Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais & Shane Hollander, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais & Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau & Ilya Rozanov, Connors & Ilya Rozanov, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Hayden Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Connors (Heated Rivalry), Coach LeClaire (Game Changers), Theriault (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, POV Ilya Rozanov, POV Shane Hollander, POV Alternating, Protective Ilya Rozanov, Protective Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, BAMF Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Can Fight, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, but with, Whimsy, Murder Mystery, Implied/Referenced Murder, Mystery, Thriller, Action/Adventure, Whump, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Situationship, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace

Language:

English

Series:

Part 8 of Heated Rivalry - But Make It a Procedural TV Show Universe

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-25 Updated: 2026-10-26 Words: 4,529 Chapters: 2/10

another one bites the dust

Summary

“What were you doing in between one and four?”

Ilya clenches his jaw. He says nothing. Clearly, she smells blood.

“Mister Rozanov,” she leans forward, grabbing the desk as she enunciates, “what were you doing between one and four in the morning?”

Fucking Shane Hollander for the last time, it seems.

Why does the police of this shitty small town care?

Or

After an exhibition game in a small town, the Montreal Metros and the Boston Raiders find themselves trapped in a hotel by a dangerous snow storm. Perfect for two hockey players sneaking around to hook up, right? But when a violent crime is committed in the hotel, everyone in both teams becomes a suspect. And there is nowhere to go.

Notes

Hello everyone!!

Welcome back to those who have read the other fics in this series :) for anyone who isn’t familiar with the concept, I’m just here to put our boys in Situations worthy of classic Procedural TV Shows.

Genre typical violence can be expected, and most importantly ✨ Whimsy ✨ Yes this is a world in which hockey players will be involved in stopping crime due to #circumstances. Please, forget about realism and proper police investigation process. We are here to have fun!

Chapter 1: are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

Chapter Notes

Ilya is a light sleeper. He wakes up —fully— at the first ring of his phone’s alarm. He has never been one to sleep through an alarm or snooze it. It’s useful as an athlete (even if he isn’t as insane as Hollander getting up at five in the morning to train every single fucking day).

He has his father to thank for it. The General was unforgiving for most things and punctuality was not an exception. Naively, as a teenager, he’d thought that moving half a world away might change that. Before he left Russia, he’d fantasize about the small pleasure of a sleep so deep and peaceful that he could snuggle back inside the blankets five more minutes. He’d miscalculated. The distance, turns out, isn’t enough to silence his father’s voice in the back of his head. His body carries the memory of the consequences of failure.

The point is: Ilya is a light sleeper.

So when there’s a knock on his door before his alarm even goes off, he jolts awake almost immediately. A quick glance at his phone confirms he hasn’t missed their call time to leave the hotel… and that he still has no fucking cell service. Another look, this one at the window, confirms the reason and suggests that they aren’t flying home today either. The storm rages on. Could ilya truly get this lucky?

Another knock on the door. Louder, more insistent.

With a groan, Ilya rolls off the bed and, without bothering with pants (boxers are enough for his modesty) he swings the door open.

“What?” He demands sharply.

LeClaire glares at him, unaffected by his anger. His coach is not the kind of man easily affected by his players moods. He wouldn’t be a good fit for Boston if he couldn’t take some fire. He is affected by something, though, judging by his disheveled hair and reddened eyes.

“Rozanov. Get dressed and come with me. Now.”

The heaviness in his tone leaves no room for questions. Ilya knows when authority can be pushed and when it can’t be. He nods, turning around to fish his sweatpants and a hoodie from the floor. LeClaire watches him, not moving an inch. When Ilya starts shoving things inside his bag, he interrupts:

“Leave it. Let’s go.”

Frowning, Ilya walks out of the room and follows LeClaire through the narrow hotel hallways. Dread curls in his gut. Whatever this is, it’s bad.

He should’ve known this weekend was a bad idea.

Admittedly, Ilya had been pissed off when he found out this year’s All Stars had been cancelled over some internal management disagreement. It’s not that he cares particularly about the event, which is closer to a marketing campaign than actual hockey. No one takes it seriously, really, (except perhaps Hollander who can’t help but take everything hockey-related seriously). No, Ilya doesn’t give a fuck about All Stars… except for the fact that it’s one of the few weekends when he can reliably spend time close to Shane Hollander without anyone thinking much about it. They get to hang out at the same bar, at the same pool, at the same events… and he gets one or two nights with him. It’s more time than they usually get, which is something Ilya finds himself craving more and more these days. Worryingly.

Of course, not wanting to miss out on the marketing potential, the League had quickly put together an alternative: a series of exhibition games played in smaller cities where people didn’t usually get to watch NHL level hockey. With the added novelty of flying teams outside of their conference territory, hoping to gather cross-coastal fans or something. Absolutely nothing about traveling across the country to play a pointless hockey game in a a small non-pro rink in a tiny town in the middle of the Rocky Mountains had been appealing to Ilya… and then he’d found out they were playing Montreal. Bless Crowell and his obsession with their rivalry.

When an unforeseen snow storm had trapped them here an extra night, Ilya had thought himself the fucking luckiest man alive (he can count on one hand how many back-to-back nights he’s ever gotten with Hollander).

He should’ve known. He should’ve fucking known that they were pushing their luck.

(Not that it would’ve stopped him, probably.)

LeClaire guides him to the elevators in stoic silence. Ilya allows himself a quick wave of relief when they don’t stop at the fourth floor, in which the Metros are staying and instead ride all the way down to the first of the three basement floors. Any sense of ease is immediately smothered, though, when the doors open and they are greeted by two uniformed cops. Instinctively, he freezes until LeClaire pushes him forward and he finds himself, quietly being led to an office.

He speed-runs the past few days in his mind, trying to figure out what he could’ve possibly done to get him in trouble with the Canadian justice system. Aside from fucking their favorite golden boy and getting into a couple fights on the ice during a game that was supposedly friendly, he comes out blank.

The office must belong to some kind of hotel manager. There’s all kinds of diplomas and recognitions in the walls, a picture of what Ilya figures must be some sort of employees retreat in a sandy beach and another of a frankly terrifyingly large family gathered around a Christmas tree. Whoever this office belongs to, it is not the person behind the desk. The person who greets him is a small black woman dressed in a leather jacket and with a detective badge hanging from her neck.

“Mister Rozanov,” she greets him, offering a hand to shake. Ilya, in a daze, takes it as she goes on: “My name is Detective Mica Harper. I am local PD. Please, take a seat.”

Ilya does as he is told, trying to keep his face as blank as possible when he finally asks: “what is going on? What is this about?”

“I just want to ask you a few questions,” Detective Harper says.

“About?”

“Let’s start with your whereabouts last night.”

The ice that fills his veins is colder than the rink’s.

“Here at hotel,” he says slowly, as vague as possible. “Trapped with the storm. Like everyone.”

This is clearly not the answer she was looking for given the way her mouth flattens, but she plays along.

“And where exactly in the hotel are you staying?”

“Room 527,” Ilya frowns. “You could check that in the hotel check in, no? So why are you dragging me out of bed to ask?”

“Fifth floor, right?” she asks, pointedly ignoring his question.

“Yes,” Ilya mutters, annoyed.

“And the Metros are staying on the fourth floor.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, that wasn’t a question,” she grins, like a not so friendly wolf. “I heard you guys had quite a game last night,” she changes her tone; practiced curiosity. “Very tight score, all the way to overtime.”

“You heard? So I get you are not a fan.”

“Hard not to hear about the big game in town, fan or not,” she shrugs, rolling her eyes. “You’d think the Pope was coming.”

Despite himself, Ilya huffs a laugh. “You would think Hollander is Pope to some people, yes.”

The detective narrows her eyes at him, clearly missing the humor behind his words. Shane Hollander is a lot of things, but a pious celibate saint is not one of them.

“That’s a big animosity you guys have. I mean, it’s not often you see blood drawn in exhibition games.”

“We have history,” Ilya shrugs. “Games get… heated. People talk shit, some get angry, they get what’s coming for them.”

Detective Harper hums, nodding as her eyes trail down to Ilya’s bruised knuckles.

“Last I check fighting in hockey is not illegal,” Ilya crosses his arms, leaning back on the stiff chair. “I already did my time in penalty box.”

“Right. And you lost the game, from what I heard,” she looks at her notes, though Ilya doubts that she needs to double check that information. “So, you and your boys come back here to have a few drinks.”

“More than few,” Ilya smirks.

“Drowning your sorrows?”

“Who cares we lost exhibition game?” Ilya flicks a hand, dismissively. “Was good game. Could have gone to anyone. Hollander got lucky in the end. But the rookies took it hard, yes? They are more hungry for wins, haven’t had their Stanley Cup like we did. So even for exhibition they get upset. And then we are trapped here in fucking storm. So we just cheer them up.”

“It must have been uncomfortable for y’all to stay together at the same hotel. Trapped, as you say.”

Ilya represses the urge to laugh manically. How could he ever explain to this woman that it was the best thing that could’ve happened to him? Instead, he shrugs.

“Some Metros were drinking too. Different mood, same place. Was a little weird but whatever.”

“And then, according to the lobby cameras, you left the bar before most of your crew did.”

She pulls out four pictures of security footage. Ilya sees himself walking out of the bad and across the empty hotel lobby. He sees himself looking around, checking that no one else got any ideas to get on the elevator with him before calling it and walking in. The top time marker indicates it was one in the morning. Ilya knew that already, because he’d been worried that Shane would fall asleep before he came up to him. Of course, he hadn’t. But he’d started opening himself up for Ilya by then and it’d been one of the hottest thing that’d happened to him in his life. Fucking great night. None of this woman’s business.

But the cameras… Fuck

“You still haven’t told me what this is about.”

“Well, you see, you’re staying at the fifth floor. As you confirmed. But the cameras show the elevator going up to the fourth floor.”

“I got it wrong,” Ilya shrugs, already hating how flimsy of an excuse it is.

She pulls another picture, this one of the elevator area on what Ilya assumes is the fourth floor. He’s walking out of it and striding away purposefully.

“The hotel has no cameras in the hallways or the rooms, for privacy reasons,” she says, her tone clearly disapproving, “but that’s you walking into the fourth floor. Which is where the Metros are staying, isn’t it?”

“Maybe I took the stairs.”

“You didn’t. Unless you came back down three hours later to take the elevator back to your floor.”

More photos are laid out in front of him. Ilya doesn’t even look at them. He doesn’t want to see himself, sated and still a little dazed from a night fucking Hollander. He is afraid his face will give him away. That they will see him and immediately think ‘ah, yes, that man definitely just got laid’.

His legs feel cold. She knows. Oh fuck, she knows. All this time, all the lying, all the hiding and apparently all it took was hooking up on the other side of the continent for them to get caught. Hollander is going to freak out; he’s never going to want to see Ilya again. Oh, god, he is going to lose him. And if whatever this is goes public, Russia will-

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“What were you doing in between one and four?”

Ilya clenches his jaw. He says nothing. Clearly, she smells blood.

“Mister Rozanov,” she leans forward, grabbing the desk as she enunciates, “what were you doing between one and four in the morning?”

Fucking Shane Hollander for the last time, it seems.

Why does the police of this shitty small town care? Canada is supposed to be different. It’s not Russia. It’s not supposed to be. Are they really that fucking homophobic in this town that they are willing to arrest them over this? Or maybe just Ilya, for fucking their Golden Boy… he can only hope.

Their staring contest is interrupted by yelling on the other side of the door. Raised male voices growing louder and louder.

One of voices is familiar. Ilya has heard it across the ice many times. It often reminds him of his father: the unconcealed spite, the  disappointed undertone, the way they think getting louder will make other’s do as they say. And, if they’ve been found out, he knows without a shadow of a doubt who is on the receiving end of all that hate right now.

Ilya stands up before he knows what he intends to do. His body acts on its own accord, desperate to interpose himself between Hollander and all this anger.

“We are not- Rozanov!” Detective Harper yells after him as Ilya crosses the room and swings the door open.

At the end of the suddenly claustrophobic hallway, Coach Theriault is yelling at… another cop.

“-and you want me to calm down?!” He is hollering, face red with fury. “One of my goddamn players is dead! I will not fucking calm down!”

Ilya feels the floor tilt under him.

Dead.

Who is-

Between one and four. Most of the Metros were still at the hotel bar. Nearly all of them, except-

No.

Ilya turns and looks at the woman that has grabbed him by the elbow and is trying to pull him back into the room, feeling like the world will crumble on top of him any second now. Maybe the world has already ended and he just didn’t know.

Of course the police don’t care who he’s fucking. That’s not why they are asking. But then-

“Who?” He manages to whisper, dread creeping up his spine. “Who is dead?”

Chapter End Notes

It was about time I wrote a proper murder mystery!!

*slaps Ilya Rozanov’s ass* This baby can fit so much trauma

This chapter is kinda short but I’ve decided not to torture myself over word counts for this fic. Some will definitely be longer and more packed, some might be lighter and faster. I’ll just go with my gut and what each part needs.

SPOILERS
If you’ve read the tags, it’s probably obvious that Shane isn’t dead but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take the chance to scare the living shit out of Ilya ;)

Chapter 2: How long can you stand the heat?

Chapter Summary

“Wait,” Hayden straightens up in his seat, “are we… suspects? You think we fucking killed our own teammate?”

“What?” Next to Shane, JJ’s entire body tenses.

Chapter Notes

Hello!! I’m blown away with the response to the first chapter!! Thank you all for your sweet comments!! I hope this story lives up to the hype and that you have fun!

Shane hasn’t cried. He isn’t sure if he should have.

Everything is just so fucking strange.

They’ve gathered the entire team in the building’s basement floor, which seems to be the hotel’s management offices. The entire Metros team and staff are crammed in a small meeting room which is clearly not meant to house this many people (especially with two thirds of them being big burly professional athletes). On top of that, they are all in different states of disarray, having been woken and summoned with little warning: Hayden is wearing the checkered blue flannel pajamas that Jackie got him last Christmas, J.J. still has his hair wrapped tightly in a silk bandana, Comeau is wearing mismatched sweatpants, Drapeau and Mitty clearly didn’t pack any leisure clothes other than their underwear and have both draped themselves in the hotel’s stiff white robes.

The result is an oddly unreal feeling, like Shane is having a fever dream in which his professional hockey team is having a sleepover the way they did when they had a roadtrips back in juniors. Shane never did good in those situations. His teammates often talked about girls in ways he either didn’t understand or, sadly, understood enough to feel uncomfortable with. He often tried to sink in the background and make it though the situation with as little awkwardness as possible before he managed to slip away unnoticed.

So, awkward pajama party it is. Almost.

Except for the fact that someone is dead.

The thought makes Shane’s stomach twist into knots, but it doesn’t quite overrule the unrealness of it all. If nothing else, it makes the feeling sharper.

They should probably cry or scream or… or do something. Except none of them has done much since they were told, except sit in silence and stare into space. It’s just too much to process.

“I can’t believe he is dead,” Hayden whispers next to him, frowning at his own hands.

Shane feels a bit of relief at the knowledge that Hayden, for all that he can be a little emotional at times, hasn’t cried yet either. It makes him feel a little less broken.

“Yeah,” he says, because he isn’t sure what else to add.

Andropov was part of the Metros’ second line even before Shane got drafted. He was a good defenseman, if an average skater, and could never quite hold his own to the likes of Rozanov or Hunter, which Shane always found frustrating. He made up for it by running his mouth with increasingly incisive chirps that more often than not led to the other teams dropping gloves and giving the Metros a power play, which Theriault often encouraged in the locker room. Especially lately. Shane could probably count in both hands the words they’d crossed in the past six years. He’d found his teammate a little bit too focused on useless things like what other teams’ players said in interviews or the stupid rivalry and not enough on fixing his own inability so sustain possession of the puck longer than two seconds. None of which means he wanted him dead, of course…. But it still makes him feel kinda weird about it. When he’d found out who it was, his first and only thought had been relief that it hadn’t been anyone more important to him, like Hayd or JJ or even Rozanov. Which probably makes him a terrible person and an even worse captain.

But he can’t just force himself to cry. It would just be weirder.

“Alright, gentleman,” the cop, who’d identified himself as Jim Holden, comes back into the room with Olsson, who’d been the last one to fill in the information regarding his whereabouts around the time Andropov was killed. The cop can’t be much older than them, tall, handsome, dark hair. Could be a player himself. “Thank you for your cooperation. It seems like security camera records confirm that most of you were on the fourth floor at the time. Except for,” he checks his list, “Mister Comeau, Mister Wilson and Mister Koch, who were all still at the hotel bar at the time. Of course, we have no way of confirming that the rest of you were actually sleeping or inside your own rooms at the time of the… incident.”

Shane hadn’t been sleeping. Not really. But he was in his room and that’s about as much as he is willing to share. No one needs to know he was getting his world rocked by Ilya Rozanov while he bit into a pillow to keep from making any noises his teammates might recognize.

“Wait,” Hayden straightens up in his seat, “are we… suspects? You think we fucking killed our own teammate?”

“What?” Next to Shane, JJ’s entire body tenses.

“We are not making any assumptions,” Holden raises his hands. “Right now, all we know is that Mister Andropov was killed in his room at some point between three and four in the morning and that, due to the snow storm, no one came in or out of the hotel since then.”

“So whoever killed him is still in here?” Shane asks, appalled. Afraid. He isn’t really keen on the idea of sharing roof with someone capable of that.

“Maybe,” Holden sighs, but it sounds like a yes.

The rest of the team squirms and starts to mumble amongst themselves. That’s not good. The last thing they need is to get paranoid or start pointing fingers at each other.

“Okay,” Shane says firmly, trying to gather their attention with his best captain voice, “so what can we do to help, officer? Our teammate has been killed, we’ll do anything to get justice for him. Right?”

Like clock work, his teammates reply affirmatively. Troops properly rallied, he looks up at the cop, who seems surprised but recovers quickly.

“Great. Well, it would help to know more about Andropov. Did he have any… enemies? Anyone who’d want to hurt him?”

“I mean,” someone murmurs across the room, “do other teams count like enemies?”

Shane represses the urge to groan but the cop nods encouragingly.

“Did he have an antagonistic relationship with other teams or players?”

“Kinda comes with the defenseman job,” JJ shrugs. “But he did get in a lot of fights lately. Chirped a lot, got under people’s skins.”

“He was trying to be Rozanov,” Shane deadpans, and regrets it immediately.

Holden arches his eyebrows. “How so?”

“Well, Rozanov is the best Russian player in the league.” His teammates groan. Shane’s cheeks burn, but he is not wrong. “Media had started making comparisons between them this summer, so Andy started imitating his game, trying to be faster, chirping more, getting in fights.”

Not that he had succeeded. Not that he would have ever been able to match Rozanov’s talent or skill. Andy could’ve tried and chased him his entire life, and he never would’ve caught up. Poor guy.

“So, did Andropov and Rozanov have some sort of rivalry?”

An awkward wave of nervous laughter ripples across the room.

“I’m guessing you’re not a hockey fan?”

“Only guy Rozanov’s got a big rivalry with is Cap here,” Hayden says proudly, shaking Shane by the shoulder.

“Andropov is- was a defenseman, so they did encounter in the ice quite a bit,” Shane explains, “but it’s not like you could measure that in a scoring race.”

Not like Shane and Rozanov do, anyway.

“So what happened last game? Why did they drop gloves?”

“Fuck if I know,” Comeau shrugs. “One moment we are skating, next Andy says something in Russian and fucking Rozanov’s going crazy.”

“That fight looked nasty. Looks like Rozanov drew blood.”

“It’s hockey,” Shane shrugs, feeling strangely defensive. “Part of the game.”

“Didn’t take you for an apologist of violence, Hollander,” Holden smirks.

“It’s a contact sport. Fighting is allowed. If it goes too far, there’s a penalty box.”

Though he doesn’t think he really should need to explain any of this to a man grown in a small Canadian town. He doesn’t buy that Holden doesn’t know puck. At least enough to have heard of the rivalry.

“You think Rozanov fucking killed Andy?” JJ growls.

“What?” Shane turns, looking at his friend confused.

“Do you think there were any remaining hard feelings after the game?” Holden prompts.

“Maybe,” JJ says, at the same time as Shane says “No.”

They share a look, both equally surprised.

“C’mon, man,” JJ says. “He’s a sore loser.”

He isn’t. He is competitive and aggressive and ambitious, just like Shane, but even after a loss he will kneel and suck Shane’s dick and fuck him good and brush it off with a smile and a promise to win next time.

“Did any of you see Rozanov in your floor last night?” Holden asks.

Oh no.

“Rozanov? Why would he be in our floor? Raiders are staying on the fifth,” Drapeau says.

Shane wants to throw up.

“We have reason to believe that Rozanov was in the fourth floor around that time, but we haven’t been able to confirm-“

“That bastard!”

“Fucking Russian rat!”

“I knew it! I knew that asshole was bad news!”

The room explodes around them as the Metros are swept in a wave of righteous anger. Shane stays on his seat, as the puzzle pieces start to fit in his head.

The questions about Andy and Rozanov, the fight last game, and now this evidence of Rozanov on the Metros’ floor.

They think Ilya did it.

It would make sense, to them. An angry, aggressive, Russian guy taking a loss too seriously, losing control or taking revenge. And Ilya has no way out, no alibi. Because he was with Shane.

Oh god, Ilya Rozanov is going to go to jail or get sent back to Russia or- or worse. And it’s all going to be Shane’s fault.

He will never see Rozanov again. Will never kiss him again. Will never get to hear him laugh or moan or feel the way his calloused hands roam his body like he is something precious.

“Alright, stop!” Shane jumps to his feet and turns to face his team. “That’s enough! Sit down!” Reluctantly, they do. “Rozanov didn’t kill Andropov, alright?”

“How can you know, Capitane?” JJ demands.

“He was with me,” Shane says, quietly first, then more firmly, turning to Holden. “Rozanov was with me.”

“Shane,” Hayden whispers badly, “buddy, what are you doing?”

“Telling the truth,” Shane says, though it’s only half of it. “I want Andy’s killer caught as much as everyone, but I know it wasn’t Rozanov, so we better get rid of false suspects.”

“Why would Rozanov be with you?” Holden asks, though his tone is less surprised than his face lets on, back in detective mode.

“We are… friends, sort of,” Shane offers with a shrug and pretends not to hear the betrayed gasps of his team behind him. “I mean, we met before we were even drafted. So when we have this sort of events, like galas or All Stars, we catch up.”

“I can’t believe you are fraternizing with the enemy,” Comeau mutters, tightening his stupid white robe around his chest.

“Hey!” Hayden snaps. “Cap’s a stand up guy. Of course he can be fucking civil, even with Rozanov.”

“He’s not the enemy, this isn’t a fucking war, Gil. It’s a sport,” Shane deadpans, looking at his teammate like he considers him childish, like he isn’t terrified of what this could spiral into. “Andropov is dead. We are not going to let the fucking rivalry with the Raiders keep us from finding who did it. It just wasn’t Rozanov.”

“So… you can confirm that you were with Rozanov all night?” Holden asks slowly.

Okay, no more lying if he can help it. If they get caught in a lie this will go badly for both of them. Shane turns his back on his team and focuses on the man who could fuck then over if he digs too deep.

“Between two and four thirty, yeah. He had vodka. I had ginger ale. We talked.”

“Why hasn’t he mentioned it? He has refused to give explanations to my partner.”

“Because he’s an asshole,” Shane sighs. An an idiot who should’ve told the truth to save himself if he was smarter. “We don’t tell anyone that we are friendly because, well…” Shane points with his thumb at his team behind him. “If I give the go ahead, he will confirm.”

Holden’s eyes are intense as they scan Shane’s face. For a second, he is afraid that his bluff will be called, that this guy will question in front of his entire team why Rozanov would go to such lengths to protect a secret this stupid —to protect Shane at the cost of himself. Shane has no answers for that, except that maybe Rozanov has even more to lose because of Russia. But even then, he doubts that the threat of his country could be worse than the threat of murder charges. Idiot.

“Alright, Hollander, come with me,” he sighs, finally, grabbing Shane by the shoulder and guiding him out of the room.

At the last second, Shane risks a look over his shoulder and finds his team staring with almost identically betrayed expressions. His stomach sinks all the way down to his ankles. No going back now. He kinda does feel like crying now.

Chapter End Notes

1. Okay so I knew from the start that Shane would give up the secret (partially) as soon as he realized that Ilya is getting blamed for it. He’s just protective of him even if they aren’t technically anything. He can’t help it. If there’s one thing for which Shane would blow his life up, that’s Ilya’s safety.

2. Who knows who this cop is named after? Hint: is not a Procedural. I was just fishing for a name and this one came up in my brain and he is one of my favorite characters ever so I decided to mimic a bit of his personality here for fun

3. The scene with the Metros was tense but please keep in mind everyone is in their pjs or worse. Also Theriault wasnt there luckily because he’s busy yelling at some poor soul somewhere else.

4. Someone asked what point of the situationship this is in. I have an idea but I’m curious to see if you guys have any guesses!

5. I’d already decided the dead Metro before I realized this but apparently Andropov is the guy that tries to talk to Shane in the deleted scene?? I decided to keep him Russian as in fanon tho… but it made Shane’s lukewarm reaction to his dead funnier in my head lol