Chapter Text
Shane checks his phone again. There’s nothing, which isn’t a surprise exactly, but it’s still annoying. Like, come on. He’s not looking for much here. Just a sign of life.
He’d seen the post-game interviews after the Russian team lost to Latvia. Rozanov appeared washed-out and drained, nothing in his eyes at all as he looked just to the right of the camera the entire time. They hadn’t even let him get dressed after the game, which means they hadn’t even let him take a moment and—and grieve, which is what’s really bothering Shane if he has to name just one thing. The way Ilya had looked like he hadn’t been able to catch his breath. The way he’d looked so defeated, and the way it was just all on camera for everyone to see like that was their right.
Over breakfast today, Fletcher, one of Canada’s D-men, had shown him an interview Rozanov had done in the locker room with a Russian media crew, English subtitles scrolling over the bottom half of the video. The entire time, Fleet’s Gila monster daemon had been draped over his shoulder and flicking out its tongue to match the guy’s every huff of laughter.
It just seemed rude as hell, in Shane’s opinion.
No one expected Russia to bomb out like that, but that didn’t mean they were allowed to laugh.
Rozanov’s twenty-three. Now everyone’s saying he’s too young for the honor of the C, or—or whatever the letter is in Cyrllic—but no one was saying that when he was chosen. Then it was all yeah, of course, who else was it going to be?
And, yeah, of course—who else was it going to be if it wasn’t Rozanov? Shane can’t think of a better player to lead the Russian Olympic team. Not that he’d ever admit that outside of his own head, but at least he’s not fucking laughing.
His phone buzzes in his hand, and Shane jolts forward suddenly enough that his knee bumps the bottom of the cafe table.
From the floor beside him, Ren flashes her teeth at him, but she doesn’t bother raising her head off her paws. She’s on edge as well, she just wears it differently.
It’s not Rozanov. It’s his mom, something about Reeboks because she’s great at knowing exactly when Shane’s stepping a toe out of line, even when he’s a handful of countries and continents and timezones away.
He feels like a little kid, petulant and angry, when he kicks at the table leg with the toe of his Nikes.
“You could just text him first,” Ren points out. It’s quiet enough that no one else can hear, but it still feels too loud.
“Shut up,” Shane mutters. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Okay,” she says and begins licking her paw.
Shane taps his fingers on the laminate surface of the table. “I mean,” he says, voice pitched just above a whisper, “If it was Canada, it’s not like I would wanna—right? I wouldn’t want to hear from anyone. Especially not someone still in the game. Like if we were switched, I’d be so mad if he texted me.”
“Right,” Ren says, rubbing her paw behind one of her ears before licking at it again. Shane knows a whole lot about snow leopards, obviously, like the facts and figures because it’d be stupid not to learn after Ren settled into her form when Shane was fourteen. But he doesn’t know if any of the actual animals are as fastidious as she is about grooming, or if that’s just a her thing.
Which would sort of make it a Shane thing, maybe, technically, he thinks. But the science and implications behind daemons and humans and the bonds they share are complicated, much harder to wrap his head around than snow leopard facts or hockey drills.
Whether or not he should text Ilya Rozanov to see how he’s feeling after his Olympic loss, despite the fact that both of them had agreed not to bring whatever they’re doing into the Village, that’s proving to be the sort of hard to wrap his head around never before encountered.
“Look, and I texted last,” he says, showing his phone screen to Ren even though she was there when he was texting Rozanov last. “So I can’t—like, it’d be weird to double text.”
“You sent him an emoji when he was on his way to ours after the game,” Ren says, and she doesn’t even have the decency to raise her head away from her paw. “And then between then and now, you had sex. It was sort of gross.”
Shane almost drops his phone, fingers numb. “Evren,” he snaps because who the fuck knows who’s listening? No one’s looking at him, but maybe the barista at the counter is too interested? Is her daemon a bat or a mouse, Shane can’t remember. Do mice have good hearing?
Ren’s ears flick back, and she raises her chin to throw him a scathing look. “It was,” she says, unrepentant. “At least his daemon was nice, or I would have been sick on the rug.”
“Please stop,” Shane says, closing his eyes against the image of Ren throwing up a hairball or something while Rozanov was—was with him. In him. Fuck. “I should text him,” he decides. “If it was me, you know, if it were Canada, I wouldn’t be reaching out to let people know I was okay.”
“If it were you and Canada, your mother would have you on twenty-four hour intensive observation,” Ren replies.
Shane pauses, fingers hovering on the keys. “His family is here,” he remembers out loud. “That’s better, right? That he’s not alone. He’s probably with his father. And he said his brother might come. And his mom, probably, right? He didn’t say his mom, but—”
“If I could still shift into a bird, I’d have dropped your phone into the Black Sea ages ago,” Ren tells him before yawning. “Text him or I will.”
“You don’t have thumbs,” Shane says, but it’s the weakest protest yet. He already has the hey, you doing ok? typed up on the phone screen.
Theoretically, it’s easy to send it.
“Shane,” Ren says, but this time she sits up on her haunches and presses her big, fluffy head against his thigh. He digs his fingers through the fur of her scruff absent-mindedly, seeking and taking comfort from his daemon the way he’s done since he was a kid. A baby, even.
“Ugh,” he says, and he sends the text before putting his phone facedown on the table. “This is stupid.”
“It’s not,” Ren tells him, but she’s his daemon, so she’s sort of contractually or molecularly obligated to say that. Anyway, she’s nervous too, has been all morning. They watched the Russia and Latvia face-off last night with half of the Canadian team, and she’d spent the entire third period pacing the circumference of the room and showing her teeth when other players’ daemons got in her way.
Neither of them have really settled down since.
“It’s a distraction,” Shane says, like it’s a sin and a confession all at once.
She doesn’t say anything. Probably because he’s right.
And then Scott Hunter and Vaughn Perrill shoulder their way inside the coffee shop wearing matching USA jackets and already calling out Hollander, my man, and how’s it going, and Ren sits back.
“There’s my favorite snow leopard,” the dingo at Hunter’s heels says, pacing forward til she’s toe to toe with Ren. Her ears are flexed up, tongue lolling out in a friendly sort of greeting.
“That’s high praise,” Hunter tells Shane, slapping him on the back in a friendly hug. He doesn’t say it to Ren directly, but there are norms about that sort of stuff. It’s sort of rude to talk to someone’s daemon directly. Hunter and Shane are friendly, sure, but that stuff’s reserved for, like. Family and best friends and soul mates and veterans on the teams, the guys who have been playing with each other for decades.
“Can’t be too high praise,” Vaughn says, and his meerkat daemon chitters out an agreement from where it’s curled in a bag hanging off his arm. “The only other snow leopard daemon in the Village is Rozy’s, yeah? Can’t imagine she’s feeling nice and polite right now.”
Shane can see the way Ren’s ears flick down, backwards over her skull for a moment before she gets ahold of herself. He can still feel it in his chest though, the edges of her bristling offense on behalf of Rozanov’s daemon.
It’s just hard to focus on that when he’s trying to will his face not to give him away.
It’s not, like, a thing. Everyone likes to make it a thing, but it’s not.
Yes, llya Rozanov also has a snow leopard for a daemon. Yes, he and Rozanov are hockey rivals. Yes, let’s talk about what that means about their souls. Let’s gossip about that, if they’re the same, if they’re a matched pair, if their rivalry stems from being too different or too similar. Yeah, that’s great, let’s talk about that instead of their hockey. Even though they’re professional hockey players. And the only reason they’re being talked about at all is because of their fucking hockey.
Their daemons don’t even look alike, not really. Not if you’re looking closely. Ren’s way bigger than Rozanov’s daemon, broader in the shoulders with a squarer head. Her tail is a bit longer too, Shane thinks. And she’s fluffier, like, on the whole. Rozanov’s snow leopard is lean, lithe. Not starved, but she sort of looks like she’s spent her whole life hungry. Like she’s on the hunt, even if all she’s doing is watching a hockey game from up in the daemon suites of the rink, close enough that the bonds aren’t tugging at the players’ souls, but far enough away that they’re not really a distraction either.
“Ha,” Shane says weakly, feeling sort of like everyone in the cafe is looking at him. “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”
It doesn’t mean anything even if everyone likes to make it a thing.
It just–-well, now they’ve gone and slept together. Or, yeah, okay, they’ve been hooking up pretty much since they met, for four years now, but now Shane knows what it feels like to really, actually—you know. Fuck Rozanov.
And it doesn’t mean anything, their daemons being the same animal, and Shane knows that the way he knew that before he invited Rozanov over after the Montreal game.
It’s just now—something means something that it didn’t before. Or it feels like it does, anyway. Shane’s head feels screwed on wrong, and the phone that he slipped into his pocket hasn’t buzzed once yet, even though he knows he sent the message.
Scott Hunter’s daemon cocks her head as she looks between Ren and Shane. It’s a perfect mirror to Hunter’s own expression, half-curiosity and half-appraisal. “Let’s be nice, Vaughny,” he tells his teammate, cuffing him on the back of his head. “You’d be fucked up if you got knocked out of contention too.”
“Yeah, but I won’t be,” Vaughny trills, bumping Hunter’s shoulder, then Shane’s. “Cause it’ll be Team USA all the way, baby!”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Shane says once his chest has loosened enough for him to say it. This is good. This is easy, this is shop talk, and Shane’s grown up doing this.
He ducks his head and pulls his phone out of his pocket just far enough to see if there’s any notification he’s missed. Ren nudges at his hand with the tip of her muzzle, but she doesn’t have to bother: there’s no new text to get caught up in.
Ren settled when Shane was fourteen years old, which isn’t really that late but definitely isn’t early either.
It’d been a whole thing, mostly Shane’s thing, because he started worrying that he’d be passed over in hockey because his daemon was still unfixed. No coach of a serious team, U16 and up, wanted to take on kids with shifting daemons, no matter how good they were on the ice. Everyone’s heard the horror stories. Everyone’s got a friend who’s got a brother who’s got an old buddy from peewee who knew a guy who had a bunch of promise, but then his daemon settled into an elephant, or a giraffe, or a bear, and he’d had to kiss his hockey dreams goodbye because there was no way you’re getting that daemon onto a team bus.
So most coaches, serious coaches of serious teams, wanted players whose daemons were known quantities to plan around. Preferably very small known quantities, but the acknowledged unspoken limit was the same as the limits imposed by most airlines around the world. A lion? Fine, but pushing it. A wolf, good to go. A moose? Fuck off, quit hockey, try your hand at being a Mounty or a park ranger or something.
Shane’d been worried about Ren settling since he was nine years old. He likes to think he would have still loved her the way he’s loved her all their lives if she settled as a rhinoceros or something, but he doesn’t know. He’s given up so much for hockey; he’s never really, seriously had to consider what he’d give hockey up for.
He thinks maybe it makes him a terrible person, to not know. It wouldn’t have been her fault or anything, she’s a physical manifestation of his soul. He just would have been…angry. At himself. Or scared, probably, about what it would mean for the rest of his life, for who he was if he wasn’t a player. Yeah, scared. Scared is the truer word, the heart of it; it’s just easier to nestle it inside of angry.
But Ren had settled when he was fourteen years old. One night she was flitting around his bedroom as a hummingbird and the next she was curled into his arms as a snow leopard, and she couldn’t change again.
She’d been worried. That’s what Shane remembers most from his Settling Day. That she’d woken him up with a paw to the face, gentle still, claws sheathed. And she’d been worried. She’d wanted him to measure her, to make sure she’d be within regulation even if he knew just by looking at her that she would. Snow leopards are big cats technically, but they’re no lions or tigers.
But she had needed the proof of it, the hard numbers, and something about it—extending the tape measure, writing down the results, wrestling control away from something out of both their hands—had soothed a part of Shane’s anxiety as well.
They’d spent that whole morning trading it’s okay’s and we’re alright’s, his forehead pressed into her fur, and Shane had told himself he’d only ever been worried that Evren would settle into something too big for him to play ice hockey, all the way up until Ilya Rozanov kissed him for the first time in that hotel room in Toronto.
And then he’d realized there was another part of himself he never wanted the world to see, a secret he hadn’t even known to be afraid of exposing back when he was a kid.
At least there isn’t really a daemon form that conveys I like to kiss boys, even though I am a boy, and I like to kiss Ilya Rozanov most.
Probably, at least. Shane hadn’t looked it up.
The moment Shane catches sight of Ilya Rozanov tucked away at the top deck of the skating rink, he thinks: oh, that’s why. Like, oh that’s why my daemon’s been on edge next to me this entire time. And oh, that’s why my skin's felt too tight since we got here. And, oh that’s why my heart’s been racing watching this guy skate like it’s my Gold medal on the line. Right, of course. There’s Rozanov. Of course he’s here. This makes perfect sense.
Except it doesn’t, not really, but at least he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone. Ren already knows, ears furling back against her head the moment she feels him go still.
“I’m just gonna—uh, go find the restroom,” he tells Hunter and Vaughny, and then he’s out of his seat.
A woman makes an offended sound that her parakeet daemon mimics as Shane brushes past her, but it’s an overreaction because the walking room between the rows of seats is big enough to fit most mid-sized daemons, which is the international standard. And Shane barely stepped on her shoe anyway.
“You are being stupid,” Ren hisses at him as he looks around for a door that looks like it could lead to a flight of stairs. Everything’s gray and concrete. Every sign is written in Russian.
“Yeah, well,” Shane huffs and shoves his hands into the pockets of his fleece. He is being stupid. And the worst part is, there’s still time to go back to Hunter and Vaughn, pretend that he really did just need to go to the restroom. But he won’t. Rozanov’s in the same building as him and he never responded to his text, and he just wants to know he’s alright, so sue him.
If it was Shane—
But that’s a useless thought exercise, because it’s not Shane. It’s Rozanov. And Shane just wants—he’ll figure that part out later, alright. The wanting is enough to justify the reaching. It always has been so far.
“Through here,” Ren says, nosing at a half-opened door next to a shuttered concession stand of some kind. And maybe he’s stupid, fine, but she keeps pace with him every step of the way even though she could have stayed in his seat and they wouldn’t have felt any jab of pain or uncomfortable tightening of the bond at all.
Professional athletes are good at that, have trained since they were kids to stretch and lengthen the tether tying their daemons to their souls. Sure, no athlete Shane’s ever heard of could leave the building without his daemon—soulmated pairs aside, of course—but most of them could separate the length of a football pitch out of sheer necessity.
So Ren doesn’t have to be here, is all Shane’s saying. Obviously he wants her with him, generally all the time, because that’s his daemon, but she could have stayed behind if she wanted. But she wants to see Rozanov as much as Shane does, he knows it.
She’s keeping pace with his every step, after all, and when they’re through the door at the top of the stairs, she’s darting through it in a flash.
“Ren,” Shane snaps out, instinctive and panicked because she’s hurtling through the air towards Rozanov as if she’s going to touch him, which is just not—no. Not allowed. Not something they do. Not something anyone does, unless you’re, like, married or family.
But she curves at the last second and barrels into the prowling form of Ilya’s daemon instead, which. Alright, it’s still embarrassing, but it’s not terrible. At least Ilya’s daemon likes Ren. Honestly, Shane thinks they have a better rapport going than he and Rozanov do, which makes him feel sort of weird.
“Uh, hey,” Shane says, stopping a safe distance away from Rozanov’s hunched figure. Even from the side, he can tell how angry Rozanov is, muscle jumping in his jaw like a soldier loading bullets into a gun.
Between them, Evren and Rozanov’s daemon are wrestling, climbing over each other and flashing their fangs, but it’s friendly. Shane thinks. Shane thinks it’s friendly, at least. They don’t use words, which is weird because daemons generally talk to each other in whatever language their humans speak. But Ren and Rozanov’s daemon never speak to each other, at least not that Shane’s heard.
Maybe they’re communicating the way snow leopards do? Shane doesn’t know. He knows a lot about snow leopards, but he’s been stubbornly refusing to look up things about daemons for years now. Especially things about matching daemons.
It’s not, like. A thing, okay?
He glances up at Rozanov just in time to see Rozanov look away, back out over the ice. “Not here,” he says, curt and final. As if Shane’s gotten on his knees, opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue or something right here in the Sochi ice rink.
“I just said hi,” he protests, and between them, Ren rears back and hisses with her ears flat to her skull. Shane lowers his voice, as if that can make up for his loud-ass daemon. “I know not here, alright, I just—wanted to see if you were okay. Nothing else.”
“Okay?” Rozanov’s eyes pierce him, bright and fiery and everything they weren’t during the interview Fletcher showed him this morning. It eases something in Shane’s chest. Better. That’s better. “Yes, Hollander, I am so fucking okay. Go now, thank you.”
“You didn’t answer my text,” Shane blurts and then he feels like an idiot. But it’s just like. Rozanov’s lying to him, and Shane doesn’t know why he cares so much, but he does, so if Rozanov’s gonna try to lie to him then he’s going to have to do a better fucking job of it.
“What text,” Rozanov says, but his eyes are back on the ice, and when Shane glances down there, no one’s even fucking performing.
He moves closer. Just a few steps, because he can’t help it. It’s enough to have Rozanov’s daemon perk up though, amber eyes fixing onto Shane with just as much heart-stopping intensity as her human’s. “Rozanov, come on,” he says. “We—”
“We are not anything, Hollander,” Rozanov snaps, and he’s looking at Shane again but it’s like a stranger’s wearing his face. Rozanov has never once looked at him like that. Not even at the beginning, not even during the last World Juniors when they took that last face-off against each other when Canada had three goals on Russia, and two of them were off Shane’s stick.
This is different.
“No, I know—” Shane says quickly. Heaven forbid Rozanov thinks Shane’s here because he got—clingy or something. Rozanov probably has no shortage of girls and guys he fucks once and then tries to avoid afterwards even when they don’t get the hint. Shane’s not one of them. Shane knows what this is, and he doesn’t want anything else from Rozanov than what they already are. He’s not here, like, gagging for it or anything.
He’s sorry for being a decent fucking person; obviously he’s not going to be trying that again where Ilya Rozanov is concerned.
“Good,” Rozanov says, short and sharp, like he can hear Shane’s thoughts or something. He’s being cruel with his brutality. Did Shane expect anything less? He can’t remember now.
Maybe it’s good he never decided what he wanted out of this—what he thought would happen when he texted Rozanov. That means that the sinking, gaping feeling opening up in his stomach isn’t disappointment. He never pinned down his expectations, so there’s nothing to be disappointed about.
There’s just this. Just Rozanov’s clenched jaw and his burning eyes and the way he holds himself frozen still, like he’s poised to strike at any soft piece of underbelly Shane's stupid enough to show him.
It’s so far away from the way he’d been in the stairwell of Shane’s Montreal apartment that Shane isn’t actually sure if that Ilya Rozanov ever existed at all. Maybe Shane’s eyes were just playing tricks on him. Maybe Ilya’d gotten him all cum-dumb and stupid with it, and he’d just made up a version of Rozanov he’d wanted to see, someone he’d wanted to be that soft with.
Maybe that’s the fake Rozanov and this is the real one. Shane doesn’t know.
He shouldn’t have sent that text. He shouldn’t have asked. He shouldn’t have cared.
Why had he cared?
“Good,” Shane repeats, and even he can hear the way his voice sounds off; too high, too stretched thin across the one syllable. Ren nudges up against his hand once in comfort before padding back to Rozanov’s daemon and flopping against her side. She gets a lick between the ears for her efforts. Funny; Shane feels like he's being kicked in the kidneys for his own.
And Rozanov’s back to watching the zamboni trundle over the ice beneath them, like he’s already checked out of the conversation, like he’s given Shane his marching orders and so that’s that. Go now, thank you.
Something about that feels like claws raking down Shane’s spine. Rozanov doesn’t even care enough to look at him anymore. He’s only a few meters away at most, but he looks so—untouchable. Distant. Unfamiliar, and that tugs at something in Shane’s gut, makes him feel sort of sick to his stomach.
He doesn’t like the weight of the feeling. Doesn’t like the way it sits inside of him, like he’s swallowed a mountain’s worth of stones. He thinks, alright. This is officially a distraction, which is sort of mortifying because Rozanov doesn’t look like he’s thought about him at all since he got into his cab a block away from Shane’s place in Montreal.
“Fuck you, Rozanov,” he snarls, digging his fingers into the pockets of his fleece so he can’t give into the temptation to run them through his hair or wrap them around Rozanov’s shoulders and shake him. “I don’t know why I even….” he cuts himself off because it’s not like that sentence is going to end anywhere that matters.
Rozanov’s shoulder raises and falls in a sharp, jerky movement. His arms are crossed over his chest; he glances at Shane again and then away. “I do not know why either,” he drawls, his lip pulling up into a sneer that hits Shane like a punch to the gut.
“Fuck you,” Shane says again, sort of breathless, and he means it. He’s startled by how much he means it, actually. He blinks at Rozanov, the side of his face, the curl of hair around his ear, the mole on his cheek, the jut of his furrowed brow, and he wants—
Shane doesn’t know.
He wants the other Rozanov back, but he isn’t even sure if that guy exists. He wants to go back in time and just—not send that text, not reach out, not want to know how Rozanov’s feeling, which really means he just wants to root out the part of him that cares about Rozanov’s emotions like it’s a stubborn weed he can dig out of himself if he tries hard enough.
More than anything, he sort of wants to reach into Rozanov’s mind and claw out the memories of that night in Montreal. He doesn’t like thinking about this version of Rozanov remembering that version of Shane. It makes him feel exposed and ugly, twisted and tied down and unable to protect himself from the sharp knife of Rozanov’s attention.
It’s all very dramatic and overly emotional, which Shane hates, so he swallows down all the wounded pride that’s welling up in his chest like a bruise, and hisses out, “I’ll leave you to brood then, Rozanov.”
Rozanov’s hands clench at his sides, and his daemon pauses in the middle of licking along Ren’s scruff, like they can both feel the approaching storm in the air. “Thank you,” Rozanov says stiffly. “Is what we agreed, no?”
“Yeah,” Shane replies, because it is. He’s right. They’d said. They’d said they wouldn’t approach each other in Sochi, that they wouldn’t even be rivals, just strangers. Shane broke the rules he’d laid out. And now Shane’s dealing with the consequences. He just didn’t think they’d be so bitter to swallow. “Yeah, it is.”
Rozanov flicks his eyes to him and then away. “I will see you on the ice, Hollander. You will be in Boston in March.”
It feels like being tossed a bone, table scraps given to a dog out of pity. It makes Shane feel wild and mean and starved. Hungry to see Rozanov as hurt and reeling as Shane feels. “You’ll see me on the fucking podium wearing gold if you can bear to stick around for closing ceremonies. But hey, don't worry. We’ll beat Latvia for you. I know you couldn’t get it done.”
Rozanov flinches. It’s small, barely anything, but it’s there.
Shane waits for the warm tide of satisfaction to flood through him at the sight, but there’s nothing.
“Go now,” Rozanov says, turning his body away from him completely. His chin juts out, proud. His shoulders are stiff and straight. Maybe his words should sound like a warning, but they don’t. They just sound the way Shane feels: tired, maybe. Empty.
Shane goes. He wants it to feel like a kindness he's giving himself, but it’s probably more like a tactical retreat. His heart is hammering in his chest and the sinking feeling in his gut increases with every step he takes away from Rozanov. The embarrassment is acidic; it’s going to burn through him if he lets it.
“Fuck him,” Shane mutters to Ren, pushing through the door to the stairwell with a bang and taking the stairs two at a time. She’s a half-step behind him, but her presence is a comfort all the same. “No, seriously. Fuck him. I just asked if he was alright, why’d he have to—like, it was just a question. He acted like it was an attack, who does that?”
Ren lets out an agreeing sort of noise, half-purr and half-chirp. Shane doesn’t even look at her as he leaves the rink. He knows, like, logically, he should go back to his seat because Hunter and Vaughn are still sitting there, probably wondering if he’s drowned in the toilet or something.
But he has too much energy for sitting. Or maybe he just wants to put as much distance between him and Rozanov as possible. “I hope he doesn’t stay for closing ceremonies,” he snaps. The cold Russian air greets him in a rush the moment he steps outside; it makes his eyes sting reflexively.
Ren is quiet at his feet, and Shane doesn’t want to see the way she’s probably looking at him in disapproval, so he speeds up. It’s not Shane’s fault she likes Rozanov’s daemon so fucking much. It’s not his fault Rozanov’s daemon’s apparently leagues better than Rozanov himself.
He strikes out in a random direction, fingers clenching around nothing in the pockets of his fleece. He can feel his phone in his pocket like it’s a dead weight. Rozanov’s not going to text him back. Shane’s never going to text him again. It’s just—embarrassing, is what it is.
“God, I’m such an idiot,” he whispers, reaching up and raking a hand through his hair. Ren bumps against the back of his legs with a small, rusty-souding purr. “You know what, I wish you could have dropped my phone in the ocean. Still might do that.”
Even though that wouldn’t help anything. Even though it wouldn’t take away the sinking feeling in his chest, like he’s lost something he’s been too afraid to name.
“Fuck,” he mutters with feeling as he turns a random corner. He barely avoids clipping shoulders with a group of German skiers walking the other way. “Shit, sorry,” he says, automatic. One of them waves him off with a smile, taking a polite step to the side to allow Ren to follow in Shane’s steps without brushing against her.
Except it’s not Evren on his heels when Shane’s eyes fall to her instinctively.
It’s a snow leopard daemon, yeah, sure, but it’s not his.
Shane jerks to a stop so suddenly that another athlete almost runs into him this time, a young girl with the French flag splashed across her jacket.
“Oh,” she says, “Excusez-moi!” Her daemon, a snake longer than she is tall and draped over her shoulders like a fashion statement, flicks its tongue out at Shane and turns its head to watch him as she skitters by.
Ilya’s daemon blinks back at him with those intense amber eyes of hers. “You should move, Hollander,” she purrs, voice a rusty rumble and just as accented as Rozanov’s. “You are in the middle of the street.”
Shane blinks and then pulls himself together through sheer stubbornness alone. It’s the first time he’s ever heard Rozanov’s daemon speak. He doesn’t even know her name. “What the fuck,” he says faintly, but he moves out of the middle of the street, into the mouth of a small alleyway. To get out of the way. To get his bearings. He cranes his neck to look around him for a familiar flash of golden curls or the gray-white blur of his own daemon.
There’s nothing.
“Where the fuck is Rozanov,” he demands, shoulders tense. “What the fuck,” he adds, in case that wasn’t clear or she didn’t hear him the first time. Then, most importantly, “Where the fuck is Ren?”
Rozanov’s daemon tilts her head and blinks at him. “I don’t know,” she says, and Shane thinks maybe he’s losing his mind.
“What do you mean you don’t know,” he snaps, looking around the street like Rozanov will appear if only he wants him hard enough. He thinks about calling out for him, demanding that he come out from wherever he’s hiding and—and, like, bring Ren, because obviously she’s been daemon-napped or something—
But the fear of discovery makes him hold his tongue. What would someone think if they heard him calling out for Rozanov in the middle of the day in Sochi? They’re not even supposed to be friends.
“Shane,” Rozanov’s daemon says, padding forward until she can sit right in front of him, long tail curled around her paws. “You know he is not here, and you know she is with him.”
“I don’t know anything at all,” Shane tells her, voice high and thready. He needs to sit down. Like, now. He can feel a soul-deep panic creeping into his peripherals. Ren isn’t here? Ren is always here. She’s his daemon, she’s his soul. She can’t just—be gone.
Rozanov’s daemon nudges at his knees, insistently, and that’s all it takes for him to fold down onto the cement sidewalk. Thank God no one else seems to be around. Thank God it’s just Rozanov’s daemon watching him have a breakdown or whatever. It feels right; he embarrasses himself in front of Rozanov, so now he gets to embarrass himself separately in front of his daemon too. Two for fucking two.
But even that mortifying concern feels distant and muted, because—because—
“Where is he?” He tries again, desperate. It’s the only thing that makes sense: Rozanov has followed him out of the rink, and Ren, for whatever reason, has stuck close to his heels instead of dogging Shane’s like she’s done for the past twenty-three years. Variety, maybe. Spice of life and all that.
“Shane,” Rozanov’s daemon says, and then that’s all she says. And she says it like it’s an explanation and an apology all in one.
“No,” Shane refuses, and a part of him wants to scramble to his feet and run back to the rink. Track Ilya down and shake answers out of him. Find Evren and wrap her up in his arms. He doesn’t want to sit here, leaning up against the concrete wall of some sports complex. He doesn’t want to look at Rozanov’s daemon.
He doesn’t want to know what it means.
But fuck--of course he knows what it means.
What it always means, when you can leave your daemon behind and not feel their absence like it’s tearing your soul in two.
“Don’t,” Shane says, when Rozanov’s daemon settles into his side, watching him like he’s something to be studied. Her fur is longer than Ren’s; it looks soft, but he can’t feel it through the fabric of his pants. He doesn’t want to feel it. Touching someone else’s daemon—that’s soulmate-level shit.
“She is okay,” Rozanov’s daemon tells him, resting her cheek against his knee. She pronounces the word the same way that Rozanov does, two separate syllables married in one breath. “Ilyusha will not let anything happen to her.”
“Ilyusha,” Shane repeats, edging from panic into hysterical territory. “My daemon is with Ilyusha.”
Rozanov’s daemon blinks at him, slow and languid. “Of course,” she says, almost reproachfully. “He would be in pain otherwise, if both of us were with you. That is how it works.”
The words make Shane close his eyes and exhale roughly. He wants to shake his head in denial, like that would dislodge the images that his eyes are sending to his brain. “I don’t even know your name,” he tries, but it’s pointless and it’s fruitless and it’s far, far too late.
Shane’s been training for years to stretch the distance he can walk away from Evren without feeling the heart-piercing pain of a fraying bond. They’ve never gotten further than roughly the length of an ice rink, which is pretty average. Any further, and his body feels like it’s being set on fire, like his soul is trying to force its way out of his chest to reconnect with his daemon, like he’s going to pass out.
It’s damning, the fact that he’d walked from the rink all the way here without feeling more than a heavy leadenness in his stomach. That he didn’t even notice it wasn’t Ren shadowing him. That Rozanov’s daemon felt familiar to him, down past his skin, further than his bones, to his very soul.
“You do not need my name,” Rozanov’s daemon says, probably just to be contrary. She’s Rozanov’s daemon, after all. She settles more of her weight against his leg. They’re not touching, skin to fur, but it’s still—it’s inappropriate. It’s—it’s soulmate shit, touching another person’s daemon like this. This is Ilya Rozanov’s soul, pressing up into him.
The thought makes him laugh, strained and hysterical. “I think I should probably know the name of my soulmate’s daemon,” he gets out, and the snow leopard purrs like a reward.
It’s soulmate shit, to swap your daemon with someone else’s and not even notice yours is gone. It’s rare. It’s special.
It’s not something that’s supposed to happen in Sochi. During the Olympics. And it’s definitely not supposed to be Ilya Rozanov’s daemon that Shane’s soul recognizes as his own.
“Fuck,” Shane says and puts his forehead down on his knees. He just—needs a moment. The cold concrete against his ass and the wind stinging at his cheeks are good, harsh sensations that remind him that this is real. They don’t do much to ground him, but he thinks probably very little would right now.
Ren would. Ren would know how to help him. Usually, she just sticks her face into Shane’s and butts her head up against his until all he can feel is her fur and all he can smell is her scent and all he can hear is the rumble of her purr.
But Ren isn’t here. Ren is with Rozanov.
Shane wonders distantly if Rozanov has realized yet. Then he wonders how far Shane would have gotten without noticing. He’s almost to the bus stop that most of the athletes use to hitch rides from the main sports campus back to the Olympic Village where the athletes are staying. If he hadn’t run into those Germans, maybe he would have gotten all the way back to his room before he properly looked at Ren and found her missing. Found another person’s soul in her place.
“Hollander,” Rozanov’s daemon says carefully, “you are having panic attack.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, breathless. “Yeah, I think—probably am, yeah.”
There’s a beat of silence, like she doesn’t know what to do with this information. It makes him want to laugh again, if he had the oxygen for it. God, he’s making Rozanov uncomfortable down to the guy’s soul.
And then—everything stops.
Rozanov’s daemon begins to purr, a sound that comes deep and guttural from her chest like a growl; then she shoves her way closer to him, batting at the side of his head until he moves it. And then she slinks into his arms, halfway off his lap but snuggled between his chest and the tops of his curved thighs.
And then—everything turns golden. It’s like he’s swallowed a star, feeling Rozanov’s daemon beneath his fingertips, skin to fur. No, it’s better than that. Smaller, too. It’s like—when he was little, his parents would take him out of the city and up to a rental cottage on a lake for two weeks at the beginning of each summer. When the sun was close to setting, when the fireflies were flickering over the water and dancing in between the trees, Shane’s father would light a fire in the stone pit and the sun would slip beneath the horizon, out of sight, and Shane wouldn’t even notice its absence because he’d be too busy staring at the flames instead, both his parents sat next to him and his daemon curled up in his lap.
Touching Rozanov’s daemon feels like that: like that kind of fire, that kind of warm, golden glow, inside him. Through his chest and down to his toes, certainty flowing through every cell of his body that there may be an oppressive darkness circling him, but he’s not been left alone within it. That he'll never be left alone within it again.
He has a soulmate. This is his soulmate’s daemon, and it feels right. Something clicks shut somewhere deep inside of him, a puzzle piece or a lock or a gear he hadn’t even realized was out of alignment.
“Oh,” Rozanov’s daemon says. She sounds surprised, like maybe she's feeling something similar.
“Oh,” Shane agrees. Her fur is soft. The panic recedes; it’s easier to breathe now. Sudden shocks help with anxiety episodes, and maybe touching your soulmate's daemon counts as one. He wonders if Rozanov’s daemon knew that or if she took a gamble and got lucky. Maybe she just wanted to help him and she couldn’t figure out how. Maybe Evren told her at some point or another. Apparently they’ve been talking a lot more than Shane ever realized, if they plotted this whole thing up.
Rozanov’s daemon is still purring, on and off, like it's a muscle she's not quite used to using. Her eyes are half-lidded but no less intense as she tilts his head to examine Shane’s face. “Serafima,” she tells him like it’s a secret. It takes him a moment to realize that it is.
It’s her name.
“Sima,” she adds, butting her head up against his fingers when he stops petting her. “Ilyusha calls me Sima.”
Shane blinks, and it’s not like the golden feeling inside of his chest fades entirely, but it’s like the darkness gets heavier.
He’d sort of forgotten for a moment is all. In the rush of amazement that was realizing he had a soulmate, that this was his soulmate’s daemon in front of him, he’d forgotten. And now he remembers.
Ilyusha is Ilya is Rozanov. Rozanov of the we are not anything, Hollander variety. Rozanov of the go now, thank you variety. Rozanov of the cruel sneer and the tensed jaw and the cold eyes that made Shane feel picked over and discarded, like the Russian had already experienced everything worthwhile Shane could offer him and he didn’t care to stick around to examine the rest.
And that Rozanov is his soulmate.
“Fuck,” Shane says out loud. Mostly to himself. Then, to the snow leopard in his lap, he says, “I think this definitely counts as a distraction.”
He’d think it were sabotage or something, a plan set up to throw him off his game before Canada faces off against the US, but he can’t imagine Evren actually going along with anything like that, and he can admit, just to himself, that she’s definitely in on whatever little switching scheme the two daemons concocted.
"Is funny," Serafima tells him. Rozanov's daemon. Because Rozanov is his--his.
"I'm not laughing," Shane replies automatically. He's not. His ass is numb and his head hurts and he feels like he's just gone five rounds against a team of enforcers, all of whom had taken turns knocking him against the boards.
Serafima hums like he has not spoken at all, which is perhaps the most Rozanov thing she's done so far. "Is funny that you call it a distraction," she says. "As if it is a bad thing."
"It is a bad thing," Shane says. "We're playing against the US tomorrow, I can't be thinking about--about Rozanov, about this. I'm going to be facing down the most defensively capable US men's team in the past two decades, alright? This is important."
Serafima--Sima? It feels weird to call her that. Like it's a coat he's borrowing that fits too tightly around his arms--slips out of his lap and back to his side, relaxing onto her hind legs and licking at her paw in practiced nonchalance. "And who do you think Ilyusha will be facing down tomorrow?"
Shane blinks. He doesn't know what to do with that question, what answer Rozanov's daemon is looking for, what she wants to hear. He doesn't know what Ilya has left to fight, except shitty media interviews and upset Russian fans.
But he doesn't think it's necessarily a fair question either. "We both agreed to no distractions," he says stiffly, scrubbing a hand over his face like it'll relieve the tension building up in his lungs. "That the games were more important than anything. You don't get to make me feel bad about that just because I'm the only one still competing."
Serafima tilts her head the same way Ren does. Maybe that's a snow leopard thing. Maybe that's a soulmate thing. Her eyes really are unnaturally bright; they hold all the fire to complement Ilya's forest. "Is not about making you feel bad, Hollander. It is about making you feel wide."
"Pretty sure I'm not the narrow-minded one between me and Rozanov," Shane reminds her, we are not anything, Hollander echoing around his brain like a really annoying gnat. "So maybe let's go find him and Ren, and you can give him this lecture and I can get my daemon back."
Serafima's lips curl back into a snarl; Shane doesn't feel the threat of it at all. Maybe the cold from the concrete beneath him has seeped up into his chest and numbed him all over, or maybe he just knows, bone-deep, that she'd never actually hurt him. She's Rozanov's daemon. And Rozanov is his soulmate.
"You two deserve each other," she snaps, all teeth. Her tail lashes when she gets up onto four paws. "You are both so stupid. But yes, okay. Let's go. We must solve the problem of your distraction."
Shane stands as well, feeling a bit light-headed as he does. He wants the golden glow back. He wants it to be easier. He wants it to be anyone else, anyone but Rozanov. He wants getting Evren back by his side to mean that he won't be playing the rest of his games distracted, that he won't be caught up and twisted into knots by the fact that Rozanov is his soulmate.
But he was fucked up and turned around by Ilya Rozanov way before Team Canada called to ask him to join their roster. He's been distracted by Ilya Rozanov for years now; if there were a cure, he thinks he'd have found it at this point. He's just started assuming this shit is terminal.