Chapter Text
Shane awakes with the distinct, unpleasant sensation that something about his body has gone wrong.
Not pain - he catalogues that first, automatically - but a heaviness in his limbs that feels disproportionate, like he's misjudged the depth of a step in the dark and is still bracing for impact that hasn't come. His right arm is flung out at an angle that pulls at his shoulder in a way that doesn’t track with how he usually sleeps. The mattress dips differently beneath him too, soft at the hips, not enough support along the spine.
He takes a breath.
Too deep.
The air sits in his chest in a way it isn’t meant to, expanding space that doesn’t exist. He lets it out slowly through his nose and watches his hand where it rests against the sheets.
His hand.
There’s a brief moment where his brain tries to smooth over it. Where it suggests lighting, angle, perspective. The way hands can look strange first thing in the morning if you stare at them too long.
His fingers are too long.
There’s a scar across the knuckle of his index finger he doesn’t recognise.
They’re paler than usual.
Shane pushes himself upright.
The movement is wrong. His balance lags half a beat behind him, like the signal from his brain has to travel further to reach his limbs. The room tilts and rights itself again.
Okay.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed.
The floor is colder than he expects. His knees don’t align the way they should when he stands, don’t almost buckle the way they tend to do after a night of rest. Everything feels just slightly out of place. A tad higher. A bit broader. His centre of gravity is off, pulling him forward in a way that makes him brace instinctively.
He swallows and glances around.
This isn’t his room. The walls are bare in a way that reads expensive rather than empty, all clean lines and neutral tones. A framed jersey hangs opposite the bed, signed in silver across the number.
He can’t bring himself to look at it properly yet.
He turns instead, scanning for something, anything, familiar. His bag. His clothes. The book he left on his nightstand.
There’s nothing.
Just a low dresser. A chair in the corner with a pile of athletic wear flung over the back. A pair of trainers by the door that look several sizes too large to belong to him.
Shane takes a step.
Then another.
Walking requires concentration in a way it hasn’t since physiotherapy. His stride is longer. His weight settles differently through his hips. He reaches out automatically when the doorframe appears in his peripheral vision, steadying himself against it as he moves into the hallway.
The apartment beyond is open-plan.
Sunlight comes in through floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating a living area with a television mounted on the wall. There’s a table with a duffel bag abandoned on it, half-unzipped, and a phone sitting innocently beside it.
Shane picks it up without thinking as his heart gives a single, hard thud against his ribs.
He turns towards the bathroom and stops in front of a large mirror above the marbled sink.
The man in the mirror looks back at him with sleep-creased skin and the beginnings of stubble along a jawline Shane has only ever seen on screens or in interviews.
Shane’s hand lifts without permission.
The reflection follows.
“Okay.” he says, pushing down the raw instinct of panic panic panic.
A phone begins to ring somewhere behind him.
The sound is sharp in the quiet. A standard ringtone that goes on and on until it’s impossible to ignore.
Shane looks at his hands. Not his hands. The hands he’s currently using at least.
The phone lights up with the caller’s name: ‘Coach Wiebe’.
His stomach drops.
It keeps ringing.
He presses accept before he can think better of it. Because if this is real, if any of this is real, then ignoring a call from 'Coach Wiebe' is out of the question.
“Rozanov.”
The voice on the other end is calm.
Shane opens his mouth and closes it again.
“Yes.” he manages finally, and the voice that comes out is…wrong. It’s lower, rougher than his usual tone.
There’s a pause.
“You just wake up?” the voice asks.
Shane swallows. “I- yes.”
Another pause. Shane has the distinct impression he’s being evaluated.
“Morning skate’s at eleven.” Wiebe says eventually.
Shane blinks.
“We’ve got Boston tonight,” Wiebe continues. “You with me?”
Oh.
He feels it click into place.
He’s talking about a game.
Shane sits down heavily on the closed toilet lid, because suddenly standing feels like an impossible task.
“Yes,” he says automatically. “Of course.”
A beat.
“You good to play?” Wiebe asks, not unkindly, but directly.
Shane’s throat goes dry.
“Yes.”
“Hm.”
It isn’t agreement but it isn’t disagreement either, just an acknowledgement.
“Good.” A pause. “Rozanov?”
Shane tightens his grip on the phone. “Yes, Coach?”
“Try being awake for the first period this time.”
The line goes dead.
Shane lowers the phone slowly, staring at the darkened screen until it catches the reflection of his face.
Of Ilya Rozanov’s face.
Shane doesn’t remember moving from the bathroom to the kitchen.
One moment he’s staring at a stranger - at a jawline he’s only ever seen on television, at shoulders built for something he’s spent years trying not to think about - and the next he’s leaning both hands against the counter like the apartment might tilt if he doesn’t anchor it in place.
He reaches for the phone again with hands that still don’t feel like they belong to him and opens the calendar, because maybe he misheard. Maybe this is just practice, or media, or some sort of travel.
Anything else.
'19:00 : Ottawa Centaurs vs Boston Raiders – Home Game'
Shane stares at it until the words stop meaning anything at all.
A game.
A professional NHL game.
Of ice hockey.
He sets the phone down very carefully.
He was on the ice just the other day with his under-10s. Half of them still struggle to stop without crashing into the boards, and one of them cries if you raise your voice even a little, so Shane makes a point not to.
He demonstrates drills. Skates slow laps. Shows them how to hold their sticks properly, how to keep their heads up through the neutral zone.
That isn’t the same.
That isn’t-
He drags a hand over his face and feels the scrape of unfamiliar stubble against his palm.
This body can skate.
Of course it can - it has to. It’s its job to.
But Shane hasn’t played. Not properly. Not competitively. Not since his last game over seven years ago.
God, it’s been years.
Years since he’s done anything more demanding than glide backwards in front of a group of twelve-year-olds while telling them to keep their knees bent. Years since he’s taken a hit. Years since he’s needed to be fast, or precise, or powerful - or good at it.
And tonight he’s expected to be all of those things in front of thousands of people, alongside teammates who will expect him to know systems he’s never learned and plays he’s never practised.
Coach Wiebe asked if he was good to play.
Shane lets out a breath that doesn’t feel like it reaches his lungs.
“I’m not,” he says into the silence of the apartment. “I can’t.”
Because he can’t.
He can’t step onto professional ice in a borrowed body and pretend to be a man who has spent the last near decade doing what Shane lost the chance to do at seventeen.
His gaze drops, almost without meaning to, to the right knee that isn’t his.
"I can't." he says again.
Ilya wakes up already annoyed.
The light is wrong.
Not dim hotel-curtain wrong, not jet-lag wrong - just wrong. Wrong in that bright, unfiltered way that suggests he’s forgotten to close something before he goes to sleep. He drags the pillow over his head with a groan and then frowns into it when the sound he makes is-
Off.
His voice is lighter than it should be.
He clears his throat experimentally.
“Mm.”
Still wrong.
Ilya shoves the pillow away and rolls onto his back.
The ceiling isn’t his.
That lands first - not panic, just the automatic filing of information. He’s woken up in stranger places before: teammates’ spare rooms, the locker room of the rink, hotel suites he doesn’t remember checking into.
But this isn’t any of those.
The room is small in a way that doesn’t read temporary. It’s lived-in. There’s a bookshelf against one wall filled to the brim, a laundry basket by the dresser, a chair with a neatly folded stack of clothes over the back that looks like it’s been placed there with more care than required.
He pushes himself upright and immediately has to catch himself on the mattress when his balance overcorrects.
“What-” The word comes out thin.
Ilya goes still.
He tries again, louder this time. “Hello?”
Still wrong.
His chest feels tighter when he breathes in, like there’s less space for it to go. His shoulders don’t pull the way they should when he moves them, range of motion shortened by muscle that simply isn’t there.
He looks down and freezes.
The hands resting in his lap are not his.
They have shorter fingers, narrower palms and no calluses where his stick usually rubs them raw. There’s a thin white line of scar tissue along the base of the thumb, old by the look of it.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands.
His centre of gravity drops out from under him. Not literally, but close enough that he has to reach for the wall as the room lurches. His stride is shorter. His hips don’t track the way they should. Everything feels…contained. Reduced.
Like trying to play in borrowed gear that doesn’t quite fit.
He takes a step-
-and his right knee nearly buckles.
Ilya catches himself on the dresser with a sharp exhale, the joint sending up a protest that feels less like a fresh injury and more like something deeply familiar. Instinctively, he shifts his weight off it.
Tests again.
The same.
There’s a stiffness there. A hesitation in the extension, like the joint doesn’t trust him not to push it too far. Old surgical work, maybe. Ligaments that once snapped and were pulled back together again with thread and hope.
His mouth flattens.
“Okay.” Ilya says.
There’s a mirror on the back of the wardrobe door where he finally sees himself.
Except…not.
The face looking back at him is unfamiliar. Young, clean-cut - controlled in a way that suggests the effort of it is deliberate rather than natural.
Pretty, too. Symmetrical, clear-skinned, with the kind of eyes people trust on instinct. Yes, definitely pretty.
But not someone he knows.
Ilya stares at the stranger in the mirror as the stranger stares back.
He keeps staring for another long second before dragging his gaze away.
People don’t just wake up in other people’s bodies. That isn’t something that just happens - especially not to him. There has to be some sort of explanation for this.
A memory flashes into his mind unbidden: a girl drunkenly rambling to him about swapping bodies with her boyfriend before being dragged away by said boyfriend with an apologetic look. She’d mentioned something about soulmates. About it being an apology from fate for messing up somehow.
He’d dismissed it as nonsense at the time; the sort of thing only drunk people with no filter or care for lying make up and spout to strangers for attention.
But now...
He turns back towards the bedroom.
“Okay,” he says again, sharper this time. “Think.”
If this is real, if this is happening, then this person exists. Which means they have some sort of identification around here somewhere. Something that can give him a name.
Ilya can work with a name.
The walk back into the main room is slower this time, more deliberate. He keeps his weight off the right leg without thinking about it, the knee sending up that same tight warning every time he forgets.
The apartment isn’t large, but it’s organised in a way that suggests habit rather than money. There are shoes lined up by the door, a neat stack of unopened mail on the kitchen counter, held down by what looks like-
A puck.
Ilya picks it up.
It’s scuffed along one edge and signed across the face in black marker, though the handwriting has long since smudged into something illegible.
A hockey fan?
“Interesting.” he mutters, setting it back down.
There’s a framed photo on the shelf beside the television. Two people - a woman he doesn’t recognise and the guy whose face he’s just been wearing in the mirror - are standing shoulder to shoulder at what looks like a rink. The stranger is smiling in that careful, closed way people do when they don’t quite believe they deserve to take up space in the picture.
Definitely a hockey fan, then. Potentially even a player. But no jersey or team logo that gives him any more information.
He sighs, prepared to give up, before noticing something sat plugged in beside the couch.
A phone.
Ilya lunges for it with a wince as his knee protests the sudden shift.
“Please.” he says under his breath as he picks it up.
The black screen lights up for just a second before unlocking for him. No passcode, no failed attempt, just…opens like it recognises him.
Ilya goes very still.
Face ID.
He swallows.
The home screen comes into focus in his hand, rows of apps shifting into place like this is normal. Like it’s normal for it to be open and waiting for Ilya to scour through its contents.
There’s a name at the top of a notification banner before it slides away.
Shane.
Ilya’s grip tightens.
“Well,” he says faintly. “That’s a start.”
He taps into Messages first.
There are no media managers. No PR contacts flagged at the top. No agents with their names in all caps demanding confirmation for appearances he doesn’t remember agreeing to.
Just a thread labelled ‘Mom’ sitting quietly at the top of the list, the preview reading: did you remember to book physio this week?
Below that there’s a message from ‘Jen’ asking if ‘Rohan’ can bring some birthday cake to share with ‘the kids’ next week. Another saying sorry for ‘Connie’ missing last week’s session from ‘Kathy’. And then one reminding him that his phone bill is due in a week’s time.
Ilya blinks.
He backs out and opens the calendar.
Coaching sessions, recurring grocery reminders and a dentist appointment fill the month. Then something called 'Knee Physio' that’s blocked in for Tuesday.
He stares at that for a second longer than the rest before forcing himself to keep going.
Photos are next.
There are no press shots or locker room selfies. No blurry team dinners or sponsorship events or screenshots of articles he’s definitely never googled himself at two in the morning.
Just a warm sunset spanning over a beach, a blurry picture of a cat strolling along a wall, a middle-aged couple smiling into the camera while leaning against each other.
It’s…
God.
It is so boring.
Endearingly so, in a way that makes something in Ilya’s chest pull tight before he can stop it.
No one is asking this guy for anything.
No one expects him to show up somewhere and be impressive. No one needs a statement or an apology or a confirmation that, yes, he’ll be available for media after the game, provided they cleared it with-
He locks the phone again without meaning to, his thumb hovering over the dark screen as his own reflection stares back at him.
Shane.
Just Shane.
His knee aches when he shifts his weight.
“Right.” Ilya says, because this is still happening, and apparently this is still him.
He checks the date again.
October 16th.
The reality arrives all at once, like a check he hasn’t seen coming.
He looks down at himself: at the hands that aren’t his, at the knee that still protests when he shifts his weight, like it remembers something he doesn’t. At the phone that opened for his face and called him Shane.
He has a game at home tonight.
A game in front of thousands of people, including his team, his coach, and fans who would absolutely notice if the Ilya Rozanov suddenly skated like a baby fawn.
“Shit.” Ilya says, because unless this ‘Shane’ person has woken up in his body, the Ottawa Centaurs’ captain is about to either not show up for a home game… or show up as someone else entirely.
Trying to push down his panic, he swipes back to the home screen and opens the browser.
For a second, his hands hover uselessly over the keyboard.
Shane.
Shane what?
He backs out again, into Contacts, scanning the top of the list until, yes, there, at the very top.
Shane Hollander.
Ilya copies it before he can talk himself out of it and flips back to the browser. He pastes the unfamiliar name and hits search.
The results load almost immediately.
'Shane Hollander: Top Prospect’s Career Cut Short at 17.'
His stomach drops.
He taps it.
The article is dated seven years ago.
Shane Hollander: Junior league captain, draft-eligible the following season. Scouts are quoted talking about his ‘exceptional talent’, ‘incredible speed’, and ‘insane hockey IQ’.
There is a picture embedded halfway down.
The face from the mirror stares back at him. It is younger, helmet tucked under one arm, hair damp with sweat, cheeks flushed from exertion. There is something almost sheepish about the way he is smiling, like he isn’t sure what to do with the attention.
Ilya scrolls.
‘Hollander, widely projected as a first-round NHL pick-'
He scrolls again.
‘-sustained catastrophic ligament damage to his right knee-’
Keeps scrolling.
‘-multiple reconstructive surgeries-’
And again.
‘-while rehabilitation was initially promising-'
Once more.
‘-ultimately announced his retirement from competitive hockey later that year.’
And he stops.
Ilya’s jaw tightens.
Retirement. At seventeen.
He backs out and hits Videos instead.
The first clip opens on a rink he doesn’t recognize, and a commentator talks over it - something about playoffs, something about prospects to watch this season - before the camera cuts to the ice.
To Shane.
He is fast.
Jesus.
Fast in a way that doesn’t look like effort so much as inevitability. Controlled through traffic like he has more time than everyone else. Edges clean, powerful strides eating up ice in long, efficient pushes. He cuts around a defender like it’s nothing. Drives the net. Recovers the puck off the boards without losing speed.
Everything is tight, deliberate and precise. There is no wasted movement. No showboating.
Just good.
The kind of good that made scouts start talking about the future - about franchise potential.
The video cut to another. And another.
Shane on the power play. Shane on the penalty kill. Shane splitting two defenders and sliding the puck in before the goalie could even drop.
Ilya becomes aware, distantly, that he's leaning closer to the screen.
“That’s…” he starts, and doesn't finish.
Because he knows what that looks like.
He knows what it means.
And he knows what it feels like when it's taken away.
His gaze drops, almost without meaning to.
To the right knee that still aches when he stands on it too long.
“Oh.” Ilya says quietly.
Shane’s gaze drops back to the phone on the counter.
Think. He has to think.
If this is real - if any of this is real - then there's a version of him somewhere that isn’t here. Someone who has woken up in-
Shane’s stomach flips.
His phone number.
He knows it. Of course he knows it. Years of filling out forms, emergency contacts, registration sheets for the kids’ league. He’s written it down often enough that the sequence lives somewhere deeper than conscious thought. It's practically muscle memory at this point.
He reaches for the phone again and opens the phone app to the number pad, his hands hovering for half a second before he forces himself to move.
One number.
Then the next.
And the next.
Each one lands heavier than the last, like he's committing to something he can't take back. Like once the call connects, whatever this is will stop being theoretical and start being…real.
He lifts the phone to his ear.
It rings once.
Twice.
Three times.
Shane closes his eyes.
Please.
The line clicks.
There's a breath on the other end. Quiet. Close enough that he can hear it catch slightly on the inhale.
Shane’s heart slams against his ribs.
“…Hello?”
The voice is- it's his.
Not the one he heard come out of his own mouth twenty minutes ago. Not the low, unfamiliar drag of Rozanov’s vowels.
His.
A little uncertain, yes, but his nonetheless.
Shane’s grip tightens painfully around the edge of the counter.
“Oh, thank God.” he says, the words coming out in low and rough. “I- I’m so sorry, I know this is going to sound completely irrational but I think… I think something has happened to both of us.”
There's a beat of silence on the other end.
And then two words.
“…You too?”
Shane blinks.
“You-“ He stops. Recalibrates.
“Yes,” he says quickly. “Yes, I woke up this morning and I’m not - I’m not in my own body, I’m in - I think I’m in yours, I spoke to someone who appears to believe I am you, which I am very much not, and-”
“Okay,” the voice on the other end cuts in. Still his voice. Still wrong. “Stop.”
Shane’s mouth snaps shut.
There's a rustling sound, like the other man is pacing. A hand drags roughly over stubble that should be Shane’s but very much isn’t his to feel.
“Say your name.” the stranger says.
Shane swallows. “Shane Hollander.”
A beat.
“…Yeah,” the man says finally. “That tracks.”
“And you are?” Shane asks, because politeness is apparently how he's choosing to cope with this outlandish reality they are both facing.
“Ilya.” the man replies. “Rozanov.”
Right.
Of course.
Silence blooms between them, stunned and fragile.
Shane’s mind scrambles helplessly through every logical explanation he has ever trusted in his life and finds none of them sufficient. How could they be?
“This is-” he starts. Stops. Tries again. “This is not possible.”
“Yeah,” Ilya says flatly. “No kidding.”
“I mean in a physical sense, or- or psychological, or-”
“Ever heard of a Soulmate Swap?”
Shane falters. “…What?”
That is not what he was expecting.
“Body swap,” Ilya says. “Or- whatever the hell you call it. Soulmate thing.”
The words land strangely.
“Huh?” Not the most eloquent reply, but Shane can’t find it in himself to care much about being embarrassing at the moment.
There's a soft, humourless huff down the line.
“I’ve heard about it.” Ilya says. “Rare soulmate thing where two people switch bodies for while. Supposed to fix something that wasn’t - or was - meant to happen. Didn’t believe it at the time, but I guess with our current situation I’m a lot more open to possibility.”
Shane stares blindly at the far wall.
“That’s not-” he begins faintly. “That’s not real.”
“Just what I’ve heard.” Ilya replies. “Unless you have another explanation?”
“I mean…no, not really.” Shane admits.
“Like I thought.” Ilya sounds smug.
Shane opens his mouth and promptly closes it again.
Because he had woken up this morning in someone else’s body. Because his own face is not his own. Because the man currently speaking with his voice is standing somewhere in Shane’s skin.
“…You’re really in my body?” Shane asks at last.
A pause.
“…Yeah.” Ilya says, and something in his voice has shifted now. It's less sharp, more wary. “You are really in mine?”
Shane looks down again at hands that aren’t his.
Looks around at a life that isn’t his.
“Yes,” he says. “I am.”
There’s a long, quiet beat on the line where neither of them hangs up. Like they’re both a little afraid that if they do, whatever thin, impossible thread has connected them will snap.
Shane is the one who breaks first.
“…So,” he says, and then immediately huffs out a breath that’s halfway to a laugh. “Break the ice, I guess?”
There’s a soft, incredulous exhale on the other end - his voice, but not his voice.
“That was terrible.” Ilya says.
“Yeah, I know.”
Another pause. Less brittle this time. Sort of like the kind where two strangers are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a lift that’s stuck between floors and have realised they might be here a while.
“I googled you.” Ilya blurts.
Shane closes his eyes. Takes a long breath.
“Okay.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Ilya adds quickly. “I mean, I did mean to, but only because I woke up and I wasn’t me and I thought maybe if I knew your name I would-” He stops himself. “Your phone unlocked with my face. Which is your face. Which is-”
“Yeah.” Shane says faintly. “No, that’s… that’s fair. I’d google me too, if I woke up like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, and there’s something unexpectedly sincere in it now. “About your knee.”
It lands like a dropped puck.
Shane swallows.
“Yeah.”
“I watched videos of you.”
Shane makes a small, wounded noise before he can stop himself.
“I know.” Ilya says, softer now. “I’m sorry. You were very fast. Very controlled. Powerful. It was…” He hesitates, searching for a word that won’t sound like pity. “Beautiful, to watch.”
That’s worse, somehow.
“…Thanks.” Shane says eventually, voice going a little tight around the edges.
Another silence, but this one isn’t as suffocating.
“I also looked in the mirror.” Ilya continues, like this is a confession booth now and he’s committed to honesty. “You’re pretty.”
Shane chokes.
“I’m- what?”
“You’re pretty,” Ilya repeats, as if this is obvious. “Symmetrical. Good mouth.”
“Oh my- okay. Okay! We’re-” Shane presses his free hand to his face - Ilya’s face - which is still deeply surreal. “We’re not doing that.”
“I am simply cataloguing available information.”
“That’s not- you can’t just-”
“I woke up in stranger,” Ilya says reasonably. “I am allowed to assess the situation.”
Despite himself, something hysterical and bubbling threatens to climb up Shane’s throat.
“Right,” he says, helplessly. “Right. Sure. Situation assessed. I’m… glad my mouth is up to standard.”
“It is.” Ilya assures him.
There’s a tiny, awful beat where Shane realises that somewhere across the city, Ilya is currently sitting in his kitchen, wearing his body.
“…Your phone is very boring, by the way.” Ilya adds.
“Oh my god.”
“No offence.”
“You went through my phone?”
“I had to establish identity!”
“You couldn’t have stopped at the name?”
“There was a notes app.”
Shane makes another strangled sound.
“It’s just- normal,” Ilya says, almost wonderingly. “Shopping lists. Messages from what I assume are parents of children you coach? Something about needing to remember to buy lightbulbs. There are no endorsement emails. No media contacts. No-” He cuts himself off. “It’s quiet.”
Shane’s grip tightens on the phone.
“Yeah.” he says, after a second. “It’s… just my life.”
“I didn’t mean it like it’s bad.” Ilya says, quickly enough that Shane almost believes he’s worried he’s upset him. “It’s just very different from mine.”
Another small pause.
“I coach under-tens,” Shane offers, because that feels like neutral ground. “Mostly. Some under-fourteens on Thursdays.”
“They must like you.” Ilya says.
“…I hope so.”
“You remembered your own phone number.” Ilya says, like this is a point in Shane’s favour.
“I’ve had it since I was fifteen.”
“Still.” Ilya insists.
Shane lets out a slow breath, the kind that trembles a little on the way out.
“This is insane.” he says quietly.
“Yes.”
“And there’s apparently a… what did you call it?”
“Soulmate swapping,” Ilya says.
“Right. That.”
“I did not believe in it,” Ilya admits. “I thought it was something people invented when they wanted to feel special or seem interesting.”
“Understandable.”
“And now you are-” Ilya stops. “-over there.”
“And you’re there.”
A beat.
“…Nice to, kind of, meet you, I guess?” Shane says, because what else even is there for him to say at this point?
There’s the ghost of a laugh down the line.
“Nice to, kind of, meet you too, Shane Hollander.” Ilya replies.
And then they sit with it for a while.
Not the soulmate-swapping thing - that’s too big, too strange to touch head-on for more than a few seconds at a time without spiralling - but the smaller, more immediate reality of this is the person on the other end of the line.
Shane shifts on the edge of Ilya’s - his? - bed, staring down at hands that are broader than his, knuckles scuffed in places that speak to a life lived in rinks and weight rooms instead of community centres and early morning practices with ten-year-olds who can’t yet stop properly.
“…Okay.” he says eventually, because there’s something sitting in the back of his mind now.
“Okay.” Ilya echoes.
There’s another pause.
“…So what happens when people realise I’m not you?” Shane asks carefully.
Ilya doesn’t answer straight away.
Shane hears him breathe in. Then out.
“I was drafted at eighteen,” Ilya says finally, voice gone a little distant. “I have been playing professionally for seven years. I have won championships. Individual awards. MVP titles.” He doesn’t say it like bragging, just like he’s listing the contents of a cupboard. Like it’s something normal. Which to him it must be, Shane supposes. “People expect things from me when I step on the ice.”
Shane swallows.
“Yeah.”
“They expect me to be fast. Decisive. Aggressive when it matters. They expect leadership.” A beat. “They expect me to win.”
The words hang there, heavy with something Shane can’t quite name.
“I care about that,” Ilya admits, quieter. “Not the… fame. But my teammates are counting on me. When I am seen to do something, it affects them. It affects how we are treated. How we are played against.” He exhales softly. “How I am seen matters, because it changes what happens to the people around me.”
Shane’s chest tightens.
“…Right.”
“But you,” Ilya continues, and something shifts, his focus narrowing. “You never got this.”
Shane goes very still.
“I saw the articles,” Ilya says. “The videos. You were seventeen. It was illegal check, yes?”
Shane’s throat closes up before he can stop it.
“…Yeah.”
Ripped away in one bad hit. One stupid, brutal moment from someone who didn’t keep their head up, didn’t care enough to pull back. Years of early mornings and late nights and aching muscles and whispered this is it, this is it, this is it just… gone.
“You were supposed to have this.” Ilya says simply.
Shane lets out a shaky breath.
“I’m twenty-four.” he says, like that’s an argument. “I haven’t played professionally. I coach kids. I can barely-”
“You know the game.” Ilya cuts in.
“That’s not the same as-”
“You dreamed of it.”
Shane can’t answer that.
On the other end of the line, there’s the quiet sound of someone shifting - of Ilya, in Shane’s kitchen, in Shane’s life, looking down at a body that still remembers how to move even if it never got the chance to move like that where it mattered.
“They will be looking at me tonight,” Ilya says slowly. “At my body. At your body.”
Shane’s heart starts to pound.
“And they will expect Ilya Rozanov.”
A beat.
“…But I am not the one who deserved chance to stand there first.” he finishes.
Shane’s breath catches.
“So,” Ilya says, steadier now. “We make plan, yes?”
“…A plan,” Shane echoes faintly.
“Yes. You know hockey. You know systems. You have coached for years. I will tell you how I play. What my line tends to do. How the power play is structured. You do not need to be perfect tonight.” Another small pause. “You only need to be enough.”
Shane stares at the far wall, vision gone a little blurry.
“Ilya…”
“It will not fix what happened,” Ilya says, gently blunt. “But maybe, for one game-”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, doesn’t need to.
Shane laughs.
It’s not a happy sound. It’s thin and sharp around the edges, like something that’s been pulled too tight for too long and is only just now starting to fray.
“You want me,” he says, breath hitching, “to play in a professional hockey game tonight.”
There’s no immediate response.
“You want me to go out there,” Shane continues, words picking up speed as the panic finally finds somewhere to go, “in front of thousands of people - on national television - with your teammates, your coach, people who have known you for years, who expect you to be - you - and just- what? Pretend? Hope muscle memory does something? I haven’t played at anything near that level in seven years! I coach ten-year-olds who think a breakout pass is optional—”
“Technically it often is.” Ilya offers.
“This is not funny!”
“It is a little funny.”
“Ilya-!”
“You are catastrophising.”
“I am being realistic!”
“You are spiralling.”
“I am allowed to spiral, I woke up in the body of a man who has won every award in the NHL-”
“Lucky you.” Ilya says dryly.
Shane makes a strangled noise.
“What if I ruin it?” he demands. “What if I cost you the game? What if I embarrass you? What if your teammates realise something’s wrong? What if I get out there and I freeze, or I mess up a play. I can’t do what you do, Ilya, you’ve had seven years of this, you’ve had training and the experience and- and-”
He breaks off, breath coming too fast.
On the other end of the line, Ilya lets him.
Doesn’t interrupt this time. Doesn’t try to talk over it or shut it down, just waits it out until Shane’s hit the end of what his lungs can manage.
“…Okay.” Ilya says eventually.
Shane lets out a shaky, miserable huff.
“That was a lot of feelings.”
“I am having a crisis.”
“Yes.”
A beat.
“You are not going to ruin me.” Ilya says, calm in a way that’s almost annoying. “I have survived worse than one bad game.”
“That’s not-”
“And if you embarrass me,” he continues, “I will simply retire immediately and move to small island where no one can find me ever again.”
Despite everything, something in Shane’s chest hitches in a way that’s dangerously close to a laugh.
“You’re joking.”
“Mostly.”
“Ilya-”
“I am serious about one thing.” he says, and the dry humour fades just enough to let something steadier through. “You are not expected to be me. That is impossible. You are expected to skate. To pass. To follow instructions. I will walk you through what I can. The systems. The tendencies. Where my wingers like the puck. What our defensive structure looks like if we’re protecting a lead.”
Shane swallows hard.
“You really think that’s enough?”
“For one night?” Ilya says. “Yes.”
A pause.
“…And if you fall over,” he adds, lightly, “at least you will do it with my knees and not yours.”
Shane lets out a weak, breathless laugh despite himself.
“Low blow.”
“I have felt them.” Ilya replies. “I am allowed.”
Another silence settles. It’s still tense, still frightening, but no longer quite so suffocating.
“Okay.” Shane says finally, voice small but determined in a way that surprises him. “Okay. Tell me where you usually line up on the power play.”
The next stretch of the call becomes something a little surreal in its normalcy.
They stop circling the why of it - stop poking at the soulmate-swap thing like it might dissolve if they look too closely - and instead settle into the how.
Ilya talks.
Shane listens.
He walks him through systems first, because systems are safer than expectations. Breakouts. Neutral zone setups. Where his winger usually is on the left when they enter the offensive zone with speed. How the second power play unit rotates if the point is pressured. Which defenceman likes the puck on his backhand for a quick rim and which one will always try to carry it out himself if given half a chance.
It’s strange - hearing someone describe instinct like it’s choreography.
Stranger still when Shane realises he understands it. That even years removed from competitive play, even with a knee that never quite healed right and a future that veered sharply away from arenas and draft boards, the language of it still makes sense in his bones. Forecheck pressure. Passing lanes. Timing on the cycle.
Muscle memory without the muscle.
Every so often he asks a question - quiet, tentative - and Ilya answers without hesitation. Not condescending. Not impatient. Just… matter-of-fact, like this is what they do now. Like this is a problem that can be solved if you break it down small enough.
They talk about his line. About face-offs. About Coach Wiebe’s expectations - effort first, flash second.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the panic ebbs.
Not gone. Not even close.
But edged out, just slightly, by something steadier.
By focus.
By planning.
By the simple, stubborn familiarity of the game Shane thought he’d never get close to again.
By the quiet understanding that for the next few hours at least, someone who has lived this life for seven years is going to try and help him borrow it.
“…Okay.” Shane says at last, when there’s nothing left to cover that can be explained over the phone. “Okay. So. Logistics?”
“Logistics.” Ilya agrees.
There’s the faint sound of movement on his end - a cupboard opening, something ceramic being set down a little too hard like he’s forgotten his own strength in Shane’s body.
“First question,” he says. “How good are you at pretending nothing is wrong?”
Shane lets out a short, helpless laugh. “Historically? Terrible.”
“Excellent,” Ilya replies. “Then this will be growth experience for you.”
Shane scrubs a hand down his face - his face, Ilya’s face - and tries very hard not to think about how wrong the stubble feels under his palm.
“Okay, no, seriously. What do I do when I get there? I mean - your teammates are going to talk to me. Your coach is going to talk to me.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know these people.”
“You do not need to know them,” Ilya says. “You need to know how I know them.”
“…That’s worse.”
“It is simpler than you think. Nod when they speak. Do not initiate long conversations. If someone says something emotional, put hand on their shoulder and say ‘we’ve got this.’”
“That’s your leadership strategy?”
“It has worked for four years.”
Shane huffs despite himself.
“What if someone asks me something specific? Like - I don’t know - something that happened last game, or-”
“Say you slept badly,” Ilya cuts in. “Or that you have headache. People will assume you are conserving energy.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Yes.”
A beat.
“…That explains a lot, actually.”
“I am an enigma.”
“You are a nightmare.”
“Only to opposing defences.”
Shane’s mouth twitches, and for a moment the terror loosens its grip just enough to let him breathe.
“Okay.” he says, forcing himself back on track. “Gear?”
“In my locker.” Ilya replies immediately. “Everything will be laid out. Our equipment manager is very particular - do not rearrange anything, he will notice and he will take it personally.”
“Right. Do not anger the equipment guy. Got it.”
“Stretch when you arrive.” Ilya continues. “I usually do dynamic first. Hips. Ankles. Groin. My left shoulder gets tight if I skip it.”
Shane blinks down at Ilya’s left arm.
“This is insane.” he mutters.
“Yes.”
“I’m going to be in an NHL arena in- in your body-”
“Yes.”
“In front of thousands of people-”
“Yes.”
“And you’re in my kitchen.”
There’s a pause.
“…Your coffee is terrible.” Ilya says.
Shane chokes on a laugh.
“That’s what you’re focusing on right now?”
“I am under great deal of stress.”
Another beat passes between them, softer this time.
“Text me if you need anything,” Ilya adds after a moment. “If you want.”
Shane nods automatically before remembering Ilya can’t see him.
“Okay,” he says instead, quieter now. “Okay.”
And then, because it matters more than he knows how to say.
“…Thank you.”
There’s a small, awkward pause after that.
Like neither of them quite knows what the protocol is for ending a phone call with the stranger currently piloting your body.
Shane shifts again on the edge of the bed, gaze catching on a framed photo across the room - Ilya in a jersey he’s never worn, arm slung around a teammate, grinning in a way Shane’s only ever seen on television.
He wonders, distantly, what his own face is doing right now.
“I should really get ready for morning skate.” Shane says eventually.
“Yes.” Ilya replies.
“You should probably go too.”
“Yes.”
Neither of them hangs up.
“…Hey,” Shane says, before he can talk himself out of it.
A soft hum of acknowledgement down the line.
“Try not to freak out when you meet my under-tens,” he manages weakly. “They’re very intense about, well, everything.”
There’s a quiet breath that might be a laugh.
“I will do my best.”
Another pause.
“…Be careful tonight.” Ilya says.
It lands differently than everything else has.
Not tactical. Not logistical.
Just careful.
“You too,” Shane replies automatically, then falters. “I mean- not- you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
A beat.
“We will figure it out.” Ilya says, like it’s a promise he’s decided he can make.
Shane closes his eyes.
“…Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah. We will.”
This time, when the call ends, it feels less like falling and a little more like stepping into something together.
Ilya doesn’t hang around in Shane’s kitchen for long after the call ends.
Partly because there is only so much aggressively mediocre coffee a man can stare at before it becomes a personal insult, but mostly because the apartment itself feels like a question he hasn’t answered yet.
It’s…normal.
Endearingly so.
Not sparse in the way of hotel rooms and temporary places, not curated in the sleek, brand-conscious way his own space has slowly become over the years as endorsements and press tours and well-meaning interior designers have had their say.
Just lived-in.
There’s a coat carefully hooked on the back of the door. A pair of trainers by the door that have seen better days but have been cleaned carefully anyway. Photo frames strewn about with various faces featured.
Shane Hollander lives here, Ilya thinks.
Not a version of him. Not a hypothetical draft pick who never got injured, not a what-if ghost who made it to eighteen intact - just the man who stayed.
He wanders down the short hallway slowly, glancing into rooms as he goes like he’s afraid they might disappear if he moves too quickly.
Bedroom.
Bathroom.
A second, smaller room that’s been converted into something between an office and a dumping ground - coaching notes on the desk, a whiteboard propped against the wall with half-erased drills scribbled across it in blue marker. Arrows. Circles. Little Xs marking player positions.
He stops there for a moment.
Then moves on.
By the time he ends up back in the bedroom again, it’s less by design and more because there’s nowhere else to go that doesn’t feel like trespassing.
The mirror catches him - or, Shane - again.
Ilya stills.
He drifts toward the mirror almost absently, tugging the t-shirt off, leaving himself standing there in Shane’s boxers with morning light cutting across unfamiliar lines.
It’s…good.
Not in the hyper-managed way of professional athletes who are paid, in part, to exist in peak physical condition. Not carved down to spectacle. Not sharpened for performance.
But solid.
Balanced.
There’s strength through the chest that speaks to years of contact drills, even if they were never followed through into senior leagues. Shoulders that have kept their breadth despite everything that came after seventeen. The quiet endurance of someone who still demonstrates every exercise before asking a child to attempt it.
He turns slightly, studying the way muscle shifts under skin that never got the chance to be pushed as far as it was meant to go.
A waste, a part of him thinks automatically - the competitive, ruthless piece that hates unrealised potential on principle.
But it’s not really wasted. Just… different.
His gaze lifts.
And there’s the problem.
Because the body is one thing, broad, grounded, unmistakably built for a sport that was taken before it could be finished, but the face looking back at him above it is softer in ways his own never quite learned to be.
Open.
Earnest.
Pretty, in a way that feels almost dissonant against the sturdiness below it.
Ilya knows what attractive looks like. He’s made a career out of recognising it, cultivating it, weaponising it when necessary. The persona - the easy smiles, the casual flirtation, the headlines that paint him as charmingly unattached - has always come naturally enough to wear when it’s useful.
He knows a hot body when he sees one.
And this is his.
No.
This is the person who is meant for him.
Somewhere in the world right now, Shane is standing in Ilya’s skin, preparing to step out onto ice he never got the chance to claim as his own and Ilya is here, in a small apartment, looking at the life that grew up around the absence of that future.
Soulmates.
He’d never put much stock in the word before.
He doubts Shane did either. Fate is easier to believe in when it hands you trophies. Less so when it takes a knee at seventeen and never gives it back.
And yet…
He reaches out without thinking, pressing a hand briefly to Shane’s sternum, feeling the steady rhythm there that doesn’t belong to him.
“…Huh.” he says again, softer this time.
Like he’s trying the idea on for size.
Eventually, practicality wins out over existential observation, and he goes to investigate the wardrobe, and then, inevitably, the kitchen again.
The fridge is - green.
Not literally, but close enough.
Vegetables prepped in neat containers. Chicken breast. Yogurt. Something with chia seeds that looks faintly threatening.
There are labels.
Dates.
An alarming number of eggs.
Ilya stares into it for a long moment like it’s personally betrayed him.
“You live like this?” he mutters under his breath, to no one.
The cupboards are no better.
Whole grains. Protein bars that taste like obligation. A complete and total absence of anything that could reasonably be classified as a reward for existing.
He shuts one gently.
Opens another.
Finds more lentils.
“…I’m going to need to emotionally prepare before coaching.” he decides.
Shane doesn’t get that luxury.
There’s no quiet morning for him to wander through, no time to stand in the kitchen and contemplate someone else’s life between labelled containers and neatly stacked coaching notes.
There’s just apartment that belongs to someone whose life is lived there in pieces between flights and road trips and late-night returns from away games.
It’s bigger than his place.
That’s the first thing he notices once the initial, breath-stealing shock of being here at all settles into something more manageable. Not ostentatious, not the kind of sprawling penthouse magazines like to photograph when they do those ‘Inside the Lives of Rich People’ spreads, but open. Clean in a way that suggests someone else probably comes through once a week to make it that way.
There are framed jerseys on one wall.
Awards on another.
A pair of skates by the door that look like they cost more than Shane’s first car.
He circles slowly, like the floor might give way if he steps wrong.
This is real.
That thought keeps coming back to him, steady and insistent.
This is real, and tonight he is expected to skate in a professional hockey game in front of thousands and-
He stops in the middle of the living room.
Because there’s a mirror.
Shane stares.
He’d seen Ilya on television before, obviously. Everyone who follows hockey has. Interviews. Post-game pressers. Highlight reels that catch the flash of a grin between shifts, helmet tucked under one arm like it weighs nothing at all.
But this - this is different. Up close. Real in a way broadcast never quite manages.
He steps closer before he can talk himself out of it, watching the movement translate - the way Ilya’s shoulders roll when he lifts an arm, the easy balance in a stance Shane remembers having once and hasn’t felt in years.
He shifts his weight experimentally.
No hitch. No compensating tilt to take the pressure off the left.
He does it again.
And again.
Nothing.
The absence of pain is so immediate, so complete, it almost knocks the breath out of him.
“Oh.” Shane says faintly.
His hands - Ilya’s hands - come down to brace on the counter, head dropping for a second as something tight and old in his chest twists sharply.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
Not careful.
Not managed.
Just solid.
He straightens slowly, eyes lifting back to the mirror.
Ilya’s face looks back at him, unfamiliar and composed in a way Shane has never quite managed to be on command. There’s a small crease between his brows that deepens when he frowns. Shane watches it form now, watches the way the expression sits differently on someone built to be seen.
People expect things from this face. From this body. From the way it moves when it steps onto ice.
And tonight, they’re going to expect it from him.
Shane lets out a slow breath.
“Okay.” he says, to the empty apartment. To the life that’s been dropped into his hands for the day. To whatever strange twist of fate decided this was how things were meant to go.
Okay.
This is fine.
He’s fine.
Then Shane makes the mistake of going into the bathroom.
It’s an entirely reasonable decision, in theory. He needs to shower at some point before practice - morning skate, he corrects automatically, like the terminology might make this feel less like he’s trespassing in someone else’s life - and it’s not like he can put it off forever.
He just….didn’t think it through.
Because mirrors are one thing when you’re fully clothed and halfway dissociating through the experience.
Mirrors are something else entirely when you’ve just pulled yesterday’s t-shirt over your head and caught sight of yourself, of Ilya Rozanov, in nothing but a pair of low-slung boxers that absolutely did not come from Shane Hollander’s sensible, multipack drawer.
Shane freezes.
“Oh, come on.” he whispers to absolutely no one.
Because this is Ilya Rozanov.
Three-time “hottest man in the NHL” according to at least four different magazines Shane had absolutely not clicked on out of curiosity late at night, thank you very much. The subject of approximately half the thirst tweets that make it onto his timeline whenever there’s a nationally broadcast game. The man whose smile has been described, in print, as “lethal.”
And Shane is-
Shane is the guy whose biggest recent indulgence was a toasted bagel for lunch last Thursday because the under-tens had scrimmage and he hadn’t had time to pack anything else.
The guy whose idea of being admired is when one of his players tells him he’s “super duper cool” after he demonstrates a crossover without wobbling.
He turns, helplessly, because apparently self-sabotage is how he’s choosing to cope today, and the mirror updates in real time - broad shoulders, narrow hips, muscle sitting clean under skin that’s been trained and retrained and maintained for seven years at the highest possible level.
His throat goes dry.
“This is my soulmate?” he asks the empty room faintly.
Because that’s the part that’s sticking now.
Not just I’m in a professional athlete’s body. Not even I have to play a game tonight. But this is the person the universe looked at me and went yes, that one.
Ilya Rozanov.
Meant for Shane Hollander, who buys own-brand cereal and gets genuinely excited when the rink installs new cones for drills.
Shane scrubs a hand over his face, which is a mistake because now he can feel the shape of Ilya’s jaw under his palm and that is also A Situation.
“I need to not think about this.” he informs his reflection firmly.
His reflection, infuriatingly, remains Ilya Rozanov.
Shane turns on the shower with unnecessary force.