Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Svetlana Vetrova, Hayden Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais

Additional Tags:

Romance, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Idiots in Love, Boys in Love, Period-Typical Homophobia, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Walks Ilya Rozanov Like A Dog, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of 2014 Remix

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-11 Words: 3,826 Chapters: 1/?

Break My Heart and Start a Fire

Summary

If standing out in the street screaming that he loves Shane Hollander is wrong, Ilya has no desire to be right.

Shane would prefer he didn’t though, so he can keep quiet. For now.

Notes

Welcome back!! I told myself I wouldn’t do this, but then I couldn’t resist. ;)

Short points – the first work is required reading for this or it will not make sense. Please feel free if it’s better for you to stop with that one, as this will stray into murky waters at times, but I promise, as always, a happy ending.

May take me awhile though; I start an intense job next month, so updates may be less frequent. You have been warned.

Title is from Gracie Abrams ‘Close To You’
If you asked me to, I’d give up everything to be close to you

And TEN THOUSAND KUDOS?! OVER 100K HITS?? You lovely, lovely people. Come chew on my brain some more. My head is so big that for this month only, I will be going by Duke Silver.

I jest, I jest. But truly, sincerely, thank you.
Please keep posting my work everywhere with credit, I love it.

Longer rambles:

1) The Closet. I know because of certain moments in TLG, there is a Shane Hate Train in some dark corners of this fandom; may I remind you we are none of us perfect. The main conflict in this fic, as you likely gathered from the summary, is the conundrum of coming out. A lot of people write as though coming out is this obvious correct solution; I lived the other side of this, obligated my partner to out themselves, and blew up both our families in the process. We have a wonderful marriage, but we still feel the ramifications of this with our blood relatives a decade later, and we’re not even famous. So no, it is not a benign choice, wanting a private life is a valid choice, and please don’t crusade about this in my comments or I will be obligated, as an elder gay, to shut you down expeditiously. (99% of you are gems who don’t need that warning, I love you. That was just for the small fraction that do. I’m so sorry you’re catching strays.)

2) I am old enough that I was (legally at least) an adult when gay marriage became the law of the land in the great US of A, and as a young queer in the Deep South, let me tell you that summer was a ✨vibe.✨ There was a lot of joy, yes, but a frantic energy; many of us were certain this gift was temporary (which it still may be) and flooded the courthouses. Pride hit the streets with tangible joy and hunger and hope and anger that this was so much later than it had to be, while some queer theorists droned on in the background that somehow gaining rights would sanitize the community beyond recognition and identity. (Newsflash, it didn’t.)

(And then a year later Trump was elected, which felt like the shoe drop, the slap, the unspoken but deeply understood promise that queer joy is always followed swiftly by a punishment. But I digress; Temu Hitler is not part of this fic.)

Anyway. I hope to bottle some energy from the year that followed that and give it to you in this fic.

Okay, enough of that. Please enjoy!

Chapter 1: Summer Love

Ilya’s knuckles were white as he stood at the dining table, gripping the back of a kitchen chair. He found his hands, at the moment, easier to look at than Yuna’s face.

Looking at Yuna had traces of looking at Shane, like a lingering aftertaste, or a glimpse of the future; she too had glasses she used to look at screens and paperwork, and a sharp way of leveling a person with the slant of her uncompromising eyes. Except, when she leveled a look at him, it didn’t cause the twin flames of competitive pride and lust as it did when Shane did the same. It only caused stirring shame.

She took off her glasses with a little sigh. “And how do you think Shane will feel about this?”

That was usually her trump card, he thought petulantly. He had not had a mother as a teenager, but even at the age of 25, wrapping up his second summer with them in scenic, peaceful Ottawa, he felt sometimes he was making up for it now, kicking up stupid fights that turned fond or tired.

This wasn’t one of them.

“I do not know,” he admitted. “But I am doing this for me.”

“I understand that,” she told him levelly, “but you have to consider the fallout. You two are known to be close, and he has never had a public relationship before. The light this points at you will be pointed at him, too.”

“Maybe he would want that!” He threw his hands in the air in frustration, knowing the words coming out of his mouth were nonsense. If Shane could opt to turn invisible the moment his skates left the ice, he would choose that in a heartbeat. “Maybe we do this together.”

“You can’t be serious.” When she saw that he was, she stood and came over to him, a hand on his arm. “Ilya, honey …” she trailed off, and he allowed himself to be pulled into a hug.

“I want more,” he admitted. “Selfish, I know. But I want more than …” he waved a hand. “This. More of this.”

“The end of summer is always hard for him, too,” she admitted. “But you can’t blow up your whole life on a whim.”

“Is not a whim,” he argued, pulling back. “I think about this endlessly. All the time. I cannot do it. I cannot do another season pretending stupid jokes are funny. Pretending to want to dance with girls. Pretending he is just my friend.”

He could see the gears turning in her head and had to admit to himself, that was the reason. He could’ve called his agent, or talked to Shane, or posted something on Instagram as he’d considered a thousand times before, taking this into his own hands and, in her words, blowing his life up, but he hadn’t. He had come to her for this exact moment, and she did not disappoint.

“Okay. Okay,” she nodded. “It sounds like we need a new plan.”

-

With Yuna’s first plan, woven fall of 2014, the distances between their teams and the publicity of their friendship had been the main questions.

Shane had shot down quickly any discussion of either of them moving teams, stating “he doesn’t want to, and I certainly don’t.” Both Yuna and Ilya had eyebrows raised at that. Shane knew his own team’s momentum, had strong cup ambitions he had no plans to look away from, and Ilya fresh off of winning one himself was similarly well positioned, so from one angle he understood. On the other hand, Ilya had felt a little strange because he had no recollection of actually discussing that, and would definitely move teams for Shane. At the time, he didn’t protest; he had learned expeditiously that riding the wave of Shane and Yuna’s combined force was better than doing something futile like fighting the tide. “I will be free agent in 2018; we can consider again then?” he had offered instead. To him it felt like he might as well have said ‘when I reach the moon’ for how far away that seemed, but the two Hollanders, who knew they were having lunch together the second Wednesday of April in 2050, simply nodded and made note of it.

So publicity had been their main angle. They did advertisements and interviews joking about their rivalry, took part in other people’s charity initiatives together mock-competitively, and went on vacations together with friends. Yuna, like Ilya, had been onboard to push all of that further, coaching Shane that vacations just the two of them, attending events together, hugging each other in public, and a lot of ‘no comment’ when asked about it would maybe start rumors but none of them particularly harmful under the cover of the ‘typical athlete homoerotic friendship motif’, which turned Shane bright red. “Mom, I’m not comfortable with that. And never say 'homoerotic' again, please.”

So there was the line on that as well, enough of Shane’s lines to start the beginnings of a cage, really. But if Ilya was a dog, he was Shane’s and he was kennel trained. He knew when to heel and when to wait. What they had gained was a lot. He had been determined to make it enough.

-

After Shane’s first cup win in 2015, with ten days of tired love pressed close to his chest, Ilya had returned to Moscow to do his duty as a good son. A mediocre son more like, but when held up next to the pain and hate that made his brother and father actively awful, Grigori losing himself to the annals of time, he would settle for mediocre, satisfying himself that a week of abusive diatribes and underhanded cruelty was sufficient. At the heart of it, he was simply unwilling to tarnish his summer further.

And then, paradise. A sweaty, happy summer in Ottawa, spent losing themselves in each other, sharing leftovers and boardgames with The Hollanders and resolving to act like nothing at all existed outside of the cottage. David even got them an instant polaroid so they could keep little pieces of it, the device becoming an extension of Ilya’s hand that summer.

In late June, they had some stupid play-argument about who would be the better soccer player which devolved into wrestling on the grass. Shane had pinned him, and Ilya would say he had let him, but he hadn’t; Shane’s 200lbs of perfectly honed and sculpted muscles bore down on him, strategic and evil even in this. He found himself gasping with air knocked from him, eyes wandering from neck and nipples up to his wicked grin.

Shane kept him in place with one steady palm over the hill of his shoulder, the other reaching into his hair and just holding. And Ilya wondered if, for one perfect second, they’d been thinking the same thing: I want you forever.

“What?” Ilya had asked, breathless.

“Just looking at you, Rozanov,” he’d answered, still grinning.

Ilya now only heard his last name from Shane when he was incredibly turned on and just a touch sexually aggressive, or out on the ice. The conflation of those two types of moments caused an embarrassing amount of arousal during rivalry games, which Shane’s little glances during warm-ups told Ilya was a known and obvious fact that his filthy Canadian would take advantage of.

So of course they fucked on the grass about it. Well, at least, Ilya had fingered him until he came and then, embarrassed and annoyed at the outdoors of it all, Shane had dragged him inside to finish the job.

He wouldn’t have remembered that date with any specificity, lost to the hazy watercolor of summer, if he hadn’t heard it announced that evening. Heck, before the TV came on, he probably didn’t know the date at all.

June 26^th, 2015. The news was white noise to him as he was in Shane’s kitchen, making sandwiches, when a voice drifted in from the other room.

“Tonight: Law of the Land! American history has been made, as the Supreme Court rules same-sex marriage is legal in every state in the Union. Celebrations and weddings are already underway as folks take to the streets …”

He didn’t know when he left the kitchen, but he had. The screen was filled with happy people crying and hugging, two middle-aged women kissing, young men tackling each other. He stood there silently, holding a knife with a blade greased with mayonnaise in one hand, the other fisted against his lips. He thought about his love. His future. His Russia.

With Canada legalizing this in 2005, Massachusetts a year prior to that in 2004, maybe it was foolish to feel this so deeply. Call him a fool, then.

Shane had been out by the fire pit, so Ilya put down the knife, walked outside, and tucked his face in his neck.

“Ilya, what? What is it? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he told him, choking on emotion, and followed it with a kiss.

Whether Shane knew from Google, Ilya’s behavior, or Yuna’s text that evening, Ilya didn’t know. It felt pointed that they didn’t talk about it, not in a hurtful way but in a careful one, delicate glass best to look at but not pick up. There was nothing lost between them; if anything, something was added. Many invisible ropes linked them, and this truth felt like the thinnest, like spun sugar.

That day took root in him, a greedy harvest of hope. He hired an immigration lawyer and started studying for his citizenship test without telling anyone or thinking too closely about why, but he knew. Like a child’s face pressed against a storefront window, he knew.

As the summer pulled to a close, another evening tucked against Shane by the fire, he heard the first lick of uncertainty from the arms around him. “We’ll do this again next year, right?”

Ilya had turned in his arms and smiled at him, eyes locked on Shane’s skittish ones. “We’ll do this every year, moy lyubimiy.” The smile he got in return almost killed him.

And then he went back to Boston.

He bought more data and storage for his phone, the closeness he felt to Shane the prior season impossibly redoubled after a lakeside summer. Joy and loneliness both became the most closely held truths of this new life. The joy came in bursts: a phone call, a text, a picture. Marly bumping shoulders in the locker room with the quietest murmur of “Saw your boy did good last night. What a fucking goal in the second, am I right?” Sveta grinning at her phone, sending a video of her and Ilya dancing in a club to a nerdy All-Star a country away.

The loneliness followed him like a seagull, which is to say: sometimes it minded its fucking business. Sometimes it flew straight at him with the intent to snatch directly from his hands. It differed by the day, adding a new dimension to the darkness that lived in him.

He assumed his unflappable Shane, introverted and unfazed by endless stretches of his own company, didn’t feel anything like this at all. He was probably satisfied or even annoyed by the endless texts and calls. After Christmas Eve with the Hollander’s in Ottawa, a sudden trip to Tunbridge, Vermont the next morning disabused him of this notion thoroughly.

“It has a hot tub, and panoramic views. Lots of land with it. Lots of smart features. Super private,” Shane was rambling. “It’s cleaned and stocked for the next few days, and I have someone scheduled to look after it regularly. I know that we can’t spend a ton of time here, but this way, any time we both have the full day off, which could be pretty often, we could each drive two and a half hours and get here, right?”

“You bought this.” Ilya had to say the words out loud to make it real. “For us?”

“We can’t exactly own a house in both our names, so yeah,” he agreed, fidgeting. “I mean, it’s halfway between-”

“Boston and Montreal,” Ilya finished, a little (a lot) stunned. Collective bargaining in the NHL meant four days a month with no practice, meetings, or games, and though Boston usually provided about six, Montreal was rigid and brutal to the letter of four only; typically, these lined up at least twice in a month for them, sometimes even three times. Ilya felt his mouth water and eyes widen at the idea of at least twenty-four more days with Shane a year, not including the breaks or summer or Boston-Montreal games they already had.

It was a very nice, probably too nice he realized when he found out the price. A million-dollar investment for twenty-four-ish days a year. For Ilya, it was an easy bargain. His heart swelled that the same was true for Shane.

“I just,” Shane started, looking at the house rather than Ilya, thumbs in his pockets. “I wanted to be closer to you.”

Ilya found himself laughing, composed of pure joy. “Of course. Of course, new house is your solution, Mr. Real Estate.”

Fiery eyes snapped to him. “Shut up, Ilya! It’s a good idea!”

Kind, shy, thoughtful Shane was alluring, but irritated Shane was irresistible. Naturally, Ilya grabbed him and kissed him right against the – wait, no, their – front door. “Yes. Yes. Is very good. We will make good use of it now, yes?”

And, as a man who by necessity had always lived in today with only a toe dipped into tomorrow, he saw a glimpse like a tilt of a curtain into what was quite possibly a beautiful future. Similar to light though a window into a dark room, it looked so bright it was blinding. The curtain shifted again, and he looked away.

They met again in Vermont to ring in 2016, tipsy in their hot tub, mouths inseparable.

In a bid to make fun of him, Sveta started getting him Vermont souvenirs whenever circumstance made it convenient: a deck of cards, a mug, a book of quick facts, a small jug of maple syrup. He acted annoyed, but they lived on his nightstand in Boston as he counted down the days until his next visit, totems to ward off the dark.

And then Victor St. Simon got married, and the seagull was following him again.

This wasn’t the first wedding he’d been to while in love with Shane, far from. Going to wedding after wedding of his teammates, declining a plus one each time, had a special sting. MLH players rocketed down the aisle shotgun-style, so much he often would joke “Oh, so she got you pregnant then?” when finding out they’d known their future wife less than a year. It burned, because he knew without a doubt that if they had been a straight couple, he would have a ring on Shane’s finger and a baby in him already, no doubt. His Shanya would look stunning in white.

But they weren’t, so instead he spent evenings with those maudlin thoughts rebuffing advances at the cocktail bar alone, laughing as he was told for the hundredth time that he needed to find himself a girl. (It was better with Sveta in tow, but she had a boyfriend right now who was less than understanding and too Russian to be trusted with their truth.) He was happy for his friend, he was, every inch appearing the good captain, but he found his stomach clenched like he’d taken a punch knowing he’d had to miss a day in Vermont for this.

Boston made the play-offs that year, and gave an admirable showing, but didn’t go all the way, less due to any specific weakness on his own team and more the brutal efficiency of Carolina. Montreal had to struggle through all seven games with them later to finally take them out, a moment which had him and Yuna standing in her Ottawa living room, grabbing each other and shouting.

And then, of course, the final series. Watching Shane lift the cup the first time had been bittersweet, but the second was just bitter. Ilya’s tongue had worked to loosen the tension in his jaw as Shane’s teammates kissed wives and partners and even girlfriends of six months on the ice, and he just clapped mildly from 100 yards away.

If Shane was startled and a little hurt that Ilya only spent two days with him after that, (most of which was not together as Shane spent it celebrating with his team,) his face said it but his mouth didn’t. “Okay. Okay,” he said with a little frown, and then Ilya was back in Moscow, ready to get his week there over with.

He returned like he had never left, welcomed with open arms, and their second summer together began.

-

The summer of 2016 hit hard and fast, a number of things coming to a boiling point quickly.

If Ilya was a little snarky, a little distant, Shane was quick to blame that on being a sore loser after the Stanley Cup, which wasn’t entirely untrue but also wasn’t fair, considering the Moscow and the long-distance of it all. He hated himself a little for allowing any non-summer concerns to touch these wonderful weeks, but even though Shane could feel perfectly at ease that there was a plan and they were following it, Ilya just wasn’t built that way.

And then June 26^th, 2016. There was a special on, commemorating a year of same-sex marriage.

Ilya had thought about asking, but that felt more aggressive than romantic in his head, a manner of forcing the issue. He didn’t know what he’d do if the answer was a horrified “What? No!” Curl up into a ball and die, maybe.

The thought didn’t leave him, though. That night, laying side by side in bed, he had turned and asked, “We are … more than boyfriends, yes?” The answer had to be yes, with years between each other, all the effort of the distance, their shared house.

In the lamplight, Shane had had that sad, serene look he sometimes wore, and kissed him. “Yeah, Ilyusha. Of course.”

But they weren’t. Not really. In some ways, they were less, he thought, chomping down on the thought like a strap of leather for an amputation. People meet each other’s boyfriends.

-

He chewed on this thought, a dog with a bone, violent with the urge to do something, anything. He couldn’t move to a closer team on this short of notice. He couldn’t make Hollander marry him. So he threatened Yuna with coming out as though today he’d somehow woken up less Russian.

“You know what the first step of this new plan is, right?” she’d said, looking at him, hands on his shoulders, and he wondered frantically if his work toward American citizenship had become known or obvious to her somehow. At his blank, maybe scared look, she sighed. “Talk to Shane.”

Okay. Maybe that was scarier.

-

Social perception was not Shane’s strong suit in general, but he had a pocket of expertise he had carved out just for Ilya. Maybe that was why, when Ilya returned from his run which conveniently took him to Shane’s parents’ house and back, Shane looked at him, crossed his arms, and asked “Are you going to finally tell me what’s been bothering you?”

Or maybe Yuna had texted him and warmed him up. That might have been more likely.

“Ah, I must shower,” he deflected, trying to turn and head to the bathroom. He was stopped by Shane’s hand on his arm.

“Because I really, really hate when you get me all sweaty,” Shane rejoined sarcastically. When this yielded no response, he tried again. “Ilya …”

And Ilya, with the constant and deep fear the next thing he said or did would ruin everything, put a hand to Shane’s face, thumb running over his cheek, and looked at him for a long moment, until he worried it would almost bring him to tears.

“Come here,” Shane told him, opening his arms and bringing them both gently to the floor, pillowing Ilya’s face on his chest.

“I want full life with you. Not half-life,” Ilya choked out, pained. Part of him hoped the words were muffled past recognition. “I want to marry you.”

The hand stroking his back froze before resuming its path. “You want to marry me?”

“So much,” Ilya said with a pathetic little sniff, the self-spectator lurking in the back of his mind shaking his head and cursing that none of this was how this was supposed to go. “I know, is not practical. But I want forever, and always, and old man Shane with wrinkles and thicker glasses who still whimpers when I suck on his balls.”

“I …” it was a rare occurrence, that Shane wouldn’t lightly tell him off for speaking like that, so he must have really been stunned. “Okay,” he said instead. “Yeah. I want that, too. Let’s get married.”

-

Ilya was giddy and embarrassed for the rest of the day, giddy with the promise and embarrassed about how it had come about. The tentative agreement had soothed him, knowing they had the same plan for eventually, but he had no delusions that Shane was going to throw off the yoke of society and come out in a blaze of flame and glory tomorrow.

Marriage would be worked into their plan, then. Their sexy, sexy plan.

Shane surprised him yet again the next morning.  

“They have confidential marriage licenses in California,” he said casually, not even looking at Ilya, just flopping open the lid of his suitcase on their bed. “I booked us for Tuesday at eleven. It’s short notice, so J.J. and his girlfriend can’t come, but the Pikes and Cliff and his girlfriend will be there; we’ll post about it like it’s just a trip with friends to Disneyland, but the first day, we’ll hit the courthouse and get it done.”

Get it done. It shouldn’t have charmed and enchanted him that their marriage was such a forgone conclusion to Shane that he discussed it like a grocery run, but G-d help him, it did.

A boring courthouse marriage. Perfect, then.

Shane had a little smile on his face as he turned and asked, “Why are you grinning like that?”

Ilya tackled him as an answer, uncertain if the litanies of “I love you” were coming out in English or Russian or if he was achieving some terrible hybrid. Either way, it would be a few hours before Shane got his packing done.

After that, though, they were headed to California.