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:

Sharing Clothes, Magic, Magical Realism, Canon Parallel, Post-Scene: Ilya Rozanov Makes Tuna Melts in Episode: s01e04 Rose, Alternate Universe - Magic, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, Hockey Player Ilya Rozanov, (they are both still playing hockey even with Magical Realism in this world), Developing Relationship, Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), 2017 MLH All-Star Weekend in Tampa Bay (Game Changers), Worldbuilding

Language:

English

Collections:

Hollanov Summer Exchange 2026

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-03 Words: 2,848 Chapters: 1/1

patterns of love

Summary

There’s power in a person’s belongings.

---

In a world where sharing clothes is not just about fabric, Shane has to contend with the fact that he is not supposed to be wearing his rival captain’s clothes (but ends up doing it anyway).

Notes

This is for radialarch, who had incredible prompts that made choosing what to write tricky :D I hope you enjoy the resulting fic! I spent way too much worldbuilding – only a fractioon made it into the final fic, but it was so much fun and I have quite a few opinions on the ramifications of the magic in this universe.

Thank you to M and K for the cheerleading, and v for the quick beta (and catching those pesky half-sentences that I absolutely meant to return to ^^) 💛

The shirt is black and soft, and it’s only when Shane has pulled it on that he realises how tight it is across his shoulders, how unlike himself it smells. He freezes. It’s not his shirt – it’s Rozanov’s.

The thought rings like a bell. Rozanov’s shirt. On Shane’s skin. By all rights, it should just be another piece of clothing. And yet.

And yet.

There's a thrill to knowing that it's not. That it's Rozanov's shirt. One he shouldn't be feeling. That he shouldn't be indulging in. He should just exchange it, quick and easy, but when he turns around, it’s already too late. Rozanov has spotted the mix-up, eyebrows up and forehead crinkled as he slowly trails his gaze over Shane’s form. When he meets Shane’s eyes again, there’s an expression on his face Shane cannot decipher.

Shane swallows and reaches for the hem.

“No,” Rozanov says, voice still rough from sucking Shane’s dick. “Keep it on. Maybe you will get some of my skill.” He licks his lips and pokes his tongue into his cheek.

“That’s not how this works,” Shane points out, though he doesn’t make another move to take the shirt off. Rozanov snorts. “And anyway, you weren’t complaining, earlier.” Shane’s face is flaming, but it’s the truth.

Rozanov leers at him again. “Just because was good, does not mean it can’t be better.” He pats the bed beside himself. “Come, if you rest now, we can both go again.”

Now it’s Shane’s turn to snort. “How could I say no to that?”

“You can not,” Rozanov says, turning the negative into two words, and if his hand lingers on his shirt on Shane’s body, neither of them mentions it.

Not that Shane can think about that through the sudden feeling that he really should be calling him Ilya.

He wrenches his thoughts away. It’s stupid – the post orgasmic haze, probably, or maybe the shirt. He’ll take it off in a couple of minutes, and then things will be normal again, and Rozanov will stay Rozanov.

It’s just a shirt.

Shane is no stranger to swapped clothes. He grew up in locker rooms and on travel teams, spent his weekends and holidays at youth skills camps and in development programs. Grabbing someone else’s shirt or pants is not just a thing that happens sometimes; it’s common, and the further along he got, the more it had been encouraged.

After all, they’d all been strangers from different parts of the city, the region, sometimes even the country, and a team had to get along. Only fools would not use all the tools at their disposal to make that happen.

So no, Shane is no stranger to pulling on a shirt and later on seeing a number other than 24 on the sleeves, or sweatpants that bunch around his ankles, or cursing when the jeans he’s grabbed are too tight to close. He plays hockey at the professional level, of course he is used to a communal wardrobe. That’s just how these things work.

But it’s one thing to grab something that is team – safe, expected, normal – and quite another to grab something and realise it is your rival’s, who you aren’t supposed to like (and much less fuck).

It’s wrong. Intimate, in a way even having Rozanov’s come streaked across his thighs and ass and abdomen isn’t. Above all, it’s not for him.

And yet, Shane cannot help but think back to that moment of realisation in the hotel room, and want.

The next time – and Christ, who did Shane piss off that there’s a next time? – Shane doesn’t realise until he’s outside in the chilly October air, watching his Uber driver approach the pickup location. There’s goosebumps on his arms, and he shivers as he tucks his one hand into his pockets.

The motion brings the collar of his shirt closer to his nose, and with it a hint of cigarette and wood smoke. Ilya. Rozanov. Because – the shirt Shane grabbed once again wasn’t his, and in return, he left his own shirt with its careful stitches, the leather jacket with charms and patches lining its seams behind.

A dark car with a Boston license plate pulls up at the curb, dark tinted window sliding down. “For James?” the driver asks with disinterest.

Shane exhales when no further scrutiny comes. Behind him are his own clothes, still littering Ilya’s floor. Safety wrapped up in danger, where Ilya’s shirt on his body is danger encroaching on his escape. He should turn around, get his own shirt. Take off this one. Instead, he says, “Yeah, that’s me,” because he isn’t stupid enough to give his own name in Boston of all places, and then climbs into the backseat.

Something tickles his side when he buckles himself in. A tag, is his first thought, because this isn’t his own shirt (fuck) and is probably one off the rack. When he slips his fingers under the hem, it’s not a tag he finds. It’s stitches, so tiny and careful that they don’t show on the outside and are barely perceptible on the inside. A quick look reveals that it’s not loadbearing. Not a mended patch but intentional.

This is a shirt that was cared for. Loved, maybe, though that makes the near-invisible embroidery strange. His own shirts show their embroidery along the seams, a sign of the care and effort poured into them.

But then – this isn’t his shirt. He should not be wearing it. He should have returned it.

Shane leans his head against the window. Outside, Boston whizzes past dizzyingly fast. In Shane’s mind, an unblemished sheet of ice unfurls, crowding out all other thoughts.

All that remains is another soft shirt that smells of wood smoke and bad decisions, and yet might just be the most comforting thing Shane has worn in ages.

He closes his eyes, and vows to himself that he’ll get rid of the shirt as soon as he gets back to the hotel. And if he buries his nose in the fabric on his shoulder? Well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

There’s power in a person’s belongings.

All of them, not just clothes, though clothes are the most prominent. Clothes, and jewelry. The longer they’re worn, the more weight they carry, the more emotions are imbued, the more they are. There’s science behind it, probably, though Shane has never cared about that part.

What’s important is this: clothes make you feel like you belong, and sharing well-loved garments and accessories can create a bond. It elevates your awareness of the other person, which is useful on the ice, and some people believe that clothes carry along skills, which would be useful on the ice if it actually worked. That part is probably bullshit, but like most hockey players, it’s not something Shane is quite wiling to chance.

At least material science has made quite a bit of advancement in terms of creating long-lasting fabric that don’t stink to the heavens.

Shane also carefully reapplies the stitches his parents taught him, which they had, in turn, been taught by their own parents, generations worth of protection: wards against injuries and bad luck, charms for regeneration and health and all sorts of small improvements. There’s no science backing those, beyond the standard team-issued wards against interference from their personalised game jerseys, but this, too, is not something Shane wants to chance.

It’s a labour to set up, but it’s a labour of love, and that part is actually backed by science. At least that’s what Shane remembers from the high school health classes he doodled his way through: that the more active, loving labour is poured into the creation, the more powerful the final result will be.

So, all of that is enough that he does not get rid of the… borrowed shirt. Someone – possibly Ilya himself – took enough care to stitch tiny, illegible wards into it, and it’s not Shane’s place to destroy that.

He means to return it; he really does, but that would mean facing Ilya, and that is not something he can quite stomach. Instead, he shoves it into the deep recesses of his wardrobe, where neither him nor his cleaning lady nor Rose will ever find it.

“I hired a stylist,” Shane had told Ilya at the bar, and, “I didn’t look like shit; I just wore, like, athletic stuff.”

It’s not a lie, of course. But it’s not just that he wanted to clean up. He still wears his athletic stuff – where his is a very loose definition, considering that most of it is part of the Metros communal wardrobe – at home and at the rink. The seams are embroidered with a mish-mash of threads and stitches, applied by spouses and mothers and grandmothers and, though rarely, the players themselves. Communal wards and charms.

But Shane had wanted clothes that were actually his and his alone. So he hired a stylist, who also specialised in custom stitching. Together, they’d devised the additions to his wardrobe, had found a tailor to spend obscene amounts of money on. And in return, he now has items that are uniquely his in every sense of the word.

Never has he been more grateful for that than right now, in a dimly lit hotel room in Tampa, with Ilya Rozanov crying into his shoulder. Their exchange still echoes in Shane’s ears: Your mother? — Dead.

It was like being doused in cold water, suddenly shocked back into his body. He’d climbed into Ilya’s lap, kissed him, because what else can he do? And now he’s holding him close and feeling entirely powerless, until a crinkle of fabric reminds him of his shirt.

He pulls back with a start, undoes the buttons as quickly as he can, and shrugs out of the garment. He doesn’t look at Ilya. It seems… wrong, even though they’re both aware that he’s crying, but… it feels wrong.

“Hey,” Shane says, shirt in one hand.

“So eager for sex?” Ilya’s voice is wobbly, and still the question sends a frisson of excitement through Shane.

“Don’t be stupid,” Shane replies, and then drapes the shirt over Ilya’s shoulders.

“Oh,” Ilya says. When Shane finally meets his eyes, they are still shiny, but not actively leaking anymore.

Shane shrugs. “I had them warded.” It’s explanation and offer and something else. Ilya’s lips quirk in a smile, though, and he makes no move to remove the shirt.

“That stylist, huh?”

Shane ducks his head a little. “Yeah.” And then, because he’s already in Ilya’s space anyway, he leans back down to kiss him again.

They probably will have sex. But for now, Shane is more than happy to know that Ilya is wearing his shirt, with his charms and wards on it.

It won’t fix everything. Might not even fix anything at all. But just then, it’s enough.

When Shane had been a child, his mother had quilted him a blanket. It’s not perfect on a technical level; he loves her and she put a lot of care into it, but she’s not a quilter, and so seams are crooked and edges don’t quite meet in places. But it is his, and that makes it perfect on a much more fundamental level.

It is also very much worn from years of use, to the point where he has it safely stowed in an airtight basket out of something like sentimentality, maybe.

Post Tampa, he gets it out and wraps himself up in it whenever he sleeps at home, grateful when it still keeps nightmares at bay.

He doesn’t know if Ilya has anything similar. If his mother, before her death, also gave him something imbued with all her love. The way he’d cried –

Shane doesn’t know if that means she had and yet her death still hurts, or if it means she hadn’t and he is mourning what could have been. But in his dreams, Ilya is strangled by that chain he’s wearing while Shane is powerless to get to him; suffocated by blankets or shirts or, once, buried by a baby’s onesie.

He doesn’t know how Ilya’s mother died. Doesn’t even know her name, or how old Ilya was. He doesn’t know anything, except the raw devastation Ilya allowed him a glimpse of, and so Shane lets his childhood quilted blanket cocoon him while he hopes that the shirt he left with Ilya will maybe provide him with a fraction of the same.

“Oh,” Yuna says when Shane is finally allowed to leave the hospital, “I put the clothes your teammates dropped off into that bag. What a thoughtful gesture.”

Shane grunts, half in surprise and half in acknowledgement. His mom is carrying his stuff while he trails behind, his arm in a sling and douchy sunglasses on his face. He isn’t entirely sure they actually lessen his headache, but they come etched with tiny engravings that probably do something, and he also isn’t willing to find out how much worse it would be with them off.

“I’m sure they’re missing you. Are you sure you don’t want one of us to stay down here with you?”

Shane exhales. “They’ll be fine. And it’s not like I’ll be there to make a difference.” A better captain might. But Shane has always been his best on the ice, can rally the guys around him. He sucks at doing it from afar, and with the concussion, he’s not supposed to be at the arena anyway. Dark rooms and lying down and all that. Ever since Sam Cruz’s concussion sidelined him for the better part of two seasons, trainers and coaches haven’t been fucking around with their top talents.

They make a pit stop at Shane’s apartment, where he lets Yuna help him pack another bag so he has more than just buttoned shirts. He isn’t quite sure what to make of those. His mom’s guess that they were dropped off by a teammate makes sense. Hayden certainly left a bracelet with him that is Jackie’s, and JJ stopped by to trade shoes with him. But he’s still captain because of his skill on the ice and not with people, so the other guys had mostly texted him or sent recovery wishes along with Hayden, secure in their usual shared wardrobe.

But no. The stack of clothes sitting in Yuna’s car didn’t come from a teammate. They came from Ilya, and were it not for the very palpable evidence they provide, he’d think he’d imagined Ilya’s visit.

He hadn’t. Ilya had come to visit him in the hospital, and brought along a few of his own shirts, with Cyrillic tags and careful embroidery. Shane had invited him to the cottage.

And Ilya had said maybe, but the stack of clothes on the visitor’s chair next to Shane’s bed suggested that it was more of a yes than Ilya was comfortable to admit.

Shane smiles and pulls the shirt he’d… borrowed earlier that season from the back of its drawer. He won’t be able to put it on with the sling, but it settles something to have it close, and for now, that will have to be enough.

“What does this one mean?” Ilya brushes his finger over the little patch on the shorts he’s borrowed from Shane.

Shane looks at it even though he could recite all of them from memory alone. “It’s a Japanese one. My mom’s dad taught it to her. It’s for prosperity and a long life.”

Ilya’s smile blooms like a sunrise across his face. “This is where you both get your good looks from.”

Shane huffs a laugh. “It’s probably genetics,” he says, but at this point, who can tell what is genetics and what is the properties imbued in their belongings?

He’s wearing a tank top that Ilya brought with him and his own shorts, while Ilya is shirtless. The necklace sitting in the hollow of his throat gleams.

“Sometimes I wonder if this is genetics, too,” Ilya says softly, the tips of his forefinger brushing over the metal.

Shane shifts so he can burrow his bare toes under Ilya’s thighs. “The bravery and strength? Sounds to me like they are.”

The smile that graces Ilya’s face now is smaller, his eyes sad, but it’s still a smile. “You flatter me.”

“I don’t,” Shane says very seriously. The sadness bleeds out of Ilya’s face, replaced by something that is much harder to parse. It makes the insides of Shane’s stomach squirm a little, but not unpleasantly so.

A moment later, Ilya contorts himself so he can pull Shane in and kiss him slowly. “Maybe this bravery is something we share,” he murmurs against Shane’s lips, and Shane can’t help but kiss him again.

The future stretches ahead of them, unknowable and uncertain, but he is secure in Ilya’s arms and his body secure in Ilya’s clothes, and it is indeed scary, but both of them are brave.

He kisses Ilya, and actually finds that he is looking forward to finding out what the future will hold.