hollanov time travel-au and plane-crash!au with a twist
shane is the one who remembers everything. the flint, the heat, the competition, the handshake in regina on a cold december morning. the chirping, the fondness, the ice, the way rozanov became ilya in his mouth and how effortless the switch was. the years spent in limbo, the cottage in july, the fights and makeups and sex and everything in between. the plane crash. he wakes up the morning of December 20th, 2008, and spends the day sobbing his eyes out, hysterically crying. he gets it all out, the panic, the gut-wrenching pain when he realized ilya was gone and wasnât coming back. his parents are frantic, but he canât explain any of it because heâll be committed. he spends the day in bed, gives himself one day, no, two days to grieve. and then he gets up and goes to practice, eyes red, nothing else giving his pain away. on the 23rd, he stays in his hotel room and waits for the game. canada loses the finals to russia. when the teams shake hands he keeps his eyes trained in front of him because heâs scared what will happen if he meets ilyaâs rozanovâs gaze.
ilya wakes up the same day, head fuzzy, tears rolling down his cheeks. he figures the weird dream that shook him awake in the middle of the night was from the shitty american vodka he drank the night before. thereâs an ache in his chest but he doesnât know why. a few days later he smokes a cigarette in a no-smoking zone and a creeping feeling of dĂŠjĂ vu hovers over him. heâs expecting someone something to approach from behind him. no one nothing does. he puts out his half-finished cigarette and doesnât know why. after russiaâs victory, theyâre in line shaking the hands of the losing canadian team, and the captainâs gaze is steadily avoiding the eyes of all the players on ilyaâs team. for some reason the same creeping dĂŠjĂ vu feeling comes back, he knows something should happen, heâs supposed to say something when he shakes the captainâsâshane hollander, he remembers, from the game tapes heâd watched, and why is his heart racing, why does he feel that ache from a few days ago so deeply now?âhand. what was it, what was it that heâd said that day after that first game, why hadnât shane come to find him behind the rink, where was he, is he okayâ
âsee you at the draft,â ilya rozanov murmurs to him, and the world shifts for shane, staring wide eyed at ilyaâs retreating figure.
