Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Complete, Feelings Realization, Episode: s01e02 Olympians (Heated Rivalry), Alternate Universe, Hopeful Ending, Fuck AI

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-13 Words: 1,765 Chapters: 1/1

a kiss goodbye, a kiss hello

Summary

Your first kiss after falling in love with someone leaves an indelible mark.

In the locker room, three weeks after Shane brought Ilya to his home and his bedroom, J.J. notices a kiss mark on Shane's back.

Notes

It’s early November 2013, just after Halloween, when Shane strips off his sweatshirt before practice and JJ, next to him, says: “Oh shit! Congratulations, Hollander! Who is she?”

“What?” Shane says. What could—oh my god, that girl he hooked up with in the preseason, is she pregnant or something? Or is she on the internet saying they’re a couple?

“You’ve got a kiss mark on your shoulder blade, dude,” says Hayden. “You didn’t know?”

A kiss mark. Where no girl has kissed Shane ever, as far as he can remember. Only one person has kissed him there. Three weeks ago now, Ilya Rozanov came to Shane’s apartment smelling of cigarette smoke and body spray and touched him and fucked him and … kissed his back …

Rozanov. A kiss mark. Rozanov. ROZANOV?

Something like reflex kicks in. Shane is the captain of this team, has to be the captain no matter what. “Okay, I’ll catch you guys up on the gossip later,” Shane says. He can’t let them see his hands tremble as he pulls on his compression shirt. He can’t let anything shake his focus; dominating on the ice is what’s most important.

Shane makes it through practice thanks to muscle memory and, to be totally honest, the fact that he’s the best player on the team. He makes excuses afterward, of course, saying he needs to nap and carb load before they face San Francisco tonight, and hurries home. It’s only after the drive to his apartment, after he’s showered and turned around to peer at his own back in his steamy bathroom mirror, that the truth of it really sinks in.

Ilya Rozanov has left a kiss mark on Shane’s shoulder blade. It’s right there, Shane remembers Ilya kissing him in that exact spot when they did anal for the first time—maybe the only time—and now that kiss is immortalized on Shane’s skin forever. Kiss marks can come in a range of different colors, ranging from white to red to blue to green to black. Shane learned that in an embarrassing health & P.E. class in middle school. Now, after craning awkwardly and wiping the mirror with a towel, he knows that Ilya’s kiss is red.

Oh, thank fuck it didn’t happen when they were kissing properly, like they did on the stairs afterward. In that same class, Shane and his classmates were told that you don’t kiss on the lips until after a kiss mark has appeared. Otherwise, you could end up with a kiss smeared over your mouth for the rest of your life. Shane never saw the point of following that rule with Ilya because it was only hookups, only sex, of course he wasn’t going to …

Of course they weren’t going to fall in love. And it’s only a loving kiss that makes a kiss mark. So they were supposed to be fine.

Slowly, Shane lowers himself to his bathroom floor to sit on his damp bathmat. Ilya Rozanov has left a kiss mark on his shoulder. Which means that Ilya Rozanov, the enfant terrible of MLH who has a girl or three in every hockey city, fucking loves him. It has to mean that. 

Is this why Rozanov has fucking ghosted him for the past three weeks? Kiss marks can take between ten minutes and an hour to appear, so maybe Ilya saw it come up, realized what happened, and freaked out. Shane can hardly blame him.

This wasn’t supposed to be love. It was supposed to be just fun, just orgasms with a guy who gets it and yeah, is hot—so what, Shane can find a guy hot too. It’s because Rozanov is so good at hockey.

Shane could get a tattoo over the mark. But no, there’s no point, his teammates have already seen it. Besides, he finds himself recoiling at the thought of covering up the little kiss shape on his skin. Rozanov loves him. The other best player in the league, Shane’s equal—loves him.

Ilya loves him.

Alone, in the bathroom of his still-new apartment, Shane is strangely aware of his inner self changing, as undetectably and profoundly as a caterpillar inside a chrysalis. He should be annoyed or weirded out or regretful that he made another guy fall in love with him, but he can’t feel that way. Ilya loves him. The more he thinks it, the more the concept settles into place.

*

Ilya continues his radio silence over texts. Shane stops trying to get a response, stops texting him too. What is he supposed to say? What do you even say to your rival who just left a fucking kiss mark on you?

It doesn’t have to end here. I know it’s a terrible idea, I know, but we can keep going somehow. Don’t cut this off now when it’s so good. 

In Sochi, Shane even catches a glimpse of Ilya watching the men’s figure skating from way up high. Shane lets himself glance for a few seconds, take in Ilya’s hunched shoulders and the curls that have grown out to reach his eyebrows, as though he’s using them to hide from the world. 

Ilya’s team crashed and burned on home turf. Shane can only imagine the bitter humiliation and regret he must be feeling. In Ilya’s shoes, Shane would be losing it. And then the whole thing with the kiss mark, given everything Vaughn just said about Russia and, uh, LGBT people—if that includes Ilya?

There’s nothing Shane could say to make it better, not really, yet he yearns to go up to Ilya anyway. Or would just going to him help? Would Ilya like it if Shane, the guy he left a kiss mark on, came to him?

Shane didn’t leave a kiss mark on Ilya’s lips in return, that night in the stairwell. Shane’s been thinking about that lately, poking at the thought like something stuck between his teeth. Shane’s looked through plenty of images, and there definitely isn’t makeup on Ilya’s mouth covering a mark up. Shane simply didn’t leave a mark on Ilya, and …

Shane forces his gaze back to the skating, but he isn’t really watching, and afterwards he can’t remember a single program.

*

By the MLH awards, months of silence have passed between them. They’re supposed to do some stupid little skit centering on their rivalry as they present an award. That just pisses Shane off. He’s trying to figure out something real and important and there’s always bullshit going on that makes it all harder.

When you think you’re ready to give a kiss mark, you’re supposed to kiss the back of the other person’s hand. That’s the traditional way, although there are people who intentionally do it on the cheek or neck or somewhere else provocative.

Shane’s caught himself wishing that his own kiss mark was on the back of his hand, so he could see it more often. 

He doesn’t want to end it with Ilya. He still doesn’t know what to say, either. It’s not like they can be anything together, not if they want to keep being MLH captains. But Shane has a mark on his back, and—-you don’t get kiss marks every day. They’re not so plentiful that you can just forget about them. Many people never get any.

If the mark was from someone else, Shane might not care so much. He wouldn’t be looking at it every day and trying to touch it under his pajama shirts even though it’s in the most inconvenient place possible. Of course Ilya Rozanov’s kiss mark manages to annoy him on a regular basis. It wouldn’t be Ilya’s, otherwise.

They have to talk, that’s all. Shane takes his place in the wings of the theater, ready to say his stupid lines and present the award, and he tells himself: he and Ilya have to figure something out. He can’t keep going on like this. 

With like five seconds to go, Ilya appears in the blue-lit darkness—sporting a shocking buzz cut. All his curls! What the fuck? Did he shave his head in the bathroom ten minutes ago? Because Shane is pretty fucking sure Ilya had hair when he saw him across the room at the start of the ceremony.

Shane doesn’t even have time to say anything to Ilya before they’re out on stage, in the glaring lights, which …

Shane’s lines are coming up on the teleprompter. But he’s not looking at them. He’s looking at Ilya’s forehead, where a blue kiss mark is shockingly obvious on his skin, close to his hairline.

 You have killed me, Hollander, Ilya had said. He’d put his head on Shane’s shoulder. And, sex-drunk, Shane had pressed a kiss there.

The crowd is murmuring: maybe because of the haircut, maybe because nobody’s speaking, maybe both.

“You, uh. You’re looking different,” Shane says. Shane left his mark on Ilya, on Ilya’s forehead where everyone will see it until the end of time. And Ilya likes it. He was hiding it before but now he’s showing it to everyone, all of MLH and the world.

“Yes,” Ilya says. He smiles, trying to wear his usual cocky asshole demeanor, but Shane thinks it’s not quite working. “Is good look, yes?”

They are completely not doing the script and Shane doesn’t even care in the slightest. “Yeah, congrats.” It’s beautiful, Shane doesn’t say. 

“Where is yours?” Ilya asks him. The crowd gasps—they think Ilya is taunting Shane—but they don’t get it. 

“Well, it’s under my clothes right now,” Shane says. And that gets some scattered laughter and even a couple of whistles.

“Congrats to you too,” Ilya says. His gaze is softer now. He extends a hand, which Shane shakes.

Shane clears his throat. His whole body is buzzing, he needs to talk to Ilya, so he cuts to the chase. “And the Lord Talon award for most sportsmanlike player goes to ….”

Ilya presents the award to a guy from Detroit. The minute it’s over, Shane strides off the stage and down a hallway until he finds a bathroom. Ilya is right behind him.

The door swings shut. Shane grabs Ilya, pulls him closer and kisses him hard, letting Ilya pull him close too as they kiss and touch and kiss and lose themselves in each other. They can’t have this, they can’t be anything to each other, but from now on they can kiss this way as much as they want. They’re already marked, so they don’t have to avoid it. At least in that, there’s nothing to fear.