Chapter Text
Shane had once had nightmares about being kidnapped.Not vague nightmares, either. Specific ones.There had been a boy in town when Shane was little, someone’s cousin, maybe, or the son of a woman his mother knew from the rink,who’d been taken for a few hours before being found. Safe, technically. Traumatized, obviously. The story had moved through the community in hushed adult voices, and Shane’s mother, being Shane’s mother, had decided the appropriate response was preparation.
Practical preparation.Which meant sitting eight-year-old Shane down and explaining, with horrifying calm, what to do if someone tried to force him into a car.Kick. Scream. Drop your weight. Scratch. Bite. Remember details. Never let them take you to a second location.All useful advice.All absolutely nightmare-inducing.She had gone a little overboard.And now here he was.Years later, apparently.Standing on the side of some remote road in the northern United States with the alleged future version of Ilya Rozanov, staring down into the open trunk of a car like this was a perfectly reasonable solution to anything.Shane’s brain supplied, very unhelpfully:Second location.
He swallowed, “you cannot be serious,”
Rozanov, future Rozanov was horrifyingly-calm-about-crimes Rozanov, looked from him to the trunk and back again.Then he made an impatient noise under his breath. Idly, Shane wondered if Russians truly did kidnap people in trunks like the movies. Or if that was just completely off-base to think. Rozanov had never been particularly chatty about Russia despite all of the times Shane tried to ask.
“Davai, Hollander,” he muttered, gesturing toward it like he was offering Shane a luxury suite. “Is spacious trunk, no?”
Shane stared at him, “Spacious,” he repeated flatly.
“Da.”
“It is a trunk.”
“Very spacious trunk.”
“That does not make it less of a trunk.”
Rozanov sighed, as if Shane was being difficult about something minor, like restaurant seating or skate sharpening.
“You want border agents to see two Shane Hollanders?” he asked.
“No,” Shane snapped. “I also don’t want to be folded into the back of your car like contraband.”
“You are contraband. You have no passport,”
“I am a person!”
“Currently, undocumented person.”
Shane made a strangled sound, “Oh my God.”
Rozanov’s mouth twitched, which was infuriating. Not because it was inappropriate.although it absolutely was.but because it was familiar. The same almost-smile Shane had seen too many times across hotel rooms and locker room hallways. The one that said Rozanov knew exactly how much he was irritating him and found that information deeply satisfying.
“Get in trunk,” Rozanov said.
“No.”
“Hollander.”
“No.”
“We do not have time for moral crisis.”
“This is not a moral crisis,” Shane hissed. “This is a felony.”
“Probably several.”
“That is not reassuring!”
Rozanov glanced down the empty road, then back at him, his expression shifting, just slightly. Less amused. More focused.
“Hollander,” he said, quieter now. “You are scared. I know.”
Shane’s mouth snapped shut.He hated that.Hated the gentleness more than the teasing.Rozanov stepped closer, not enough to crowd him, but enough that Shane could feel the gravity of him. Familiar and wrong. Older. Softer. Still Rozanov.
“I will not let anything happen to you,” he said.
Shane looked at him sharply.The words landed somewhere uncomfortable.Too intimate. Too easy.
Like Rozanov had said them before.Like Shane had believed him.Shane looked away first, jaw tight. I’m not a chicken, he thought.
Shane stared at him for one long, miserable second.Then he climbed in, muttering, “If I die in here, I am haunting you.”
Rozanov leaned over him, expression suddenly much too pleased,“Good,” he said. “Then even death cannot make you leave me.”
Shane’s entire face went hot,“Shut the trunk, Rozanov.”
“Da, solnyshko.”
“Stop calling me Sunshi-...,” the trunk slammed shut leaving him in darkness in the middle o the word, “shine,”
***
“Shane!” Ilya called out as he marched up the steps of the house. He paused only to punch in the code, daring one glance back at Shane of two thousand and fifteen, who was doing his Mr. Real Estate thing, in the dark and trying to appraise his future house. Ilya would allow it if wasn’t fucking freezing or that he desperately wanted to see his husband. He knew he had loved Shane since that damned parking lot, but he’d forgotten how uptight and anal his husband could be.
He entered through the threshold of the house, expecting to be greeted by his dog and his husband. He only got one of them. His husband was wearing the soft fleece pajamas that had been a Christmas gift from Yuna. Without really thinking much about what Jane would think, he crossed over engulfing his husband in a hug before kissing him.
“Ilya…,” Shane was pulling away but he was smiling, “where is younger me?”
“Admiring woodwork outside ... .he is Mr. Real Estate,”
Shane rolled his eyes but there was no heat in them. He tucked strands of his bangs back behind his ears before he started in the direction of the door. Jane had entered the house though, and had paused to stare at his future self. It was like that movie. The one with the red headed twins who got separated at birth. If they had lost their voices like “The Little Mermaid”. Ilya could feel the panic oozing off the pair of them and he half-expected them to start circling each other like prey and predator.
“Uh hi?” his husband began.
“Smooth Hollander,”
This earned him identical glares.
“This situation is weird, Ilya. Can you not be a fucking menance?” his husband growled out, “look I know I’m, or you’re freaking out, but we’ll figure it out okay?”
“Oh?” Jane asked, eyebrows raised. Apparently being ripped out of his timeline, smuggled across an international border in the trunk of a car, and then informed he was secretly in love with his hockey rival had activated an entirely new level of sarcasm, “how so? Do you remember being teleported years into the future and can assure me that all will be well?”
“No,” Shane admitted, “And fine this is freaky as hell but I think you’re panicking enough-
“I AM NOT A PANIC ATTACK, okay?” Jane was doing a poor job of showing this as he began a short pace back and forth, back and forth, “This,” he declared, pointing emphatically at absolutely nothing, “is a perfectly normal reaction to being displaced in time and smuggled into another country like some sort of fucking luggage,”
Shane turned to Ilya then, “what does he mean? Smuggled?”
“We had to be creative,” Ilya began defensively, “he did not have passport so…,” he shrugged his shoulders and began to mime putting a suitcase in the trunk of a car.
“YOU PUT ME IN THE TRUNK?” Shane asked.
“He did indeed,” Jane grumbled out.
2015 Ilya descended the stairs wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers and an expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and mild annoyance. His hair was tousled from sleep, soft curls sticking up unevenly, and Anaya trotted loyally at his heels like a furry little bodyguard.He looked so young. Like child.Disarmingly so.
Sleep had stripped away some of the sharpness he carried so carefully, leaving behind the version of himself Shane had once known only in fragments: half-awake in hotel rooms, blinking slowly into the dark before rebuilding all the walls by morning.And then he saw Jane. The one he knew. Everything in him softened.
Not dramatically. Not enough that anyone who didn’t know him would notice.But Ilya noticed.Of course he did.That small, private smile. Barely there. Instinctive. Fond in a way his younger self would probably rather die than acknowledge.And then, almost immediately, he schooled it away, replacing it with practiced indifference as he continued down the stairs.Oh, what a fool you were.Ilya remembered this period painfully well.
It is just sex, he’d tell himself afterward, staring at ceilings in unfamiliar hotel rooms.Just sex.And then he’d say it to Shane too, with far more confidence than he’d ever actually felt.2015 Ilya sauntered the rest of the way down the stairs, gaze flicking lazily between the two Shanes before landing on the pacing one.
indifference. Oh what a fool you were. Ilya could remember this time period well. Is just sex he would tell himself and would say to Shane with much more confidence. He sauntered down the steps.
“I thought I heard panic,”
Jane scowled at him, “shut the fuck up Rozanov,”
“What, you are not happy to see me?”
Jane’s anger was displaced by his eyes hungrily staring up and down the boxer clad Raiders player. His mouth gaped open a bit. Ilya was going to tease his husband about this later. You had a crush on me, he’d tell Shane, Could not keep eyes off me for even one second, solnyshko.….that was when he noticed his Shane staring at two thousand and fifteen Roz. Hm.Ilya very subtly-and by subtly, not subtly at all-shoulder-checked his husband.Shane jolted slightly, blinking hard like he’d just been caught doing something illegal.
“I gave you sweats to sleep in,” his husband managed to say.
Roz shrugged, “was more comfortable in….,” he looked at Jane, “in less,”
Jane choked.Actually choked, “You can’t just say that,” he sputtered.
“Why?” Roz asked. “Is true.”
“That’s not…..” Jane gestured wildly between them. “There are…..there are social rules!”
Roz looked genuinely unconcerned, “I am wearing underwear, not naked. And everyone here has seen me naked?” he titled his head, “some people have had my dick in their mouths so this should be that weird Hollander,”
Jane looked like someone had unplugged his brain entirely.His husband turned to look at him, do something. Ilya, unfortunately, was having the time of his life.He leaned casually against the wall, arms folding over his chest as he watched younger Shane continue to malfunction in real time.
“What exactly would you like me to do?” he asked mildly.
“Stop him!”
“Why? He is technically correct.”
“ILYAAA.”
There it was.The full-name tone.The fix this right now before I combust tone.Okay fine. Ilya turned to his younger self, “Roz..,” he tried to adapt his sternest tone, “go put on pants,”
Roz blinked at him.Then his eyes narrowed immediately with deep suspicion, “You are only saying this because both Hollanders are staring,” he accused.
Jane made a noise so strangled it barely qualified as human speech.Shane began to curse in Russian. Jane turned to him, looking flabbergasted again.
“We know Russian?” Jane’s voice squeaked out.
“Da,” Shane muttered, “we learn for our…,” he paused, fingers suddenly going to the ring he never took off. It would be unwise to tell them, he knew that but he could also see Roz clocking it, “it’s late you should be in bed,”
Roz grinned, “yes Hollander bed time for you,”
Jane turned violently red.The insults visibly rattled around inside his skull,Shane could practically see them colliding with one another trying to escape,but somehow, miraculously, he managed not to say any of them out loud.Instead, he looked at his future self with the exhausted despair of a man whose entire worldview had been dismantled in under twenty-four hours.
“Maybe I’ll wake up and this will all be a terrible dream. Maybe I’m too drunk,”
“Off ginger-ale? Impressive Hollander,” Roz asked incredulously as they followed one another up the stairs. Ilya wondered idly what their past selves would do if they stuck them in the same guest room. This was before the first time they had ever had a sleepover. It was before the damn tuna melts and Rose. He knew his past self had been daydreaming about it though. In those quiet moments on the bus or when he had nightmares about his mother. Not that past Roz was in any head space to tell anyone about his mother, it would be nice to wake up with someone next to you. And Shane? Shane gave the best cuddles. Sometimes he did so in his sleep, soothing Ilya as though he was a weighted blanket.
“The is a tooth brush and floss for you, okay Sh-I mean Jane,” Shane paused in front of one of the guest bedrooms that had a bathroom attached to it, “and the sheets are new and we’re just in the room across the hall if you need us,”
“What no floss for me?” Roz asked.
“As if you’d use it,” Shane told him, “do you need more sweatpants or I have other fabrics-
“Relax Hollander,” Roz walked towards his designated room, “I usually sleep naked…so this is fine,”
Shane stared after him, shaking his head. The door to both guest rooms closed tightly. Ilya grabbed his husband's hand to give it a gentle squeeze. He hoped it communicated that I'm also scared but we’ll figure it out. He tugged Shane into their room into their bed where he peppered kisses to his husband’s warm neck.
“We are not having sex within earshot of well us!”
“Moya lyubov', I understand why you do not wish to do so when your parents here but they are us?” Ilya said, “they’ll probably be jealous that they choose separate rooms,”
“Right. I’m sure Jane is thinking that right now. His back probably hurts from you shoving him in a trunk!”
Ilya sighed dramatically and rolled onto his back across the bed., “you are never going to forget this are you?”
“No!”
“Where is Anaya?” the dog always slept in the bed when he was home.
“With Roz,”
“Predatel'