Erin Lasgalen

Soulmates weren't talked about, but they were seeped into everything. In the locker room, in the press, at the dinner table with his parents, always with one seat open as if he'd bring some girl home one day and say, ‘guess who I met’. He knows he's supposed to want that, but secretly he thought it would get in the way of his career. The guys talk about the WAGs like a weight dragging them away from the club and bars and boys night, always with this chagrined smile as if they wished there was something they could do.

But no matter where he was, the idea persisted. Where was his soulmate?

She must be out there, but he hasn't tried looking. One day, his parents keep assuring him, he'll lock in step with someone as easy as breathing, and he'll know. There she is. The one woman who's supposed to be so close to him they'll almost share a brain.

His parents drift almost every day. Mostly, it's little things like sipping their coffees in the morning, or watching hockey games with the exact same expressions of elation at a goal, or tense posture during overtime. Growing up with that kind of synchronous domesticity left him with an ache he ignored when he could. Of course he'd want a closeness like that with someone, he just didn't want to sacrifice hockey to get it.

Shane had never clicked with anyone like that. A lot of the time, he worked hard to get to know his teammates, and still there was a barrier he couldn't cross. Maybe it's because he's half Asian, and because he's gay— though they didn't know that part— and some other third thing that lags him a step behind all their jokes and comments.

With Rozanov, he never had to worry about that. There were no expectations. In his bed, he was just Shane, and they could connect in a way that touched a part of him no one had ever reached.

And then the tuna melts happened. They had a nice day together, except for that little bit in the middle where Rozanov talked about all his hookups and placed Shane squarely among them, not special. He covered up his hurt, and they continued to hookup, because that's all they'll ever be. At least they're good at it.

But when he and Rozanov came at the same time, saying each other's first names in the same breath, he felt something unclick in his panic, like his slip up booted him out of a flow state. It was disorienting, and all his agonized longing had nowhere to go when Rozanov had made it clear exactly how casual this arrangement was. Shane, again, like in Sochi and Vegas, needed to be corrected. Well, he could do that somewhere else.

Rose was so easy to talk to he almost deluded himself into thinking they were soulmates. Their conversations eased him. They could be drifting, right? If the sex wasn't good, if he was so in his head and miserable, then that was the price he had to pay. Sometimes, happily ever after hurt, but she knew better than him. Probably always would. Their breakup was embarrassing and enlightening at the same time. She was his friend, at the end of the day, even though he was a terrible boyfriend.

Now he's at the All Stars hotel. This year, the MLH split the teams up by Eastern vs Western Conference, instead of the usual North American vs Europe. He's captain of the Eastern team, and was going to be playing on the same line as Rozanov. This far into his career, he thought he was all done with firsts.

Rozanov was at the bar. They talked without saying anything. It was a bad habit Shane didn't have the courage to break.

He knew hockey, though. Compression layer, socks, pads, jersey, then skates. Tie them tight with three knots. If he focused on that, he wouldn't stare at Rozanov dressing ten feet away. It was surreal.

The ice made sense. His blades cut through clear glass and chipped snow. Warm ups calmed him enough that he didn't even freak out when Rozanov approached him.

“Strange," he said as he made lazy circles around where Shane was stretching out his thighs.

After a beat, he knew Rozanov was waiting for him to take the conversational bait. “What's strange?"

“We have never been on the same side of the blue line before."

He was bracing for a chirp, so this plain statement threw him off. "Yeah, I guess.”

"Do you think they know?”

"That we're on the same team?”

"That we're going to destroy them.” Rozanov stalled his restless circles to lock eyes with Shane, and the whole arena fell away. "You and me, we will be incredible.”

His breath caught in his throat.

When he settled at the face off dot, Rozanov at his wing, he felt a familiar peace wash over him. Only three things mattered between now and when the last horn would sound.

The ice, the puck, and Rozanov.

He won the face off, and knew without looking that Rozanov shook off Western’s defence, tearing down the rink just behind him. There was no thought to his pass, only the bone deep certainty that when he shot the puck away, Rozanov would be in the exact place to catch it.

He absorbed the check that came seconds later, already making his way to the right side of the goal, where he received Rozanov's pass back without a hitch in his stride, looping behind the net, and scooping the puck top shelf in a lazy flick. It's less than a minute into the first period. He thought this might be what it felt like to be high.

J.J. was the first to reach him, clapping hard on his shoulder and screaming in his ear. “That's my Capitaine!"

Shane shrugged him off with a laugh, and scanned the ice. Rozanov was already skating up to him, not slowing down until they crashed into each other, and he sloppily kissed the side of his helmet. Shane's hands automatically came up to steady him as they wobbled.

"Nice assist,” Shane said.

Rozanov pushed off and began skating backwards. Like a rope was pulling from his chest, Shane followed, his right foot sliding into the empty space of Rozanov's left.

“Nice goal."

The game continued. Each shift, he and Rozanov dominated easily. As easy as breathing, even. In between shifts, they sat side by side and watched the second line play. Their heads turned left as Western gained control of the puck. They drank their water together. Their heads turned right as Eastern stole it back.

“We could-"

“Yes."

“Will you-?"

“Easy."

By the time the second period ended, 4-1 with two goals each, they stopped talking. They didn't need to anymore.

Vaughan was looking at them strangely in the locker room between second and third. "You know, this isn't a real game. You don't have to take it so seriously.”

"Why?” they asked.

For some reason, that made the whole room pause.

Shane added, "We're having fun.” Then quickly turned back to Rozanov, who already had his mouth open and poised to say something no doubt annoying. "Shut up.”

Hunter was looking at them intensely. J.J. laughed nervously, and then said, “Wow."

Whatever that meant, they had no time to address it.

Third period started with another goal right out the gate, and then they continued to steal, pass, deke left around defense, pass back, lose the puck, turn around in tandem to corner Western’s forward into fumbling, steal it again, pass, pass, pass, score. 6-1, a hat trick each.

It was as if they were the only two on the ice. Rozanov raised his eyebrows, and Shane rolled his eyes. Message sent and received.

Are they even trying?

Don't be a dick.

Shane felt like a live wire finally grounded. If he just touched Rozanov, maybe all this joy bubbling up in his chest could be shared. His face hurt from smiling. He's never smiled so much in his life.

The wind flew past them as they skated side by side. Play had paused, for some reason, but he wasn't looking at the refs or the coaches or their fellow players. Rozanov raised his arm at the same time as Shane, and they clasped hands. He pulled, and Rozanov came easily, like breathing. They were almost dancing as they spun around once, twice. Rozanov pulled, and Shane side stepped Vaughan instead of colliding with him.

It was easy. Like breathing. As Shane inhaled, he knew Rozanov was doing the same. One foot pivoted, the other turned to match, linked by their joined hand. Rozanov was so handsome, pink cheeked and playing an amazing game, with his eyes that never left Shane's.

They cut graceful arcs across the rink as one.

It was so easy, like… drifting.

There you are, his heart seemed to say, and Rozanov was having the exact same realization at the exact same time, because of course he was, they're soulmates.

“Oh," they said in unison.

The entire arena was watching them.

They slowed in front of Eastern’s bench. Rozanov's face was… quietly devastated. Shane didn't know what to do with it, or what it meant, and they had no time under the arena lights and expectant stares of tens of thousands of people.

Dropping a glove, Rozanov brought his hand up to Shane's cheek, swiping his thumb under his eye.

Whistles blew their little bubble apart. Hunter cautiously approached. Shane didn't know which one of them let go first, but they went to the bench with Hunter leading them, a gentle hand on both their shoulders.

He might be having a panic attack. Rozanov didn't look too good, either.

"You guys are okay,” Hunter said. “Just sit. Everything's alright."

The bench made room for them to sit side by side, just as they had done the whole time. Hunter approached the coach, and through the roaring in Shane's ears, he overheard him suggest keeping them out for the rest of the game. Shane would have been offended if he didn't feel two seconds away from passing out.

No one said anything more.

He couldn't look at his teammates, or the crowd. He could hardly pay attention to the play on the ice. What did it look like from the outside? Fuck, there's no way they could pretend they hadn't been drifting for the last hour and a half.

He stole a glance at Rozanov, and Rozanov did the same. Were they still drifting? Shane couldn't tell. He felt the same as he always did in his presence. Electrified and alive, slightly turned on. Oh, God.

He looked away for his sanity.

The game ended, eventually. The handshake line was a strange mix of stares and a few shoulder claps. He thought that was some of the guys’ way of showing support, or something. He didn't have the brain space to dissect it, because he's too busy changing out as fast as possible before anyone can talk to him. The locker room is silent. None of them know how to handle the situation.

Fuck, they're the first soulmates in the MLH. Statistically, that couldn't be right, but what did it matter when they're the first ones out?

Varda closed her eyes, something she only did when she was feeling entirely comfortable and safe.

Between her shamelessly spread thighs knelt Nienna—the Lady of Mercy was particularly beautiful in that position—and lapped at her star-dewed skin with devoted, precise strokes.

For a moment, the Queen of the night sky managed to forget about everything—her husband, her part in the grand scheme of things, and her gnawing fear of an uncertain future—as the pressure of the swirling gasses that would soon give birth to new stars mounted inexorably within her heaving chest.

Her demanding fingers tightened in Nienna’s hair, making the devoted Valië yelp softly into the thrumming flesh without interrupting the maddeningly regular cycle of nipping and sucking she was lavishing upon her colleague’s most intimate constellation of raw nerves.

Growling impatiently, Varda tilted her hips up, desperate now for that climax that kept evading her—after all, she was the one who painted unreachable shapes into the night sky, not the one made to pursue them, weary and despairing.

“Patience,” Nienna’s voice rippled like a soothing caress through her mind, and Varda relaxed, thus allowing the disinhibiting madness to finally take hold and wash her away.

In a burst of light and power, she exploded.

Nienna—by nature and design—easily absorbed the blast of penned-up frustration that washed over her in a cascade of heat and pressure, but the same could not be said for some of the less sturdy beings in the immediate vicinity.

The ladies’ desire for undisturbed intimacy had pushed them far into the sky—notably because Nienna’s brothers, for all their feigned dignity, could be exceedingly nosy—and ultimately, it was poor Eärendil who had to pay the price for Nienna’s predilection for a slow but steady build-up of devastating, destructive rapture.

Indeed, he and his trusty vessel were blown right out of their trajectory and were presently nose-diving towards the faraway continent of the Children at a slightly alarming speed.

“Let him find friendly faces,” Nienna hummed as her power reached out instinctively to cushion the crash of the innocent mariner.

Varda herself merely shrugged, utterly relaxed and sated, and leaned back; she knew that her lover was not prone to making harsh demands, and she wanted to see how long she could withhold her affection and skilled fingers before Nienna would speak up at all.

“He’ll be fine,” she huffed in annoyance when she realised that the other’s mind kept drifting to the shipwrecked fool instead of burning for her alluring beauty. “Is there nought you’d ask of me?”

Kanafinwë Macalaurë who had been known as Maglor before becoming a crabby hermit on the seashores, had certainly known his fair share of surprises.

As a matter of fact, he would have readily claimed that there were few ways left to truly astound him, but when—while he was sneaking to Imladris to check on his blessedly oblivious foster son—he was struck by a literal body falling from the sky, he was nevertheless profoundly astonished.

Like a literal shooting star, the radiant creature cut across the darkening sky only to land on top of Maglor’s defensively curled-up body in a tangle of flailing limbs.

Shuffling out from the ludicrous heap of flesh and bone, Maglor groaned loudly before being clasped by a pair of strong, rough hands around the shoulders that pulled him back towards another body’s living warmth.

It had been so long since last he had let himself get close enough to someone to feel and smell their presence, and—in his startled, weakened state—he granted himself a single moment to revel in the all-but-forgotten sensation.

All the while, bright eyes—gleaming like stars under an unruly mop of gilded curls—scanned his face frantically which made Maglor, obsessively private nowadays, frown in discomfort and try to pull away once more.

“Forgive me—Maglor, is that you?” the golden-haired man gasped and then took the liberty of putting his dirt-smeared hands into the nobly pale visage of his unwitting victim. “What a small world it is!”

Throwing himself back to break free from the terribly, inappropriately intimate embrace he found himself in, the tongue-tied Mighty Singer stared at the heap of fine garments and shapely limbs in disbelief.

“Eärendil?” The melodious, compelling voice which had been his shield and sword for so many ages sounded brittle and wavering, but Maglor was too flabbergasted to feel threatened. “I thought—”

What had he thought exactly? He and his brother had driven the man’s wife into the cruel, cold arms of the sea, and then they had abducted his sons.

Of all the people Maglor had not been looking forward to meeting again, Eärendil and Elwing were admittedly amongst those that made his soul quail the most—he should have known, though, that he would not escape his fate and punishment and that endless ages of hiding and sneaking around would eventually be cut short by the implacable hands of the Valar.

“I wish I could explain,” Eärendil said somewhat sheepishly. “I cannot. One moment, I was in the sky, as always, and the next I was free-falling. And now, I am here, and we come face to face at last.”

Immediately, Maglor raised his hands—palms outward—in an unmistakable expression of placating apology.

My sons—”

Elros chose…he picked the fate of your father’s blood.” Maglor tried to explain, but he—who had convinced, charmed, and corrupted countless souls with well-sounding words—couldn’t find a way to express the grief still gnawing relentlessly at his very bones.

My parents are both well, though,” Eärendil declared sharply. “Where are my boys?”

For a moment, Maglor wondered whether his death—an inevitable threshold he knew he might have to cross sooner or later—would come in the form of the pleasant, open face of one he had robbed of everything.

He was at peace with that anti-climactic and yet alluringly poetic epilogue to a wearisome drama.

“You’ve spoken of Elros, what about Elrond?” Eärendil now asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What terrible curse have you laid upon my flesh and blood?”

With an exhausted sigh, Maglor slumped back against the cold, damp ground. “Love,” he then answered in the hollow voice of one who indeed spoke a gruesome malediction. “If you believe that our single-minded hatred was horrifying, you cannot even begin to fathom what irreparable harm our jealous, possessive, corrupting affection might have wrought.”

When the famed mariner merely blinked at him—his gaze softening with something dangerously akin to pity—Maglor shuddered.

“He is alive,” he said hastily. “As far as I can ascertain, he is doing well. Actually, I was on my way to see him when I was so rudely interrupted in my quiet musings and regrets by your unexpected entrance.”

“Do you meet often?”

Scratching the back of his neck, Maglor shook his head. “I don’t think…I hope that he remains blissfully unaware of my presence.”

Now, Eärendil’s brows knitted in evident perplexity—he did not understand how this despicable murderer could claim to love Elrond and follow the potentially fatal urge to check up on him but refuse to make his benevolent guardianship known.

“Does he resent you?” he asked carefully; the same apprehension plagued his own soul, and—to his profound surprise—he realised that he had more in common with this shaggy recluse than he could ever have imagined.

“I—” Maglor ground his teeth. “I do not think so—I know that he is looking for me, but I cannot bear to sully his present bliss by dragging the ashes of his unhappy past back into his life.”

“That,” Eärendil remonstrated not without kindness, “is his decision. Let’s go and face the just wrath and deserved rejection of a son we’ve both deserted when he needed us most.”

As they walked in silence, the revered star following the legendary singer, a strange and oddly soothing thought occurred to Maglor: his fate was inextricably intertwined with the Eärendil’s, and he preferred the shared devastation over an eternally lost son to the harrowing obsession with a cursed stone.

The first person they saw upon entering the enchanted realm of Imladris was a sullen, dark-haired Elf who scowled most impressively.

“So you’ve come back,” he said coldly. “Both of you! I’ll let Elrond know.”

Turning on his heels, he disappeared without any further comment.

“Uncanny,” Maglor whispered. “You’ve never met him, for he died in the slaughter of your father-in-law, but this curmudgeon is the spitting image of my brother.”

A flurry of hasty steps, their rhythm faltering and frantic, interrupted the brewing storm of old resentment between the two unlikely visitors, though, and they turned around at the same time to see a tall, handsome Elf all but fly down a flight of stairs.

“Father!” he cried in a voice that sounded nothing like the dignified tone of a ruler.

They knew not whom he had addressed, but—a mere moment later—their shoulders collided painfully as both were pulled into an impulsive, overpowering embrace.

“My darling boy,” Eärendil sighed. “I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Elrond replied instantly, his voice thick with tears and muffled by the fabric he inhaled greedily with every shaky breath. “We were fine—we were taken care of. Oh, I have so much to tell you!”

“I better leave you alone,” Maglor interjected quietly. “It may be but a small act of redemption, but it was an honour to lead you here, Eärendil.”

“You stay right where you are,” Elrond barked. “Did you know that I married your cousin’s daughter? I have three children of my own—” He fell silent. “I am so sorry about Nelyo.”

“Half-cousin,” Maglor corrected, out of habit rather than bitterness, and averted his gaze. “Nelyo made his choice—it might have been for the better. He…He wished you well, both of you, and I hope you can believe that.”

Cocking his head in a strangely bird-like motion—it was no wonder his mother had not been turned into a fish—Elrond regarded him with mild disbelief. “Why wouldn’t I? He was ever strange, bitter, and very sad, but he was never cruel to us.”

“You loved them well,” Eärendil commented, amazement and pride colouring his breathless voice as he looked upon the dignified, noble Lord his son had grown up to become. “In a world where everyone was fleeing or pursuing impossible goals, you have found love and peace—you do us proud. All of us, I dare say.”

Blushing a little, Elrond nodded at someone behind their backs. “Erestor has been so good as to order tea and cake. Come, let’s talk in a more comfortable setting.”

“Is he—”

“Oh,” Elrond laughed, mirth twinkling in his bright eyes and making the corners of his generously smiling mouth twitch. “There is so much you don’t know, and—while I truly am not one to indulge in idle gossip—it shall be my pleasure to share the newest developments with you!”

Leading them up endless corridors of white stone, he sauntered merrily—his steps light with joy—ahead of them.

“Let’s start with the most obvious question, though. How come you hither?”

“Well,” Maglor grinned—he could not remember when he had last so much as smiled, but in the face of so much earnest delight, even he could not hold on to his morose demeanour. “I was struck by a falling star. Would you believe it?”

Thank you so much for reading <3

-> Masterlist for November