Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Anxious Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Shane Hollander Needs Therapy, Hurt Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Whump, Soft Ilya Rozanov, Soft Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Protective Ilya Rozanov, Good Significant Other Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Has an Eating Disorder, (not a main focus of the fic but is present and lightly discussed), Therapy, Panic Attacks, Healing, Husbands, Heavy Angst, service dog, Ottawa Centaurs Player Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs Player Shane Hollander, Feelings, Dogtor Rosie, Homophobia, Homophobic Language

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-01 Words: 18,140 Chapters: 2/2

at your service

Summary

“Luch-Shane,” Ilya says, catching himself only at the last moment before he breaks their no pet names in the workplace rule. “Why don’t you get some air, yes? We can-”

Shane’s anxiety takes a quick backseat to annoyance once more, at being handled like a child instead of a grown man, like he hasn’t been doing this just as long as Ilya, like he needs someone to tell him when to take a break.

Like he deserved to have everything taken away from him because he couldn’t handle it to start with.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice icy.

The step he takes away is too big, farther than he meant to get from Ilya’s side, and the air between them feels both charged and icy.

He isn’t quite bold enough to try and fix it.

(shane is married and on the same team as his husband) (and all it cost him was his whole career and the life he spent years building beforehand) (but it's fine, really) (it's all so very, very fucking fine)

Notes

WHAT UP FRIENDS HOW THE FUCK DID 18K OF THIS FIC HAPPEN TO ME

so this started with me just enjoying the idea of shane's anxious ass attracting someone else's service dog to try and task for him, and then through the power of idea ping pong with hardlyhinged and nightquills, rosie the service dog gained life. i started writing this fic just to be funny, but then i started to think about a post i made before about how i hope season 2 lets shane be angry and hurt that everything he was afraid of happening to him did. in fact. happen to him. so then the funny service dog fic got feels because it was out of my hands.

a note that i know very little about service dogs and hockey, so please let me know if i've done anything horribly egregious but otherwise just forgive me any mistakes and please to enjoy some feels and healing.

original post: https://www.tumblr.com/penandinkprincess/815233334941761536/anya-doing-her-residency-under-supervising

Chapter 1

As Shane has learned in his weeks of settling in on the team and feeling the absence of a C on his chest like a physical thing, there is one benefit to not being the star of the Ottawa Centaurs the way he was for Montreal. 

Namely that his newly-frequent panic attacks usually fly right under the radar. 

It’s hard to feel grateful for it right now, though, too busy telling himself to knock it the fuck off, a desperate refrain of Not here. Not here. Not here. Not here. Not here. pounding in his head on repeat as he waits on the bench, too caught up in his head to even really appreciate watching his husband on the ice, usually his one consolation prize for not always being first string anymore. 

Not that that’s a bad thing right now, of course, not when it means Ilya is thankfully too busy doing his fucking job to watch Shane struggling to do his. 

C’mon, he tells himself, forcing his chest to rise and fall in slow, even movements even as his ears ring faintly, his heart pounding loud enough that it’s the main thing he can hear. Don’t do this. Don’t fucking do this. 

Like most of the ones he’s been getting recently, he doesn’t even really know what’s causing it, doesn’t know what stupid, random thing has him feeling like he’s about to have a heart attack. He’s painfully aware of the cameras, of course, painfully aware of the commentary of the people watching those cameras, painfully aware that the A on his jersey is little enough to commend him after a hard reset of his entire fucking career, painfully aware that a good quarter of the audience of this game probably pities him and the other three-quarters probably enjoy watching Shane Hollander knocked the fuck down, painfully aware-

“Head in the game, Hollander. You’re up soon.” 

He flinches at the pat on his shoulder from his coach and nods, sharply, hoping it was a “atta boy” pat and not a “get your fucking shit together, you embarrassment to professional hockey” pat. 

He doesn’t dare actually look at him to find out which. 

He doesn’t actually usually play on a different line from Ilya these days, not after it became clear that they’re almost always better playing together. It’s gotten them plenty of snickering and side eyes and jokes on Twitter, but him as center and Ilya as wing on a line is a thing of beauty, weird as it might seem on the outside to put the two best players together instead of spreading them out. No one else can really keep up with them, not like the other can, and the moments they share the ice are Shane’s single point of consolation when it comes to hockey these days. It’s nice, getting to turn his brain off, knowing Ilya will be right where he needs him to be, knowing he’ll be right where Ilya needs him to be, knowing that no matter what he doesn’t have anymore, he still has this, the ability to put on a good show and make goals. There are YouTube compilations of it even, stupid videos with titles like “Ten Times Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov Shared a Brain.” Ilya likes watching them, always gets teasing and cuddly and playful when he plays them on his phone and shoves it in Shane’s face, usually when they’re in bed together, like it’s his own weird and hyper-specific form of foreplay. 

Shane usually rolls his eyes and smiles and tries not to let his attention flicker down to see what the comment section has to say. 

*

Shane scores two goals in the game. 

All he can think about, even as his team slaps him on the back and jostles him with bright approval, is if it’ll be enough to maybe temper the people still rejoicing at his fall from grace, if it might be enough to start clawing back some semblance of what got taken from him, if it might somehow serve as the foundation to rebuild his career on from scratch again. 

(He knows it won’t be.)

*

“Maybe we just kiss and give them something else to do besides ask annoying questions,” Ilya whispers into his ear before they take their places before cameras that night, clearly an attempt to make him smile. 

He obliges and pretends like he manages to fool his husband into thinking he was successful. 

“Shane! Shane!” Calls a woman who has a microphone in front of his mouth before he’s even accepted her interview. “How does it feel to be playing a season under someone else as a captain after so many years?” 

Like shit, he thinks, still keeping a perfect, polite smile in place through long years of practice in front of his bathroom mirror. Still feels just as bad as the first time someone asked me that question, thanks. Still feels like the punishment it is for the audacity of being gay. Still feels like I’m forgetting something every single time I put on my fucking uniform. Still feels like I worked my ass off for that C and got it taken away anyway. 

“I’m just here to play the best season I can,” he says, perfectly even, perfectly polite. “Anything past that isn’t worth thinking about.” 

“Ilya,” another reporter crowds in to ask, wielding their own microphone and almost hitting Ilya in the mouth in their eagerness, stopped only by Shane grabbing it at the last minute, Ilya giving him a quick little wink of thanks for the save. 

Shane just tries not to think about how many people are going to try and spin it into something it’s not, cut the moment so it looks like Shane was trying to take the microphone and not save his husband from a busted lip, twist it until-

“-best at what he does,” Ilya is saying, and Shane hopes the way his face heats will be excused by the way he’s still sweating when he realizes he was so busy in his own head that he missed what the actual question was. Hopefully it doesn’t end up needing a comment from him. “No, is no problem. Our marriage stops at the door. We pick it up again when we leave.” Ilya winks at the camera, and there’s a little scatter of appreciative, approving murmurs, people glad for a good soundbite. 

“Shane,” another reporter says, “there’s been a lot of talk about a lacking performance from you so far this season.” Shane’s chest goes tight and his ears hot, anger and humiliation flaring at once, equally bright. It’s not the first time he’s gotten this question, but he can feel the anticipation from the press around him, like sharks sensing blood in the water, like being openly gay means he’s going to sit in front of cameras and cry about his feelings now instead of continuing to be a fucking professional. “What do you have to say to the fans at home?” 

“I’d invite them to take a look at my stats and compare them to my past seasons,” he says, light and easy and like he doesn’t want to just walk away, find an empty room, and scream until maybe his chest feels less unbearably tight. “Joining a new team always means an adjustment period, but I’m delivering the same performance I always do.” He cuts himself off there, knowing anything else will just seem defensive. 

“But what about the fans who say you just aren’t skating the way you used to?” Pushes another reporter, because apparently they’re all determined to be a pain in the fucking ass tonight. “Does it have anything to do with-” 

“All of these questions and only for my husband?” Ilya interrupts, feigning offense. “I am also here, yes? I do not get to answer anything?” 

The reporters turn to him at once, playfully conciliatory instead of hungry for a crack they can dig into. 

Shane tries to pretend that he doesn’t notice the difference in treatment. 

Just like he tries to pretend his chest isn’t getting tighter at the way he can already hear headlines being written about Ilya’s interjection, people making guesses and assumptions about their marriage and what tension may or may not be there and Shane Hollander being a diva and stealing the spotlight from hi-

He breathes, in and out, slow and steady, forcing his breath to remain normal and unremarkable, thumb pressing to the body-warm silicon of the wedding ring he wears during games, a matching twin to the one on Ilya’s hand. 

This is fine, Shane tells himself sternly as he shoves his mouth into a smile and answers another question on autopilot and another and another and another. This is fine. He’s fine. 

He’s so very fucking fine. 

*

“Jesus,” Ilya complains when they’ve finally been released, scrubbing a hand through his sweat-limp curls and then pressing it to Shane’s face just to be disgusting, grinning when Shane bats him off. “It would kill them to ask actual good questions?” 

“Apparently,” Shane says, and it doesn’t come out as light as he wants. He resists the urge to make a face when he sees Ilya notice it, sees his expression shift from the corner of his eye. 

“They don’t-” 

“Hey, cap!” 

Shane doesn’t turn at the call only through the practice he’s put in, but Ilya extends a hand, touching his elbow lightly to try and make him stop, too. Shane shrugs him off. 

“I need a shower,” he says, not quite meeting Ilya’s eyes. “I’ll meet you in the car, okay? I have a headache.” 

“Shane-” Ilya starts, but the C on his chest means he stays right where he is as he turns to answer whatever Bood needs to ask him. 

Shane knows he’s going to try and bring it up again later, try to talk things through the way he has before, like anything they can say between the two of them can materially change anything. It’s only going to end in a fight or silently hurt feelings or Shane plastering on a smile and pretending any of this has gotten any easier. 

He resolves to give Ilya a blowjob so good it hopefully makes his short term memory disappear. 

*

This far into his career, meet and greets and photo ops aren’t new to him. 

The way his chest feels tight and his neck feels hot and his head feels full of cotton is, but there’s nothing he can fucking do about it, so he sucks it up and gets the fuck on with it. The press has enough to say about him these days without him adding “lost his shit at a team meet and greet for no reason” to the list. Him making a face at a fan already caused enough of a stir on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. The fact that he’d only made the face because the fan had asked him to sign his dick hadn’t come up in the process of people picking it apart, and it’s not like he could volunteer the information without making it all so much worse. Rose had thrown words around like “sexual harassment" on the phonecall they’d had soon after when she’d asked about it, and Shane had felt cowed under the weight of it, of words like that said about something he experienced, doing his best to brush it off and then to redirect when Rose had refused to let it go. 

He hadn’t known how to tell her that he’d been relieved that at least it had been a genuine request and not another dig at him being gay. 

She hadn’t really seemed in a place to hear it, anyway. 

He hasn’t been asked to sign anyone’s genitals today–small fucking blessings–but he still can’t shake the tightness in his chest he gets at events like this now, especially with the way it’s expanded to his stomach today. He managed to get breakfast down and keep it down today, but it had taken enough effort that Ilya had noticed. They hadn’t talked about it because they’d just had a fight the night before about Ilya talking about getting a second dog and Shane internally deciding that a second dog might actually be the thing to fully break him right now and externally saying no fucking way, but he’d caught a concerned look that had been immensely annoying, and he’d taken his shake with him to choke it down elsewhere. 

He tries to distract himself now, tries to focus on anything that isn’t the press, isn’t anyone’s facial expression, isn’t anything that’s going to make him wonder what’s going to be written about him later, what sins are going to be caught and held against him, what little looks are going to be sharpened into weapons to get him with later. Following that train of thought just makes his breath harder to get into his lungs in a way that makes Ilya send him annoying little side glances, and he makes himself focus harder on the crowd milling around them, kept back for now while they organize everyone into lines. 

Including the random lady with a dog that Ilya is apparently determined to be obnoxious with. 

“Prekrati,” Shane hisses under his breath the third time the dog gets up and pulls to the end of its leash to try and get to them. It’s perhaps overkill, switching to Russian just to tell his husband to knock it off with whatever he’s doing, but there are too many cameras around them for him to feel comfortable in English. 

“I am not doing anything,” Ilya says just as quietly, his tone at odds with the smile he still manages to give the reporter who looks their way at the sound of his voice, quiet as he tried to be. 

Shane tries to give the man a smile as well, but it doesn’t feel quite as successful. 

“O, sobaka prosto-prosto-” His brain stalls out, already stretched by the way so many eyes around him are making him hyper-aware of himself and the space between him and his husband. Fuck it. He turns slightly, moving to pick imaginary lint off of Ilya’s shoulder for the excuse of hiding his mouth from any cameras (hopefully). “We argue about getting another dog, and now another dog keeps trying to come over here?” He says, voice low but scathing. “Just happens to want to come right over to you?” 

“She has good taste,” Ilya says, sounding just as biting despite the way he’s managing to keep his face mostly neutral. “Unlike some people.” 

Shane wonders in a part of his brain that does nothing for the tension he feels in his chest if this is just always going to be their new normal, at odds with each other, sniping each other with comments, chasing little moments of sweetness and togetherness that then still always get replaced with this weird, awkward tension between them as soon as anything that isn’t the safety of their house enters the equation. He thinks about divorce statistics and how much someone can stand. He thinks about Ilya getting fed up and deciding to cut his losses. 

He thinks about how it would feel to truly lose everything. 

“Luch-Shane,” Ilya says, catching himself only at the last moment before he breaks their no pet names in the workplace rule. “Why don’t you get some air, yes? We can-” 

Shane’s anxiety takes a quick backseat to annoyance once more, at being handled like a child instead of a grown man, like he hasn’t been doing this just as long as Ilya, like he needs someone to tell him when to take a break. 

Like he deserved to have everything taken away from him because he couldn’t handle it to start with. 

“I’m fine,” he says, voice icy. 

The step he takes away is too big, farther than he meant to get from Ilya’s side, and the air between them feels both charged and icy. 

He isn’t quite bold enough to try and fix it. 

*

Shane oscillates between bored and riding the edge of a panic attack for most of the rest of the event, smiling on autopilot and posing for pictures and saying things he forgets as soon as they’re out of his mouth. His chest is tight and his head hurts and he can’t help but mentally write headlines the entire time, wondering which of his smiles will be picked apart, which little gesture is going to get torn apart on Twitter tonight as being “so obviously fruity, guys, how did we all miss it?” 

Busy dissecting whether the way he pushed his hair back looked gay or not, he almost misses it when the woman with the dog finally comes forward, tuning in just in time to hear Ilya ask if it’s alright if he says hello or not. The eagerness with which the dog is pulling against her leash says clearly that it was indeed Ilya doing something to try and call to her the entire event-

-or it would, if she didn’t immediately yank herself past Ilya to get to Shane, nosing at his hand urgently. 

Reflexively, he yanks his hand back, realizing far too late what that probably looked like from the outside and wondering exactly how many news sites are now going to run that he’s a dog hater in addition to an overhyped fag-

“Sorry, sorry!” The woman says. “Rosie, heel.” The dog–Rosie–doesn’t seem too keen on listening, though, straining towards Shane with even more urgency before her owner finally puts a hand on her butt and pushes until she sits. “Sorry,” the woman says again, looking up and shoving her glasses back into place where they slipped down her nose. She gives him an apologetic smile. “She’s still in training as a service dog, and we’ve clearly got a lot of work left to do.” 

“Oh, a professional in training?” Ilya says to the dog, voice nearly a coo, clearly delighted. “What a smart girl. What are you learning to be, huh?” 

“An anxiety service dog,” the woman responds cheerfully. 

Shane goes very, very still, a rabbit in front of the fox that is Ilya’s sudden, pointed attention. 

“Wow,” Ilya says, and now there’s a tone in his voice that Shane knows no one else will pick up on despite how very clear it is to him. “So she knows when someone is not okay? Even if they say they are?” 

Shane grits his teeth. 

“Kind of,” the woman says, busy trying to keep the dog in place as she whines and tries to shuffle towards Shane again, almost vibrating in place with her eagerness. “Dogs are really good at picking up on things, so she’s training on how to pick up on anxiety and panic attacks and then task to-” 

Shane doesn’t stick around to find out everything else Rosie the Narc Dog is learning, mumbling an “excuse me” and slipping away. 

He feels Ilya’s eyes on him his entire way out of the room. 

*

Shane finds an empty conference room and lets himself in, keeping the lights off. The hum of so many people in a building still comes through, but it’s at least a little easier to breathe in here, with the sound muted by the walls, and he slides down the wall to crouch down, trying to breathe through the tightness in his chest enough to loosen the knot of it, to clutch the frayed edges of his nerves back together enough to make his husband stop giving him annoying, worried looks. 

He’s almost managed to do it when the door opens and the goddamn fucking dog walks through, her handler close on her heels. 

Because where else would they go but right where Shane is trying to get his shit together? 

“Oh, shi-shoot, sorry!” The handler says, juggling her bag and the leash and a water bottle all at the same time. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to find a place for Rosie to take a little break, and the other rooms are locked. We didn’t mean to disturb you, I’m so sorry, we can go look for-” 

“It’s fine,” Shane forces himself to say. “Seriously. Most of the other rooms are locked.” 

It’s why he’s here, after all, he thinks, managing to only be slightly bitter about it now. 

“You’re sure?” The woman asks. “That’s really-oh! I’m Gina, by the way. I don’t know if I said that before.” 

Shane shakes her hand and tries to figure out if there’s a polite way to get the hell out of here without making it obvious that it’s only because of her and the dog that he’s leaving. He’s not sure, but it feels rude to let someone know they’re the reason you’re leaving somewhere, even if they are. 

He wonders how fast she’d take the story to Twitter, and the thought makes his chest feel as tight as it did before he got five fucking minutes of peace in this room before it was taken away from him. He breathes through it, but the dog tilts her head like a tattletale and pulls against the leash, pulling Gina with her until she plants her feet, the dog’s attention fully on him as she whines, low in her throat, straining forward, ears perked up and alert. 

“Can I ask you kind of a weird question?” Gina asks. 

Shane wonders what she would do if he just said no. 

“Yeah,” he says, forcing his best approximation of a smile. “Sure.” 

“You can totally say no,” Gina says, “seriously, it’s no problem, but, um, if you don’t mind, would you mind letting her practice tasking with you?” 

She must see Shane’s absolute bewilderment before he gets the chance to hide it, hurrying to explain. 

“Like I said, totally cool if it’s a no, seriously, I get it, 100%, but she’s kind of riding the edge of not making the cut for her program, and it would be good for her to practice tasking on command, you know? And she already seems so excited to meet you, and it’s kind of not what she’s supposed to be doing, going up to a stranger, but she also hasn’t gotten to task in-” 

At a certain point in the onslaught of words, Shane’s brain shifts from confused to just wanting to make the flood of noise stop. In an uncharitable part of his brain, he wonders if Gina knows that it seems like she might also benefit from Rosie’s “tasking,” whatever that means. Out loud, though, he remains polite, too well trained over the years not to be. 

“Sure,” he says. “What do you, uh, need me to do?” 

Gina smiles with what seems like relief, breathing in heavily at the break in her flow of words. 

“Have you ever heard of deep pressure therapy?” 

*

Shane’s not totally clear on how he got here, laying in a dark conference room with a random golden retriever laying across him. 

In a way that makes Rosie shift and nose at his neck, he wonders if this is just his life now, condemned to never controlling what happens to him ever again. 

“Just be chill, okay?” He tells the dog, gently pushing her nose away from his face. If she minds that Gina stepped out into the hall to make a phone call and left her with a stranger, she doesn’t show it, apparently content to lay on top of Shane and get dog hair on his outfit. She breathes in a way that moves her whole ribcage, exhaling like a sigh and getting even heavier on top of him. 

Annoyingly, it is kind of…soothing, sort of. 

“I make my husband do this sometimes,” he tells her, idly moving to scratch behind one of her ears. “He’s a lot heavier than you, though.” He smiles faintly. “You guys are both blondes, though, so there’s that.” Rosie breathes heavily again. Shane moves his hand to stroke along her back, relieved that she’s clean enough that it doesn’t leave his hand feeling filmy the way some dogs do. He’ll still want to wash his hands after, but he doesn’t feel gross from touching her. “You really have to learn about not sharing people’s secrets with other people, you know. You kind of put my shit on blast out there.” 

If Rosie is sorry about it, Shane can’t tell. 

He just lays under her warm weight until Gina decides he’s free to go, even politely offering him a lint roller to get the fur off of his outfit. 

“Thank you, seriously,” Gina says when he hands it back. “I know it’s kind of a weird ask, but-” 

“It’s all good,” Shane says, forcing himself to smile. It comes a little easier now, like laying in a dark conference room helped alleviate some of the tension in his chest, and he’d rather not risk it by setting Gina off again. 

“Say bye Rosie,” Gina says, and looking down at his outfit to make sure he got all of the hair off, he doesn’t think twice before he’s obeying on autopilot. 

“Bye, Rosie,” he says. 

He looks up when he hears Gina giggle, and she covers her mouth with her hand, embarrassed. 

“I was, um, I was actually telling Rosie to say bye,” she says. “You know, kind of, a joke?” 

A joke like his entire fucking life is now, Shane thinks, mortified. 

He takes his leave then, saying goodbye to Gina and pointedly not saying goodbye to Rosie again. 

*

“There you are.” 

He turns at the sound of Ilya’s voice, his husband jogging down the hallway to catch up. 

“I was looking everywhere for you,” he says, giving Shane a quick up and down that Shane desperately wishes was flirtatious and not diagnostic. 

“Needed some water,” he says, waiting only long enough for Ilya to fall into step beside him. “They wanted us both for an interview with that magazine, right?” 

“Yes,” Ilya says, and Shane can tell from the careful tone of Ilya’s voice that whatever he’s going to say next is going to piss him the fuck off. “But it’s been a long day. If you want me to take it-” 

“You want a solo feature?” Shane asks. “What, you don’t want to share a story with your boring husb-” 

“Shane,” Ilya interrupts, and Shane shuts his mouth, forcing himself to breathe. 

It feels a little bit easier than it did earlier, and it also makes it easier to stop being an asshole to his husband when he can recognize objectively that Ilya is just trying to do something nice for him. 

(Even if it’s subjectively insulting that he feels the need to do it in the first place.)

“I’m good, okay?” He says, not bothering to force a smile because Ilya would see through it anyway. “I just have a headache.” 

“Again?” Ilya asks, moving forward automatically to rub at the muscles in his neck, well-used to it courtesy of all of the tension headaches Shane has been getting recently. 

It turns out having your entire life and career explode in front of you is pretty stress-inducing. Who fucking knew. 

“I got some Tylenol,” he lies, shrugging out of Ilya’s hold, aware as always of how easily someone could catch them and spin even the most innocent touch into something vile. 

(If he never has to see another fucking online petition to make seperate locker rooms for gay players “for player safety,” it’ll be too fucking soon.)

“I’m good,” he lies, and in an attempt at distracting Ilya from calling him on the lie, he bumps against him, a rare offer of physical touch outside of their house. “C’mon, if we don’t hurry, it’ll look bad and they’ll write up a thinkpiece about how the T in LGBT should stand for Timely.” 

Ilya’s laugh isn’t as bright as Shane was hoping for, but he’ll take what he can get. 

These days, it’s usually the best he can fucking do. 

*

It’s their second game against Montreal, and Shane resolutely ignores the lingering looks he gets from his current team. He says he’s fine because he is. He gets ready to take center because he’s center. He faces off because he’s supposed to. 

He ignores the slur Comeau hisses at him because he has no other fucking choice. 

“Watch it,” snaps Ilya from his right, close enough to hear. 

Shane bites back the way he wants to tell him to shut up, to ignore it the way Shane has to because if he has to play nice, everyone around him should have to do the same. 

“Aw,” Comeau says, “he’s afraid I’m gonna hurt his puck bunny’s feelings.” 

Shane grits his teeth around his mouthguard so hard it makes his molars ache. He knows this game. There’s nothing he can say that would ever make this stop. Giving him any reaction at all is just fuel on the fire, and if he starts a fight about it, he’s going to be painted as the problem. He’s fine. This is fine. They’re just words. It doesn’t matter. 

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ilya growls. 

“What?” Comeau asks, clearly delighted at the reaction he’s getting. “He doesn’t let you fuck him if he gets his little feelings hurt? Not so sweet when-” 

Shane wins the puck. 

He wishes it felt better. 

He makes the first goal of the game. 

He wonders when it stopped feeling like a victory and started feeling like the only way he can defend his right to be on the ice in the first place.

*

“Stop reacting,” he tells Ilya before they take their places again. 

Ilya first looks surprised and then upset. 

“Shane, he does not get to talk t-” 

“He does,” Shane corrects. “He does, and so does anyone else who wants to say that shit. You think anyone actually gives a fuck?” 

Ilya half-winces, like Shane aimed a blow for his face. He starts to reach out, and it’s only Shane giving him a look that makes him stop, lips thinning as he presses them together, clearly unhappy. Shane’s mad at himself as much as he’s mad at Ilya. It’s not Ilya’s fault any of this is happening, and he can recognize even in the heat of it that it’s not fair to take it out on him. 

It’s just unfortunate that he’s the one target Shane can take aim at without consequences beyond damaging his own fucking marriage. 

“It just makes it worse,” Shane says flatly, kicking Ilya’s skate lightly to get him back into motion when he starts feeling the weight of eyes from people waiting for them to line up again. “It doesn’t make my life easier when people think you’re my fucking-fucking body guard or something. I can take care of myself, Ilya.” 

Ilya doesn’t respond, just gives him a tight, unhappy nod. 

Shane lines up again, feeling angry and hurt and frustrated and increasingly looking forward to checking someone into the boards just for the relief of it. 

As opportunities to take his feelings out on someone go, hockey isn’t the worst option, after all. 

*

Shane makes a second goal, and he almost manages to feel proud of it when Hayden whistles under his breath as he passes, tapping his shoulder affectionately with a, “Jesus fuck, buddy, sucks to watch you do that on this side of it.” Shane manages a half-smile, and he bumps shoulders with Ilya, which makes him fully smile as they line up for the puck once more. 

And then Gilbert Goddamn Motherfucking Comeau hits him so hard in an illegal check that he gets airtime, elbow catching on the edge of the boards as he comes down, wrenching his shoulder in a way that sends out a loud, sickening pop that sounds like it should carry all the way up to the stands with how loud is sounds to him.  

Face pressed to the ice, trying to breathe through the mind-fuzzing pain of it, he hears a distant roar of rage that he knows is Ilya before he even puts a name to the voice, and then there are echoing roars all around him as the ice descends into chaos as people pair off in fights. 

For his own part, he’s currently a little busy trying not to fucking puke. 

“Christ, capitaine,” he hears JJ say, the man himself appearing in his field of vision a moment later, “you know how to go down with style, eh?” 

Given how sparse their texting has been after everything went down the way it did, the shock of JJ actually talking to him in public is almost enough to distract him from the shrieking pain in his shoulder. 

Almost. 

“You know me,” Shane tries to joke, but there’s an edge to it that slips out before he can stop it, and it makes JJ hesitate, just for a moment, emotions flickering across his face too fast to track. Shane half-thinks he’s going to about-face and skate away, but he just shakes his head like he’s clearing it of something and then kneels, helping Shane sit up. Shane’s made it to his knees when Hayden manages to make it through the fray, wincing with sympathy when he sees the slack way Shane’s left arm is hanging. 

“Well, shit, buddy,” he says cheerfully, and unexpected understatement that it is, it actually manages to get a small laugh out of Shane, which he regrets immediately when the motion makes the pain in his shoulder flare up like a hot poker jabbed into the joint, leaving him closing his eyes tight and breathing through it until his ears stop ringing. He flinches slightly when an arm goes around his back, but Hayden’s voice, quiet but close enough to his ear for him to hear it, lets him know who it is, and he doesn’t have it in him to fight the help, not when he does indeed seem to need it based on how unsteady he feels. 

And no matter how much he knows there’ll probably be vile things splashed all over Twitter about this later, speculations about if Hayden is fucking Shane, too, if there’s a gay love triangle with-

“Alright, here we go,” Hayden says, tugging him up with him, JJ surprising him by helping on the other side and then skating ahead of them, pushing people out of the way to get them a clear path through. Halfway through, a bloody-nosed Dykstra disengages from his own brawl to help in the effort, and Shane tries very hard not to imagine what people must be saying about poor, delicate Shane Hollander needing a whole fucking entourage just to get off the ice. 

He only resists pulling away from Hayden because he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t let go if he tried, and a struggle between them would just invite further questions. 

Still, it’s a relief when he gets handed off to the medics, tossing a thanks over his fucked shoulder and then blessedly moving out of range of cameras and witnesses and everything else that’s going to come back to haunt him later. 

*

When Shane wakes up, groggy and disoriented, it takes him a long, long moment to place why his sheets are suddenly scratchy and his pajamas are so bad-feeling and his bedroom smells so hospital-y. 

As it turns out, it’s because he’s in a hospital. Go figure. 

“Hi.” 

When his brain has had enough time to register the word, he turns his head to find Ilya sitting in the chair next to him, looking tired. He lifts his eyebrows at the bruise Ilya is sporting across his cheekbone, and Ilya smiles faintly, tilting his head to give Shane a better view. 

“Is fine,” he says, still letting Shane reach out with clumsy fingers to touch it, like just touching will let him know if it’s anything to worry about or not. Ilya winces when he presses a little too hard, but the bone doesn’t give, and Shane decides to call his investigation good enough. He rests his arm back against the mattress, and Ilya takes his hand in his own, holding it in his palm like something precious. 

Or something fragile, Shane thinks, wondering exactly what headlines have made it out by now. 

“Makes me extra-handsome, yes?” Ilya asks with a wink, and Shane wishes he had it in him to flirt back. As it is, all he can think about is what pictures everyone must have gotten, what they’re saying about them now, how many people are congratulating Comeau on a job well done, how many people are hoping Shane took a hit that will knock him out of hockey for good, how many-

It’s not until Ilya rests a hand on the top of his head and kisses him in the way he does when he’s trying to snap Shane out of a spiral in his head that he realizes what his husband kept glancing at was the machine next to him telling Ilya exactly how fast his heart started beating. 

“I’m fine,” he says, before Ilya even pulls back. 

“Hm, yes,” Ilya says, clearly doubtful as he shifts to sit on the edge of the bed. “The machine telling me you are having heart attack is making that very clear.” 

“Can’t help it,” Shane says, managing to recover enough to try and do damage control. “My husband’s hot as fuck. It’s not my fault if looking at him gets me going.” He winks, and he resists the urge to make a face when Ilya’s expression stays soft instead of going playful, like what Shane’s saying is pitiable instead of flirtatious. 

“They said you can sign out in a few hours,” Ilya says, clearly trying to make a guess about what exactly was upsetting him. 

Shane makes a conscious effort to remember that it’s love making Ilya try to manage him, not pity. 

It’s harder than he would like it to be. 

“Then I get to take you home and spoil you until you feel better,” Ilya teases, touching his nose playfully.

Shane isn’t proud of how immediately it stabs right at the painful, angry thing in his chest, but he also can’t fucking help it. 

“I don’t need to be spoiled,” he says, voice hard despite his attempts to make it not be. 

Ilya seems thrown by the heat of it, tilting his head slightly as he tries to work out what’s happening. 

“I’m fine, Ilya,” Shane says. “You don’t have to stay here. You can-” 

“I am going to not stay with my husband when he is in hospital?” Ilya asks in disbelief. 

“You should go get some sleep,” Shane says. “Our stuff has to get packed up anyway, and you always throw your shit everywhere.” He doesn’t want to fight with his husband. He doesn’t want to be saying these things. He doesn’t want to send Ilya away. 

But he needs to not feel like he’s something delicate Ilya has to wrap in tissue paper. 

“I don’t sleep well without you,” Ilya says, leaning down to kiss him. “You know this. I will wait until we are home and in our bed.” 

“That’s not the-” 

“Shane,” Ilya interrupts. “Why are you fighting me right now? What is happening?” 

Shane looks away, shaking his head slightly, and he makes a noise of complaint when Ilya nudges at him, pushing him carefully into sitting up and then climbing in the bed with him, slipping behind him and settling him between his legs, pulling Shane back to rest against him like he’s a sentient recliner. 

“Someone’s going to see us and-” 

“And know I love my husband, who is hurt and trying to fight with me for some reason,” Ilya says, kissing his cheek, his ear. 

Shane exhales, unsure what he’s even really annoyed with right now, but his body is too attuned to Ilya to resist it when his muscles start relaxing from the contact even without any conscious effort from him. Ilya leans to the side and takes gentle hold of his chin, pulling him into a kiss, sweet and soft. 

“Talk to me,” he breathes against Shane’s mouth. “What’s wrong, dorogoy?” 

“Nothing’s-” 

“I cannot fix it if I do not know what hurts,” Ilya says, and Shane tries to pull his chin back, wound up by the words again in an instant, sweet as they are and gently as they’re meant. He makes a frustrated noise when Ilya refuses to release him, and he’s glaring when he looks up at him. 

“I’m not something for you to fix,” he says, voice hard. “I’m your fucking husband.” 

“I am aware,” Ilya says, voice losing some of its gentleness, replaced by frustration. “You think I do not know this?” 

“I think you think I’m some fucking-fucking damsel you have to save,” Shane says, the painkillers managing the ache of his shoulder but also taking his already-limited filter with them, mouth moving faster than his brain can moderate. “We do the same fucking job, Ilya. I’m not-” He cuts himself off, tugging his chin free and looking forward again. 

“You’re n-” Ilya starts to repeat, but Shane really and truly just cannot fucking do this here. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, tilting his head enough to press his temple against Ilya’s jaw in apology. “My shoulder hurts and it’s making be an asshole. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you.” 

“Hm,” Ilya hums, consideringly, and Shane can tell he doesn’t quite buy it. “Do you want me get a nurse? To give you something more?” His fingers brush lightly over the sling holding Shane’s shoulder still. 

God, and isn’t that just what he needs, even the medical staff at this hospital thinking he’s too fucking weak to handle his own pain management. 

“No,” he says, leaning back a bit more to let Ilya hold more of his weight. “This is good.” And it is, really, Ilya warm and solid and steady behind him, his one unmoving thing in a world that got yanked from under his feet and still hasn’t fully settled months later. 

(It’s possible the drugs are also making him maudlin in addition to grouchy at his husband for no reason.)

“I really love you,” he tells Ilya quietly. 

“I love you, too,” Ilya says, voice just as soft. He presses a lingering kiss to Shane’s head. “Sleep now, okay? I will go back and pack things up later. I will even pair socks together correctly. Just for you.” 

“Wow,” Shane says, unable to keep from smiling. “You are planning to spoil me.” 

He drifts off to sleep once more to the sensation of gentle fingers moving across his skin and a chest rising and falling beneath him, slow and steady. 

*

Shane hasn’t actually thought about Rosie The Narc Dog since the day they met. 

Not until Ilya far-too-casually brings up that the organization reached out through Ilya’s DMs when they didn’t get an answer through Shane’s to say that Rosie can not only not mind her business, but she also apparently can’t pass service dog school because she can’t mind her business and won’t reliably focus only on one person. 

“Okay…?” Shane trails off slowly, glancing at Ilya briefly. “And what does her flunking out of dog school have to do with us?” 

“Well, she can’t go to the person who would have gotten her,” Ilya says, casually enough that Shane knows he’s given this conversation extensive thought. “And they know we already have one dog and the resources to have another. They thought maybe we would want to take her.” 

“And why would we want to do that,” Shane says, flat enough that it fails to come out like a question. 

“I thought maybe you would want to have her here, with us. Maybe.” 

“And why,” Shane says, slowly and carefully and neutrally because he’s an adult and can talk to his husband without getting pissy over a stupid dog, “would I want to have her here with us?”

“I thought maybe it would help,” Ilya says, tone even in a way that's immensely irritating, as if Shane is some fragile fucking wild animal who needs to be handled gently. “Anya was good for me. Maybe Rosie will be good for you.”

“And what exactly is a defective dog supposed to help me with?” Shane asks dryly, knowing there's more acid in his voice than there should be but unable to help it.

“She's not ‘defective,’” Ilya says, as if the stupid dog is here and would be able to understand him even if she was. “She's-” 

“She can't do the fucking job she was trained for, so they're getting rid of her,” Shane says. “What else should I call her? She's defective.”

“Shane-” Ilya starts, and his tone takes scissors to Shane’s already-frayed patience. 

“Don’t say my name like that,” he snaps, reaching for protein powder in the cabinet so he can finish prepping his stupid breakfast for the week and escape this conversation or maybe just fuck his husband until he feels something other than annoyed and frustrated. 

He’ll decide based on whether Ilya drops this stupid conversation or not. 

“Like what?” Ilya challenges, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning back against the counter. 

“Like you’re afraid I’m going to fucking-fucking break or something,” Shane bites out, measuring out scoops of protein powder with a care he knows is going to make Ilya give him a look, as if it’s unreasonable to want to be able to accurately log his food so he can be sure he’s hitting his caloric and nutrient needs. It’s the reason he stopped weighing things out on a food scale, his husband’s Looks. 

(...when Ilya’s around to witness it, at least.) 

“I’m fine,” he says, tapping the scoop and depositing a small mound of powder into one container of oats before moving to the next, having to carefully tilt the container and tap it down to shift the powder to one side before scooping with his one functional arm because he’s getting to the end of the canister. He can only hope it’s going to last this mealprep. 

It might actually make him do something that isn’t going to seem okay if it doesn’t. 

“Yes,” Ilya says, and the clear doubt in his tone makes Shane clench his teeth. “You have said. Many times.” 

“What are you getting at, Ilya?” He asks, ripping the bandaid off because he doesn’t have the patience right now to play these stupid games of his husband trying to invent problems where there aren’t any. 

“You like hiring people for everything,” Ilya says, and Shane can feel his eyes on him like a physical thing. “Maybe you hire someone to make sure you are fine.” 

“I don’t need to be in therapy, Ilya,” Shane scoffs before he actually thinks about it, too focused on making his husband see he’s fine to consider that there was maybe a better way to phrase it. 

“Because it's bad to be in therapy?” Ilya asks, tone less gentle now. “Because there is something wrong with it?” 

“That's not-” Frustrated, Shane slams the container of protein powder down, misjudging it enough to make it topple over the edge of the counter and sending a cloud of artificially sweetened chocolate all around him as it falls. 

It certainly does nothing to fix his mood.

“Don't put words in my mouth,” he snaps, moving to grab a dishcloth.

“Then put them there yourself and talk to me.”

Ilya intercepts him on his way back to the mess, taking him by the shoulders–immediately moving to the bicep of his injured one–and just holding on tighter when Shane tries to shrug him off. 

“Shane, I am not trying to fight with you,” Ilya says, and Shane resists the hand at his chin that tries to demand eye contact, keeping his gaze focused firmly just past Ilya’s left ear. 

“Then don’t,” Shane says flatly. 

“I am worried, moy lyubimyy,” Ilya says, squeezing him gently. “I know you are ‘fine’-” 

“Then there doesn’t need to be a but like you’re about to say,” Shane says, making a frustrated noise when Ilya still doesn’t let go of him. “Drop it, Ilya.” 

Now he does look at his husband, keeping his expression hard. It almost breaks against the clear worry in Ilya’s, but he holds firm, white-knuckling his irritation because it’s the easiest thing to feel. 

The only thing he can let himself feel. 

Finally, Ilya sighs, and Shane grumbles but allows it when he’s tugged forward, wrapped up in a hug that’s far too gentle. He barely returns it, his good hand resting at Ilya’s waist but not wrapping tight the way he usually would. 

“I love you,” Ilya says, softly, squeezing him once. “You know this, yes?” 

“I know,” Shane says, toneless. “I love you, too.” 

The way Ilya holds him tighter for a moment says he didn’t find it very reassuring. 

Shane doesn’t have it in him to try again. 

*

Driven to it by Ilya being unable to leave him alone or not, he does feel bad about their disagreement after he’s cooled off from the heat of it. He knows therapy has helped Ilya, and he would never want to make him feel bad about going or like Shane doesn’t fully support him doing what he needs to do to feel okay. He’d attempted to make his apologies this morning with words and a blowjob, but he still gets the feeling that Ilya still hasn’t fully let it go. 

So. 

Now there is a service dog school dropout in his backseat, the process of acquiring her made even smoother by the home check Ilya apparently did without telling Shane he did it. 

Motherfucker. 

“I hope you get along with other dogs,” he tells Rosie as he makes the turn towards their neighborhood. “Because Anya is basically Ilya’s biological child, so if you don’t get along with her, you’re going to be out.” 

Rosie seems unconcerned, sitting happily in her assigned seat, harness connected to the seatbelt with the safety strap he originally bought for Anya after reading horror stories about dogs in car accidents when he was doing research after Ilya first got her. He makes a mental note that he’ll need to buy a second one now, wishing he’d thought of it before he placed the Chewy order earlier for food and another bed. 

“And you’re his dog,” he tells her firmly. “I don’t really like dogs. I’m sure you’re…fine or whatever, but Ilya is the one who likes dogs. Not me.” 

A huff of breath is his only response as Rosie continues looking out the window, like she’s taking stock of her new home. 

“And I’m serious about you getting along with Anya,” he tells her, needing to drive the point home. “I think he’d even get rid of me if I didn’t play nice with her.” It’s only halfway a joke. “So if you try to-I don’t know, be dominant or whatever dogs do, you’re going right back until someone else can take you. You got it?” 

Rosie sneezes. 

Shane chooses to take it as a yes. 

*

“Ilya!” Shane calls the next day, when he’s already regretting the defective dog he brought home who won’t get the fuck off of him. “Ilya, get your dog!” 

“Anya is already here with me!” Ilya calls back from the kitchen.

“No, the other dog!” He yells back, trying to push Rosie off again only to have her somehow manage to flop over him even heavier. He could try and push her off, but he’d feel bad if he hurt her while doing it. 

And Ilya would also probably be pissed about it. 

“She won’t get off of me!” He yells. “Call her.” 

His fatal mistake had been needing to take a knee when an email from his PR firm had come through to let him know they wanted to schedule “a talk” with him, like that wasn’t the most ominous fucking thing they possibly could have asked to do. With Ilya in the other room, he’d thought he was safe to just ride the panic attack out privately and get his shit together with no one needing to know about it. 

Until this stupid dog all but tackled him to the ground and then climbed on top of him. 

“Ilya!” He calls, impatient now and ready to get the fuck off of the floor. 

Ilya appears around the doorframe, lifting his eyebrows and looking amused as he takes in Shane’s plight. He approaches, Anya at his heels, quirking her head from side to side like she’s trying to figure out what game they’re playing. Ilya smirks. 

Shane glares. 

“Get your stupid dog off of me,” he demands. 

“Hm,” Ilya says thoughtfully before shrugging. “She looks comfortable, Hollander. Is rude to disturb a lady.” 

“Ilya-” He starts, speaking through his teeth. 

“Take a nap or something,” Ilya says, sounding way, way too fucking happy. He leans down, but just to scratch behind Shane’s captor’s ears. “Good girl, Rosie.” 

Rosie’s tail thumps even as she remains a heavy, unwieldy weight over him. 

“Bad girl, Rosie,” Shane tells her. 

All the comment gets him is a wet nose to the mouth.

Chapter 2

Shane learns in the days after Rosie comes to join them that one of the tasks she’s trained to do besides being annoying and heavy is bringing people medication. 

He learns this when she keeps trying to bring him Ilya’s. 

“Stop it,” he tells her today, home alone with her again because his shoulder isn’t yet healed up enough for contact practice. 

Rosie whines, nudging his thigh with her nose, making him pull his leg back, annoyed. 

“It’s not mine, and you keep getting it all gross and slobber-y.” He makes a face of disgust as he wipes it off as best he can, the -oza- of Rozanov smudged from dog drool. After their tense not-fight this morning when Ilya invited Shane to attend practice and just watch and Shane refused with a flat no, Ilya deserves worse than some dog spit on his pill bottle, but mad at him or not, he doesn’t want his husband’s medication fucked with. 

Even by the dog they only have because of him to start with. 

“Also if you eat this, it’s probably going to kill you,” he tells Rosie, who then nearly trips him by trying to lay over his feet. He exhales an annoyed sigh and steps over her, ignoring the wet nose that pokes at his ankle and setting the pill bottle back where it usually stays right by their coffee maker to make sure Ilya won’t forget it-

-and then nudging Anya’s head right back down when it pops up over the edge of the counter on the other side, her ears bouncing with the movement. 

“And you can leave it alone, too,” he tells her, pushing her down a second time when she tries to look at what he’s doing again. She yips at him, annoyed. He looks back down at Rosie, who is making a very un-sneaky creep to try and lay on his feet again. “You’re a bad influence.” 

Rosie exhales and rests her head on his foot, like a sentient fuzzy slipper. 

“You’re-no, Anya,” he says, pushing her back down a third time and getting his fingers lipped before she obeys him this time, trotting around the kitchen island and coming to sit at his feet, eyes bright and focused. He rolls his eyes, irritated, despite her very good sit. “No, don’t-” He starts, exhaling and leaning forward to brace himself against the kitchen island with his head on his arm when Anya takes it upon herself to copy Rosie and rest her head on his other foot. It’s one of the things he hadn’t foreseen when he decided to bring Rosie home in apology: clever, trainable Anya deciding to learn new tricks on her own. 

And entirely against his will. 

He makes a wordless noise of complaint but holds still for a moment, feet pinned by two fuzzy heads, one larger and golden, and the other smaller and white with brown splotches over her eyes and ears, a dusting of smaller brown speckles across her nose that Ilya always teases him about passing on to her. Almost as cute as your freckles, he always says, usually kissing the ones across Shane’s face when he does so, like he just can’t resist. 

Shane closes his eyes and exhales, the memory just making him feel like a dick after this morning. He feels Rosie’s tongue start lapping gently at his ankle, Anya joining in after a moment because they’re apparently raising a dog who is painfully susceptible to peer pressure. 

Shane accepts the dog slobber as his penance. 

*

“What is this even supposed to do for me?” He complains when Anya finally moves from observing to copying Rosie when she brings him Ilya’s pill bottle, Anya’s lack of service dog training meaning she just grabbed what was apparently the first thing she saw when Rosie went for the pill bottle, which is now a decoy full of orange Tic Tacs kept by the coffee machine because they’ve learned firsthand that Rosie will go looking for it if it’s not where it’s supposed to be by her standards. Of the two options, letting the stupid dog bring him a stupid fake prescription is better than coming home to a kitchen that’s been systematically taken apart and searched in pursuit of what she’s been trained to look for, but it still feels ridiculous, having to give Rosie some fake pills to give him. 

He examines the–mildly slobber-y–sunglasses case that Anya proudly presented him as her contribution to today’s offering. “These aren’t even mine,” he tells her as she rests her head on his knee because Rosie did it first. “You brought me your dad’s.” Anya’s tail wags regardless of his criticism of her work, and he sighs, slumping back against the couch and reluctantly putting the pill bottle and sunglasses case to the side to scratch them both behind the ears, mostly because the weight of two sets of attentive, hopeful brown eyes would make him feel like an asshole if he didn’t. “Good girls, I guess.” He considers them both. “Well, mediocre girls, really. You didn’t actually do anything.” 

From the dual tail wagging, he doesn’t think his performance review of their work holds much weight. 

*

The less said about the day he has to try and ref a dog wrestling match because Anya grabbed Rosie's pill bottle first and Rosie took offense to it, the better.

“You deserved that,” he tells Anya after Rosie bodyslams her against a wall and takes the bottle when she drops it, trotting over in a way that feels distinctly smug. “That's what you get for giving into peer pressure.”

Anya scrambles for a new offering and settles on her stuffed hockey stick, putting it right on his lap and putting it back when he tries to knock the disgustingly damp toy off of him and back onto the floor.

“Feel free to knock her over again,” he tells Rosie, who instead hops up on the couch and wriggles her way on top of him until he's forced to lay back.

When Anya, who apparently hates to be excluded as much as Ilya, crawls into the scant amount of space left on his chest, he sighs but surrenders, wearing her like a fuzzy scarf until Rosie decides he's been sufficiently tasked.

Fingers carding through soft gold fur, he thinks wistfully of the days he lived in a house with no dogs at all.

*

Healing enough to get back to practice should put things back to normal between him and Ilya.

And motherfucking yet.

His luck ran out when it comes to hiding his panic attacks, this one hitting him while on the fucking ice while running a drill, and this one had been bad enough that he’d known he would need to retreat to privacy to ride it out. He’d mumbled something about feeling a little sick and skated off to the side, and it would have been fucking fine if Ilya hadn’t tried to follow him. Shane had practically had to snarl him back to the ice so he wouldn’t make it even worse, make his humiliation hit all the harder at not being able to do his fucking job all because someone tossed out a stupid chirp about not knowing why they were paying the big bucks for Shane Hollander when he missed two shots in a row. It was stupid. It was just for fun. It wasn’t even remotely the worst thing he’s heard someone say to him. 

And yet it had still had his heart pounding in his chest as if someone was holding a fucking gun to his head. 

He and Ilya had thankfully had to take separate cars to work today because Ilya had had a brand meeting Shane’s mom had set up for him. Shane had had to pull over once on the way home when another panic attack had hit him at the tension he knew was waiting for him at home, and it certainly hadn’t fucking helped things that Ilya had been tracking his location and texted him a “You okay?” when he’d lingered in a random Tim Hortons parking lot for what was apparently too long by Ilya’s standards. 

He also doubts his responding text of “Stop fucking stalking me” helped things very much. 

Nothing they’ve said to each other since he did get home has, either. 

“-ay you are okay when you are not fucking okay, Shane!” Ilya says now, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. 

“Yes, I am,” Shane says, arms crossed tight over his chest, furious and embarrassed and wishing that saying he’s going to go stay at his parents’ place tonight wouldn’t just create questions he doesn’t want to answer. 

“You are lying!” Ilya says. “Just tell me why! Why are you fucking lying to me, Shane?” 

“I’m not! I’m not fucking lying, I’m-”

“Why are you being like this? Why won’t-”

“Because I’m fucking fine!” 

Shane freezes once it’s out, the words screamed in a way that makes it obvious they’re a lie even to him. He clenches his jaw tightly, swallowing back the angry thing in his chest that’s been trying to escape for months now, the thing that’s now gotten its fingers in the gaps between his ribs to start poking its ugly face through. It’s gotten incrementally harder to keep it contained, keep it locked up tight, keep it from slipping loose and hurting someone. 

And apparently tonight is the night it wins. 

He hates the way Ilya is looking at him like he’s a scared stray, like he’s the kitten he helped their neighbor coax out from under the car when it got out and then spooked itself when the world was larger than it expected it to be. The look had been endearing when his husband was wearing it while flat on his stomach and babytalking a tiny kitten cowering against a tire, coaxing it slowly closer until he could scoop it up, his giant hand enclosing it completely. 

It’s significantly less endearing when it makes Shane feel like Ilya is looking at him and seeing something equally small and pathetic. 

“I’m fine,” he repeats, and now he hates himself for the way his voice goes rough. 

He is fine. He’s fucking fine. He’s so fucking fine, and it doesn’t kill him, the way he’s lost his entire career and no one else seems to fucking care. It doesn’t hurt, the way people use past tense now more often than they used to, like what he’s doing in the present isn’t significant and what he has left in front of him isn’t even worth thinking about. It doesn’t fill his ribcage with aching, angry hurt, the way he feels like he can’t even talk about being upset because everyone else also agrees that he should be fine now. He’s got a team that accepts him. He’s got a husband who loves him. He has parents who love him and live near enough that he sees them all the time. He shares a home with the love of his life and never has to spend more than a few hours apart from him. He’s got everything anyone could possibly want. 

It just cost him everything he fucking had. 

“Shane-” Ilya starts, and Shane shakes his head, once, quick and vicious. Too soft. His voice is too fucking soft. That’s the kind of softness that’ll break him if he isn’t careful. He can’t have that softness near him. Not now. Not if he’s going to keep being so fucking fine. 

“I-” He starts, but his throat is too tight for more, and he knows he has to bail. He pivots, moving for the backdoor, his first available escape route. His heart is beating too fast, like a rabbit in a trap, and he hates it, he hates himself. He’s a fucking coward running from his fucking loving husband because he’s losing his fucking shit over fucking nothing when he’s fucking fine-

“Sweetheart-” 

He yanks his arm from Ilya’s gentle hand like it’s a burning brand, and he hates himself for that, too, hates the look of hurt he puts on Ilya’s face, but he can’t do this. He can’t keep being fine if Ilya keeps looking at him like he’s not, keeps trying to touch him like he’s breakable, keeps-

“Just-I need air.” He yanks the door open and then manages to pause, some little frisson of better nature coming through enough to remind him that it’s the love of his life he’s running from, the love of his life who is so scared of people walking away from him. The thought gives him enough focus amidst the fluttering-bird writhing happening in his stomach to hopefully mitigate exactly how much damage he’s doing being a fucking basket case right now. “I’m coming back, okay? I just-I need air. Give me a minute.” 

“Okay,” Ilya says, voice soft. He doesn’t reach for Shane again. 

Despite being what he wanted, it still hits like a slap. 

*

He’s sitting on the ground at the side of their house because he might as well full send his own pathetic-ness at this moment and feeling extra stupid for not bringing a jacket with him when he hears the backdoor open. He shuts his eyes and braces himself, wishing he had given Ilya a more definite timeline on when he’d be back so he wouldn’t be coming out to look for him now. He exhales when he hears the door shut, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to get his shit together so he won’t take things out on his husband like a complete asshole. He drops his head back against the side of the house and opens his eyes when he hears footsteps on the grass-

But it’s not Ilya’s head that pops around the corner. 

“What are you doing out here?” He asks Rosie, who trots up to him with a wag of her tail that slowly decreases in excitement when she apparently decides it’s time to work again based on whatever she reads on him. He rolls his eyes. “What the fuck are you wearing? It’s not that cold out here.” At least not for anyone with fur. 

When she gets close enough, lowering herself to the ground and belly crawling to get on his lap in a way he knows better than to try fighting by now–she can and will knock him the fuck down if he doesn’t go willingly–he sees it’s not a dog jacket like he’d assumed. 

It’s his zipper-front hoodie laid over her back, the sleeves tied around her neck to keep it in place, clearly sent by a human with the capacity to understand that he’d be cold out here. 

The first tear that escapes him lands right on Rosie’s soft, golden head. 

He covers his face, humiliated even if his only audience is a dog, but Rosie lifts her snout up and starts nosing at his hands, her breath soft and tickly on his skin. He recoils reflexively at the wet touch of her tongue–he doesn’t care what nonsense Ilya quotes about how clean dogs’ mouths are, he knows where those things have been–and drops his hands to let her know she can stop. She noses her way under his palm, and he rolls his wet eyes but obeys her, wondering exactly how much more pathetic it makes him that he gets bullied by a fucking dog now. 

“I’m fine,” he tells Rosie, who isn’t a human and thus can’t process his stupid wet eyes as a contradiction to what he’s saying as he unties the hoodie and slips it on, Rosie’s warmth caught in the material and making it feel even nicer against the cold than it would otherwise. 

Rosie lets out a huff as if she’s calling him on not telling the truth. 

“You’re fucking annoying,” he tells her. 

Despite that, he curls his arms around her soft, furry body and leans forward. 

They sit in the yard together for a long, long time. 

*

He hears Ilya take Anya out the front door, talking to her in a low voice that means only the noise carries and not the words, and he’s ashamed at what’s obviously a gesture meant to make sure he won’t be disturbed. He scrubs his face off on the sleeve of his hoodie and then stands, staggering slightly on his now-stiff legs, Rosie hovering nearby like she’s decided to diversify into mobility aid work. 

It’s possible Ilya might be a little bit right when he teases him about Rosie taking after him when it comes to being an over-achiever. 

He lets himself and Rosie back into the house, makes sure her and Anya’s waterbowls are filled, and then goes upstairs, stripping out of his clothes and getting into the shower, letting the warm water chase the last bit of chill from his toes and fingers. When he gets out, he can sense Ilya is back in the house in a way he could never actually put words to, but he doesn’t go looking for him, just slips into pajamas and then gets into bed. He knows logically that he should eat dinner–this deep into the season, skipping meals is just fucking stupid–but the idea of eating anything right now just makes him feel a little nauseous, and he’d rather argue with Ilya about it than risk being pathetic again and making Ilya feel like he needs to hold his hair and rub his back when he pukes up an ill-advised dinner. 

He wonders darkly when exactly his life started involving so much least-shitty-option calculus. 

*

He hears Ilya pause when he enters their bedroom, and the clear hesitation, as if he wonders if he’s welcome or not, just makes Shane feel even worse. When Ilya slips into the bathroom, Shane folds the edge of the covers down to make it a clear invitation, and Ilya takes it for what it is, though he maintains distance between them until Shane moves closer, now taking his turn to hesitate to check his welcome until Ilya puts his arms around him, curling him close. He closes his eyes when a kiss is pressed to his forehead, knowing he’s unworthy of it but unable to resist it. 

“You are not happy,” Ilya says into the safe darkness of their bedroom. 

“I am,” Shane disagrees at once. 

Ilya makes a gentle, disagreeing noise. 

“I…” He exhales, frustrated, wishing he was better at words, wishing he was better at feelings, wishing he was…

Just wishing he was better, period. 

“You keep having panic attacks. All of the time, Shane. You-no, let me speak, please.” Shane releases the breath he had taken to disagree, and Ilya strokes a thumb over his cheek in thanks. “And I don’t know why. Is it team? Someone is saying something to you that I don’t know about?” 

Shane would like to be insulted by the clear threat living under the words, the way Ilya is so clearly ready to throw down with his beloved team for him. He should be insulted that his husband thinks he can’t fight his own battles. 

Right now, though, he’s just tired. 

“I’m working on it,” he says, trying not to sound as defensive as he feels. “I’ll fix it, okay?” He doesn’t know how, but he will. Somehow. 

“Just tell me why,” Ilya presses, holding him a little tighter like he’s afraid of Shane slipping away. “You are so stressed, all of the time, and you try to hide it, but I see it. I know it’s happening to you, and you do not talk to me, and I can’t fi-” He catches himself, clearly remembering what happened the last time he used that particular f word around him. “I love you, Shane, so, so much, and you are hurting, and you will not even admit it’s happening.” 

“I don’t want it to be happening,” Shane says before he knows he’s going to. 

Ilya doesn’t respond, but his silence is a listening kind of quiet, his hand moving to stroke over Shane’s back, slow and even. 

“I’m not going to fuck this up,” Shane says, needing to know that Ilya knows it. “Okay? I’m not-” The next words out of his mouth were going to be "going to embarrass you,” but he can take a pretty solid guess about the reaction that would get him. He edits. “-going to let things get messed up this time.” 

“‘Messed up?’” Ilya repeats, hand moving up to stroke his fingers over his hair. 

“Well,” Shane says, forcing levity into his voice, “almost all of my old team would like to see me dead, preferably while failing to make a goal, so I’d like to avoid that happening again if I can.” 

“Your old team is stupid,” Ilya says with venom even as his hands remain gentle. “You should not care what they think.” 

He can’t help the way it grates right against raw things, can’t stop the way it has him prickling again, like it just didn’t occur to him to not care. 

“I do care,” he says, forcing himself to take a breath when he hears how defensive his voice sounds. “Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t, but yeah, it fucking bothers me that people I thought were my friends now fucking hate me and don’t give a fuck if I live or die.” 

“You didn’t do anything wro-” 

“I know!” Shane says, both sharper and louder than he means for it to be, words lurching forward in a way he just can’t fucking stop, not after months of biting them back have left him so fucking tired. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong. That’s-that’s the fucking problem. I put in the work. I worked my ass off. First Asian captain in the league. Ended a sixteen-year dryspell and brought the Stanley cup home three fucking times. Played by all the rules. Showed up first and left last. Played nice. Did the interviews. Did the work. And it was hard, and it sucked, and I fucking-I fucking did it.” His voice breaks on the last two words, and he pulls back enough to toss his arm over his eyes, ashamed of that and his stinging eyes and just everything in fucking general. “And it didn’t fucking matter. They took it all away from me anyway.” 

He doesn’t even know who the “they” is really, whether it’s the media or the general public or hockey or or or. 

Maybe how many “they”s there are for him to point at and hate is part of the problem anyway. 

“I love you. I love us, but it didn’t cost nothing, Ilya. This,” he gestures with his free hand blindly to indicate the life around them, “didn’t come without sacrifices.” 

“And you think it didn’t for me?” Ilya says, a little sharp. “I’m sorry,” he says at once. “That’s not-” 

“No,” Shane interrupts, too tired to let that get too far. “I know.” That’s one of the worst things, after all, knowing Ilya gave up so much, too, and has been able to be happy anyway. He drops his arm down from over his eyes. “And I know it’s not fair. I know you gave things up, too, and you did it first and-” His voice breaks, and he’s angry and ashamed and so, so fucking tired. “But I-” He bites the words back again, knowing that what he’s about to say is selfish and unfair. 

“But?” Ilya coaxes anyway, because he’s good and generous and kind and loving, and Shane hates himself that there is a little tiny part of him that still resents him anyway.

“You got to choose it,” Shane says, miserable and ashamed but unable to keep silent about it anymore. “And I know you chose it for me, and I love you for that, but I-I didn’t get to pick any of this, Ilya. I got you, and I’m so, so fucking happy about that, but I lost everything else. And I didn’t get to choose it. It just fucking happened to me. It-” He takes a breath that shudders more than he would like it to. “It still feels like it’s just always still happening to me.”  

Ilya doesn’t speak for a long while, just tugs Shane close again despite the way he resists at first, knowing he doesn’t deserve the comfort even though he wants it so badly. He doesn’t cry, too tired for even that, but he burrows his face into the safe darkness of Ilya’s neck, reducing his world to nothing but the familiar smell of soap and laundry detergent and Ilya. He’s halfway to falling asleep when Ilya speaks, voice soft, chest rumbling under Shane when he does. 

“Then maybe you stop trying to be fine,” Ilya says quietly. “Maybe you just try being Shane. Maybe Shane is angry or sad. Maybe he is not just fine.” Ilya pauses for the space of a breath. “Maybe is okay if he’s not fine.” 

“You sound like Galina,” Shane scoffs. 

Ilya makes a humming noise in response. 

“There are worse people to sound like.” 

*

“Do you think Galina might have some recommendations for other therapists?” Shane asks the next morning, deliberately not looking at Ilya as he makes breakfast for them while Ilya makes breakfast for the dogs. 

Ilya goes still for a moment and then rises, and Shane tracks the motion in his peripheral vision when he comes closer, pressing close to his back, warm and solid and steady. He ducks his head enough to kiss Shane's neck, resting his cheek against his afterwards.

“I love you,” Ilya says softly, moving them into a slow, steady sway.

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Shane says, leaning back.

*

Shane's new therapist is named Joy, a Japanese-Canadian woman in her early forties with bubble-gum pink hair and a wife named Cara.

She also pisses him the fuck off in their fifth session when she looks at him over her glasses and tells him in a pleasant, even tone, “I do feel like I should let you know you can't win at therapy by giving me the right answers, Shane.”

He knows before he even gets to the parking lot that he'll be cancelling all future sessions with her, Rosie happily trotting along beside him back to the car, none the wiser that their little field trips to this stupid fucking building are at an end.

He barely greets Ilya when he gets home, beelining for his laptop to pull up the office’s scheduling software, so busy being mad at fumbling entering his password and having to do it again that he doesn't even shrug his husband off when he comes up behind him, draping over him like a cape.

“I'm done with therapy,” he says flatly, impatiently waiting for the slow ass website to load. “I did it. I'm fixed. Hoo-fucking-ray.”

“Hm,” Ilya says, tucking his chin over Shane's shoulder, hand gliding under his shirt and then pressing against his stomach, warm and solid against his skin, “too bad for Rosie. She liked going.” 

“Rosie also likes rolling on dead things,” Shane says. “She'll get over it.” 

“True,” Ilya says, rubbing his chin against him idly and leaning in to kiss his ear. “Still, shame for her to not get to say goodbye. Joy really liked her, I think.”

Joy is the reason Rosie started going along beginning in their second appointment, amused at the story of how she joined them and asking if they could meet. Rosie had greeted her when they went and then spent the rest of the appointment at Shane's feet, head laying across his shoes, steady and forcing him to stay still even when he was irritated enough that he wanted to walk out. Joy had invited him to bring Rosie with him again after that, and he had, Joy even buying a bag of dog treats to give her their last couple of sessions.

It’s the thought of that stupid bag of dog treats just sitting there forever that keeps him from clicking the bright red “CANCEL APPOINTMENT” button. 

Ilya doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even touch his arm like he’s trying to guide it away. If he did, Shane knows it would annoy him enough to do it just to spite him, and he gathers that Ilya knows it as well. He lets out an annoyed breath from deep in his stomach, leaning back and letting his head loll back enough for Ilya to keep it up for him. 

“Going to therapy for a dog is fucking stupid,” he tells the room at large. 

Ilya doesn’t comment, just nuzzles his face into the crook of Shane’s neck, eyelashes tickling him when he does. Despite how good it feels, Shane makes an annoyed noise and then slaps the laptop shut without looking. 

Fine. He’ll go back just one more time for Rosie’s sake. 

Just for Rosie.

*

He goes to the next session, and the next, and the next. They suck, and they’re hard, and sometimes he leaves feeling so heavy that he basically jumps Ilya when he’s home, needing a release. He doesn't know if Joy would approve or not–he certainly isn’t going to tell her–but she’s always talking about his “toolbox of coping skills,” and if his toolbox happens to include his husband’s cock and his favorite dildo, he thinks he should be allowed to use them. 

They certainly help him focus on the positives, after all, like the way Ilya feels inside him, heavy and thick and good and his, all his, even in the ugly things and the hard things and the snapping-at-his-husband-because-Joy-made-him-face-something-that-hurt-and-he-took-that-hurt-home-with-him things. 

“Fuck,” he gasps today, thighs burning as he rides Ilya, his husband helping him get just the right angle by tilting him back slightly, holding his hips there to make every bounce hit him just right. 

“So beautiful,” Ilya pants, eyes glazed, cheeks flushed, curls wild all around his head. “Fuck, Hollander, how are you so beautiful?” 

Shane smiles, eyes only half-open and closing completely when Ilya moves one hand to stroke his cock in time with his movements, thumb circling the head with every pass and fucking with Shane’s focus on his rhythm. 

He can’t find it in himself to complain too much, though, hands reaching blindly to hold any part of Ilya he can get, desperate to hold on when the pleasure threatens to sweep him away. How can it be possible, he thinks sometimes, for it to still feel this good after so many years? His breath catches, ready to complain when he feels Ilya shift, sitting up, but he moves only to get his mouth in range to close around one of Shane’s nipples, hot, wet tongue getting to work on sensitive nerves in a way that makes Shane’s stomach pull tight, his whole body shaking. 

“Il-Ilya-” He gasps. “I need-” 

He doesn’t need to say more. Ilya wraps a hand around his lower back to hold him in place and then flips them, mouth open and breath warm and damp against his cheek. He noses at Ilya’s face, needing a push to the edge, needing just a little-

“Come for me, malysh,” Ilya pants into his ear. “Come on. I need you to come for me.” Shane whines, high and thin, the noise dissolving into a groan that slips between his teeth as he drives his hips up into the pleasure of Ilya inside of him. “That’s it,” Ilya says, voice all but a purr, “come on, for me.” 

Shane’s breath leaves him in a rush of air when it hits him, his arms wrapping around Ilya, tight, fingers clutching desperately. 

“Good,” Ilya groans, pressing a clumsy kiss to his cheek, “always so good for me. Alwa-” He shudders when his own climax hits him, hips stuttering and then pressing against him, tight, like he’s trying to get impossibly deeper. Ilya mouths his way across his face until their lips meet, and Shane returns it as best he can, still shuddering now and then. 

“I love you,” he breathes the moment he’s gotten enough air back to say it. “Fuck, I love you so much.” 

Ilya huffs a chuckle, shifting them carefully until he’s on his back, Shane sprawled over him, still connected. The sweat on their skin makes them slippery, but Shane is still holding onto him like he might be swept away otherwise, which probably helps. Maybe. 

He’s a little too fuck-drunk to tell, honestly. 

*

“This is gross,” he tells Ilya later, when they’re sharing a bath. 

“No,” Ilya corrects, leaning back against him. “Word you are looking for is romantic.” 

“We’re literally sitting in fucking…people soup,” Shane complains, scooping up a palmful of water just to let it drip back down. 

“Mm,” Ilya says, craning his head back to kiss under Shane’s chin, “but is us soup, so not so bad.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Shane says dryly, but he still doesn’t let go of Ilya. 

“We will shower,” Ilya says, soft and affectionate, sounding amused by Shane’s distaste. “You will not have to sleep in soup.” He sinks down in the bath some, knees drawing up when he starts to run out of room for his legs even in their almost comically gigantic bathtub, head resting on Shane’s shoulder, forehead turned to press against his neck. Shane leans down enough to kiss him and then sits back, head resting on the folded towel Ilya put there earlier for his comfort. Ilya pulls his arm around him a bit tighter, fingers trailing affectionately over his skin. 

For a while, they sit in comfortable silence together, both huffing a laugh when two noses try to nudge their way under the door, Anya’s speckled little paw managing to shove its way in up to her toes before she’s stopped. 

“Naughty,” Ilya calls, and the paw disappears, replaced by a nose that moves side to side with the rhythm of a wagging tail. She whines, low and frustrated, and Shane hums a laugh, trailing his hand up Ilya’s arm, to his neck, eventually cupping his face in his palm and pressing him close. 

“You’re raising a spoiled brat,” he tells Ilya, voice warm. 

“She is little baby princess,” Ilya dismisses easily, flicking his free hand as if waving the words away. “She deserves everything forever.” 

Shane smiles, rubbing his cheek against Ilya’s hair affectionately. 

“God, how does anyone think you’re mean when you get bossed around by a thirty-pound dog?” He kisses Ilya’s forehead. “Saw the last PetSmart trip on the credit card statement by the way. Jesus Christ, Ilya.” 

“All essentials,” Ilya says, unrepentant, and Shane can hear the smile in his voice. He moves his head enough to kiss Shane’s bicep, nipping at the skin playfully before soothing it with his lips and sitting back. “Our daughters deserve whatever they want.” 

“No, you’re just bad at telling them no,” Shane says, amused. 

“Hm,” Ilya agrees. “They get it from their daddy. I am bad at telling him no, too.” 

Shane squeezes him a little tighter. 

“Maybe you should, sometimes,” he says softly. “When he’s being a dick to you for no reason.” Ilya tries to move, to look at him, but Shane holds him in place. “I’m sorry I’ve been taking things out on you-” 

“Shane-” 

“No, this is homework from Joy. Let me say it or I’m going to get a bad grade at therapy, and I’m going to tell Joy it’s all your fault.” 

“Go ahead, then,” Ilya says, leaning up enough to kiss his jaw. “Can’t let Shane Hollander not win at something.” 

“I’m sorry I’ve been taking things out on you,” he says again, resting his chin against Ilya’s temple. “It’s not fair to you.” 

“Hm,” Ilya says, hand moving to wrap around his wrist loosely, thumb stroking over the soft skin underneath. He lifts it up enough to kiss it before resting it back down again. “Do I have words I have to say, too, to get a good grade from Joy?” 

“Asshole,” Shane says, smiling faintly. 

“Hm, no,” Ilya says thoughtfully. “This does not sound correct. You must have taken notes wrong.” 

“Actually, nevermind,” Shane says, moving his hand up to yank one of Ilya’s curls. “Apology rescinded. You’re an asshole and deserved it.” 

“Better,” Ilya says, turning his head enough to grin at him. He releases Shane’s wrist only to nudge him down into a kiss, brushing their noses together when they part. “If Joy says you must say sorry, that is fine, but I do not need sorrys.” 

“You deserve them,” Shane says, eyes stinging a bit. Ilya starts to look away, and Shane nudges his chin back up. “I mean it. It’s not okay for me to hurt you just because you love me.” 

“I love you,” Ilya says. “I don’t care about anything else.” 

Shane closes his eyes and rests his cheek against his head. 

“Tell me you know it’s not okay for me to hurt you or I’m telling Galina on you,” Shane threatens, no heat in his voice. 

“And then I tell Joy you still sometimes weigh out egg whites when you think I am not looking,” Ilya says, just as non-threatening. “We live together, Hollander. You tell on me, I tell on you.” 

Shane smiles, eyes still closed. 

“Okay, truce,” he says. “We still get to be fucked up sometimes.” 

“Is what keeps things interesting,” Ilya agrees. 

“Also I ate two donuts yesterday,” Shane points out. “One of them was even filled. Give me credit.” 

“Good job,” Ilya says, a laugh in his voice. “I am very proud. Soon you will be in pie eating competitions.” 

“Motherfucker,” Shane grumbles, kissing along Ilya’s hairline and then tweaking his nipple to even things out. 

“I am glad for you eating donuts,” Ilya says, and the softness of the words is almost funny when contrasted with the words themselves. “You deserve nice things when you want them.” 

The way the world starts looking a little blurry is mildly embarrassing, but with Ilya as his only witness, he doesn’t mind too much. 

“You’re my nicest thing,” he confesses softly, slipping down a bit to put his face closer to Ilya’s. 

“Hm, yes,” Ilya agrees. “You tell me this often when you have my cock in your as-” 

Shane splashes him in the face with a palmful of people soup. 

*

In a home game against Montreal, Comeau hisses out a one-two punch of a racial and a homophobic slur as they start to skate to the center line. Shane starts to grit his teeth, to shoulder it off-

-and then he skates to the ref and tells him what just happened. 

It galls him. It feels like admitting a weakness. It feels like admitting he can’t take it. 

You don’t get extra credit for suffering when you don’t have to, he hears Joy say in his head. You just get to suffer.

To his surprise, it isn’t Hayden or even JJ who backs him up, not when both of them weren’t yet close enough to hear it. It’s Montreal’s rookie, a lanky-looking right wing named…fuck, Shane doesn’t actually even know his first name, not after avoiding news about Montreal all season, just knows his last name is Ferguson. When he sees Shane looking at him in surprise, the kid shrugs. 

“We’re still gonna kick your ass, Hollander, but that shit’s fucked up.” 

Shane smiles, just slightly. 

“Thanks,” he says. “Sorry you’re about to get fucking wrecked.” 

Ferguson smiles. Shane smiles back. 

Comeau gets a match penalty and is ejected from the game.

Shane gives himself seven seconds to feel giddy disbelief about it, and then he gets his fucking head in the game. He loses the face-off, but he gets the puck back quickly. He speeds back across the ice, feeling Ilya close to him, orbiting like a moon around a planet. He doesn’t need to look. He just knows, feels his presence the way he feels his own limbs. He sends a blind pass that Ilya catches like they diagrammed it out ahead of time. They send it flinging back and forth between themselves, and Shane also knows without looking that Ilya is grinning around his mouthguard the same way he is. Ilya passes it back. Shane lines up the shot. He takes it. 

He scores. 

*

He’s tossing a ball for Anya in the back yard late one afternoon–Rosie more than content to sit on her outdoor bed to spectate and gnaw on a chew toy after a few rounds of participating before getting tired–when Ilya hits him with the conversational equivalent of a haymaker. 

“Some of the team has been talking about us being co-captains.” 

Anya gives him a look like she’s trying to figure out what his damage is when the statement, delivered in a deceptively neutral tone, makes his throw spike the ball into the ground barely a third of the way to where Anya was waiting. Ilya lifts his eyebrows at the fumble but doesn’t comment, and Shane ignores it when Anya grabs the ball, races up, and tries to give it back to him, as if willing to overlook his bad attempt and give him another chance. He ignores her, even as she tries to shove it right into his hand. 

“NHL rules don’t allow co-captains,” he says flatly, as if Ilya doesn't already know this.

Ilya shrugs. 

“They let captaincy trade off,” he says, voice still deceptively neutral. “Carolina did it a while ago, yes? One captain for home, one captain for away.” 

Shane feels his face heat. 

“I don’t need you giving me the C, Ilya,” he says, trying to remain calm, especially now that they’ve achieved some level of peace, but humiliated that his husband would-

Ilya extends his hand, fingers flexing when Shane just stares at him. He waggles his hand completely when Shane still doesn’t take it, finally leaning all the way forward and grabbing his wrist, tugging him to sit next to him on the porch swing. 

“Is not giving you anything,” he says, putting an arm around Shane’s shoulders and leaning back, taking him with him. Anya huffs out a breath, annoyed at a subpar throw and then fetch being put on pause altogether, but she just moves to join Rosie, both of them playing a quick round of “I’ll bite your face” “No, I’ll bite your face” with overdramatic noises before they settle. Ilya sets them to gentle rocking with a foot against the ground. “Wasn’t even my idea.” 

“No?” Shane asks, doubtful, mind still whirring as he tries to decide how he feels about it. 

“No,” Ilya says, pressing a kiss to his head. “You would not do it if it was my idea.” 

Shane would like to argue, but he’s not…wrong. Coming from Ilya, he would always have to wonder if it was just out of love or pity. Coming from someone else on the team, the people who already adore and respect Ilya, he would wonder…

Well, he doesn’t know yet. 

“Is not a bad idea, I don’t think. I can be captain at home where everyone loves me because they are very smart and good at their jobs,” Shane snorts, “and you can be captain in other places, where referees are very stupid and bad at making calls.” 

“You might not think that if you weren’t constantly setting records for time in the sin bin,” Shane says dryly. Ilya makes an offended noise, but his mock-offense is spoiled by the way he kisses Shane’s temple. 

“I know what your very beautiful brain is telling you, luchik, but is not pity.” Shane doesn’t comment. “You are a good player, Shane. You would be the best if I retired, but you are still very good in second place.” 

Shane very maturely doesn’t bring up the fact that Ilya has told him before that Shane is the better player. Dirty talk or not, it’s not like Shane has forgotten it. 

(...after all, he’s gotten himself off in the shower to the memory more than once since.)

“You work hard, you play fucking amazing, and even if you are very, very boring, the team likes you for some reason. I cannot figure out why, but I am told it is true.” 

“Wow,” Shane observes dryly. “The couch must be looking really comfortable if you’re trying this hard to end up sleeping on it tonight.” He brings his legs up, hooking his feet on the edge of the bench and tipping sideways to rest against Ilya, tucking his head under his chin, trying to figure out if he believes what he’s being told or not and needing the solidness of Ilya under him while he decides. 

“Is not the same as before,” Ilya says quietly, gliding a hand along his side. “But is something, yes?” 

“Sure you want to share the C?” Shane asks, keeping his voice light. “Thought you liked having it to yourself.” 

“I like you getting what you’ve worked for,” Ilya says, squeezing his side. “And not just because I love you. You are a good captain, Shane. You were captain for a reason.” 

Shane focuses very hard on staring at Anya’s abandoned ball. 

“People will say it’s just because you fuck me,” he observes. 

“Hm,” Ilya hums, kissing his head gently. “And I will tell them that no, it is just because you fuck me.” 

Shane laughs, unable to resist, and then he slips down a bit, propping his legs up and settling with his head on Ilya’s thigh. Ilya’s hand moves down, brushing over his hair gently and then cupping the side of his face, fingertips along his jaw. 

“I can’t make people stop talking,” Ilya says, and there’s a note of apology to his voice, because he’s a ridiculous man who holds himself to standards he shouldn’t when it comes to Shane’s happiness and well-being. 

Shane loves him so much it feels like he swallowed the sun. 

“But,” he says, fingers stroking lightly over Shane’s skin, “I can talk louder. You deserve to be a captain, Shane Hollander. Everyone else who says you shouldn’t is stupid and should walk into traffic, maybe.” 

“Harsh,” Shane says with a smile. 

“Hm, okay,” Ilya says, pretending to think, “just the ocean, maybe.” 

Shane rolls his eyes, turning to press his forehead against Ilya’s stomach. 

They sway together on the swing for a long, long time, until the setting sun and the creeping cold chases them back inside. They settle down on the couch together after flipping a coin toss for who gets to pick what to watch, curled up, Anya a content little half-moon at Ilya’s hip and Rosie a warm weight over Shane’s legs. 

*

As winner of the coin toss, Shane gets to pick what to watch, and just to hear Ilya bitch and moan about it, he picks the most boring-looking space documentary he can find from Nat Geo, only grinning wider as Ilya’s commentary gets increasingly loud. They only make it about halfway through before Ilya decides to try and save himself through seduction, and Shane resists as long as he can before succumbing. 

(So…approximately six and a half minutes.)

In the aftermath, dazed and lax and sweaty, Shane is still thinking of stars, and it makes him think of something his dad said years and years ago. 

“Did you know we’re made of stardust?” He asks, tilting his head up to look at Ilya, who yawns before looking back at him. 

“What?” He asks, brushing Shane’s hair back. 

“It’s something my dad told me years ago. Humans are made up of elements that came from the stars. Something about the big bang, maybe?” 

Ilya smirks, and Shane doesn’t even need him to speak to know exactly what punchline he’s thinking about. 

“You’re gross,” Shane says, stretching up to kiss him. 

“Stardust?” Ilya prompts after a long, lazy moment of making out. 

“Mm,” Shane agrees, settling down again. “Something something electrons in the elements something something magnetic draw something something drawing back together later.” 

“Very specific,” Ilya says with a laugh. “You are planning to go into science after retiring, or what?” 

“Shut up,” Shane complains, popping him on the stomach lightly. “I’m trying to be romantic.” 

Ilya makes a grand gesture for him to proceed, and Shane graciously ignores him being annoying in favor of continuing to try to be romantic despite his husband’s best efforts to ruin it. 

“I think maybe we’re made of the same star dust, you and me,” Shane says, pressing his cheek tighter against him. “I think we were always meant to find each other.” 

Ilya’s breath pauses, for just a moment, and then his hand moves up, pressing Shane’s face tighter to his shoulder. He feels it when Ilya kisses his head. 

“Moy krasivyy zvezda,” he says, and Shane knows the first two words enough to guess the third in this context, even if he’s never heard it before. Another lingering kiss to his head. “I am glad for my star dust, then. If it brought your star dust to me.” 

Shane smiles, reaches up for one more kiss, and then settles down again, sleepy and comfortable and so, so fucking in love. 

*

Of the calls he’s heard in his years of playing hockey, “Dog on the ice!” is a new one. 

Watching Rosie scramble over the ice with her eyes locked on a puck even as her legs do their best to go out from under her, though, he can’t say he minds the interruption too terribly, even if he should maybe be a little embarrassed that it’s his dog disrupting practice, only here at all because they’re waiting for his mom to pick her up for her appointment at the dog groomer and the rink was closer than their house, making it a little more convenient for his mom, who already had other errands to run today. With everyone else busy laughing, Ilya gets to her first, scooping her up easily like she isn’t 60 pounds of wriggling-because-she’s-pleased-with-herself golden retriever, ears flopping back when she tilts her head backwards to look right at Shane. 

“What do you have?” He asks, skating closer and noting the suspicious way she’s holding her mouth. “Give.” 

Rosie resists for a moment, unwilling to give up her prize after fighting so hard for it, but she’s ultimately too well-trained to refuse for too long, and she obediently drops her slobbery stolen treasure into his palm: a very, very gross hockey puck. 

“You were going for second one?” Ilya teases, kissing her head. “You are greedy like daddy.” 

“Getting on the ice at all?” Shane says flatly. “You have no manners like papa.” 

Ilya gives him a fake annoyed look, scrunching his face up, but it’s ruined when Shane returns the gesture, making him smile. He feels an impulse, and he catches it, remembering where they are-

-and then deciding on a course of fuck it, and leaning in to kiss his husband anyway, Rosie’s paw poking him in the chest in protest of getting squished between them. 

It’s the first time he’s ever kissed Ilya in front of their team besides their wedding, and he pulls back, his tension making Rosie try to nose at his chest…

…but everyone around them mostly ignoring them both. 

There are a couple of playful “whoo!”s, a couple of calls to save it for their bedroom, and a faux-scandalized yell of, “Over your baby? Sickos!”, but even those dissipate quickly, a couple of people giving Rosie a pat as they skate past but then continuing on, like Shane kissing his husband is normal and fine and-

-and not a problem, not here, at least. 

“Okay?” Ilya asks, voice quiet, shifting Rosie to a more secure hold. 

“Okay,” Shane says with a smile, before pushing himself back and nudging at Ilya’s arm. “Now get our daughter off the ice before she dislocates a hip, please.” 

*

Even though he knows he can’t, it’s almost as if he can feel the C on his chest as he steps into the arena for the first away game since the team voted on and agreed to his and Ilya’s split captaincy. It’s like he can feel the letter moving with him, rising and falling with each inhale and exhale, pushing his shoulders back straight like it has reverse gravitational pull. Stupid as he knows it is, it’s like he can breathe easier with it on his chest. 

(Though that might also be down to the breathing exercises he did in the locker room as prescribed by Joy, a subtle, easily-hidden routine, aided by a pair of earplugs to dim the noise to something a little less frantic and a little easier to breathe through.) (It’s a compromise he’s made with himself only recently, that last little detail, something that felt like an admission of weakness until Joy gave him a look when he finally said as much out loud in therapy and asked, “So KT tape and shoulder pads are admitting weakness, too, or…?”)

The roar of the crowd hits him like a physical thing, and his first impulse is to try and pick out the boos, to listen for the jeers so he knows what the worst thing said about him will be, so he can prepare for it, feel it now so it won’t hurt later, go into this knowing-

We get good at what we practice, Joy told him a while ago in one of their sessions, when he directed a statement about how many people are happy when he fails to Rosie’s soft fur, sitting on the floor with her because the session had felt heavy but it had rested easier when Rosie’s weight was on his lap. You know that more than most people, I imagine. You practice your skating. You practice your stick handling. You practice your speed and your turns and your teamwork. You get good at it because you do it all the time. It’s the same with our brains. What we practice is what we get good at. What do you want to get good at? 

He tilts his head towards the little section of Ottawa fans, enough to hear them better. It’s not big, not for this team and not this far away, but it’s not empty, either. When he strains his ears–fresh and not overly sensitive thanks to wearing his earplugs in the locker room–he can hear his name, a three-beat chant. Holl-and-er, Holl-and-er, Holl-and-er. He doesn’t know what other people are yelling. It’s too distorted, too many overlapping voices, too much reverb in the arena. He could pick it out, if he wanted. He could figure out exactly what other people have to say about him. 

Instead he listens to the chant of his name. It’s small, but it’s present. 

And it’s his. 

We get good at what we practice. 

He knows who’s at his shoulder before he even looks. 

“Ready?” He asks Ilya, glancing at him. 

“Ready, Captain,” Ilya says with a nod and an easy smile. 

Shane returns both. 

And then he moves forward, leading his team onto the ice.