Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Scott Hunter & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Bonus Scenes, extras, bits and bobs, and so forth - Freeform

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Where does such tenderness come from?

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-29 Words: 4,000 Chapters: 2/?

Marginalia

Summary

What it says on the tin; extra scenes, chapters, bit and bobs that haven't made it to the main body of the fic (:

Chapter 1: Chapter 35

Chapter Notes

From the people who brought you hockey as narrative device and fashion as narrative device, a limited time product: fine art as narrative device.

The painting is enormous and obstinately abstract: built-up pressure, and one pale rupture running through the middle, not straight enough to be clean, not jagged enough to be called a tear. The surface is worked to death—black over iron-grey over old brown, paint laid down and scraped back and worried into itself until it looks less painted than accumulated, like nature or scar tissue or a struggle made visible. A dramatic pale tears through it, cuts, disappears, comes back altered—thinner here, broader there, nearly swallowed in one place, startlingly bright in another. It’s not white, it’s many shades of pale yellow melting into each other, never subdued but always under pressure.

Van Reiner, says the little brass plaque. Ilya has never heard of her in his life, which is hardly shocking. The room, however, very much has. People keep drifting toward the canvas, lingering before it with drinks in hand and careful expressions, as though contemplation itself requires etiquette, a dignified, but humble posture.

Moreau stands nearest it without seeming to claim the place, which only makes it more evidently his. Everyone else arranges themselves around that fact with varying degrees of grace. A writer with lacquer-black hair and a dry little smile. Samantha, maybe. The introductions happened in a confusing blur of nicknames—the presumption being that people present need no introduction. A pianist in a modern, pale yellow suit. A collector or dealer or critic, one of those men whose exact function in the ecosystem is impossible to pin down except as someone involved in attaching art to a concrete number. Sasha, naturally, looks as though he was born to stand in rooms like this and find them wanting. Shane, beside Ilya, looks deeply unconvinced by everything he’s seeing.

Rose has been pulled half a room away by some theatre person of indeterminate importance. Good. She can still see Shane from where she’s standing, which means he’s safe as houses, and Ilya is free to enjoy himself.

People are talking. Structure, gesture, abstraction, whatever. Ilya is only half listening. He is not an art guy, but he doesn’t need much to feel, and enjoys letting himself do so—enjoys the act of being invited to do so. And there is plenty to feel, here.

At first glance, the dark seems to be the subject. The thing being struck through. Opened, interrupted by it. That makes sense. Darkness, if it is lucky, gets confronted by light. Changed by it. Maybe that violence is holy, maybe it is cleansing. What it for sure isn’t, is peaceful. There is nothing painless about being made different, even by something better than you. Maybe especially then.

Then again—What if the pale thing is the subject? The virtue. The stubborn, living thread trapped inside all that weight, pressed from every side and enduring anyway. Visible. Endless. Insisting on itself. Cutting down its boundaries where it can, piercing through where it can’t.

This feels true too. You can’t stamp out light. Not really. You can muddy the edges, force it narrow, force it strange, but pressure won’t destroy it. It will purify it. What remains is clear, unambiguous goodness, the kind that can no more be destroyed than energy can. Ilya might have only high-school physics, but he knows about force and energy. He knows that the one thing you don’t want to do with energy coming at you is focus it.

The third story is the least welcome: Maybe both are true. The dark hurts itself and the other because it can’t do otherwise, bound by its volume, its nature. Static. Heavy. Spreading without direction or purpose. The light, relentless and always moving because stillness is not its nature. Fast where the dark is slow. Piercing where the dark is broad. Cutting not because it has been wounded into motion, but because this is how it enters the world. The two of them bound together, sharpening themselves against each other, transforming perhaps, but not into anything worthwhile.

Right. He steps back physically and metaphorically. You’re projecting, Rozanov. It’s fucking childish.

“What interests me,” the writer—possibly Samantha?—says, “is the way the rupture refuses to remain merely an injury. It becomes a seam, a site of relation that organises the canvas.”

A seam. He turns to Shane, just in case. “Sorry, seam is—join? Yes?”

Shane looks at him like he’s mad. “Yes, like—“ He raises a hand, points at a seam on his jacket. “Seam.”

“Thanks.”

A seam, Christ. Like it’s finished, like the light has already left, and this ruin is just what it left behind—

“I do not see a seam,” Ilya says. How dare she even imply such tragedy? He’s having a nice night.

A solid third of the crowd turns his way, eyebrows raised, some more polite about it than others. Well, good people, if you didn’t want the uncultured ape to speak to you, you should not have come to his fucking party.

The woman blinks. “No?”

“No.” Ilya gestures at the canvas with his glass. “Seam implies that what happened, happened in the past.” The little ring around the painting quiets further. “The light is right there. The dark is right there. There is no space between them. The violence is still happening.”

Moreau turns his head and looks at him properly. “Good,” he says.

Ilya pauses. “Good?”

“Yes. You are looking at the painting, not the plaque. An unfashionable place to start, granted, but an interesting one.”

The writer laughs into her drink.

Ilya’s mouth twitches. “Then you agree?”

“In part.”

“Shocking.”

“You are right that it is not healed,” Moreau says. “You are wrong that relation means healing.”

Ilya looks back at the pale line. “Relation sounds too polite.”

“Only to people who have been lucky in their relations. Personally, I haven’t met any such extraordinarily fortunate people.”

Bless. Ilya finds himself grinning. It’s—word games, maybe, but the good thing about it is that it’s not him, that’s the problem. Creatives use words as they please, stretch and abuse them. Sasha does the same. Ilya might understand every individual word he used, and have no clue what on earth he’s talking about.

Moreau lifts his glass toward the painting. “The dark presses. The light pierces. The expression is different, but the force is the same. Neither has won. Neither has gone. This painting doesn’t show us the aftermath, but it does portray relation.”

“Still sounds like violence.”

“Of course. Relation is often violent.”

“Then why dress it up?”

“Because violence is what is happening,” Moreau says. “Not all that it is.”

Ilya narrows his eyes. “Difference with no meaning.”

“Difference with a very precise meaning.” Moreau lifts his glass slightly, not quite a toast. Has he taught? These look like teacher manners; the ghostly imprint of chalk lingers around his fingers. “If the dark became the whole canvas, there would be no painting. If the light became the whole canvas, there would be no painting either. It exists because they remain two.”

Ilya looks back at the canvas.

The pale thing is not escaping. The dark thing is not devouring. They are right there, each of them. Slow and suffocating. Fast and piercing. Equal. Locked into the present-tense.

“Sounds like a very fancy way to say they are still fighting,” Ilya says.

“Yes,” Moreau says. “Now you’re getting it.”

The writer laughs again, sharper this time.

So—what? Relation is violence? Or is violence part of relation? Byproduct? Huh. An interesting way of thinking about it.

“Maybe,” Ilya says. “But rooms like this are very attached to elegant fragility. If I had to choose between holy suffering and holy survival, I would rather focus on the survival.”

Moreau’s mouth twitches. “Of course you would.”

Oh, good; they’re done with the serious part. Now it’s time to snark. “Rude.”

“My dear boy,” Moreau says, turning his glass lazily between his fingers, “you came to your own party displaying gilded wounds. Forgive me if I suspect your relationship with survival is somewhat triumphalist.”

Ilya shrugs. “Survival is triumph. Modesty is best left for biographers to lie about”

The writer laughs first. The pianist follows, startled into it.

Moreau’s eyes brighten. “Survival is the first triumph. Necessary, by definition. Often impressive. Rarely sufficient.”

“Rarely sufficient for who?”

“For anyone who survived long enough to become interesting.”

Damn. Never mind art in general, Ilya needs to learn about this man’s art. He can just bet it’s exactly like him: prickly as a green chestnut husk, all soft spikes and hidden polish

“Fine,” he says. “But it is still better than holy suffering.”

“Most things are,” Moreau says. “Holy suffering is largely invented by people who expect others to do the suffering.”

“Careful. Go on like this and I may decide you are sensible.”

“Oh, hardly,” Moreau says. “Art and sensibility go together about as well as smug young stars and restraint.”

Ilya grins. “My mistake.” He turns to Shane. “I fear this only leaves me with one source of solid good sense.”

Shane blinks, caught. “You can’t possibly mean me.”

“I always do.”

Shane gives him a look, then glances back at the painting with the careful expression of a man trying to be fair to something he would rather not be fair to at all. It’s subtle enough that most people would miss it. Ilya does not.

His grin widens. “You hate it.”

A few people laugh.

Shane’s ears go a little pink. “I don’t hate it.”

“Liar,” Ilya says, delighted.

“Quit it, you pest.” Shane gives him another look, then exhales, trying. “I just—this kind of stuff isn’t really for me. Abstract stuff, I mean. It always feels like people are making up the explanation after.”

There is a tiny shift in the circle.

Not dramatic. Not hostile, exactly. Just the slight involuntary tightening of people who have, apparently, spent their lives hearing some version of: my kid could do that. What is it supposed to be? Why is this art?

Fair enough, maybe. It wasn’t Shane’s most elegant sentence.

Shane catches the shift anyway, because of course he does. His shoulders don’t move, but something around his mouth goes still.

A man near Moreau turns his way, relaxed. Mid-forties, maybe. Maybe younger. Glasses, carefully understated suit, the sort of expensive watch meant to imply he’d forgotten he was wearing it. A washed-out version of Scott, in many ways. Boring as hell.

“Well,” he says, “some forms do ask a little more than immediate affinity.”

Shane nods once. “Sure. I’m not saying it’s bad because I don’t like it.”

“Very generous of you.”

Alright. A joke, fair enough. If he thinks he can unbalance a hockey player, any hockey player, with irony, he is about to be disappointed.

Still, Ilya glances at Moreau, but the old man’s face hasn’t changed yet.

It’s probably fine.

Shane’s expression stays even. “I mean—I don’t pretend to know enough to be any sort of authority. I just don’t really enjoy art where the first step is someone explaining what I’m supposed to understand.”

The woman who started the conversation tilts her head, interested despite herself.

The collector smiles. “But surely you understand that trained attention is not the same as being told what to think.”

Ilya doesn’t bother hiding his incredulous look. Did this man just ask a professional athlete if he understands what training is?

“I understand the difference just fine,” Shane says. “I just don’t enjoy the training.”

That gets a laugh. Smaller than Ilya’s had been, but real. More than one person looks relieved to have been permitted to laugh instead of wince.

The collector hears it and makes the mistake of thinking it belongs to him.

“Of course,” he says. “And nevertheless, taste only becomes useful once it has survived correction.”

Christ. Talk about a flawed messenger.

He’s not wrong. Ilya knows it, they all know it, Shane probably knows it. Taste can be trained. Attention can be trained. It’s just the bizarre combination of the condescension in the man’s voice and whom he is speaking to.

Ilya begins to suspect, slowly and incredulously, that this man doesn’t know who Shane is. Thinks he’s some guy. Some minor actor, maybe, brought along as Rose Landry’s pretty plus-one.

“I’m not trying to have useful taste,” Shane says. “I’m saying I don’t like it.”

“A beginning,” the collector says, pleasant as frost. “Not a conclusion.”

Funny thing is, Ilya can’t even be properly annoyed. He could get there, probably. For now, it’s just—funny. He can see the shape of what the man is trying to do. He wants the Moreau rhythm: the correction with a smile, the clever little sting, the room turning toward him with delighted attention. He wants to set the record straight, be admired for it, maybe even admired by Ilya, the cause célèbre of the evening. A hilarious trainwreck of saying something correct in precisely the wrong way, to precisely the wrong person, and being utterly unaware of any of it. Ilya is almost embarrassed in his place, simply because someone must be, and he doesn’t seem willing.

Of course, it’s one thing for Ilya to be magnanimous. He’s not the only person there.

Sasha, thus far content to ignore the lot of them in favour of studying the artwork, turns his head and shifts into the here and now.

“My dear man,” he says, “if Van Reiner’s work required defending from preference, I should hope she would find better advocates.”

The collector blinks. “I was suggesting—”

“You were suggesting,” Sasha says, “that Mr Hollander’s response is immature and underdeveloped.”

A pause.

“Mr Hollander, at twenty-one, is one of the best hockey players in the world. He may, once he grows bored of records and awards, decide to study art properly, acquire a collection, and develop all the approved opinions. I would be very interested to see your own reinvention as an NHL centre.”

The writer laughs first this time, sharp enough to sound almost cruel. The musician gives up entirely and turns away to hide it in her drink. Even Moreau laughs, brief and dry, into his glass.

The collector goes red in a thin, expensive way, but laughs gamely enough. Ilya’s seen less gracious losers.

“Not everything has to be for you,” Moreau says to Shane, casual and calm, like he’s continuing a conversation. “That’s true enough. Life is short, and the world is full of art more to your taste.” He glances back at the painting. “That said, you would be, as my students say, missing out.”

Shane nods once. He’s gone a little strange around the mouth, caught somewhere between embarrassment and amusement and something else Ilya can’t name quickly enough.

“Right,” he says. “Thanks. I think.”

Sasha glances at him at last, eyes half-lidded with boredom. “Don’t be absurd. You need defending about as much as Van Reiner does.”

That does it. Ilya has to bite the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood.

The little circle loosens. Conversation reforms around some other topic with the eerie efficiency of rich people long practised at pretending ugly moments never happened in front of expensive art. Shane exhales once, almost a laugh, and doesn’t move away.

Chapter 2: Chapter 35

Chapter Notes

Both this and the previous chapter are basically false attempts to start ch35. Plan was, I’d jump straight in at the party, skip the carpet entirely. I couldn’t swing it, mostly because it’s generally a struggle to post as you write, make the chapters few as more or less coherent wholes and NOT make it feel like you’re writing a sitcom. Minute x there is a problem minute y a solution psych the solution is not a solution then minute x real solution and Big Lesson.
Cliffhangers are a solution granted but I hate cliffhangers, they feel like a failure of planning even more. So—we have stuff like this lol. Many false starts thst could be promising but introducing more OCs at this stage is straight up irresponsible and having these mini contained chapters in a chapter is just pointless. Nothing is being established that wasn’t already in text. It’s just fun

Ilya is drifting, glass in hand, and passes by a small knot of people between the bar and one of many sofas strewn around, presumably for art viewing purposes. He catches the tail end of a story—Dominic in the middle of it, hands moving, drawing out the punchline—and lingers at the edge of the group without meaning to. He can’t quite make heads or tails of the story this far in, but he gathers it’s about a theatre in London in the mid-nineties, a leading lady who had to be extracted from a bathtub, and a costume made entirely of fake pearls. Dominic is an exceptional storyteller. Ilya is laughing before he realises it.

 

Dominic notices him at the edge of the group, finishes the story to the group, lets them laugh, and then turns his full attention on Ilya like a spotlight.

 

"And who is this beautiful boy?"

 

"Ilya."

 

"I know who you are, sweetheart. I was being theatrical. Do you know who I am?"

 

Ilya grins. This is going very well. “I do, in fact. My friend Sasha—the tall, skinny one over there—admires your work. He made sure I was educated on the ballroom scene, under threat of inventive and disproportionate punishment.” 

 

Dominic looks politely disbelieving. Fair enough. It is unexpected knowledge, maybe. 

 

“It was the two thousands in Moscow, you know,” he says. “Not really a drag scene you could visit in person. We had YouTube and rented apartments.” Well. “I say we; it was really only Sasha, and only for a little while. Fun, though.” He grins. “He was the best at it by far. He's a ballet dancer, so." He makes a vague gesture. "The advantage is obvious."

 

"And you?"

 

"I never got into it; not my thing. I like to think I got pretty good at the shoes, though. Not beautiful, or anything, not like you. But, good. I won a race, once."

 

Dominic's glass stops halfway to his mouth.

 

"A race."

 

"Down the hallway. Svetik—Svetlana, the blonde bullying the soul out of that nice man over there—timed it. Best out of three. I won."

 

"In heels."

 

Ilya shrugs. "If you don’t bother with making it, you know, sexy and all that, it's not that different from skating. I have very good ankles, you know. Strong. Hockey ankles." He nods, proud. He worked hard on those. “They are among my better qualities.”

 

Dominic stares at him for a long moment. "I don't believe you," he says.

 

Bless. "Okay."

 

"No, I genuinely don't. I have been in heels since I was fifteen, and I don't believe a twenty-one-year-old muscle-bound hockey player—"

 

"—With very strong ankles," Ilya says again, patiently.

 

A particular expression crosses over Dominic’s face, part irritation, part laughter. Ilya knows it well. "Show me."

 

Ilya looks at him. Looks at his shoes. They are extraordinary—five inches at least, clearly valuable. Ilya tilts his head.

 

"They’re too small for me. I’ll ruin them.” 

 

“Are you backing off?” 

 

Ilya straightens. Oh, it’s on. He can buy him a new pair if he whines about it. 

Dominic takes off his shoes. Ilya puts them on, which involves a brief negotiation given that he wears, indeed, at least one size larger, but they hold. He stands up.

 

He is now for sure the tallest person in the room. And drawing some attention. Whatever. 

He rolls his shoulders back, finds his balance, and walks.

 

It’s not elegant. Not the way Sasha can do it, swaying hips and lazy, poisonous grace. Not the way Svetlana does it, either, who took off her skates and replaced them with stilettos. Ilya can’t do that. He has never been able to summon seduction on command without it coming across as embarrassing for everyone. Nonchalance, though, that he can do.

 

Athletes’ bodies are built by professionals, same as dancers’. He knows where every part of him is. Knows what his weight is doing, where his balance sits, and how to shift it without letting the effort show. And he wasn’t lying before: if you strip away the frill, it is a little like skating. Different centre of gravity, yes. Different posture. A different kind of danger underfoot. Luckily, adjusting his body around danger is, broadly speaking, his entire job.

 

He goes up the length of the room, turns, and comes back. The small knot of people around them has gone quiet. He sits back down, takes off the shoes, and hands them back. Dominic holds his shoes and looks at him with an expression that is equal parts delighted and slightly bereft.

 

"You are wasted," Dominic says, "in that sport."

 

"Many people say this."

 

"I'm serious. Look at you. You should be—I don't know. Everywhere. You're twenty-one and beautiful, and you can walk in my shoes, and you never go anywhere. You don't go out. You don't—" He waves at the room. "—this. You just stay inside with your hockey people and your illicit Russians, and nobody ever sees you."

 

Illicit Russians. Do they all forget he is Russian too? How? Does sleeping with Scott Hunter automatically wipe away any other ethnicity? 

 

"I like being home."

 

"Sweetheart, the world is out here."

 

He arches his eyebrows. Taking it easy is one thing, but let's not lose sight of things. "I know. The world has not been very nice to me. I prefer home."

 

Dominic looks at him. "Fair enough," he says, after a moment. Quieter. Then, rallying: “Nevertheless. A talent like this can’t be wasted. With those shoulders and those muscles and those cheekbones—I must have you on a show. I simply must.” 

 

Ilya relaxes into the sofa. This is more like it. He knows what to do with theatrical, unserious praise. “I have a job, you know? I am a hockey player? A very good one?” 

 

Dominic waves an airy hand. “Nonsense. They have others, I’m sure. I don’t have—six-four?” 

“Six-two.” He pauses. “Six-three. I am growing, apparently." 

 

Dominic’s eyes grow even rounder. He turns to his friend. “He’s still growing. A big, buff baby.” He turns back to Ilya. “You must quit immediately. I’ll have you in sequins and feathers with—Well, blonde is an obvious choice, but your lovely curls—Maybe you grow your hair out, and we tint it red—“ 

 

“Red?!” 

 

“And lace—No, no lace. Leather. Oh, you’ll look so beautiful with a lovely stretch of leather around that waist—“ 

 

Ilya laughs, leans back into his seat and cranes his head. "Scott," he calls, pitching his voice across the ambient noise without raising it much, because he has learned that Scott will hear him regardless. "Come save me. I am being bullied, and I need affection immediately."

 

Scott, in conversation not three meters away, looks over. Sees Ilya folded into the couch. Sees Dominic. Sees the expression of theatrical distress on Ilya's face. He raises one eyebrow.

 

"Scott."

 

Scott excuses himself and walks over. 

 

"You beckoned?"

 

"I am bullied. He said I am wasted in hockey. Wants me in leather and sequins.”

 

Scott tilts his head. “You poor thing.” 

 

He looks at Dominic. Dominic, composing himself, extends a hand. "Dominic St. Clair. He's extraordinary, and I'm in love with him, and I'm sorry about the shoes."

 

"Scott Hunter. Don't be," Scott says, shaking his hand. "He won a race once, you know."

 

A beat.

 

"You know?"

 

"Sasha told me."

 

Ilya stares at him. "Sasha told you."

 

"Back in February. I was stressing about your ankles.” He looks at Dominic again. “He has very good ankles.” 

 

Well, that’s true. 

 

“Still! Tell them I am a very valuable player and  you would all be lost without me.” 

 

Scott’s smile grows into something more vivid. “Who says I wouldn’t quit, too. Join you on the stage. Or do you think I can’t pull off leather and sequins?” 

 

“You? You’re as graceful as a rhino! You’d fall and break your hip, and then where would we be?” He turns back to Dominic, who is properly, sincerely entertained now, laugh a lot less practised than before. “No, sorry. I simply can’t risk it. Hockey world would fall to ruin if Scott weren’t there to hold it together. Alas.” 

 

Scott sighs, but reaches out, squeezes the back of his neck a bit. You look like you’re having fun. Ilya twists a little to send him a real smile. Having the time of my life. 

 

“Well, you seem like you’re in capable hands. Mr St Clair, it was a pleasure.” 

 

"Baby boy," Dominic says, when he has recovered himself, "I adore you and your hot, gruff boyfriend. I adore your whole situation. I need you to know that."

 

"Thank you," Ilya says, with dignity. "We are adorable, I have always said so.” 

 

***