Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Connors (Heated Rivalry), Hayden Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Episode: s01e05 I'll Believe in Anything (Heated Rivalry), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Hockey Injuries, Dementia, Trapped in a Closet, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt with just a little bit of accidental comfort

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-05 Words: 4,924 Chapters: 1/1

like thieves in the night

Summary

Ilya hadn't responded for several hours. Just before warm ups, at the last possible second, Ilya had sent two photos.
The first was the nightstand beside Shane's bed, where his boring hockey book and sexy glasses sat arranged with a strip of condoms and the bottle of lube. The second was Ilya's suitcase open on the floor.

Shane had seen it. He had told Ilya, when he'd skated up to him during stretches, that leaving the suitcase open there was a tripping hazard. Ilya had laughed him back to the Metros bench.

He wasn't laughing now.

OR: Shane gave Ilya the code to his condo before the game. With Shane hospitalized and his status uncertain, Ilya embarks on a quest to get his stuff back.

Notes

PLEASE READ: The tags for this are very important, and I wanted to offer an additional warning that Ilya is in a very bad headspace for most of this fic. His worry for Shane bleeds into the unresolved trauma of his mother's suicide and it gets very messy.

Would you believe me if I said the original concept was a crack heist fic? That fell apart pretty quickly as I remembered Ilya was not having a great time at this point in canon. Speaking of which, this is mostly TV show canon and we're ignoring the book detail that Ilya was planning on ending things with Shane after the game.

Never before had Ilya been more desperate for a game to end, or less interested in the results of one.

He loves hockey. Really, he does. Perhaps not as obsessively as some. But it has always brought Ilya the things he loves most in life: attention, connection, purpose. Hockey had gotten him out of Russia, a fact that Ilya would forever be grateful for.

Right now, Ilya wishes that whoever had first had the idea of strapping blades to the feet of massive men and sending them after a tiny puck had fallen into an icy lake and drowned to death before spreading his stupidity to the rest of the world.

It shows in his playing. He knows it does. With Montreal's star player and captain gone (down and out, swept away on a stretcher under the watch of a half dozen medics) it should be an easy win for Boston. Outrage can only carry a team so far.

Except, as both the commentators and Ilya's coach point out, the Raiders seem to have also lost their star, their captain.

"What the fuck are you doing, Rozanov?" LeClaire barks, during the first intermission. "Are you even paying attention?"

"Yes coach." No. How could I pay attention? Why would I care?

There's no way he could say that, even if Ilya could summon the energy to form the English sentence. All he has it in himself to do is sit quietly in his temporary stall and half listen to the game strategy that LeClaire continues to drone on about.

Who cares? What if he's dead? What would point of any of this be if he never fucking plays again?

Cliff sits next to him, nearly as distressed. Clearly feeling bad. That remorse doesn't mean Ilya can stand to look at him. If he did he might—he might—

"Any word on Hollander yet?" Connors asks, addressing Coach but looking at the sad mess of his teammates.

LeClaire shakes his head. "Not yet. Shake it off boys, nature of the game. Focus on getting the puck in their net and making sure Montreal doesn't do the same. It's fucking awful but don't waste this opportunity."

Every muscle in Ilya's body tenses. He wants to spring forward and hurt this man, this coach who has always been fair and indulgent and steady. Ilya wants to turn around and dig out his phone and power it on, damn the rules and logical reasoning that says there will not be a message from Jane waiting for him.

The break ends. The game (the show, it's all a fucking show) goes on.

Shane's team is out for blood. Boston is out for a win. Ilya doesn't give a damn. He's operating on muscle memory. Steal the puck, make a pass, skate forward forward forward.

The game ends. The score is disappointing for both teams, not unlike the last time the Raiders had been in this arena.

Where on the ice was Shane Hollander? Where was Ilya Rozanov?

Shane is at Montreal General. Ilya is…Ilya is adrift. Like some important part of him had been in that collision too, had gone away in the ambulance. Good. Maybe it would take the damage meant for the important bits of Shane.

Handshake line happens. Locker room line fist bumps, which Ilya has embellished with teasing jabs and sincere declarations of love since they slapped a C on him, do not. Ilya skips them in favor of getting to his phone as soon as possible.

He'd resisted during the game. Not even the Rosgvardia could stop him now.

There are no new messages from Jane waiting for him. There are news alerts, and social media mentions, and other bullshit that means nothing.

Ilya shuts the phone off and just holds it in one hand, using the other to lift the crucifix everyone else things of as his to his lips. The metal is warm from the heat of his body and slick with sweat.

Everyone else is stripping down, heading for the showers, casting him concerned looks if they're not too busy…celebrating? Were they celebrating? Had Boston won or lost? Ilya genuinely cannot remember the scoreboard.

He cannot remember anything but Shane's smile and the realization that Marlow was going to slam right into him and sound Shane's body made as it hit the ground.

I love him. Not a new revelation, but each time Ilya allows himself to think it he finds himself flinching anyway. I love him and I cannot have him and no one can know.

"Dude." Connors, again, concern all over his face. "You gonna shower, or does Jane like the unwashed hockey player scent?"

Ilya still can't summon sentences and when he spits, "Fuck off," at his teammate, at his friend, it comes out in Russian but still so full of emotion that Connors backs away. Fully puts his hands up in surrender and backs off, something like fear in his eyes. Good.

He returns to the problem of his phone. No new messages. But a years old thread he could open and send something in, so that the moment Shane could look at his screen again…

Oh. Ilya freezes, unable to bring himself to type anything new with their text history in front of him, informing him of a new problem, one that had yet to occur to him.

Today at 07:33 AM

Jane: 1919

Lily: What's that?

Jane: Code to the front of my building.

Jane: So you can let yourself in.

Lily: Front door. Brave.

Jane: Fuck you.

Lily: Later. Before the game is cutting it close though. We've got maybe an hour. Get yourself ready for me?

Jane: I have to be at the arena early for some PR stuff, the code is for after.

Jane: Plus I think our pre-game meet ups are cursed.

Lily: Us fucking before a game did not kill my father.

Jane: Whatever. I won't be there.

Jane: Your flight out isn't until the afternoon, right?

Jane: What if you spent the night? You'd need your stuff though.

Jane: You could bring it over before your team heads to the arena? That way we could go straight to my place after the game and press and stuff.

Jane: Not together, of course. But then you wouldn't have to wait for me.

Jane: Since obviously, as the Captain of the winning team, they'll want to talk to me longer. Even though you'd think they'd be tired of hearing about me talk about our wins by now.

Jane: Use the code to get in the front door, and the spare key hidden in a rock in the fake plant to get into my penthouse.

Jane: Lily?

Ilya hadn't responded for several hours. Just before warm ups, at the last possible second, Ilya had sent two photos.

The first was the nightstand beside Shane's bed, where his boring hockey book and sexy glasses sat arranged with a strip of condoms and the bottle of lube. The second was Ilya's suitcase open on the floor.

Shane had seen it. He had told Ilya, when he'd skated up to him during stretches, that leaving the suitcase open there was a tripping hazard. Ilya had laughed him back to the Metros bench.

He wasn't laughing now.

Finally, Ilya stands. He has a job again, a mission and purpose beyond the stupid game that had put Shane in the hospital and his blood on the ice.

First he has to shower, and only kind of pretend that he hadn't heard the request for press, and get a ride to Shane's place. All of that was doable.

Earlier in the day, emboldened by permission, Ilya had given his cab driver the actual address where Shane lives. Now he reverts to the usual spot two blocks away, then walks through the familiar landscape.

It's darker than normal. Several of the streetlights needed changed. There goes the neighborhood.

His feet, once again operating on muscle memory, take him to the back alley. But those doors needed a key. Ilya only had a code, and knowledge of where Shane kept his backup.

1-9-1-9. Not a hotel room he knew of, or a jersey, or a score. Not the year the league, and therefore both their teams, had been established. Ilya wonders for the hundredth time since this morning how Shane had decided on it.

It probably came with that code. Ilya hadn't bothered to change the default for his own security system.

He takes the elevator, finds the spare key in the fake rock, exactly where he'd left it before the game. Lets himself in for the second time.

The difference…well, it's night and day.

Ilya, just a few hours ago, might as well have been drunk on sunlight.

Even in a rush to get back to his team (Connors had covered for him, extracting both the knowledge that Ilya was going to spend the night with his famed Montreal girl and a promise to play fucking golf with the man sometime in exchange for this favor) Ilya had lingered.

He'd not been able to help it. The place had looked so different. Not because Shane had personalized it in any way in the months since their last hookup here. The apartment was still just shy of a showroom.

But express permission to be in this space, combined with the sun sinking towards the western horizon and illuminating the whole place, had made it seem like another world.

Now it's just the Underworld. Dark and still and filled with the ghosts of sexy times past. Ilya had fucked Shane on that couch, been pushed by him against that wall, brought them both to orgasm not far from where he now stood.

Gear against the ice, breath forced from the body, blood blood blood—

Suitcase. No evidence.

Ilya unsticks himself from the doorway. Climbs the stairs and tries to imagine that this is just like the first time, that Shane was just behind him. So long as he does not turn around he can pretend Shane is just a step behind him. Just being quiet.

It's unclear if he's responsive or not.

I need you to stay awake. Eyes open, okay buddy?

Go back to your bench Rozanov!

The second floor of the condo holds two bedrooms, the second of which is half office. Ilya knows that Shane's parents normally stay in that one when they're in town. Yuna Hollander had picked that desk out herself and was the only one who ever used it since Shane preferred to do paperwork and stuff on the couch, or the floor, or in his bed.

Would the Hollanders be in Montreal yet? They didn't come to every home game, especially not the Boston ones, but surely they watched the hit from whatever idyllic suburban home Shane had grown up in. Even if they hadn't then the Metros organization or hospital would call them. Tell them—what?

Ilya swallow, eyes burning suddenly. That was the question. How was Shane? How bad was the damage? Was he conscious or in surgery or in pain? The soonest Ilya would possibly be able to know was tomorrow when the hospital was open for visitors and that was only if he was allowed to see Shane before the afternoon flight.

A new fear strikes, as Ilya lets himself into the dark bedroom. What if he went, and was allowed in, but Shane sent him away again, not knowing or caring what they meant to each other beyond public perception?

Head injuries could mess with memory, same as dementia. If he looked into Shane's beautiful brown eyes, surrounded by the fucking freckles Ilya was still obsessed with after all this time, and saw the same blankness his father had viewed him with the last several times they were together, he would—

Something like nausea swells in him, and Ilya's just glad he's close enough to the bed now to mostly fall onto it instead of the floor as he abruptly loses his balance.

Facedown in the pile of pillows that Shane had thinned down over the years but is still too many, Ilya screams. Like maybe he could expunge the fear and preemptive grief and all the other shit swirling in him. He doesn't cry. He just screams.

All it does is make his throat hurt.

Suitcase. Hotel. Check the news, wait for sunrise. Get up, Ilya.

Not once does he consider staying here without Shane. It had been thrilling earlier but now it was just…hollow.

Ilya rolls over, intending to get up. To get his stuff and leave. But laying on his back, one arm dangling over the side of the bed, he freezes up again.

There is a game that Ilya sometimes plays with himself. Alone in the dark, in this exact position, Ilya closes his eyes and thinks what would happen if I died right now?

He had come up with the game when he was twelve. Play starts with the discovery.

The maid coming in to clean, screaming, and dropping her broom.

Papa bursting in after getting a call from Ilya's school or coaches and shouting for several minutes before realizing Ilya would never attend school again, never play hockey for the KHL after all.

In Ilya's most spiteful moments, he would imagine that it would be Alexei who entered first. Sent to fetch Ilya, or there with some grievance Ilya can't help.

Ilya had played the game less when he started traveling with his team. It was too simple, with someone in the next bed over to immediately notice that Ilya was dead. But the urge was still there. Sometimes Ilya couldn't fall asleep without playing the game, without turning scenarios over in his brain and finding perverse comfort in them.

To keep it interesting, he had added another layer, a second period.

What happens after?

There were rules to finding a body, just like there were rules to hockey. A call to the authorities, and to his emergency contact if it happened before or after or between games on the road. Being away from home meant that arrangements would have to be made to transport him back to Moscow.

(Technically, there would be an autopsy. Some sort of investigation. Healthy teen boys didn't just close their eyes for bed and never open them again. Ilya never bothers considering this aspect. How he dies is not the game.)

(It's no fun to imagine them cutting him open, to give a voice to a nameless doctor who will lean over the cavity of his corpse and declare, "Ah yes, he was never long for this world, see how many important pieces he was missing? It's a miracle this boy lived as long as he did.")

After the discovery, after the appropriate calls have been made and Ilya (or the thing that used to be Ilya?) has been removed from the bed, there would be a funeral. A very traditional one, because no matter how Papa felt about Ilya's death, the protocols still had to be followed.

That meant white cloth for Ilya and black for everyone else. All of his extended family would be invited, even if few would bother to show up. They'd send gifts at least—flowers and whatnot. Teammates and coaches would come if their schedules allowed. A handful of close family friends would put in appearances and make all the appropriate condolences.

Svetlana. She would not cry at the funeral, but she would after. Probably before too. When she heard the news. The Svetlana aspect is the only painful part of the game.

Coming to America complicated the game. On one hand, Ilya had much more agency. If he died in his own bed, arm dangling and knuckles brushing the floor, people might not know for days.

The Raiders would care of course. They'd blow up his phone when he missed practice without warning. The entire organization would curse his name and worry something had happened but no one had a key to his place.

They might call the police for a wellness check. Or maybe the cleaning service Ilya paid to come by every few days would be the ones to find him.

Police. Stretcher.

Transporting a body across an ocean.

A very stressed PR team, trying to balance compassion with grief with keeping anyone from thinking this will weaken the season. Presumably they had statements drafted already, so they could fill in the blanks where his name and maybe some personal details should go and get the release out ASAP, as soon as possible.

Again, on the road is quicker. His roommate complaining that Ilya wasn't shutting off his alarm, jumping on his bed to piss him off, fielding question from Coach about where Ilya was and reluctantly going back up to the room, only to find—

Maybe that's why Ilya hasn't exercised his power as a veteran player and team captain to get himself a single room. He'd have to entirely rework the familiar play to account for the lack of a ready made body-finder.

On the road is also more complicated. A hotel means more witnesses, more photos up on social media. They might be in the states when it happens, they might be in Canada. Would his body go back to Boston before proceeding to Russia?

There would be a memorial for him in Boston. A large photo of him outside, where the fans would come to cry and place flowers. Maybe the religious ones, or the obsessive ones who knew he wore a crucifix, would try and do something godly. Candles or whatever.

Perhaps the team would retire his number. Hang it in the rafters with the banner for the Cup Ilya had won them.

Ilya considers all of this, on reflex, laying alone in Shane Hollander's bed.

What would happen if I died right now?

No maid, no teammate in the next bed, no one in the world with any idea that he was here.

Connors would cover for him until it was impossible to not know Ilya was gone. He thought Ilya was spending the night with his Montreal Girl and he was a good friend, love of golf and obsession with Rose Landry aside.

No one would think to look for him here. No one but Shane knew he had the code, and Shane was—

Alive. He had to be alive. The universe couldn't take both of them in one night, so eventually Shane would come back here. Take his shoes off at the door and make his way up the stairs then—

Find Ilya in his bed. Cold and maybe rotting already. Would he scream like an imaginary housekeeper? Would he, as Ilya had all those years ago, mistake the stillness of death for simple sleep until he got closer and—

Ilya's on his dozenth scenario when it happens. So deep in his own fucked up dreams that he doesn't realize at first that the door opening is real.

Shane would never be so loud, he complains. Face off violation. Two minute minor for delay of play. Reset.

The door shuts, firm and horrifyingly real.

"Who hides a spare key in a fake rock in a fake plant inside a building he owns?"

In the silence of the condo, of the cemetery, the simple complaint might as well be a gunshot. Ilya's entire body jolts.

"I don't think he owns the whole building? Just this condo and the one next door. And the storefront below." A second voice says.

"I can't believe you don't have your own key." The first voice continues. "I get why I don't, sure, but you two are all—"

"Shut up JJ."

"It's weird being here."

"Yeah. He hates people in his space, so lets make this quick. Bedroom is this way."

"I know that much, I have been here before."

For the second time tonight, Ilya feels like a dead car battery someone just plugged jumper cables into. The fog melts away into a single clear goal: do not be found.

He remembers another game from his childhood, an older one: crawling under the bed and pretending the wooden slats above made up his coffin. Ilya had loved vampire stories and zombie movies right up until he saw a dead body with his own eyes.

Shane's bed is too low and his athlete's body too bulky to pull that off now. But the bed frame can hide the suitcase that still lays open on the floor. Ilya shoves it to safety with his foot and bolts for the en-suite bathroom.

Quietly though. As quiet as a church mouse, as a ghost in the grave. He pulls the door shut without a sound just as the footsteps reach the top of the stairs.

Past the luxurious shower, and the counter top that Ilya has still never gotten to bend Shane over, is a closet. Ilya knows there is a joke here—a dozen or more low hanging fruits—but he can't hear his own thoughts well enough to pull one as he shoves himself into it.

This door he can't shut, because there's a towel over the top of it, so Ilya settles for pulling it as closed as possible.

Shane Hollander's closet is only half full. Again, so many jokes that Ilya does not want to make. There are a dozen game day and gala suits hung up in dry cleaning bags. A self of fancy dress shoes above a collection of sponsored trainers. There's drawers built in, and Ilya imagines they're full of shiny watches. Most of the closet is taken up by recommendations from Shane's fancy new stylist.

Ilya had forced Shane to send him pictures, after they'd left Florida. He'd been angling for some photo strip teases but Shane would never put that much of himself in a picture he intended to send Ilya. They're nice clothes. Very fashionable but somehow still very Shane.

This closet would not make a good tomb.

Even with how his heart is pounding, Ilya can clearly hear Pike and Boiziau enter the room. Hockey players were never quiet—not unless they were Shane Hollander or a graveyard mouse masquerading as alive.

"Putain de merde."

"Oh my god."

No no no what did I forget—

"Is that lube?"

"The good shit too." A pause. "What? You think it's just luck I've been married this long? You don't get as many accidental kids as I have with a boring sex life."

Right. Right, the display. Lube and condoms sitting expectantly. But that can be excused, as Pike just proved.

There's a brief debate, one Ilya mostly tunes out as he tries to convince his lungs to invite oxygen in again, as quietly as possible. He catches Rose and breakup.

Boston Lily and wrong city idiot, it's right there in the name.

We could ask—

He's gonna kill us—

I need a picture, Hayd, you don't understand—

"Okay but you can't bring it up until he's out of the hospital. If you add to his stress then I won't stop Yuna from killing you. Now come on. We came here for a reason."

"Cap's a fucking legend. I should have guessed. It's always the quiet ones who turn out to be freaks."

"I want a picture of you saying that to his face."

Their reason, Ilya puts together, is to grab some stuff for Shane to make the hospital stay less awful. Comfortable clothes from his dresser and the right toothpaste and a charger for the phone he won't be using any time soon.

The closest either of them comes to opening the closet door is a debate about a bag to put their findings in.

"I think I saw one downstairs," Boiziau says as he packs up Shane's toiletries, unaware that there's only a thin door and a damp towel separating him from the man he'd tried to drop gloves with just a few hours ago. "I'll go grab it."

Ilya is discovering new depths of fear today. He might have a heart condition now, or brain damage from lack of oxygen. Might have strained his muscles from the effort of holding as still as a statue, like that could keep them from noticing him.

But all of that is worth it for what Pike tells Boiziau when the he bounds back into the room.

"David just texted. Collarbone is fractured, he'll be in a sling for a month minimum, but the doctors aren't worried about his head. At least no more than they always are."

"Dieu merci!"

French is a stupid language and Ilya left piety behind long ago. He touches a trembling hand to his necklace and echoes the words in his head anyway.

Dieu merci, thank God, slava Bogu.

"They're not letting non-family see him tonight, but visiting hours tomorrow should be fine." Pike continues, and maybe he says other things, but Ilya's mind hooks onto visiting hours and disregards the rest of the world.

Shane might be furious, but he could put up with that if it meant seeing that Shane was really still alive, just down a stable collarbone and maybe some brain cells. Visiting hours were less dangerous than literally hiding in the closet. Hollander could fucking deal with the possible scandal of a captain checking on a rival in the hospital.

Shane might be happy to see him. He has a harder time picturing that, but it had been Shane who sat down next to him at the bar in Florida, so maybe it would be okay for them to approach each other in public now. Especially with the cover of sportsmanship.

Shane would probably still know him, if the doctors weren't that worried about his head. He would have passed most of their brain tests, the ones Ilya hated doing. The questions were always stupid and weird.

He'd have to time it right. Before the Metros got out of their morning practice and descended on the hospital like locusts, before the Raiders' flight left. Maybe stake out the room a bit first, to make sure he didn't run into the elder Hollanders.

He turns this plan over in his mind as he waits for the invaders to leave, plus a ten minute window of just in case. He likes this use of his imagination—Shane smiling at him from a hospital bed, Shane blushing when Ilya presents him with a large get well soon bouquet, Shane asking Ilya to drop out of hockey and become his live in nurse who gives him sponge baths and makes him soup.

I cannot die tonight, Ilya thinks with rare conviction. Not that he had been planning to. He had never planned to. It was just a game. And he'd already played it tonight anyway. No need for a repeat.

Except—what if it was the planning that kept it from happening? Seeing Shane before a game had not killed his father, Ilya was sure of that, but hockey was a superstitious sport and he'd absorbed some of that over the years. Enough to make him occasionally paranoid.

Maybe, maybe. A problem for later. First the suitcase.

When he feels that the coast is for sure clear, Ilya emerges from the closet to blinding lights. The one in the bathroom that Boiziau had left on isn't so bad. But the main one in the bedroom? Powered by the sun, surely. No wonder Shane was obsessed with his bedside lamps and indoor fireplace. Awful.

Ilya retrieves his poorly hidden suitcase. Zips it up and decides that he'll carry it. Big strong hockey players did not need noisy wheels. Dragging it would only feel like further tempting fate. He will go out what he thinks of as the normal way too. Out like the trash, or someone fleeing a fire. No more elevator. Too risky.

After a moment of consideration, he stows the lube and condoms away in their drawer. Shane's parents might be the ones to bring him back here after his release from the hospital. They didn't need to see that. Bad enough that Shane's friends had.

Look at me, so responsible. Sorry your friends are going to interrogate you about who you were expecting to come over tonight. Sorry my friend broke your collarbone and rattled your brain around. What's the point of playoffs without you?

Good thing you don't keep them with your famous dildo of unspecified color and whatever other sex toys I hope you have, because that would have been way harder for them to justify.

By the time Ilya has smuggled himself out of the building and back to the team's hotel, Connors is already asleep and making those little sounds that he always denied were snores. He doesn't stir as Ilya strips down in the darkness and falls into his own bed.

In the morning, Connors will wake up first, because he always did. He'll wonder why the fuck Ilya was here and not with his infamous Jane after all that work for a night together. He will not let Ilya off the hook for that damn golf game.

In the morning, Ilya will be able to go and see that Shane is alright for himself.

For now, he finds himself too tired for any mind games or mental gymnastics or letting one arm dangle. Ilya is out as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He dreams of introducing his mother to Shane Hollander.