Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Halloween, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov Was Never a Professional Hockey Player, Mechanic Ilya Rozanov, Retirement, or the fear of it, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Closeted Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-20 Words: 1,800 Chapters: 1/3

October 31, on a road outside Montreal

Summary

October 31st. It was after ten p.m., so the streetlamps and other cars’ headlights glowed eerie in the pounding rain on Route 342 toward Montreal. Not that the sky would have been any brighter at six, these days. That was what time did to you: pickpocketed summer sun and warmth until, before you knew it, you were forty-two and your coach was playing you on the second line more and more.

--

Shane Hollander, age 42, crashes his car on a stormy Halloween night and accepts a ride from a handsome stranger on a motorbike.

This is a spooky Halloween story, but also a story about getting older, the burden of perfection and the loneliness of the closet.

Notes

This fic is tagged choose not to warn which means that any archive warnings might apply. This is also a spooky Halloween story which means there may be Halloween-esque surprises that are not tagged! Once I finish the fic, I will put the summary in the end notes so that readers can know what is ahead if they want to. I can't do that yet because, although I know the general shape of the story, I may end up changing stuff as I write.

Thanks for reading!

Chapter 1

October 31st. It was after ten p.m., so the streetlamps and other cars’ headlights glowed eerie in the pounding rain on Route 342 toward Montreal. Not that the sky would have been any brighter at six, these days. That was what time did to you: pickpocketed summer sun and warmth until, before you knew it, you were forty-two and your coach was playing you on the second line more and more. Just to give your ankle a little rest. Just because Donovan has the speed, and you know Winnipeg is all about speed these days.

Shane was still a fantastic player, but … possibly not the very best in the league anymore. Privately, silently, he could admit to himself that he was slowing down, and it was never going to get better. The end of his career was drawing closer like the sharp bend in the dark, rain-obscured rural highway he was driving on right now: he couldn’t see the turn yet, but it was coming toward him inexorably all the same.

Shane knew this road from taking it many times to visit Hayden’s house in Rigaud, where Hayden lived with his new girlfriend whom he’d met as his ski instructor shortly after his divorce.

JJ, like Hayden, was years into his retirement, although at least he had stayed in Montreal, so he and Shane could get a beer together once a week or so. In fact, most of the Metros who had earned Shane’s four cups with him were gone now: either traded away or retired or, in a couple of cases, no longer themselves thanks to dementia. Probably CTE, a result of all those concussions. Probably Shane should be more worried about that in his own future.

But it was hard to imagine what his own life would really be like after he left the ice. Shane had aimed to be the greatest, and he had been the greatest, for a good fifteen years. He had brought the Stanley Cup back to Canada and then won it three more times, which wasn’t his childhood goal of seven but was enough to make him a Canadian hero. In many ways, he had achieved everything he had dreamed of.

And soon he would retire, and they’d definitely hang his number in the rafters, and then fucking what? Would Shane find a male ski instructor to shack up with, and endure the whole world gawking at headlines about how Shane Hollander was secretly gay? Or would he just drive up to his cottage one day and … never come back?

Out of nowhere, that sharp swerve in the highway appeared out of the deluge and the night. Shane turned—his tires skidded on the wet asphalt—and it was like that time when Marleau laid him out, when in the milliseconds before impact Shane knew it was going to be bad.

Some time later, Shane opened his eyes. His forehead was resting against the steering wheel. There was some blood on his upper lip—dripping from his nose, leaving that familiar tang in his mouth. The airbag hadn’t deployed. So fucking much for buying a safe fucking car!

Something smelled like burning. That wasn’t good. His hands shaking with adrenaline and maybe relief, Shane unbuckled his seatbelt and squeezed himself out of the wreck that had once been a Range Rover Sport, into the cold, windy rainstorm. The car was fully off the road, smashed into a tree on the edge of the neglected woodland this stretch of the highway ran through. Shane always took Route 342 for the journey to Hayden’s because it was a little more scenic than the Trans-Canada Highway; that probably hadn’t been the smartest choice today. When Shane left Hayden’s house and realized it was raining, he had never even thought of breaking his routine. 

Sniffing, aware that he was dripping blood on his shirt as the rain ran down his face, Shane took stock of himself. He didn’t feel seriously injured, only bruised and banged up. His phone was in his pocket—but it proved to be cracked and unresponsive. Great. The rain couldn’t be helping it either, of course. And was that a rumble of thunder up in the clouds?

A truck sped past the ruin of his car, but it didn’t stop. Maybe in all this downpour and the dark its driver hadn’t noticed the wreckage at the roadside. Or they just didn’t give a shit about him.

Shane took shelter as much as he could under the rough boughs of the fir tree nearest to him and let himself have one bitter, miserable laugh. Fuck, it was getting colder too. His jacket, which had been fine for driving and walking from Hayden’s driveway to his door, wasn’t enough for being outside in this night’s weather. And Shane knew enough about hiking to know that hypothermia was no joke.

Another light was coming closer in the distance—but this one stopped, revealing itself to be a motorbike, not a car. A guy, barely distinguishable in the rain, swung himself off of it and whistled. “Wow. You okay?”

“Just about,” said Shane, annoyed for no justifiable reason. As this rider walked closer, peering at him by the light of his motorcycle headlamp, he became clearer to see: probably about Shane’s height, muscular, long-legged, around Shane’s age, with a handsome, interesting face and light brown curls that were now plastered to his head. “You should be wearing a helmet,” Shane couldn’t help saying. 

The guy raised his eyebrows and, in a tone that was more teasing than angry, said, “You are lecturing me about road safety?” He had an accent. Maybe Russian? 

“I must have hydroplaned. I wasn’t texting or anything.” Actually, Shane wasn’t 100% sure he hadn’t been speeding. He’d been distracted. Stupid.

“Mm, okay. Well, Mr. Safety, you want a ride somewhere drier?”

“You live nearby?” Shane didn’t want to end up in a Misery situation. On the other hand, his other option was, what, standing here in the rain until some other total stranger took pity on him?

This guy was hot.

“I have auto repair shop just up the road. Convenient, yes? You can get tow to my place in the morning. Or not, if I am not fancy enough for you. Either way, my place is warmer than this, and it has a roof. Probably it’s not good idea to keep standing on the side of the road in nighttime rain where someone else could skid and hit you. But is your choice.”

This guy was also kind of a dick. He did have a point, though. “Okay. I mean, thank you.” Shane pushed his wet hair back off his forehead. “Uh, do you not have a helmet I can wear …?”

“No. But I will drive very boring and slow. It’s like eight kilometers that way, we will be there in minutes anyway. I promise you will not get hurt from riding with me.”

Shane knew he should say no. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said instead. He swung a leg over the back of the motorbike; he’d never done this before, but he obviously knew how to ride a normal bike. Only after he was pressed against the firm back of his maybe-rescuer did he realize that if anyone got a photo of him doing this, they’d find it embarrassing.

Fuck them, anyway. Seriously, the whole world, the commissioner, all the fans who had so many opinions, they could all just—get fucked, and not in the fun way. Maybe Shane was just too fucking old to deal with it any more.

Then the motorcycle drove off, and Shane learned that riding it was not much at all like riding a mountain bike. He had the strength in his legs and back to keep himself in place, though. And he couldn’t help having to put an arm around the guy in front of him to stay on the bike.

Shane had enjoyed his share of furtive hookups with men in his time, though not as much any more. He’d be flicking through Grindr and then think: but I can’t today, I have to do my physical therapy exercises, I need to take my meds for my ankle on time and I can’t twist my knee the wrong way again, I have to get eight hours of sleep for healing … it was easy, when you were an athlete, to start thinking of your body as something separate from yourself. Shane’s body, once so smooth-moving and effortlessly powerful, had become the kind of junky car that constantly needed to go into the shop for maintenance, that had a sticky clutch and a door that only opened if you lifted the handle a certain way. He’d been pouring money and time into it, trying to eke out just one more season. The doctors said all the cartilage in Shane’s knees was worn away. 

The point was—Shane had hooked up with a lot of men, but he’d never held any of them in his arms.

A flash of light in the sky to Shane’s right, followed by a sharper thunderclap, jolted Shane out of his thoughts. Shane couldn’t fathom how this guy—Shane hadn’t even asked his name, that was so rude—was even seeing where he was going in the pouring rain. 

But, as the stranger had said, it wasn’t long at all before they were pulling into the small forecourt of a likewise small auto repair place. Shane couldn’t make out much of it from the outside.

Shane’s rescuer unlocked a side door and told Shane to go and get comfortable while he stowed his bike in the garage. So, at first, Shane was left alone in what turned out to be something like a narrow living room, with an uneven linoleum floor, a sagging couch, and an ancient, boxy TV. In the corner of the room, a set of rough wooden stairs led upwards. Possibly to a bedroom? The place smelled fairly clean: a little of cigarettes, a little damp, but also of the forest surrounding it. 

The problem was that Shane was too soaked-through to sit down anywhere or touch anything. He really needed a change of clothes. Maybe this guy would give Shane a shirt of his own to borrow. Fabric that held the shape of another man’s body in it …

God, Shane was so fucking lonely sometimes.

And then the man in question strode in through another door. Gorgeously shirtless, with a trail of hair on his lower stomach, he was one-handedly squeezing his hair dry with what looked like an old t-shirt rather than a towel.

“You are Shane Hollander,” he said with a smile that was maybe smug, maybe pleased. “My name is Ilya.”