Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

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, (more at the end than the start), Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Feels, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Soft Ilya Rozanov, Depressed Ilya Rozanov, Anxious Shane Hollander, Insomnia, Anxiety, Husbands, Autistic Shane Hollander, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Non-Explicit Sex, Good Significant Other Ilya Rozanov, Good Significant Other Shane Hollander, Cars

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-17 Words: 10,060 Chapters: 1/1

knockout

Summary

“That’s not-” Shane starts, but he stops himself. Ilya tilts his head slightly in question, but Shane bites the inside of his cheek and then shakes his head slightly, cheeks flushing. “I do trust you,” Shane says.

“But not with your car?” Ilya asks. “You are afraid I will drive all the boring out of it?”

Shane rolls his eyes.

“It’s a good car-” He starts in another refrain of one of his favorite summer songs.

Ilya rolls them and pins his boyfriend under him before he has to hear about four wheel drive and gas mileage again.

There are far better uses for Shane’s mouth, after all.

(in which ilya learns that being a passenger in the car knocks shane tf out)

Notes

hi. so i had the idea on tumblr of "oh man how funny would it be if shane conks tf out on car rides and thus always tries to be the driver" and then the thought wouldn't leave me alone until it was a story

also!! this takes place in a verse in which shane joined boston instead of ilya leaving and going to ottawa because i am a boston shane truther. "pen, how did that come to pass in this fic?" that is beyond the scope of this paper thank you for your understanding.

enjoy!

It’s not that Ilya minds sitting pretty in the passenger seat, really. 

It’s just that after a certain amount of trips spent there while his boyfriend hogs the steering wheel, it starts to feel a little suspicious that he never gets a turn driving the most boring car in the world around rural Canada. 

“Just enjoy the view,” Shane says during today’s effort at getting a turn as driver. 

“The view of trees?” Ilya asks dubiously, eyebrows arching above his sunglasses. “They look the same as last year. Done.” 

He checks the impulse to return the backhanded slap to the arm the comment earns him only by remembering at the last moment that it’s probably not the best idea to hit the driver. He flicks Shane’s ear in compromise. 

“Why do you even want to drive?” Shane persists, slowing down like a grandmother and putting on his turn signal even though Ilya estimates they still have approximately thirty years before they reach the intersection in front of them. (Ilya knows by now that it must have been David who taught Shane to drive like a senior citizen. From a grand total of two rides with her at this point, he knows Yuna knows how to use the full capabilities of her gas pedal unlike the rest of her family.) (Something he’s reminded Shane of repeatedly to no effect yet.) “You hate my car.” 

“I do not hate your car,” Ilya corrects. “I just think your car is extremely boring. Makes me want to sleep just looking at it.” He grins. “It matches you.” 

“Fuck off,” Shane says, though he’s smiling when he says it. “It’s good in snow-”

“-and has great gas mileage and storage,” Ilya recites in unison with him, the usual defense Shane offers of his car when Ilya has decided he needs a reminder that it’s the most boring car in the entire world. “See? If it’s so great, I should get turn, yes? Yes.” 

“You don’t even know your way around up here,” Shane says, and Ilya wonders distantly if he’s ever going to get better at making up excuses when he doesn’t want to say what he’s actually thinking. “This is only your second summer here.” 

“Is not a complicated place, Shane. There are five turns to grocery store and eight turns to little stand you like to buy eggs at and seven turns to coffee shop in town.” He smirks, resting a hand on his boyfriend’s thigh and squeezing suggestively, slowly creeping his hand up, thumb firm on the muscle beneath it even as it twitches. “Even less turns to that side road where we-” 

“I am driving!” Shane says, and Ilya desists, hearing the genuine note of refusal in his voice. He picks Shane’s hand up off of the gear shift long enough to press a kiss of apology to it, keeping custody of it when he’s done. 

“Fine,” Ilya sighs in overdramatic resignation, slumping back in his seat to demonstrate how incredibly wounded he is and how brave he’s being about it. “I will stay passenger princess even though you take five hours to get anywhere.” 

When Shane refuses to acknowledge his great injury, he steals his sunglasses in punishment, stacking them on top of his own and scolding Shane about keeping his hands at 10 and 2 when he tries to blindly make a grab to get them back. 

*

“-fuck, fuck, Ilya, oh fuck-” 

It’s hard to remember his goal in this round of sex with Shane so pretty and pliant and desperate beneath him, back arched and skin flushed and hands gripping the sheets like they’re the only thing keeping him tethered to earth, and it’s a few more thrusts of his hips than he means to allow before he collects his thoughts beyond “fuck, he’s so beautiful like this” and manages to stop. 

There is a profound moment of stillness before Shane’s head comes up sharply, the haze of his near-climax warring with the daggers he’s suddenly glaring at him at the audacity of denying him when he’s so close. 

Ilya raises his eyebrows in question. 

“Need something?” He asks innocently. 

“Fuck. Me.” Shane demands, and if looks could kill, Ilya would be dead on the ground right now. 

As it is, the barely-leashed anger he can see in Shane’s eyes serves only to make sure he stays hard as a rock during this little negotiation of theirs. 

“Let me drive,” he says calmly, and for a moment, Shane looks at him like he’s wondering if he’s truly lost his mind. 

Then he gets a fistful of Ilya’s hair, tugging. 

“Fuck. Me.” He says again, horny and imperious, and it takes a great amount of willpower to remind himself that he has a goal here when he has a boyfriend being such a delicious brat in front of him, practically begging to be put in his place. Even remembering his plan, he still can’t resist a few thrusts in response to the beautiful sting of Shane pulling his hair, stopping as soon as his boyfriend releases him in favor of gripping the pillow beneath his head, arching back up into the pleasure, so sure he’s gotten his way because Ilya likes spoiling him. 

When Ilya stops again, he actually thinks for a moment that Shane is going to get physically violent about it. 

He’s as turned on as he is amused. 

“You want to come?” He asks, like it’s actually a question. “Next time, I get to drive.” 

He grabs Shane’s hand and pins it to the mattress when he reaches for his own cock in a clear threat to finish himself off without any need for Ilya’s help, the cock still in his ass be damned. When Shane lets out a growl and reaches with the other, it gets pinned as well. 

He sees the moment Shane shifts tactics, relaxing into the hold instead of pushing back. 

Knowing he’s about to be manipulated isn’t the same as being immune, though. 

“Please,” Shane says, softer in an instant. “Please fuck me. Ty mne nuzhen. Pozhaluysta.” 

Ilya swallows hard, head going light when even more blood rushes southwards. There’s a flicker of a satisfied smile on Shane’s face, there and gone again in an instant. 

“Pozhaluysta, ser. Mne nuzhen vash chlen.” 

Ilya groans, abandoning his plans in an instant for the more pressing business of fucking his boyfriend through the mattress. 

*

“You play dirty,” he tells Shane later, when they’re both (relatively) cleaned up and curled up together in the bed, the comforter kicked to the bottom of the mattress but the top sheet resting over them against the slight chill from the air conditioner. 

(He will never admit it under pain of death, but he can admit that Shane’s foresight on the occasions he gets long enough to put a towel down before they fuck does make the afterglow a little easier to enjoy.) 

(Not that Shane will ever hear him say it, of course.)

Shane huffs a breath, not bothering to lift his head from its place on Ilya’s shoulder. 

“You literally tried to edge me into giving you what you want, asshole. That was dirtier.” 

“Was strategy,” Ilya informs him, pausing his light strokes along Shane’s side to deliver a pinch. “Very good strategy. Is part of why I’m a better hockey player than-” His mouth is closed for him by a firm hand at his chin. 

“You should stop talking before you ruin your chances for a round two,” Shane informs him. 

Ilya snorts, unconcerned by the threat. The day Shane Hollander isn’t ready to go at any moment for sex is the day he’ll know the world has truly turned upside down. 

“You think I am bad driver,” he says when he has been released, and he feels Shane pause from where he was shifting to settle down in the position Ilya knows he likes to sleep in. 

“...no,” Shane says. 

It’s as unconvincing as it ever is when he’s not telling the truth. 

“I have never been in accident,” Ilya informs him. “Which is more than you can s-”

“I was rear ended!” Shane protests, shoving himself upright on an elbow to glare. “I was not at fault.” 

“Mmm,” Ilya hums dubiously, barely resisting the urge to smile when it winds Shane up the way it does every single time he reminds his boyfriend that he’s the only one of the two of them that’s never been in a car accident. “I don’t know how traffic police work here because I have never had to meet them. Maybe you just pay them to say that.” 

“I didn’t!” Shane says hotly, and really, it shouldn’t be legal for someone to look so angry and cute at the same time. Ilya briefly weighs the costs and benefits of pinching his cheek. Benefit: he really wants to. 

Con: Shane might drown him in the lake about it. 

“The man behind me was texting and driving and failed to stop before-” 

Ilya closes his eyes and tunes out a bit as Shane recites the full details for his apparent benefit. 

*

“It really bothers you?” Shane asks the moment Ilya opens his eyes the next morning because God forbid he give him even five seconds to fully wake up before he’s full speed forward on whatever has him looking so alert when the sun’s barely up. 

“What?” He asks, voice rough from sleep. He shifts enough to get a hand loose to rub his eyes. Shane readjusts to let him but doesn’t move away. 

“Me driving all the time. It bothers you?” 

Ilya considers the question, using the excuse of rubbing his eyes and yawning to delay answering. The honest answer is both yes and no. Given his general Shane-ness, it’s not a surprise that his boyfriend would be a control freak about driving, but the fact that all of his offers to drive have been rejected also hurts a bit if Ilya’s being honest. He might not be so staunchly safety-focused as his boyfriend, but it’s not as if he’d be practicing for a future career in Formula 1 with Shane in the car, not with the most precious cargo in his life along for the ride. He doesn’t hold Shane’s anxiety against him, but he’d like to at least be trusted to drive sometimes. 

He lets his hand drop. 

“A little,” he says. It’s one of their rules, after all, being honest in the cottage. He sees Shane’s expression start to go guilty and reaches up to nudge at the corner of his lips with his thumb playfully, hand cupping his cheek. “Is okay, though. I know you are just-what is word you used? When you said no to sky diving?” 

“Risk averse,” Shane offers. 

“Risk averse,” Ilya agrees. 

“That’s not-” Shane starts, but he stops himself. Ilya tilts his head slightly in question, but Shane bites the inside of his cheek and then shakes his head slightly, cheeks flushing. “I do trust you,” Shane says. 

“But not with your car?” Ilya asks. “You are afraid I will drive all the boring out of it?” 

Shane rolls his eyes. 

“It’s a good car-” He starts in another refrain of one of his favorite summer songs. 

Ilya rolls them and pins his boyfriend under him before he has to hear about four wheel drive and gas mileage again. 

There are far better uses for Shane’s mouth, after all. 

*

So used to hopping in the passenger seat at this point, Ilya doesn’t know to be on the lookout for an attack on the day they’re set to go pick up a couple of things from the produce stand Shane likes before joining his parents for dinner. 

“Catch!” Shane calls, and Ilya looks up from his phone, confused-

-just in time for a ring of keys to hit him in the face. 

“Blyat,” he hisses, recoiling and pressing a hand to his cheek more as a reflex to the surprise of the hit than out of true pain. 

“Shit,” Shane says, jogging close and pushing Ilya’s hand aside to take a look for himself. Ilya glares. “I said catch!” He protests at the wordless accusation. 

“As you were throwing things at me,” Ilya says, annoyed. “You tell someone ‘Catch!” and then you wait until they see you and then throw.” 

“Are you a professional athlete or aren’t you?” Shane asks dryly. “You’re not bleeding,” he says, giving Ilya a firm pat to the cheek at the declaration. “Walk it off, champ.” 

“I’m locking you out of our room tonight,” Ilya informs him. 

Shane doesn’t seem remotely alarmed by the threat, just bending down and retrieving his keys before offering them up. 

“After I’m letting you drive?” He asks, raising an eyebrow. “Seems pretty ungrateful.” 

Ilya’s eyes slide from Shane’s face to the keys and then back to Shane’s face, suspecting a trap but not sure about where or how. 

“Are you drunk?” He asks on a guess, and Shane looks insulted at the suggestion. 

“If you’ve changed your mind-” Shane starts, but Ilya snatches the keys away before he loses his chance. Inspired by Shane’s eyeroll into seeing if he can earn another, he opens the passenger door and gestures grandly. 

“Your highness,” he says, stepping back to let Shane through. 

His response is a middle finger, but Shane still hops in, slapping Ilya’s hand away when he obnoxiously starts to buckle him in. 

Ilya releases him after a loud kiss to the cheek, letting Shane shove him away by the face and rounding the car to get in the driver’s seat. 

“So,” he says, turning the key in the ignition and sliding on his sunglasses. “We’re seeing if I can beat your usual time, yes? I am thinking I can do it at least twenty minutes faster.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Shane grumbles under his breath, taking an insultingly tight hold of the grab bar above his door. 

Ilya grins and revs the engine just to see the look Shane cuts him from the corner of his eye past the edge of his sunglasses. 

*

Despite the teasing at the start, Ilya is careful on this maiden voyage of being trusted as driver, even keeping the volume of the music at a level that won’t have Shane making faces and Googling the long-term cognitive impacts of hearing loss so he can read them out loud while Ilya slowly turns the volume up to drown him out. He’ll be the first to admit that he had more than a slight reckless streak when he was younger–fast cars and a youthful sense of invincibility and a slight “who gives a fuck” attitude about death in general will do that–but despite what Shane might grumble under his breath just loud enough to carry when Ilya’s getting on his nerves for sport, he has mellowed some with age. 

It turns out risk is much less appealing when there’s something precious to lose in the bargain. 

It happens in slow increments while he’s navigating the narrow roads out to where the produce stand is, careful to not let the tires so much as touch the edge of the painted line, which is why it takes Ilya time to catch it. Usually attuned to everything Shane Hollander, it isn’t until he feels his boyfriend’s hand partially slip out of his own that he glances over-

-and finds Shane fully passed out beside him, head tipped back and mouth slightly open. 

His kneejerk–if ridiculous–first thought is that Shane truly was distressed enough about Ilya pushing the speed limit by about 15 MPH to have passed out on him, but when he slows enough to safely take a second glance, he finds that he instead just looks…peaceful. 

Peaceful, and completely, fully, absolutely-dead-to-the-world asleep. 

Shane makes a small, content noise as he shifts slightly without waking, and it’s Pavlovian at this point that Ilya smiles at it, even as he keeps his eyes on the road, shifting his hand slightly to better hold Shane’s now-slack one in his own, thumb rubbing gently along the knuckle of Shane’s. It’s one of the things he only got to truly appreciate about Shane Hollander after sharing a bed with the man for longer than a few stolen hours at a time: all of his damnably endearing little sounds. From fucking them out of him over the years, he knows Shane has a variety that come out only in bed, but he’s widened his knowledge of Shane’s range in the time they’ve spent at the cottage last summer and this one. Little content purrs when he’s pinned down for ease of kissing, little grumbles low in his throat when Ilya pulls the covers aside enough to let cool air sneak under, little rising question noises when Ilya presses close to his back when he’s busy with something, nosing behind his ear and nuzzling at his jaw until he successfully becomes more interesting than whatever he’s stealing Shane’s attention from. 

Now Shane exhales slowly, a quiet hum caught in the noise. 

“I tired you out last night, yes?” Ilya asks, softly enough that he’s not sure Shane would have caught it even if he wasn’t out cold enough that Ilya doubts even a marching band would wake him. 

Still, he lowers the volume of the radio even further until it’s a quiet murmur. 

And if it’s more for the ease of hearing any lovely little noises than it is for keeping Shane asleep, well…

It’s not like there’s anyone awake to call him on it. 

*

He half-thinks Shane will startle awake and be adorably flustered and ready to tease when he pulls to a stop by the un-manned produce stand, but his boyfriend remains completely dead to the world, sunglasses slipping down his nose from the slight rumble of the car pulling off the road to park until Ilya gently pushes them back up. 

Shane doesn’t so much as twitch. 

Ilya shuts his door gently despite how deeply asleep Shane is and opens the Hollander family groupchat–currently renamed “Ilya, The Cool Hollanders, And That Other Guy :P” because Shane hasn’t checked his phone yet and changed it back–to double-check what David asked them to pick up on the way. The produce stand is run on the honor system, which seems foolishly trusting and Canadian to Ilya, but Shane and his parents apparently know the hobby farmers who run it, so he’s stopped by more than once in their company, a safe errand because it carries no risk of witnesses. He gathers what he’s been directed to, drops cash in the little lockbox, and then returns to the car, putting everything in the backseat in one of the little car grocery organizers Shane has because of course he does. Errand run, he returns to the driver’s seat and starts the car, glancing at Shane as he hesitates for a moment before buckling. With how many times he’s heard Shane pointedly tell him “Car doesn’t start until everyone’s buckled”–a phrase he now knows from experience came right from Yuna Hollander, who has also said it to him–he’d almost thought the sheer audacity of not buckling immediately would wake him up as he sensed someone doing something rule-breaking in his general vicinity. 

As it is, Shane keeps sleeping as Ilya pulls back onto the road. 

*

It’s kind of a blessing, frankly, that David is already outside pulling weeds in the front flower beds when they pull up to Shane’s parents’ house. It saves Ilya the trouble of having to figure out a way to ask, “Your son passed out cold as soon as I started driving and has not woken even though I took several turns way sharper than I probably should have and made him look like one of those dashboard things with large heads on springs. Should I be worried about that?” in a way that is very casual and normal. 

Much easier to see Shane’s dad catch sight of his son out cold in the passenger seat and soften in a way that says there’s nothing to worry about. 

(Not that Ilya was worrying, of course.) (Worrying about silly things is strictly Shane’s territory in their relationship.) 

(...but it’s still a relief.)

David brushes his hands off as he approaches the car before he pulls his gardening gloves off, already smiling, like just seeing Ilya in front of him is enough to be happy about, something he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to. He leans into the hug he’s offered much more easily than he used to, feeling a very childish little thrill at the firm pat he gets to his back before David releases him, squeezing his shoulder affectionately before he steps back, tilting his head to look at Shane, still out cold. 

“Found his kryptonite, huh?” David asks, and it takes a moment for Ilya to place the word and another to remember its context. 

“So he always does that?” Ilya asks as casually as he can, wanting a direct confirmation, silly as it is. 

“Has since he was a kid,” David says, and the warmth in his smile says that the man is remembering a much smaller Shane than the one currently in front of him. “We were about at our wit’s end when he had a fussy stage as a baby, and I thought I could at least let Yuna get some sleep if he and I just drove around a bit, and lo and behold, he got in the carseat and settled right down. Slept the whole time. I think I went through a whole tank of gas just so I didn’t jinx it and wake him up again.” 

It’s one of those things that makes Ilya feel an odd kind of happy-pain, little pieces like this from Shane’s childhood, these glimpses at a family so different from his own. Imagining a tiny baby Shane falling asleep in a carseat fills him with the same kind of overwhelm as when he sees pictures of a little gap-toothed Shane in child-sized hockey gear, so much “fuck, that’s cute” that he doesn’t know what to do with it all. (He’d once recognized an expression on adult Shane’s face after an unexpectedly squishy grape that he’d previously seen on the face of toddler Shane in a picture on the mantle at his parents’ house, and it had been all he could manage not to squish his boyfriend’s face in a way that probably would have earned him Shane kicking his ass in annoyance.) It’s a sweet, happy thought, an exhausted David lugging around a fussy baby Shane and then burning through gas just to keep him asleep. It’s one of the clues that tells him why Shane is how he is, the blueprint of the building blocks of the love of his life. 

But it’s also so wildly foreign to how he was raised. 

He honestly isn’t sure if his own father ever even held him as a baby, or if he just waited until Ilya was old enough to not need holding in his presence. He can’t picture the man ever bothering to be soft enough to do something like hold a baby, and if his own mother had been exhausted during a fussy stage, he knows with a certainty that feels like a rock in his stomach that she would have been on her own for it. 

“You alright?” David asks, and the clear concern on his face is enough to chase away the shadows of Ilya’s thoughts, leaving him feeling light enough to smile, nodding. 

“Just tired from playing nap-” The word in English escapes him. “Person who drives around?” 

“Chauffeur?” David offers. 

“That,” he agrees. “Your son sleeps like the dead. Left me all on my own like hired help.” 

“And here I thought we’d raised him better,” David jokes. 

Ilya grins. 

*

He sends David inside with the produce from the stand and then opens the passenger side door, Shane still out cold like Ilya drugged him. He hesitates for a moment, not totally sure how to wake him. His preferred method for Shane Waking isn’t really appropriate right in front of his parents’ house, after all. 

(No matter how effective it is.) 

A gentle nudge to Shane’s arm does nothing, so he gets a little more proactive, resting a hand against his cheek and bobbling his head slightly. 

“Shane,” he says softly, but his boyfriend just makes a grumpy noise and closes his eyes tighter. Ilya smiles, and, unable to help it, leans in to kiss him. Shane receives the kiss but refuses to surface enough back to waking to really return it. Mouth against Shane’s, he speaks again, voice low. “Shane, there is very official letter for you. Something about not paying electricity bill on time?” 

He laughs when that has Shane startling awake immediately, and Ilya leans back against the open passenger door as Shane frowns at seemingly the world in general before he drops back against the seat, rubbing at his eyes clumsily. 

“Motherfucker,” he grumbles, before he yawns and stretches, hands dropping to his lap as he glares at Ilya. “It’s on autopay.” 

Ilya snorts, reaching to unbuckle him. 

“C’mon,” he says, “enough playing Sleepy Beauty in passenger seat. You are keeping your parents waiting for dinner. Is very rude.” 

“It’s Sleeping Beauty,” Shane corrects around a yawn. He hops out of the car and then wobbles slightly, still re-orienting after sleeping so heavily, and Ilya steadies him with a hand at his hip. 

“You’re okay?” He asks, unable to help himself. Shane always wakes up first, so he’s almost never seen a fresh-from-sleep Shane and thus doesn’t know how normal him being this groggy is. It’s cute, certainly, but Ilya would also like to confirm that it isn’t indicative of something he should worry about. 

“Yeah,” Shane says around another yawn, shaking his head and then his body like he’s trying to shake the sleepiness off. 

It’s so unfairly endearing that Ilya really has no choice but to press him back against his Boringmobile and kiss him until he’s definitely fully back in his body. 

*

“Catch!” He calls to Shane when they take their leave for the night, laughing when the immediate response is Shane flinching and putting a hand up in front of his face, anticipating revenge from earlier. 

“You’re an asshole,” Shane says after a moment, peeking past his hand to confirm that Ilya hasn’t even taken the keys out of his pocket before he drops his arm. “I can drive,” he says, but Ilya is already climbing into the driver’s seat, reluctant to give it up after it took so long to get it in the first place. He reaches across the console to open the passenger door. 

“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty,” he teases. “Is much nicer drive when you’re unconscious and not yelling at me about speed limits and turning signals.” 

“Such an asshole,” Shane says, shaking his head, but he’s grinning as he climbs in, and when Ilya gently grabs him by the jaw, he turns into the kiss he’s pulled into without a fight. 

*

He also falls asleep barely past the driveway, Ilya smiling faintly and keeping hold of his hand as he drives them home. 

*

Shane wastes no time setting up house in Boston after the transfer, and Ilya submits easily to the process, signing where he’s told to on things he doesn’t bother to fully read and passing over bank information for what he’s told are joint accounts for utilities and groceries and the other mundane pieces that make up a life together. Ilya had had a functional system already, but Shane had taken one look at it all and gotten the look on his face that said he was trying and failing to find a polite way to say that he was going to get stress hives if he didn’t take it apart and start over. Ilya, still giddy on the high of having his husband–his husband–on the same team in the same city as him, hadn’t protested. Shane, because he’s Shane, had a whole spreadsheet and presentation prepared for his new system, but Ilya had managed to seduce his way to salvation and get out of it when Shane was only halfway through his section on “equitable distribution of living expenses based on-” and then a bunch of other words that Ilya could feel making his eyes glaze over. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the work Shane has put into making their lives as neat and efficient as possible. 

It’s just that he doesn’t get quite as horny about spreadsheets as his husband. 

The end result is that bills get paid, money gets moved into investment accounts, and they don’t run out of milk because Shane has apparently calculated their exact usage in order to perfect what cadence it needs to be bought on. 

(Really, Ilya thinks sometimes with equal parts affection and mild fear, it’s probably for the best that Shane ended up devoting his life to hockey. God help them all if he’d decided to dedicate that brain of his to evil.) 

Despite his white-knuckle control over their finances and utilities and even the landscaping–really, as much as Ilya loves him and all of his quirks, he did have to put his foot down on the day he saw Shane outside trying to measure the grass with a ruler to make sure it had been mown to the optimum height for lawn health–there’s still a few hiccups in working out settling down together as a married couple dominating the NHL in a way that makes other teams look at them with a pleasing amount of fear. 

Namely that Shane still hasn’t settled as much as Ilya knows he wants to pretend he has. 

They haven’t discussed it in depth yet, really, but he knows Shane is still hurting from how things ended with Montreal, knocked off-center and set adrift, ready for Ilya to scoop up and take home but still aching from the cruelty of it. Ilya’s tried to broach the subject a few times, but gently as it’s been done, Shane shrugs it off, usually redirecting to how Ilya’s therapy is going or coming up with some new home improvement project he wants to do. 

For the sake of not dying of old age in the Lowes paint section while Shane facetimes with his mother to discuss how green is too green for a dining room for the third time in two months, Ilya usually lets the subject drop. 

(A man can only entertain himself with paint swatches for so long before it starts feeling like a psychological experiment about torture, after all.) 

They’re both happy, and Ilya knows they’re both happy, but Shane is still struggling to find his new routine in a brand new context in a brand new city on a brand new team and also still refusing to admit that he’s struggling, which makes helping him an exercise in them beating their heads together like the mountain sheep they watched one evening when Ilya had been trying to lull Shane to sleep early with the most boring documentary he could find on TV. 

(He had failed, naturally. Boring things are catnip to his beautiful boring husband, after all.) 

*

“Still awake?” He asks tonight after waking up alone, not for the first time this week. 

“Mmm,” Shane hums vaguely, not looking away from his laptop on the kitchen island, glasses on and brows furrowed in concentration in a way that makes him look like a sexy accountant. Ilya snugs up against his back, chin over his shoulder, and glances at the laptop screen, finding that it’s split into two windows, one with–what else–an Excel spreadsheet and another with all of Shane’s recent sponsorship contracts open in a neat row of tabs, organized alphabetically because Shane is a deeply not-normal person. 

Ilya presses a kiss to the side of his husband’s neck, so deeply in love with him that it almost hurts when it hits him all at once like this. 

“You are afraid Dior is stiffing you on bill after you did such good work for their awful cologne?” Ilya teases, pressing another kiss behind Shane’s ear before looking at the screen again, where Shane is diligently moving numbers around in spreadsheet boxes. 

“Just doing some worst case scenario numbers,” Shane says absently, like this is a normal thing to be doing at 2 in the morning, and Ilya closes his eyes and barely resists the urge to groan. 

“And what is worst case scenario?” He asks dryly, nuzzling at the join of Shane’s neck and shoulder and trying not to be offended when his teasing hand down his husband’s stomach is moved immediately to PG territory without Shane even looking away from the screen. “I only get to see you in underwear ads in most magazines at supermarket instead of all?” 

“It’s not funny,” Shane says, and there’s a snap in his tone that’s immediately apologized for when he presses back against Ilya and leans his head back enough to rest their cheeks against each other. “Sorry-I’m sorry. I’m just…” He makes a frustrated noise and waves his hand in a vague gesture at his laptop. “Everything happened so fast, and I didn’t have time to plan on any of it, you know? I’m just trying to figure it out and make sure we’re good.” 

“We are good,” Ilya murmurs into his ear, jostling him lightly. “There is no crisis waiting. We start season in three weeks, and then we crush all of NHL and make grown men cry. And then win another Stanley Cup and do very, very sexy things with it.” 

“Sexy things like what?” Shane asks, and it feels like doing a shot, the success of hearing a smile in his voice, the thrill of it going right to his head like liquor. 

“Come back to bed,” Ilya says in a low, low tone that always makes Shane shiver, “and I will demonstrate, yes?” 

Shane snaps his laptop shut with enough force that Ilya half-worries for the screen. 

*

The next night, Ilya wakes alone again. 

Straining his ears, he can hear the faint clack of computer keys from another room. 

*

Ilya officially loses his patience with being patient when there start being visible shades of exhaustion under Shane’s eyes, even his fancy “stop fucking with that, Ilya, I just bought it and you’re gonna break it” skincare products only doing so much to offset the insomnia that appears to only be getting worse as the start of the season approaches. Shane has remained determined to be stubborn and sleepless despite Ilya’s best attempts at fucking him into a coma each night, so it’s time for the big guns. 

“Come on,” he tells Shane today, snagging him by the arm on his way to their basement gym, no doubt to go be grumpy at exercise equipment for being too loud. 

“What?” Shane demands, pulling back. “I need to-” 

“I need to run errands, and I need DJ. Let’s go.” 

“What errands?” Shane asks, still trying to pull back as if Ilya isn’t fully willing and able to wrestle him down and haul him out over his shoulder if he doesn’t go quietly. “All of the bills are on autopay, aren’t they? Did the bank call about-” 

Ilya cuts him off with a kiss, but Shane continues like he wasn’t interrupted the second he’s released. 

“-the rental house in Orlando? My realtor said-” 

“I have a very important errand of needing McDonald’s and also to get the new Target thing Svetlana sent me. It’s very serious, you know. She said if they sell out before she gets back from Russia and I didn’t get her one, she would kill me. You are ready to be widower?” 

“What thing?” Shane persists, determined to be grumpy and difficult. Given the fact that Ilya both fell asleep and woke up without him in bed beside him, he doesn’t hold it against him. “And why can’t she just order it online if she needs it?” 

“Because it’s nicer if someone gets it for her,” Ilya dismisses easily, tossing Shane his wallet and a jacket. “It’s called a personal touch, Hollander. Let’s go.” 

Shane finally gives in, grumbling something about not touching a certain someone’s person if he wants to be a dick and fuck up Shane’s plans for the day for no reason. 

Ilya gives him an affectionate slap to the ass in response. 

*

“DJ,” Ilya demands when they’re in the car, tossing Shane his phone just to annoy him and make him fumble to catch it. 

“I still don’t know why I even have to come,” Shane complains. 

“To do DJ things,” Ilya says, pulling smoothly onto the road. “You’re the one who is always talking about how bad traffic is here in Boston, and you will risk my life making me drive and play DJ? This is no way to treat your husband. I should tell your mother on you.”

“Not if I tell on you first,” Shane shoots back, though he opens up Spotify and starts scrolling through their shared playlist. “I’m supposed to be working out ahead of the season right now, not getting some mystery bullshit from Target because your best friend has apparently never heard of online shopping.” 

“And instead you are doing very, very important errands with your beautiful husband so he can drive safely,” Ilya says, claiming Shane’s hand in his. He pulls it to his lips to press a kiss to the knuckles without taking his eyes off of the road before resting their hands between them. 

“Not,” Shane says, interrupted with a yawn he tries to swallow, exhaling heavily through his nose, “very important errands.” 

Ilya hums a non-response, barely resisting the urge to smile when he catches Shane rubbing his eye with his free hand. 

*

“Feel better?” Ilya asks a couple of hours later when they’ve arrived back home. For the sake of his cover, he did indeed order a curbside pickup of a random set of wine glasses for Svetlana, but with the way Shane is barely awake, he doubts his husband is in a place to play detective about it. 

“Fuck off,” Shane says, but he yawns again, leaning against Ilya heavily as they make their way into the house. 

Ilya deposits him on the couch, closes the curtains in the living room, and leaves his husband to his much-needed nap, Shane out like a rock as soon as he’s horizontal. 

*

Even after repeating the trick a few more times, he can’t be sure if Shane truly isn’t catching on, or if he just knows consciously or subconsciously that it’s in his best interests to get driven around until he’s out like a light in the stretches of time anxiety has him up past his bedtime more than once in a row. After the season starts, Shane does settle a good bit, finding his rhythm and being as much of a menace in the rink as Ilya has always known he is. They’re as deadly on the ice together as everyone had hoped they would be when Boston chose not to replace a couple of players after retirement and turn down any other new players for the season in order to afford Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander on the same team. 

From how decisively they’re dominating the rankings so far, it was a worthwhile investment. 

As their first match against Montreal approaches, however, Ilya starts finding himself waking up alone again. 

“You are thinking too loud,” he tells Shane one night when he finds him in the basement gym, following a YouTube video of “Yoga Flow for Sleep” that doesn’t seem to be very effective based on how extremely awake he still is even what seems like halfway through. Ilya rests against the doorway since there’s no reason to not enjoy a good show of his husband showing off how bendy he is even if he would prefer to explore that bendiness in bed. “I can hear your brain all the way up in our room.” 

Shane doesn’t respond, and Ilya knows without a doubt that it has nothing to do with the headphones he’s wearing. 

“It seems wasteful to spend money on an interior decorator when you don’t even appreciate the work she put into picking out our bedding,” he says, louder. “She will be very sad if I tell her, and then what will you do?” 

Shane pushes himself into some pose named after a snake that Ilya can’t quite remember the actual name of and doesn’t respond. 

Ilya pushes himself off of the doorway. 

Shane attempts to shrug him off when he kneels down behind him on the yoga mat, but Ilya persists. Shane gives up and sits back on his heels, leaning back into the solid warmth of Ilya’s chest. 

“I’m not a child,” he complains, but he sounds more tired than annoyed. “I don’t need you to babysit me.” 

“Is not babysitting, dorogoy,” he says softly, kissing Shane’s jaw before trailing up to the sensitive spot behind his ear. “I don’t sleep well alone. I am very spoiled now.” 

Shane reaches up, resting a hand on Ilya’s wrist and squeezing gently. 

“I’m okay,” he says, because he is the worst liar in the world and yet never stops trying. “Seriously, I’ll be up in a bit.” 

“Finish your yoga. I want to join.” 

He smiles when he hears Shane snort. 

“Since when do you do yoga?” Shane asks. 

“Oh, no, no, no,” Ilya tsks. “You misunderstand. I am purely appreciating it as spectator sport.” 

“You’re so fucking annoying,” Shane says, and the tone of his voice means it lands as sweet as any lovesick declaration he could have made. 

*

After waking alone even after luring Shane to bed with him, Ilya barely lets his husband finish breakfast before he’s herding him to the door. 

“Ilya-” Shane starts, but Ilya just tosses a scarf at his face in distraction and then stuffs him into a jacket. 

“Things are too easy with both of us on the ice together,” he says decisively. “We need an adventure to make things exciting.” 

“No we don’t,” Shane argues, but it takes barely a nudge at his back before he’s heading to the garage. 

*

There’s probably something sweet and poetic in the way Ilya has explored more of Boston and the surrounding area in the months Shane’s been here to share it with him than he has in all of the years before, something about Shane expanding his world just by being with him and showing him things he never even thought to look for before. 

As it is, his primary reward for these drives of theirs is both a rested husband and a growing collection of mementos in his cellphone. 

Now that they’re married and out to the world, there’s no reason to hide anything about them, and Ilya has gleefully collected an album in his phone called “My Beautiful Passenger Princess: Sleeping Beauty” full of selfies he’s taken with Shane out cold in the passenger seat beside him. Despite a half-hearted threat of factory resetting his whole phone if he didn’t delete it, Shane’s only response to the photos has been eyerolling and “God, you’re such a dick” every single time Ilya scrolls through them to find a new contact photo for Shane when he feels the need for a change. He knows Shane just thinks he’s teasing him with his little collection of photos, and he’s not wrong, really. There are few things he enjoys more than getting Shane flustered and flushed, and whether that’s from annoyance or arousal is equally fine to Ilya with the way both usually end in the same thing. 

But that’s not the only thing it means to him, these pictures. 

He doesn’t know how to say it in words, not in a way that would make sense to Shane, and he doesn’t know that he would even if he could, really. He doesn’t have words for the way it feels good, feels right, carving out these stretches of time for Shane to rest in, the satisfaction of knowing that Shane’s life is tangibly better because Ilya is with him, that he can give Shane what he needs even if Shane would never ask for it himself because he’s stubborn and enjoys getting on Ilya’s nerves by putting up a fight before he lets himself be tended the way Ilya wants to tend to him. When they’re most at odds, he wishes he could extend the obedience he always gets when telling Shane to get on his knees to telling Shane to do things like stop checking Twitter after a lost game to self-flagellate with the opinions of morons or to just admit that he’s overstimulated after a long day and go lay down in their quiet, dark bedroom until the world doesn’t scrape on his nerves so badly or to just have a burger and a beer if he wants it even though they’re still in the middle of a season. Then again, if Shane gave up without a fight, he wouldn’t be Shane, wouldn’t be the love of Ilya’s life, wouldn’t be the sunlight that made Ilya realize how dark his life was before he came along and filled it with warmth Ilya never even dreamed he’d get to experience even once, let alone to have and to hold until death does them part. 

And if the only way he can protect that sunlight is by driving it around until it passes out when it needs a nap, well…

“We need an adventure,” Ilya always says, and Shane always rolls his eyes. 

But he still climbs into the car, every single time. 

*

“You really don’t have to do this, you know,” Shane says one day when they’re out on an adventure-car nap. Today’s had ended with Shane waking up in the parking lot of a roadside antique store Ilya had pulled over in to answer a text message, a passing semi-truck blaring its horn and startling Shane awake to blink around with a disgruntled and groggy, “Where the fuck are we?” as he took in the welded car part sculptures spread around them. 

“Don’t have to do what?” Ilya asks. “Walk around in a death trap-careful, cord there, don’t trip–because you like looking at boring old people things?” 

“You’re the one who wanted to go inside,” Shane points out, reaching up to nudge a sign aside before Ilya hits his head on it. 

“Is the perfect place for boring old people,” he says, kicking Shane’s ankle affectionately. “I could not keep you from your natural habitat.” 

“Asshole,” Shane says, but it’s affectionate the way it usually is when he says it. “It’s not my natur-” He’s distracted briefly by a set of salt and pepper shakers in the shape of reindeer, and Ilya openly laughs at him, getting a shove to his shoulder for the crime. “Fuck off,” Shane says with a smiling shake of his head, taking his phone out of his pocket to snap a picture and then sending it to what Ilya sees is his texts with his father when Ilya looks over his shoulder at the screen. “My great-aunt collects them and dad wants to get her some Christmas ones this year.” 

“Is okay,” Ilya coos, nuzzling at Shane’s face in a deliberately obnoxious way, “there is no need to lie to your husband about your hobbies, mo-” 

Their resulting playfight cuts off abruptly when the rough housing makes them bump into a shelf of terrifyingly-breakable-looking teacups, making them rattle in their saucers in a way that has them both freezing until the entire collection settles again. After a shared exhale of relief, Shane reaches out to nudge one teacup carefully back into place without releasing the hold he had on Ilya’s jacket in his attempt at putting him in a headlock. 

They pointedly avoid meeting the hawk-like glare of the elderly woman at the checkout counter for the rest of the visit, still repeatedly catching each other’s eyes and snickering at the absurdity of it all each time, two massive hockey players menaced by a tiny woman in a floral dress and pink cardigan for the crime of acting like stupid teenagers near breakable collectibles. Shane gets a text back from his father when they’re almost out the door, and Ilya braves the woman’s ire to purchase the reindeer salt and pepper shakers because he is a good and giving and generous husband. 

Which he makes sure to reiterate to Shane several times during the drive home, his husband now in the driver’s seat and thus conscious for the trip. 

“I deserve a reward, I think,” he repeats for the third time. 

“You have the reward of a good gift for my great-aunt,” Shane says, signaling approximately five years ahead of their next turn. 

“Brenda is very lovely woman,” Ilya says dryly, and it’s true, after all, Shane’s Aunt Brenda reliably happy to see them at Hollander family events and equally reliably happy to get tipsy with Ilya at those same events, “but I would prefer a reward from my husband for being very brave and risking my life for salt and pepper shakers.” 

“You did not risk your life,” Shane scoffs. 

“Did you look into the eyes of that woman?” Ilya challenges. “No. I did. There was murder there. I saw it. I barely made it out alive.” 

“You’re so fucking dramatic,” Shane says, but when he stops at the stop sign before turning, he pulls Ilya into a kiss. 

Ilya accepts it as the reward it is. 

(For now, at least.)

(He’s still making his plans for when they get back home.) 

*

“Hey,” Shane says when they’ve arrived home, making Ilya pause where he was about to open his door. “Thanks.” 

“For saving you from evil checkout woman for sake of salt and pepper shakers?” Ilya asks, eyebrows lifting in question. “Because I have other ideas for how you can say thank you.” 

“Not for that,” Shane says, far, far too serious and earnest for someone Ilya is trying to collect a sex-based reward from in exchange for novelty salt and pepper shakers. “I know it’s been…a lot. I’ve been a lot. You don’t have to drive around all of Massachusetts so I can take a nap now and then, but you do. I appreciate it. Thank you.” 

Ilya pulls him into a kiss, pressing their foreheads together afterwards. He nudges Shane’s nose with his own. 

“You are not a lot,” he corrects, squeezing Shane’s neck lightly. “You are my husband. If you need something, I give it to you. Simple.” And it is. He doesn’t need this, doesn’t need Shane thinking he has to apologize for needing him, as if Ilya wouldn’t give him the world if he didn’t know Shane would immediately go mad with power trying to institute a hockey-based new world order in which everyone goes to bed by 10 pm on weeknights and artificial food coloring is punishable by death. He smiles faintly before collecting another kiss and then pulling back, looking at Shane fondly. “Besides, it gives me lots of good blackmail material when you start drooling on-” 

“You’re the worst,” Shane says, shoving him away before he unbuckles and gets out of the car, throwing a middle finger as he goes. 

*

Ilya’s been doing good. He has. Therapy has helped. Being married to Shane has helped. Being with the love of his life in the city that’s been his home since he was 18 has helped. Things are good. They’re so good. 

Which is why it hits so much harder when things suddenly aren’t. 

He wasn’t even supposed to be in the WhatsApp group, he doesn’t think. He was added by some distant relative who apparently forgot or didn’t get the memo that Ilya is now an outcast since he’s no longer playing bank for them all. It wasn’t about a relative he really, really cares about, even, as bad as that might be, the news that there had been a car crash and that things looked bad. The group chat was for updates about the situation, and Ilya hadn’t spoken up, hadn’t betrayed his inclusion in the chat, though he’d followed the updates religiously, a glutton for pain in the form of news from a family that was no longer his, not really, not in any way that matters. It had been bad enough, this reminder of people who were no longer his people, the instinctual urge to figure out a way to do something about a problem and the knowledge that that was no longer his role. Even knowing it’s for the best, even knowing that they never loved him the way a family should love each other, even with the welcome he’s found among the Hollanders as his true family, he just can’t look away, can’t stop pressing on the bruise of could have been and I wish we could have. 

And then someone had caught on to him being in the group. 

The responses weren’t even that vicious, which almost made it worse that they still hurt. Pointed comments asking if he even cared. Snide replies about coming to his senses and remembering where the fuck he came from-

-certain hateful inquiries about his new husband that had made him angry enough that he’d thrown his phone across the room with enough force to alarm Shane into coming to investigate what the fuck was going on. 

It shouldn’t hurt. He knows it shouldn’t hurt. They’re his relatives, not his family. His family is Shane and the Hollanders and the people he’s chosen who have chosen him in return. His family smiles when they see him and always pull him into hugs and playfight about trying to push the other person in front of them when dinner’s ready and they play a game of “after you” “no, after you” “no, you first” until someone finally breaks. His family is toasted marshmallows around fire pits and swimming in the lake next to the cottage and ruthless games of UNO and chicken parmesan with extra cheese layered on just for him and soup and Dayquil doordashed to his house by his in-laws when he’s sick and Shane is out of town for a game and hands–kind hands, loving hands, would-never-even-dream-of-lifting-to-hurt-him-hands–jostling his shoulders after wins or patting his back after losses. Those are the people who love him, the people who take care of him, the people he takes care of in return. 

…and yet. 

And yet it starts getting just a little too hard to get out of bed in the mornings, a little too hard to come up with a joke in the locker room, a little too hard just to make himself shower each night before bed because Shane likes keeping “street germs” out of their bed, a little too hard to even finish the food that’s put in front of him because even chewing feels like so much fucking effort. 

A little too hard not to wonder if all love can end up getting so fucking ugly. 

“I love you,” Shane tells him each morning, each night, loving and gentle and more than Ilya ever dared dream he’d get, more than he thinks he deserves whenever his head gets like this. Shane holds his face in strong, careful hands, like Ilya is something precious, presses their heads together like he’s trying to push the love into him through sheer concentration and skin contact, kisses him like he’s making promises that don’t even need words. “Fuck them. They don’t know shit about you.” 

Ilya makes vague noises of agreement and receives the affection and wishes with all of his goddamn heart that it didn’t still hurt. 

*

“Hey.” 

It takes two more repetitions of the word from Shane before Ilya summons the energy to move enough to make eye contact, his husband so beautiful in the dim light of their bedroom that it makes Ilya’s eyes sting just to look at him. He should get up. He knows it. He’s being a bad husband, and he’s fully, painfully aware of it. He’s retreated even further and has now reduced himself to the bare essentials of living for the past week, getting up, eating the food Shane has put in front of him–including a “healthier” version of his usual McDonald’s order, a gesture of care that was humiliatingly almost enough to bring him to his knees right there in their kitchen–going to practice, and then coming home to collapse in bed again, leaving Shane to essentially be on his own the whole time, his husband wandering in and out of the room to carry on soft-voiced and largely one-sided conversations with him before kissing him on the cheek and going off to do something else. Alone. Without his husband. 

Because even for the most beautiful man in the world, Ilya just can’t make himself get up. 

“C’mon,” Shane says, tugging him up. Ilya makes a noise of protest but doesn’t physically resist, too tired for it. “We need an adventure.” 

Ilya blinks, thrown. Shane’s never asked to be driven to sleep before. Ilya’s just always known, always taken care of Shane before Shane’s even known he needed it, always gotten the satisfaction of knowing that he’s good at tending the most important person in his entire fucking life, the most precious thing that has ever been his. 

It feels like a pit in his stomach to confront the idea that he hasn’t even noticed Shane needing him now. 

“C’mon,” Shane repeats, leaning back and lifting, muscles developed for hockey deployed now for leveraging up useless husbands. “Let’s go.” 

Ilya stumbles slightly as Shane pulls him downstairs with him, not even pushing him to change out of his sweatpants and t-shirt, but his husband doesn’t pause, just moves him ever onwards. 

“Luchik, I…” he starts, and fuck, he can feel the shame of it churning in his stomach like bile. He just doesn’t have it in him. He just doesn’t. It hurts worse than getting checked into the boards, having to admit that he can’t be what Shane needs, not right now, but-

“I need a DJ,” Shane says, and Ilya is so thrown that he doesn’t even protest when he’s manhandled into his jacket and a beanie is pulled down over his ears. He thinks he might be having a very strange dream when he’s pulled into the garage and deposited into the passenger seat of one of the two sportscars he kept after downsizing his collection. 

“You don’t drive my cars,” he says, stupidly. It’s true, after all. Shane loves his boring, safe, reliable cars and hates Ilya’s “macho man deathtraps.” 

“Maybe I’m tired of being boring,” Shane says with a faint smile, leaning over to kiss Ilya, once on the cheek and then once on the mouth. “And we’re having an adventure, so I need an adventure car.” 

Ilya lets out a breath that shudders way, way too fucking much in response to such a stupid thing. 

“Okay?” Shane asks quietly, pausing with his hand on the back of Ilya’s headrest before he commits to backing out of the garage because Ilya delights in annoying him by never reversing into parking spots even though Shane always does. 

Ilya nods, beyond words for just a second. 

“Okay,” he finally manages, barely audible. 

“We’re gonna go so fucking slow, dude,” Shane says when they’ve pulled out of the driveway, with an enthusiasm usually reserved for promising the opposite. “You’re gonna lose your shit. I bet I can make it all the way out of Boston without ever hitting 40.” 

“You’re terrible,” Ilya says, voice tight. “Driving like a grandmother and torturing me for no reason.” 

“You like it,” Shane says confidently, reaching to take Ilya’s hand in his. 

“Yes,” Ilya says, leaning back in his seat. “I do.” So, so fucking much. 

Shane squeezes his hand. Ilya squeezes back. 

And then he settles back, closing his eyes to enjoy the ride.