We can visit each other and spend time together without it being the end of the world if people know. And someday—" Shane's throat clicks, and he breaks off.
"Someday, when we can be together?" Ilya guesses. He reaches up to tilt Shane's face back towards his, asking for his eyes. It takes a moment, before Shane blinks and his eyes gravitate back to meet Ilya's again.
"I know people will be mad either way. No matter what we do, then or now. But maybe it will help, if they don't feel lied to. Even if it was the League selling that image of us, it's still us they picture when they think about it. Hollander vs Rozanov, most anticipated match up of the season. Bets and priced up tickets and fucking forum wars over who's really the best. All that, and were we even trying if we're in love with each other and pretending to hate each other's guts?"
"Okay," Ilya says. He's helpless against this side of Shane—a man who lives his life by the rhythm of next game, next season, next appointment, no big picture plan required—that so earnestly offers years of careful effort and change up to Ilya. For them, so they can be together someday.
If that's the play, then the execution should come from Ilya. Shane might be more of a stonewaller than a liar, but Ilya knows how to find the fault lines that run between perception and desire and wedge his words into them, breaking open a space for himself there. And Shane's always been able to trust Ilya's lead. So long as he plays this right, Shane will be able to fall into step with him on this, and they'll get what they need.
"We start small," he decides. "On final day, after Russia beats Canada, we don't just say 'good game, see you at the draft' during the handshake line. You stay on the ice until you're done seeing your team off of it, and I do the same. Then you come up to me, to say good game again, because you are Shane Hollander, future winner of the Lord Talon award two years running. And I will manage the rest. We are both up for the draft, I need to work on my English, good reasons to keep talking, yes? You will give me your email and we stay in touch. And because it is still on the ice, there will be pictures, maybe video. Groundwork, for later."
"Give me your email now," Shane says.
"What, you don't care about authenticity of performance? Where is your passion for the stage, Hollander. Method acting, or whatever the fuck."
Ilya's comfortable resting place abruptly starts wriggling as Shane digs in his pants pocket for something.
"I don't have any passion for the stage, I'm a hockey player. And I have horrible visions of something happening to stop us from talking, or there not being a fucking pen at the bench or whatever, and not being able to talk to you at all for six months."
Shane drops a pen and a piece of hotel branded notepaper onto Ilya's face for emphasis.
Love makes you so stupid. Ilya really, really wishes he could blow Shane right here on this staircase.
Instead, he reluctantly sits up and rips the page in half, bracing one torn piece of paper against the flat of the wall and writing down his email, his phone number, his father's address (with the note DO NOT USE! scribbled to the side), and, after a moment's hesitation, Svetlana's phone number and email too.
"Just in case," he tells Shane, handing it over. "If my phone gets taken away or I can't answer you, she will know what's happened. You will not have to worry from the other side of the planet with no one to ask."
"...Thank you," Shane says, uncertainly.
Ilya wishes now that he hadn't used Svetlana to tease Shane's jealous streak so much. In his defense, he didn't know to plan for time travel making this exchange necessary.
"She is my best friend, and our fathers are friendly too. She will know what's going on with me no matter what," he clarifies. "And she attended boarding school in New York, so she has an international plan and lots of American numbers in her phone. It will be safe for you to get in contact through her even when maybe it won't be for me. Yes, we have slept together before but I could not sleep with Sveta, who is a teenager for real, when in my head I am twenty-six. It would feel fucked up. And if it turns out Svetlana is also a time traveler, I still would not want to, because she is not you."
"Yeah?"
Shane Hollander and his irresistible doe eyes, like Ilya could break him with a word. Like Ilya was everything that mattered in the whole world.
"Yeah," Ilya parroted back gently. "Now give me your phone number too, Jane."
"I can't," Shane sighs, plucking the pen from Ilya's offering hand. He uses his knee as a surface for the paper, rambling a little absently as he writes. "I didn't get my own cellphone until I moved out. Maybe I'll be able to get one sooner, but I don't know. My parents were really big on internet safety, technology doesn't belong in your bedroom, computer in the living room, no tv after dinner unless it's hockey. That kind of thing. Though in 2017 my mom's a complete phone addict, and my dad's the one complaining about screens at mealtime and no work emails at night."
No tv after dinner unless it's hockey. Ilya's been working on a mental picture of the Hollander parents for years, adding to it from the little scraps Shane let slip over the years. It's never quite resolved into a full image, though maybe that's more a failure of imagination on Ilya's part than a lack of information. There's a baseline of unqualified care and respect to how Shane talks about them that seems fundamental to how his family operates, and that Ilya can't quite make himself trust. A protective control over his life at this age that he doesn't chafe against because he knows the intentions behind it are sincere. Ilya wonders if seventeen-year-old Shane Hollander's Russian hockey friend will be expected to introduce himself to Yuna Hollander before being allowed to email him.
"Here," Shane says.
Ilya accepts the little scrap of paper. Shane folded it before giving it back, like he was shy, or it was supposed to be a secret even from Ilya. He opens it. An email address, an Ottawa street address as well as another Ontario location annotated my parent's cottage and three phone numbers marked as family cellphone, parent's home land line and parent's cottage land line. Ilya is better equipped to maintain contact with Yuna and David Hollander than to reach out to their son specifically. The narrow spaces where they can squeeze into each other's lives feel like such a step backwards.
At the same time, this is a wealth of Shane Hollander's real life like Ilya's never received before. He remembers that second time they came together, their rookie season All Stars. How his heart had been in his throat as he needled Shane into handing over his phone. How badly he'd wanted that small thread of connection, the power to bring them back together.
Now he's seventeen, and he has Shane's parent's addresses and phone numbers offered up to him without prompting.
It's not the same as what they had in 2017, what they could hope to build there, with Ilya in Ottawa and Shane in Montreal, but it's more than they've ever had before.
Tomorrow is New Years, Ilya realizes. They won't be able to risk meeting like this tomorrow with all the people out celebrating, maybe trying to get onto the roof even in the miserable cold. Then it will be the semifinals, and then the finals. And then Ilya will be shuttled to the airport with his team for a redeye back to Russia. There's no time.
A hand cups his chin, and he lifts his gaze back to Shane's face.
"It's the longest we'll ever have to be apart again," Shane tells him like it's a promise. Thoughts running parallel to Ilya's, or maybe just reading the anticipatory loneliness on him.
Ilya has never kissed Shane Hollander at midnight on New Years, and he won't do it tomorrow either. But he can kiss him now.
+
It may be cold in Saskatchewan, but here at the International Prospect Cup, fans are hoping for something hot on the ice. It's the Canada-Russia final showcasing the two most talked about prospects in the world: Canada's Shane Hollander, and Russia's Ilya Rozanov...(*)
...
...and that's a goal from Rozanov, assisted by Vasilyev, bring the score to 3-3 as we head into the final five minutes of the game. And I have to say, the credit for converting that pass into an actual goal is squarely on Rozanov's shoulders. Russia's defense has showed up in a big way through out this whole competition, but in terms of offense, it's really a one man show out there. When your teammate passes to you in such an unfavourable position, it really is a incredible feat to turn it into not only a credible run on the net but an actual goal.
Tongues have been wagging since the competition began about Hollander and Rozanov, and what hockey's going to look like in a few years time with two such talented players coming up in the same draft class. I'll be the first to admit, I was ready to be disappointed. There's been something of a slump in recent years—promising prospects burning out early, big talk around mediocre talent with charisma making up the deficit. And that's not just the opinion of this one grumpy not-that-old-yet-thank-you man. More than one think piece has been written about whether hockey's best years are in the rear view mirror.
I was ready to write the hype around these two off as yet another attempt to drum up excitement in the fanbase. But even beyond the technical skill on display today—and it has been displayed to advantage, my god. That second period assist from Hollander? A thing of beauty. Textbook. Beyond that, though, there's a depth of play from both of them that you just don't see in players that age. Hockey is a sport where the experience gap can show, badly. But these two are making plays like they've got a veteran MLHer's perspective plugged into their brains.
I'm officially a convert. These two are going to be like nothing we've ever seen before. Take it to the bank: once these two hit the big leagues, hockey will never be the same.
And with that, play resumes! Hollander and Rozanov facing off at center ice...
...
...just clearing the goalie—a heart breaking near miss for Petrov, who's been putting up an incredible showing since day one of this competition—and that's a goal for Canada! With less than twenty seconds left in the game, it'll be a tough turn around to tie things up, but if we know anything about Russia's offense it's that Rozanov will come at the net guns blazing. Rozanov to Vasilyev, Vasilyev to Rozanov, he's found an opening, he's lining it up—but it's too late. Another two seconds and we could have been staring down sudden death in overtime to decide this final, but Rozanov didn't get those two seconds he needed. Canada takes the 2008 International Prospect Cup!
A devastating loss for an incredibly solid Team Russia. They just didn't have the firepower to keep up. A remarkable showing from Ilya Rozanov in particular, who demonstrated that the real secret is to ignore the 'or' in brains or brawn. Smart plays, incredible decision-making on the ice, and the power to back it up. A player who really knows how to bring out to best in a team.
But today—that best just wasn't enough. A heartfelt congratulations to Team Canada—they made you fight for every inch and you didn't back down. Captain Shane Hollander looking a little shell-shocked as he heads up the handshake line—he's such a smooth, natural skater that I would have said he never had a moment of doubt all game, calling for passes at just the perfect moment, and hands down the best stick-handling I've ever seen at the junior level. But to look at him now, you'd think he never expected to win this one.
Well, that's hockey, kid. Never over 'til it's over. No such thing as a sure thing, for better or for worse...
...
...With the teams headed off the ice, I'll say my own good—oh, what's this? Hollander was by his bench looking—sorry, but it's true—more like he's been clubbed around the head than won a hockey game, when Rozanov skated over. The two are talking and—hey, there's a smile from Hollander finally. Must be sinking in at last. He's grabbing something off the bench—a pen and paper? Either this is a scheme to get rich auctioning off each other's signatures, or they're exchanging contact information.
Well, that's a beautiful note to close out on. At the end of the day, Russian or Canadian, (or Swedish or Finnish, congratulations to our third and fourth place competitors as well!) we're all here because we love hockey. That's what brings us all together. Incredible showing on the ice today, and incredible sportsmanship too.
And on that note, I'll be signing off.
+
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(*) This paragraph is copied directly from episode one of Heated Rivalry, and is not my own work.
...this one got away from me a bit. While I'm getting through the basic set up for the premise, it's hard to be brief or skip around to different moments, and this one probably leans more into the angst side than the fluff side. Rest assured, I have a lot of very fluffy fluff planned for time traveling Hollanov! As well as more angst. A balanced experience, hopefully.
(I haven't watched any hockey since I was a very small child watching clips with my dad so he'd let me stay up later, so if there's anything absolutely horrendous or nonsensical, I apologize! I was aiming more for narrative utility than true-to-life commentating, but I wasn't trying to invent sportsbabble: the technobabble of sports settings either)
Anyway, congrats to Canada on the 2008 International Prospect Cup win, courtesy of time traveling competitors! Surely that's against the rules somehow...
This is not meant to imply that Shane so much better at hockey or whatever, btw. Canon suggests that Canada's problem was inexperience and not being able to get through Russia's excellent defense, so they seem poised to benefit more from Shane's increased experience. Also, when you roll the dice, you can't guarantee the same outcome, and time travel meant a reroll for the final. And I wanted to smack our protagonists in the face with the fact that the future isn't written in stone.
