Rating:

General Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Fluff and Angst, Fluff, Retelling, POV Shane Hollander, Game Changers Hockey Camp (Game Changers), The ghost of Sochi Olympics haunts the narrative, Angst, Light Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-18 Words: 3,556 Chapters: 1/1

Wolves change rivers

Summary

In 2008, seventeen year old Ilya Rozanov—all 6’2” of him, smirking wolfishly around a cigarette, moving across the ice with explosive, animal energy as he barked at his teammates in Russian and gnawed at his mouthguard, all brilliant white canines and rangy grace—lands in Saskatchewan, and changes Shane’s world forever.

Notes

"How Wolves Change Rivers" is a real documentary about how the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park had a remarkable impact on the entire environment and ecological ecosystem. They affected everything: how prey animals grazed, how the trees and the riverbanks recovered from erosion, how niche species of flora and fauna started to show up again.

I thought the parallels with Ilya Rozanov, how he keeps showing up through the Game Changers series like everyone favourite queer fairy godmother, and creating these safe, beautiful spaces for various characters was too apt.

The books reference Ilya having a grizzly bear tattoo, as a nod to his Russian heritage and career with the Boston Bears. I loved that so much, so this version of Ilya also has a bear tattoo.

This is more of a light-touch retelling of Heated Rivalry and a short character analysis than any real plot-driven story.

I hope you enjoy!

When wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone Park in 1995, no one could predict how drastically they would shape the landscape. As soon as the wolves arrived, they started to have the most remarkable effects. This was a trophic cascade: an ecological process which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom. 

“Ilya Rozanov?”

Shane’s heart flips in his chest. Oh, he thinks faintly. His ears go hot, thankfully hidden by his Team Canada black toque. 

He has a sudden sense of deja vu while watching Ilya Rozanov attempt to light a cigarette. It’s the same feeling as the third period of yesterday’s game, when a Swedish player built like a Viking god had slammed into his teammate’s side, right in his blindspot, and sent them both careening into the boards. 

The moment before the hit Shane’s brain had been instinctively calculating angles, trajectories, probabilities, the sprawl of limbs tangling, time in the penalty box for a dirty hit versus time left on the clock, three different options for how his team could recover, regroup, send fresh legs onto the ice to maintain their slim goal advantage, the famously highest hockey IQ in the league whirring away to plan for and around the inevitable collision. An unstoppable force (Eriksson, #33, said Viking brick shithouse) will meet an unmovable object (Davies #14, slow, always so slow down the lane, lazy situational awareness at this level of the game) and Shane can’t look away from what’s about to unfold. He’s rooted down into his skates, his breath punched out of him in anticipation of the thunderous impact and the messy aftermath. 

Shane is fixating Rozanov’s cupid’s bow because there is a very real chance he may spontaneously combust if they make actual eye contact. He’s pretty sure he’s used up all his annual allowance of courage already and interest is due. 

Rozanov’s mouth starts to curve up, as if in slow motion. 

Shane stands stock still in a snowy parking lot, hand outstretched to Rozanov, frozen in fear and something else and felt like he’d been slammed into ice. 

This beautiful boy looks at him askance for interrupting his smoke break, his halting English and eyes glittering with amusement and surprise, like a wolf that’s just stumbled across a rabbit in an open field.

Shane feels like he was a dark rink suddenly lit up by fluorescent lights—the thunk thunk thunk of stadium lights blazing to life, his head thrumming with static and mind wiped clean by a Zamboni.

Oh no, Shane thinks again, with a trickling horror and something warm and syrupy he doesn’t want to name unfurling in his stomach. He knew he was flushing hard. He could probably melt a whole snowbank if he faceplanted in it. No doubt NASA could spot the heat signal from outer space, he thinks hysterically. He wasn’t 100% convinced he could remember how to walk away from this encounter, as if the exquisite, deft footwork that had so impressed scouts and carried him this far in his hockey career had abruptly been replaced by knock-kneed Bambi legs. His scuffed Reeboks suddenly felt like clown shoes. He’d never been so betrayed by his body like this. 

In 2008, seventeen year old Ilya Rozanov—all 6’2” of him, smirking wolfishly around a cigarette, moving across the ice with explosive, animal energy as he barked at his teammates in Russian and gnawed at his mouthguard, all brilliant white canines and rangy grace—lands in Saskatchewan and changes Shane’s world forever.  

“It starts with the keystone predator.”

Shane watches Ilya’s interview on his cellphone, the tiny screen taken up by the blonde’s sweaty post-practice curls and wide, wide smirk. His mouth was full and wet and pink; it glistened sensuously under the reporters’ lights. 

Shane looks at the infamous bear tattoo snarling across one pec and feels like he’s in a deep forest. Like his heart is about to get shredded by a predator that’s hunting him. He idly wonders, professional athlete that he is, if he can stop his too-fast heartbeat entirely through willpower alone, like some sort of Tibetan monk. Surely that would be better than this—this indignity: curled around his kitchen counter with both hands clutching his phone like a lifeline, his nutritionist-approved green smoothie gone slimy and untouched at his elbow. 

A notification from his mom chirrups and the text obscures half of Rozanov’s face: “We have a booth by the window! Do you want me to order you the salmon?”

He’s already so late for lunch with his parents. He’s going to leave his apartment any minute now. He’s not going to replay the clip. He’s not. 

(Is lie, liar told you that.)

A grainy version of Ilya winks again. “What an asshole,” Shane huffs, almost fondly, and rewinds. His traitorous rabbit heart thumps loudly in his chest. 

“Changes in one aspect of any ecosystem have unforeseen, unintended and often powerful consequences in connected systems. Most remarkably, wolves changed rivers. ”

“So being boring is…genetic.”

“Wow,” Shane mouths silently and reared back. His smile drops off his face like he’d been struck. 

Shame churns in his gut, roiling hot and sudden, like the worst case of food poisoning he’s ever had. He feels like he’s going to be sick. Shane presses his palm over his mouth to—fuck—catch the first tears of frustration and feverishly wills the taste of vomit at the back of his throat away. He can’t throw up—not here, not now, not because Ilya fucking Rozanov called him boring. Again. Fuck, this is mortifying.

Shane has endured years of chirps and taunts, outwardly homophobic and slyly racist and everything in between, but nothing makes his whole body shut down cold the way that Ilya Rozanov just said “boring”. Tossing it between them like it wasn’t a half-joke that just became a hunter’s snare squeezing his lungs. Shane has had torn ACLs that have hurt less.

All of a sudden he’s back in Sochi, gazing at Ilya who is half-turned away from him. Ilya who is trying to wrap the shadows of the stadium’s rafters around himself. Ilya who is radiating misery from head to toe. Shane yearned to reach out and touch his shoulder and pull his rival into his chest, fold him tight into his cream Team Canada fleece and feel Ilya’s nose nuzzling against his breastbone.

He can’t help it. He sees a big “FUCK OFF” neon sign hovering above Ilya and wants to inch closer. It might as well say, “EXTREME CAUTION: WILD ANIMAL” and Shane would still want to curl his hand around the back of Ilya’s head and stroke the soft honey curls at the nape of his neck like he’s gentling a spooked creature.

Single-minded, his pewee coaches had said approvingly. Self-destructive, the Metro’s sports psychologist would cluck.

He’s back in Sochi and everything feels sharp and dangerous, nothing more so than the man in front of him. He’s back in Sochi and “No, I didn’t answer your boring text,” drips with so much disdain that Shane wants to peel off his own skin and leave it behind in the Olympic Village. 

The playful banter and heady tug of desire that had been thrumming between them the last few minutes evaporates in the cold bathroom. Shane squeezes his eyes shut and misses the look of surprise and panic flashing across Rozanov’s face. His breath saws out of his chest, hot gulps of air that usually signal an incoming panic attack. A bad one.

He desperately gathered himself by pressing the cold edge of the marble counter into his hip, just above a mottled green bruise sustained from the last match. The line of pain steadies him, grounds him, keeps him here in this moment and not spiralling back to Sochi. 

He already knows this about Ilya: a wolf will gnaw its own leg off to be free of a trap. 

Boring boring boring clangs through his head like a tolling bell. His heart is scrabbling out of his chest. His tux constricts like a compression top two sizes too small. 

“Sorry I’m so boring. Why do you even bother with someone so boring, anyways,” Shane says flatly. His fingernails cut tiny moons into his palm. 

He doesn't dare meet Rozanov’s eyes; he didn’t want to see pity and derision there. Or even worse, the hollowed-out blank stare that still haunts him from Russia, a bone-chilling absence of any emotion. His gaze jumps from the muscle feathering in Rozanov’s jaw, to the ceiling lights, to the line of grout underneath their perfectly polished dress shoes. 

Shane presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, as if he could mash these feelings back into his body. Shape-shift into something less pathetic, ideally. 

“I just—fuck. Fuck this. Why did you follow me in here if you were just going to—what?—make fun of me? Make me feel like shit again? Jokes on you, I don’t need you for that. I’ve been doing that just fine by myself. For months.” He laughs wetly. It sounds very much like a sob. 

“Go find someone else to toy with, Rozanov. I can’t—I don’t know what you want from me anymore.” 

He wants so badly to sound angry, to meet Rozanov’s teasing heat with a furious fire of his own. He wants to scoop the hurt that’s churning inside him and fling it back at Rozanov’s shocked face. Just like Rozanov flung Shane’s earnestness back in his face, pushed his nose into it the way you would a misbehaving dog that’s peed indoors again. Look at the mess you made. 

Shane’s words come out instead as tired and devastated. He feels like he’d been wrung by the neck and shaken like a small animal until all the fight went out of him. God, he’s so pathetic. How fucking mortifying is this, to secretly pine for someone you know you shouldn’t for years and years, and lay out your want so nakedly at another forgettable NHL award ceremony, to place your heart down on a filthy bathroom floor, to be both desired and discarded over and over—and still, after all that, be left wanting. 

Shane gathers the crumpled up edges of his dignity. The line of his shoulders tightens like he’s bracing for a nasty away game while playing through an injury he’s hidden from the trainers. And then, because even in his heart-broken devastation and bone-melting misery he is still a polite Canadian boy and a Captain to boot, says with as much calm as he can muster, “Enjoy the rest of your night, Rozanov.” 

The words flop between them, a dead offering dropped to the ground. Like a rabbit slammed against the ground by a predator, stunned and crooked and still reverberating with the hit. They are words said to a casual acquaintance at a tedious work event, not someone who had long ago curled up in the unholy mess behind his ribs. 

Shane hopes the break is clean and final, the kind that allows the bone to reset and heal right on its own. 

“Holl—” Ilya croaked, horrified, and reaches for his waist. Shane muscles past Rozanov, shoulder checking him into the paper towel dispenser and blindly gropes for the bathroom door through vision that’s gone blurry from tears. 

The world tilts, the landscape reshapes itself, and the river between them changes course again.

It turns out that the legends of ravens following wolves are true. Ravens and wolves share a close, symbiotic relationship in the wild, with ravens often called "wolf-birds" by several cultures, because they hunt and travel together. This special relationship enhances the survival of both species. 

The TV is turned down to a pleasant hum, a nature documentary playing that he’s seen countless times, about how wolves change rivers. The scenes are quiet and soothing the way the last two weeks have been: sun sparkling on water, endless green forests. An easy silence pools between them like caramel lamplight.

Shane rakes his fingers through Ilya’s hair. They’re both pleasantly drowsy, slightly sun-stupid and the adrenaline of kayaking out to the far shore and back sapping their energy. 

“Turns out, we were wrong about wolves,” a kind-looking ecologist says with a wry smile as she gestures at the landscape behind her. She’s in a ranger’s khaki outfit, sun spots freckling her cheeks.

You can’t see the wolves but you know they’re there, in the belly of the forests and in the foothills, ranging across lowlands and valleys, quietly changing the fragile balance of the world. Making space for songbirds and small creatures. Allowing new growth on the forest floor to finally reach sunlight. Steadying riverbanks and preventing erosion of precious ground. Charting new rivers. 

“That’s you, you know,” Shane remarks, idly, tracing a finger around the soft shell of Ilya’s ear. The words slipped out without him realising it.

“What, lone wolf?” Ilya says. 

Shane goes quiet for a moment. 

How exactly do you tell your once-rival turned long-distance-casual-hookup now maybe-definitely-secret-boyfriend-lover, No I mean, you changed everything. You changed my whole world. And I never saw it coming. I was so wrong about you. Everyone was. Please stay.

“Ahhh, yes, you mean top of the food chain.” Ilya nods sagely. “Yes, I am the best player in the league. Nice of you to finally admit it after all. Was it painful to say?”

“Asshole.”

“No, no you’re right. Maybe I should get a wolf tattoo when I go back to Boston, next to my bear. I bet I can make it growl when I flex my pec. You’d like that, no? Ooh, Sveta said she knows a good tattoo artist in Cambridge. I’ll text her now.” He lights up with glee.

“Maybe start with just the loon tattoo?” Shane says with all the authority of someone who knows they’ve lost the battle and the plot. Shane regrets saying anything. He blames the nature documentary, sun stroke, being fucked six ways to Sunday for melting his brain. 

“Wait, if I’m a wolf, does that make you—”

“If you say prey, I swear to god, Ilya—”

“Deer,” Ilya says gleefully. The fucker is grinning with every canine on show. He snaps playfully at Shane’s nose and his teeth click together inches from Shane’s face. 

“Deer!?” Shane splutters.

“Yes,” he says simply. “Look at these beautiful brown eyes. Big Bambi eyes. Fluffy eyelashes, like doe. And these freckles,” Ilya murmurs, gently tapping the constellation across Shane’s nose with one finger, the aching tenderness of the gesture completely at odds with the playful grin tugging one corner of his mouth up. He cups his hand over Shane’s jaw, ghosting his thumb over the sun-warmed freckles in large, sweeping motions. 

“I take one look at them and I am—how you say—down bad.”

Shane squirms with secret pleasure. He remembers, a half second later, that they’re alone together, safe here, that they’ve already whispered I love you to each other that morning as the sun stretched languidly across the bed, that the people he loves most in the world now know each other and have a standing monthly lunch date in Ottawa, that he doesn’t have to tamp down or hide how he feels about this man in this space. 

His body bristles with delight at being adored by Ilya so openly, for once. His heart beats rabbit-quick and for the first time in years there’s no underlying fear.

Ilya Rozanov: Russia’s Greatest Sap. Who knew.

Shane tries valiantly not to laugh but his lips twitch. “Oh my god. Who taught you that phrase?”

“WAGs,” Ilya says primly. “It’s true. I am goner. Goner, Hollander.”

Ilya has this all wrong. Totally backwards. Maybe one day he’ll tell Ilya about how it was definitely Shane who fell first and fell harder, in a snowy parking lot in Saskatchewan watching the most stunning boy he’d ever laid eyes on shake his hand and completely change his entire future without realising it. Goner. Right.

Shane spots their reflection in the cottage’s floor to ceiling windows. Raven-dark hair contrasting with golden curls, Ilya’s large frame blanketing his as they nestle into each other. The wolf, and his Canadian wolf-bird following.  

Ilya shifts and resettles, cuddling further into Shane’s plaid fleece. He smushes his cheek into Shane’s chest. “What’s for dinner, my beautiful Bambi?”

“That’s not my new nickname.” Shane tries very hard to sound stern, really.

“We’ll see,” Ilya says in a falsetto voice. He grins even wider when Shane huffs grumpily.

“You don’t want mom’s leftovers? You love that chicken salad she made. She left us extra in the fridge.”

“Please Shane, no more quinoa,” Ilya pleads, like he's physically pained.

He exaggerates the word so it sounds like a high pitched bird call: keeeeeeeee-noah. He scoots down the sofa further so he can peer up at Shane, upside down, with an imploring look. An unfair face-off: puppy dog eyes vs. nutritionally balanced poached chicken (or tofu wraps or “ancient grains”, whatever the fuck kind of bird food that is, seriously Hollander, it’s the off-season).

“Fine. Venison steaks?”

Ilya gasps. “You are cannibal.”

Wolves are ecosystem engineers; they create niches for other species. Much to the surprise of ecologists, the Yellowstone wolves rebalanced elk and deer populations. Willow and aspen returned to the landscape. And as soon as that happened, the birds started moving in. Songbirds multiplied, as did beavers, otters, muskrats and ducks. The end of overgrazing stabilised grasslands and regenerated riverbanks, reshaping whole landscapes.

“I love you, I love you, I love you. Good job today, Nick. I love you, I love you. Nice assist there, Maya. I love you, I love you. Great passing, Shannon.”

Ilya plants himself at the boards offering a fist bump to each player coming off the ice. It’s said casually but with so much pride. A reassuring rap of his knuckles on a helmet, a fist bump, a fond hair ruffle as they all pass him, chattering and hollering, a gaggle of peewee equipment and tiny pads and caged helmets. The praise is doled out generously and equally—it doesn’t matter that they barely come up to Ilya’s waist (even in skates) and spend most of the time careening around the ice and falling over like fainting baby goats. 

Ilya does the same wearing the ‘C’ for Boston. It doesn’t matter if the Raiders are winning or losing, if the team was up 4 - 0 at home or a demoralised mess in an away stadium; Shane knows Ilya would stand at the tunnel exit and say it firmly and loudly, looking each Raider in the eye, no matter the circumstances. Ever the Captain, last one on the ice. I love you, I love you, I love you. It says, I see you, you belong here, I got you, you’re not alone. 

The hockey camp kids all seem to yell, all the time, like they can’t talk unless it’s at an ear-splitting, deafening volume. The kids are hyped up on post-scrimmage adrenaline high and the promise of ice cream sandwiches that Wyatt had mistakenly offered if they scored at least ten goals on him during practice. 

(Wyatt claims loudly the tenth goal didn’t cross the line. Ilya calls Wyatt a big fat liar and says he forgot his wallet at home, so now Wyatt has to go buy them all ice cream.)

Shane loves them all but also looks forward to the rush of relief and sudden quiet when the parents filter in for pick up. He also knows that there’s nowhere Ilya would rather be than right in the middle of the scrum, laughing and chirping the kids, crouching on the ice to adjust a stick or offer up coaching advice. 

Shane slowly starts gathering up tiny orange cones and leftover pucks, skating slowly across the ice. He looks over to the far side of the rink. 

Maya has a messy blonde braid spilling out from under her helmet. She careens into Ilya’s leg with a soft whump and starts talking at him at a mile a minute, excited breaths whistling through her gap tooth. Shane looks over at them, their matching honey-blonde blonde curls tilted towards each other, and something jolts in his stomach. It feels like a stick being jabbed between his ribs—sharp and hot and unexpected.

Ilya Rozanov made everyone around him better—better hockey players, certainly. But better teammates to each other, better and kinder humans to themselves. 

He cares for the people he loved the same way he played: with devastating ferocity. Uncompromising pack loyalty. Loudly, unabashedly, like it’s a dare he had already won and couldn’t wait to gloat about while he runs rings around everyone.

The last one off the ice, the first wolf to change rivers so completely.

“Hollander!” Ilya booms, waving him over. “Hey Hollander! Maya also thinks you have terrible backhand. Can you go in goal so I can show her how the best player in the league does it? Wyatt is busy buying ice cream so you are the backup goalie.”

Maya turns towards him, a very Ilya Rozanov-esque smirk on her face visible even through her caged helmet.

Shane smiles, steadies himself and skates towards the love of his life.