Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander & Rose Landry, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Rose Landry, Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Shane Hollander is a centaur, Ilya Rozanov is a Raider, Coming Out, Bad Montreal Metros Team and WAGS, Slight shade to Jackie, Shane and Ilya did not hook up before Rookie year, Unreliable Narrator, I cannot emphasize how unreliable Shane is as a narrator here, he misses so much

Language:

English

Series:

Part 13 of here a fic there a fic everywhere a fic-fic

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-14 Words: 5,543 Chapters: 1/1

rocky mountain way

Summary

It takes the end of the season, a "friendly kidnapping" (that is parent approved), and seven Moscow mules before he'll talk about it, honestly, to Rose.

"It's okay if you're still upset about it," she says, which is a thing she's said before.

Before he always just says he's not. But he's warm and comfortable and they're alone, and he's a little drunk, so he looks out over the view of the city through the glass doors of the balcony and says. "I am so pissed about it."

Notes

Was listening to Rocky Mountain Way by Joe Walsh when I needed a title.

For fic a day, day 13, the word for me today is seal.

I really enjoy fics that have the WAGs being super supportive of Hollanov, but any time I think about something too much I start to consider other ways it might go. And I had seen some, Shane and Ilya don't get together and then Shane comes out on his own later fics, and these two got mashed into one thing in my head. This is that thing.

There's a fair amount of self indulgent wish fulfillment in this one, in terms of what it might be possible to do, and some realistic bits, and some just silly bits. It's up to you to decide which is which, good luck.

Unbeta'd because I just finished typing and quite frankly it's bedtime and I wouldn't want to inflict "fifteen minutes to beta" on anyone. Someday I may edit it slightly (there may be typos, I tried but, well, fic a day month.)

It takes the end of the season, a "friendly kidnapping" (that is parent approved), and seven Moscow mules before he'll talk about it, honestly, to Rose.

"It's okay if you're still upset about it," she says, which is a thing she's said before.

Before he always just says he's not. But he's warm and comfortable and they're alone, and he's a little drunk, so he looks out over the view of the city through the glass doors of the balcony and says. "I am so pissed about it."

Everything feels syrupy, slow, and surreal. He'd been Rose's date to the Met Gala the year before and there had been landscapes that looked soft and dreamlike hung next to the costumes she'd wanted to look at. That's how he feels, like he's in one of those paintings.

He takes another drink of his Moscow mule. He'd never had one before Rose. Hockey bros think drinking anything but beer means you're gay, and up until his secret was spilled he spent a lot of time making sure no one thought he was gay.

Too late now.

But honestly probably better he didn't find something he liked to drink before this. Because beer tastes shitty and shots are gross so he never got super drunk which would've effected his performance. Or hell, maybe his secret would've come out sooner.

Though maybe if he'd just blurted it out, drunk, they would've all laughed it off and made it clear he better not be and he wouldn't have risked trying to tell just a few friends.

"Good," Rose says, "you should be pissed. It was such a beyond shitty thing to do!"

Shane rolls his head against the back of the couch so he can look at her. She's leaning against the arm rest, her toes shoved under his thigh, and scowling. She looks like an angry bunny. "I feel like I have to forgive Hayd at least," he admits to her.

"You absolutely do not!" she says, sitting up straight which pulls her feet out and she's leaning forward and putting her hand on his shoulder.

He doesn't always like physical contact — he definitely hasn't liked all physical contact with her, but they've worked through that — but this is nice. "It's not like, really his fault though."

"Bullshit!" she says and squeezes his shoulder and leans in. "You asked him not to tell anyone, right? You told me that. You said he and JJ promised not to tell anyone."

"Yeah but it's —" he looks away from her, can't deal with her righteous fury on his behalf. "She's his wife."

"She's a bitch!" Rose exclaims, hands flailing enough that he is vaguely concerned she's going to somehow knock something over, even though there's nothing remotely breakable around them. She's the most breakable thing in the room. Or maybe he is. His whole body is a bruise at this point and one of his toes is still broken. (JJ and Hayd hadn't been the only two watching his back, despite everything, but he's never made it through playoffs without feeling like he's gone through a grinder and he doubts he ever will). One of them for sure.

He can feel his mouth twist into something ugly. He's glad they're alone. Though, of course, they wouldn't be having this conversation if they weren't. He turns his head to look up at the ceiling. They're at Rose's long term rental. He thinks with how often she's filming in Montreal she should buy a place — but not this place. This place does not have good bones. "She thought they'd be cool about it. Supportive." He can hear the bitchy, mocking tone he takes but it's just Rose so he doesn't stop it, as he repeats what he was told. "'It's hip to hang out with gay people these days.'"

"Oh my god," she says and collapses against his side. "That's what she said?"

"'They're not going to tell anyone, you're over reacting,'" he continues.

"I have a few very dedicated fans," Rose muses, "I bet I could manage to get them to slash her tires if I did some like subliminal messaging in my next tweet."

They both consider that for a moment and then Shane snorts and Rose snickers and they dissolve. Shane does not tell Rose that Jackie had been so excited when they'd been dating and that she kept trying to get Rose to come with him to dinner. He does not tell her that he half thinks that the reason Jackie told the WAGs was because she was paranoid that Shane was attracted to her husband but that he suspects his failure to bring Rose around so that she could be friends with a movie star might've also had something to do with it. He doesn't tell her because Rose already hates her, hates her for him since he still can't even if he's pissed as hell, and there's no reason for her to hate her more.

Later, after they've eaten — carry out, neither of them can cook and drinking and cooking is dangerous besides — Rose claps both hands together and leans forward.

"Alright, what's the plan?"

Shane considers, shrugs. "Play for Ottawa and hope the gossip doesn't reach the front office."

"That's stupid," she says. "All the Metros know and now that you're not there you know they're going to be losing and bitter about it. So they're going to spread it. You've got to get ahead of it."

"Being gay lost me my room," he says. "I was there for eight years, Rose, I can't —"

"You still won the Cup," she points out, reasonably. "Again."

He makes a face. "Great, so the timing of my outing was the best possible option. After we'd already cinched our spot with a little time for the wheels to fall off before the playoffs. But if Buffalo and Los Angeles hadn't shat the bed we absolutely wouldn't have gotten it. Like, that was shit hockey. I'm embarrassed for all of us."

"You played beautifully!" she protests and shakes him by his shoulder until he laughs and nods. He doesn't agree with her, but he knows when to pick his battles. "So you won another cup even though you're gay. So like, win a cup with Ottawa and then come out and it'll be so clear that they were morons and you're the best."

The look he gives her is deeply disappointed. "Ottawa is not going to win the cup next year."

"They have you now!"

He rolls his eyes so hard he thinks he strains something. "Yeah, me and they traded for a good goalie. We have okay wings, but no real depth at center and defense is a fucking joke. We'd need, at minimum, another good center — not an okay one but a good one — and at least three people who fucking know how to defend."

She sniffs. "Okay, so you're not going to win the cup. You can still get them to the playoffs with just you and a good goalie."

She's exaggerating. She knows she's exaggerating. But. "Maybe," he grants her.

"Ottawa hasn't even made it to the playoffs in like forever. So if you do that, they'll love you."

He makes another face. Montreal also hadn't made it to the playoffs for ages but. Well. Not quite as long as Ottawa. "You think?" he asks, unhappy with how his voice wavers. He doesn't think about how the Metros hadn't made playoffs his first two years, hadn't gotten the cup until he'd been with them five years. Doesn't let himself consider what's going to happen if the Ottawa barn is just as shitty as Montreal.

If he's going to loose hockey.

"Absofuckinglutely!" she assures him and pulls him into a hug. "You just won the cup. Get them to the playoffs, and then come out and it's a big fuck you to the Metros and like I can have so many leading men taking you out you don't even know. You are actor catnip, okay?"

"Okay," he says, blinking away the wetness in his eyes. "But like, what if I don't want to date an actor?"

She hits him with a pillow.

The gossip that Hollander is gay doesn't hit the Raiders until after the trade, but it lights up the group chat in the off season when it does.

Ilya sees the first text roll in and is filled with mixed emotions.

On one hand, Hollander is the hottest man he's ever seen and this is great news for him personally, on the other, it seems very likely his team is going to be shitty about this and then he's going to have to kill all of them.

He's already formulating how he can convince coach to start a bag skate heavy training regime when the rest of the texts start.

There's a lot of shock, a surprisingly small amount of disgust, and then:

Okay, who wants to take one for the team and try to seduce him so that we throw him off his game?

I volunteer

me!

oh i could do that

don't mind if i do

fyeah

lemme at him

And then, while Ilya's brain feels like it's leaking out of his ears, St-Simon speaks logic into the chat.

Full on delusional if you think any of you are good enough to throw Hollander off his game. Get real.

Ilya decides to step in then.

I hear about anyone being shitty to Hollander about this and I will send you home crying.

He hopes no one tries to test him, because he's got to figure out his seduction plan — not to throw him off his game, just to get him.

Shane honestly didn't think they'd manage it. Like, at the start of the season he'd absolutely thought getting to the playoffs themselves was a long shot. Coaching staff was new, which usually meant they'd all have to figure out how to work together and fail a lot to get there. But that hadn't been what happened.

They'd gotten Barrett shortly after the start of the season, and their rookie was actually really fucking good, and Hayes was a fucking wall and — and apparently gossip had traveled enough around the league that he was getting just a wild increase of the standard slurs thrown at him and Shane discovered that channeling all of his rage into hockey actually worked. Plus Longdon had traded in, which even Shane had side eyed him for, because everyone knew he was going to retire soon and he wanted a cup but.

But it was a lot to bet on. He'd apparently believed Weibe when he told him they were going to get the cup if they'd joined.

Having a good defenseman — and Longdon was an All Star of defense — had made all the difference. And they'd gotten Price as well, cheap after his breakdown. Which fucking sucked. But having good defense? Fuck. They wouldn't have made it without them.

Especially with how many penalties people seemed incapable of not pulling against Shane. If he hadn't had good defense he would've fucking died.

And sure, he was pissed, and he was willing to blow a kiss if it got someone to lose their goddamn mind and try to fight him.

Which wasn't sustainable.

He knew that.

He'd been dealing with racial slurs his whole life, and the standard cocksucker of course because most of the players thought that was the highest insult. They seemed real pissed to find out they'd been right.

Somehow the things that annoyed Shane the most weren't the slurs, but the ones who called him "pretty boy" repeatedly, or kept mocking him, asking if he wanted to go out with them. It was fucking obnoxious and it was fine.

Shane was a wellspring of rage. He might still be, he's not sure.

But he has another fucking cup — he is the only active player with four cups and that's not nothing — and the Centaurs have gone all in on him. So.

So he talks to his parents. He talks to his agent. He talks to Rose.

And he comes out.

It is tasteful, careful, targeted.

Three prongs. A social media post. A longer article in Out Magazine. And a Buzzfeed video interview where he and Rose are interviewing each other.

The social media post is mostly the work of Farah, a slideshow of him with awards and family, and of course, hoisting the cup four fucking times, and a simple statement of: "Hockey should be for everyone, but the existing biases make it hard for people to break that ground. I want to be clear that I have been gay from the first moment I ever set foot on ice. I have been gay for every win and every loss. I love hockey and I hope others like me will get the chance to love it as well. #HockeyForAll"

The longer article is fairly dry, and he's careful not to name any names or spend too long talking about issues he's had since coming out, but it's easy enough to read many of them between the lines.

As for the Buzzfeed interview? That goes viral.

The questions go back and forth between superficial and personal. So he talks about his favorite season (fall), and then says that he's single. And Rose goes on a mini-rant about humidity and trying to keep her hair from looking greasy and talks about her favorite restaurant.

His team — and Rose's team, but separately — looked over and approved all of the questions. But the order that Rose asks them in is up to her.

"So what's your type?" she says, next, settling forward in the director's chairs they have both of them in, clasping the note cards between her hands.

He arches an eyebrow at her. "Guys."

"Shaaaane," she complains, waving her cards at him, and he laughs.

"I'm not sure that I have a type," he admits, which is the better version of 'I've been trying so hard to pretend I'm not gay my whole life that I've done my best not to notice anyone I might've found attractive.' Which is, to be fair, something Rose knows and not an answer she's going to try to force out of him.

But she doesn't let it go, which he was kind of expecting. "Really, you don't have anything that makes you attracted to specific guys?"

He taps his cards against his thigh and considers, before shrugging. He knows he could stop it here. This isn't live, only what he agrees to will go into the final video. But, well, why not? "I don't know, I guess someone who is driven?"

"Do you mean famous?" she asks, delighted, "are you a clout chaser, Shane Hollander?"

He laughs and shakes his head. "No like, I mean they could be. But that's not it. Someone who is doing something they're passionate about and is good at that."

"So like an A-list actor?" she pushes.

He rolls his eyes. "No, like. Sure, some A-list Actors are super passionate about their projects, but you cannot tell me you were that passionate about fucking Under Dark, I won't believe you. I'd rather have like a D-list actor who's only doing small independent projects they really care about, you know?"

"That hurts me, personally," she says. "So you're not interested in like sports guys?"

Shane shrugs, "I mean I could be. But I don't know much about anything but hockey, and I've got more cups than anyone else right now, so like, how dedicated can they be?"

She laughs at him. "So what, everyone else you just need them to be passionate but hockey they need to be good?"

"Yeah," he says with a shrug, "that seems right." And then, because whatever, fuck it, he adds. "Like, at least one cup win and another award or why bother, you know?"

And of course that's the part that goes fucking viral. Not the part where Rose admits how much blue paint she ended up ingesting during filming.

Ilya has spent the entire last season hitting on Hollander just on the rumor that he was gay. Now he knows for sure and — well.

He had flirted as hard as it was possible for a person to flirt when facing off over a puck, which isn't as hard as he could flirt off ice of course, but it also isn't nothing.

And Hollander had ignored it.

Is Ilya somehow not his type?

That's stupid, Ilya knows that he's everyone's type. Well, everyone who is attracted to men but he's pretty sure he's made more than one person realize they are attracted to men.

He'd tried everything, flattery, negging, pick up lines, innuendos, sexy looks — everything!

Well, everything short of a strip tease but again, not the sort of thing he could do on the ice.

He doesn't normally have to go to so much effort to seal the deal and to be honest it's kind of hot.

Especially now he has confirmation that Hollander is gay, and the only conclusion he can come to, as to why his very blatant come ons were ignored during every face off, is that Ilya doesn't have enough cups. It's rare that someone makes him work for it.

Sure, Hollander said one cup and "another" award, but Ilya is one of the most decorated hockey players — and he didn't get any of his cups on the back of Hollander, so that has to count for more.

Which means, that Boston has to win the cup this year.

It's the only way.

Most of the room had heard he was gay before even halfway through the season and they had not responded badly about it overall. There were still guys who would wait to shower until he was done or leave if he went it when they were there as well. Always the ugliest motherfuckers too, like they thought 'shitty player on a shitty team with a shitty face' was even remotely his type.

And sure, yeah, okay. They all have a cup win under their belts now, but it happened despite those shitty players, not because of them. And when they look at him he knows they know it, and he knows they know he knows it.

He can only imagine how rancid the group chat they must've made is, but that's fine. Because the first line is good with him, and most of the second line as well. And the coaches! The coaches are great. And that's all he cares about, because that's what lets him continue to play.

And even bigots are more willing to play with him now, with four cups to his name.

He's sure they're not the only ones saying shit about him, of course, but his management agency manages his social media accounts, and he only takes brief looks when Rose or JJ send him a link or a screen shot.

He'd had to have a super awkward conversation early on that the team managing his social media does not need to tell him about people messaging him. He assumes that it's mostly just Metros fans who are pissed at him anyways.

So Harris telling him that apparently the bulk of the messages are people trying to ask him out is baffling.

"Wait, what," he says, staring down at the iPad that Harris had shoved into his hands.

"I talked to your management agency of course," Harris says, "but we're getting people auditioning to date you on all the team channels and also as replies to some of the posts and I just think we need to come up with a different strategy than ignoring them."

"Uh," Shane says, because he's too busy reading some of the messages on the screen. Most of them do not seem complimentary. "Are you sure they're interested in me? This person wants to chew on me, that seems bad."

Harris doesn't say anything for long enough that Shane looks up to check if he's left or something. But he's standing there, just staring at Shane, with an absolutely befuddled look on his face. "Oh boy," he says, before reaching over and taking the iPad out of Shane's hands. "Nevermind, I'll figure something out with your management agency."

Later, Shane will recount the conversation to Rose and she will laugh so hard she accidentally hangs up on him.

"Alright," Harris says, clapping his hands together, "We're going to do this one at a time, so who wants to go first?"

The rest of the Centaurs — not the whole team, just the half of them who had been ushered in, take a step back. Haas is a moment slower than the rest so Shane fixes him with a glare as he does it, but Shane doesn't take the step back.

He's captain, this is his job. It's fine. It's not like he absolutely hates the social media part of his job the most. It's fine.

Harris giggles extra high pitched for some reason, but that's when Clarence ducks in, "We need Shane real quick," and Shane cheerfully ducks out before he finds out whatever the fuck has Harris nervous giggling.

Shane does try to drag the meeting out with Coach Weibe a little longer than it needs to go, but unfortunately he's ushered back to the social media room when he's done, so he failed.

The guys are standing around looking disheveled — like they had a food fight with fruit.

His gut sinks as Harris grins at him. "It's your turn, Captain, the time to beat is currently Bood's, and you just gotta get the fruit open quicker then he did."

"Great," Shane says, and then peels an orange as fast as he ever has, gets the banana out of it's peel, knocks the coconut against the table just below the "eyes" until it cracks and then opens that up with his hands, and then sits on the floor and crushes the watermelon between his thighs.

Harris is staring at him, slack jawed, stopwatch still going. Shane would worry about that but they can get the time from the video, so it'll be accurate. A few of the guys swear. Shane offers them some watermelon.

"Did I win?" he asks after he stands up, he's reassured with Harris nods, slowly, and takes the excuse to go and shower off.

Connors shoves the phone in his face before he's all the way through the doorway, and hits play immediately so Ilya doesn't have time to ask question.

The Centaur's ugly logo flashes by — they really should just put a photo of Hollander as their mascot at this point, he is all anyone cares about on that team after all — and then a voice over starts as it pans through a group of the team. "We asked the team who could get to all the fruit as fast as possible."

"Of course they'd use fruit," says one of the rookies, and Ilya hears the sound of flesh hitting flesh before he can look up.

"Have some fucking respect," Vinnie says, "Shane fucking Hollander has more rings than any living player." Ilya decides he can deal with terrorizing the rookie later. The rest of the team had gotten real good at avoiding hate speech after Hollander had officially come out, he's keeping a mental tally of which ones would move to Ottawa if Hollander so much as arched an eyebrow. The tally is basically the whole team. He's accepted that.

The pan stops and shows an orange sitting on a table. The voice that comes is one of the players, Ilya recognizes it but it takes a moment for him to place it, "Did you just bite that orange?" It's Boodram.

The image of an orange is replaced by a banana on the table. "Oh my god," Hayes says, "have you never seen a banana before?"

Now it's a coconut. "Uh, don't you need like special equipment to open these?" says a voice, accent Ilya doesn't immediately place. Maybe Danish?

Then it's a watermelon. There's the sound of a groan and then Barrett says, "Holy mother of god," and Shane Hollander says, "Does anyone want some watermelon?"

And for an instant the shot is of Shane on the floor, holding up a piece of watermelon, it's gone too quickly for Ilya to see all the details but his throat goes dry. A date two days in the future flashes on the screen and then it goes dark.

Ilya immediately pulls out his own phone to watch it again.

Later, he will worry about what the Raiders social media people are getting up to, as he spots them clustered around an iPad which is surely going to leave him and the rest of the team doing some nonsense. The last time they'd had them doing a trend was the ice bucket challenge and they'd done it in November and even with his Russian blood it had been cold as shit.

But he has to watch it again and try to pause it to see if he's right and if Shane Hollander has a crushed watermelon between his thighs in that last shot.

Confirmation might kill him, but what a way to go.

The team is still good — but it's not a cup winning team, and that's obvious during the first few weeks of pre-season. Even with the summer break, a lot of the vets are limping (figuratively speaking), they lost the strongest of their d-corps to retirement and between the call ups and the rooks there's a lack of cohesion.

He's pretty sure they'll make it close to the playoffs, maybe into them, but it would take every other team just absolutely falling apart at the seams for them to get further than that. And he somehow doubts that's going to happen again so soon after the last time.

Shane tries to be relaxed about it. Which he mainly does by deciding he can still win the scoring race, even if it's not going to help the team.

Gratifyingly, something seems to have lit a fire under the asses of a lot of other players and there's a lot more competition for the scoring race than usual — usually it's him and Rozanov in the lead and someone else lagging behind.

Probably, he realizes when some of the guys are joking with him during a barbecue at Bood's, a lot of people don't want a homo to win anymore awards.

Fuck them, he's going to beat all of them — and this year his team might not be ready for a cup but he can put in the leg work to get them there for next year.

He still has a place here, with this team, and he's going to get them more cups but — but it'll be okay to not try to chase the impossible this year.

"If we do not win this cup," Ilya tells his teammates, "I am going to drive all of you into the dark and leave you there. Do you understand? I will kill you."

"Roz, buddy," Marley tries to soften his message, but Ilya is one game away from winning the cup, and if he wins the cup he can get Hollander, and they are not going to fuck this up for him!

He draws a line across his neck .

"Alright, alright," Marley says, clapping his hands together and drawing the attention of the locker room, "Cap wants to win fair, uh, other captain, so we gotta lock in and help him get this cup, yeah?"

A cheer goes up.

"I can't fucking hear you! Are we going to get this fucking cup?"

It's a much louder cheer, and logically, Ilya can see why Marley's version is more socially acceptable.

But also if they don't win the cup he is going to kill them, so the warning feels polite.

Shane is just finishing packing for heading to the cottage, all of his brand obligations are done for the summer, and he'll have a solid two weeks before he has to come back for pre-season training.

The trash is taken out and the fridge is empty of any perishables.

He puts on his glasses to double check the list that he made after he forgot to take out the trash and came back to such a stench in his first apartment that he had to have the cleaning service spend like a week there before he could go back in. If he hadn't been on his first contract he probably just would've sold and bought something new.

He's just verified that he's done all the necessary steps and has everything he needs when there's a knock on his door.

His parents have already headed up to their cottage, but his team knows he's leaving today so maybe someone needs something? He really hopes it's not one of those kids trying to sell him something, he always feels obligated to put in an order but it's embarrassing to figure out who to give the chocolate or cookies or whatever to.

He checks his doorbell camera, telling himself that it's not really lying if he doesn't go to the door if it's a kid — and then freezes.

What the hell is Ilya Rozanov doing at his door?

There's another knock, and then Rozanov seems to find the actual doorbell and presses it. And then again.

Fucks sake, he's obnoxious.

Shane cracks his neck and shakes out his shoulders, and then heads to the door. "What are you doing here, Rozanov?" he asks as soon as the door is open.

"Glasses," Rozanov says, frozen, hand raised to knock again.

"For fucks —" Shane takes his glasses off and Rozanov makes a noise. "What are you doing here?"

"Can you put the glasses back on?" he asks, hand finally lowering.

Shane frowns at him, "What?"

"The glasses," Rozanov says, tapping his cheek below his eye, "on please."

Shane fiddles with them for half a moment before putting them back on. It's not like he has somewhere better to put them after all. "Are you happy?"

"Extremely," Rozanov says, grinning.

Shane rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. "Now will you tell me what you're doing here?"

"Everyone tells me how polite Canadians are, especially how polite Shane Hollander is, and you don't even invite me inside?" Rozanov says, rocking slightly on his heels.

Shane rolls his eyes harder but pushes the door open and gestures in, sarcastically, "Fine, come on in. Why are you here?"

"I am doing very well, thank you for asking. How are you?" Rozanov says as he steps inside — and annoyingly seems to clock that Shane is in house slippers and slips his shoes off and places them in the tray before padding further into Shane's house.

"Are you seriously just here to annoy me?" Shane asks, and then, because it's going to bother him. "And I'm fine."

"Yes, you are," Rozanov says, glancing over his shoulder and looking down at Shane's feet and then up to his face. "And no, not here to annoy you. Here to ask you out."

"Excuse me?" Shane has had a number of Russian teammates, and he quickly runs through the possible misinterpretations before it makes sense. "Oh, you mean like take me out, like fight me? I'm not going to fight you, what the hell."

"No, no," Rozanov says, turning around and holding his hand up by his face and Shane realizes for the first time that he's wearing both of his championship rings like an asshole. One of his brands had him wear all for rings for a shoot recently and he felt like such a tool the whole time, and here Rozanov is just running around like that, on purpose. "I mean take you out like date."

"What?" Shane asks, brain blank.

"I won the cup this year," Rozanov says, slowly, patiently, "so I can ask you out on date. Or to be my boyfriend. Fiance would also be okay I think, but I will have to get you a ring, I did not bring any others."

There is a ringing noise in Shane's ears that he can't place, as Ilya Rozanov stands in his living room and asks him out.

"Uh — that's — I — what," Shane stutters.

"It's lunch time," Rozanov continues, like Shane isn't falling to pieces right there, "Is there a good restaurant you like? We can go now."

"I was going to drive to the cottage," Shane manages, "and eat once I got there."

Rozanov considers, then nods, "Alright, I accept, I will come with you to your cottage." He seems to spot Shane's bag then and he grabs it and then grabs the keys off of Shane's wall hook, slips his shoes back on, and heads out to the garage and by the time Shane has got his shoes on and followed, Rozanov is loading a bag that Shane doesn't recognize next to his bag in the back of his Jeep. He closes the hatch and then heads for the passenger door.

Shane hesitates, then grabs his sunglasses and slips his glasses into that case and heads for the drivers side door.

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