Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Original Male Character(s), Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady

Additional Tags:

Accidental Outing, kind of?, Texting Fic, Social Media, Crack Treated Seriously

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-25 Updated: 2026-10-27 Words: 2,905 Chapters: 2/?

The Fifth Cup

Summary

The morning after Shane wins his third MLH Cup Finals, the newspapers should read, "Montreal Wins MLH Championship," or "Voyageurs Win Three Cups in Four Years," or even "Shane Fucking Hollander Does It Again." Instead, after a long night of partying that Shane really, honestly, doesn't remember very much, the headlines read something different.

When Shane wakes up to the headline "Shane Hollander Outs Fellow MLH Captain?" he almost pukes. He's ruined everything and put Ilya at risk of persecution by Russia ... except, has he? Because apparently all he said was that there was another queer MLH captain, not who it was.

As the social media witch hunt begins and things spiral out of control, the general public knows one thing to be true: there's no way Ilya Rozanov is involved.

Notes

THE TEXT MESSAGES SCROLL

Make sure to turn on work skins. I don't actually know if this will work on mobile. I'm just learning about CSS and HTML so big thank you to ShelovesmeNott, 409_conflict, nerdzword, CodenameCarrot, and La_Temperanza for their CSS work skins and HTML code that I have butchered into this fic with, I think, some moderate success. If anybody can tell me how the fuck to get the image in the newspaper article to centre-align, I will never get those two hours of my life back, but I will give you my firstborn.

If you saw me accidentally post this for less than five minutes (twice) while trying to save drafts/preview the work, no you didn't. (I've never written in the actual work text box before, I always write in google docs/ellipsus and copy it over and it's fucking with my brain).

Chapter 1: Shane Slips Up

When Shane Hollander woke up the morning after his third MLH Cup Final win, his only immediate concern was that his mouth was so dry it felt like sandpaper and tasted like fermented roadkill.

"Yuck," he said to himself. Clearly, he hadn't brushed his teeth last night. He was pretty sure he was wearing his street clothes too, which meant he'd have to strip the bed and wash his sheets before Ilya came over later. Actually, was this even his bed? He wasn't sure.

After a moment of contemplation, the mattress underneath him was exactly the right not-too-hard-not-too-soft firmness of his own, and the duvet he apparently hadn't bothered to climb under was the correct cotton weave, so he'd likely somehow managed to make his way home last night, but his head was pounding hard enough that he was reluctant to open his eyes and check.

Actually—no. It wasn't just his head pounding; there was somebody knocking on his bedroom door.

"Hey, Shane?" Hayden called out. "You up yet, buddy?"

Shane groaned loudly. "No," he called back.

Hayden snorted, muffled. "You gotta get up, dude. Your phone is dead, and your mom wants to talk to you."

"What?" Shane jolted up, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles. "Why are you talking to my mom?"

"I'm not talking to your mom, dude. Apparently she has Jackie's number, and she texted her. Then Jackie texted me and told me to tell you to wake up and call your mom. So here I am. Waking you up."

Shane grunted, opening his eyes reluctantly and pushing himself into a mostly upright position. "Fuck," he muttered. "Okay," he called back to Hayden. Just … I'll plug my phone in and call her back after I take a shower."

"Sure, bud," Hayden said, pausing. "Don't take too long. If you don't call her back soon, I'm pretty sure she's just going to show up, and I still haven't found my pants."

"Where the fuck did your pants go, Hayd?" Shane asked. "When did you lose them?"

"Well, if I knew that I wouldn't be looking for them, would I. I'm pretty sure I had them when we got back here, but I'm not like really sure."

Well. If the first and second times Shane had won the cup had taught him anything, it was that if Hayden losing his pants was the most scandalous thing one of his teammates got up to last night, it wasn't a bad night at all.

"Yeah. Okay. If you can't find them, I'll bring a pair of sweats out for you after I shower."

"Cool," Hayden said, oddly relaxed for somebody who may have been photographed in his boxers last night. "I'll make us breakfast while you're in the shower."

"My smoothie stuff is in the fridge—"

"Fuck off, bro," Hayden interrupted. "We just won the cup again. I'm making eggs and bacon."

Shane tried not to gag at the thought of the grease. "Whatever," he scoffed, rolling off the bed and to his feet.

He patted his pockets and found his phone—thankfully not last in the chaos of last night—but when he tried to open it, the screen stayed black, confirming it was dead. Well, nothing a charging cord couldn't fix. He plugged it in and headed for the bathroom.

The hot water and steam of the shower had him feeling a little more human, and by the time he'd scrubbed away yesterday's sweat and spilled liquor, his phone had enough charge to light up his lock screen when he picked it up.

Oh.

Shit.

537 notifications. At least two dozen missed calls. That was … that was not a good sign. That was beyond "hey, you won the cup again so I'm texting you for the first time in two years," levels of messages; that was "something has gone terribly wrong, and you will be sitting through several meetings today" levels of messages. That was "Yuna Hollander is your mom but also your manager, and she loves you, but she is extremely disappointed in you, levels of messages. Fuck.

The pounding in Shane's head increased, and for a brief moment he considered just going back to bed, but the bang of something metallic hitting his marble countertop and a muffled curse from the direction of the kitchen brought him back to reality. Hayden, who may-or-may-not still be pantsless, was waiting for him to get up, and his mom was waiting for him to call, and … and …

He wanted Ilya. He didn't even know what was wrong yet, but he wanted Ilya.

Shane shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and only winced slightly at the pain. A simple swipe cleared away most of his notifications, which could wait a minute or two for him to get his shit together, and opened the only text thread he actually wanted to deal with right now.

Chapter 2: #AnyoneButRozanov

Chapter Summary

Shane reacts to his slip-up last night. Then Ilya reacts to Shane reacting to his slip-up last night. The internet also reacts to Shane's slip-up last night.

Chapter Notes

It had taken approximately two hours on Zoom for Shane, his mum, and his agent, Farah, to come up with a statement that none of them loved but all of them could tolerate. Shane honestly hadn't wanted to make a statement at all—too scared he was going to fuck up and make things worse—but Farah had convinced him that if he put it in writing that he wasn't going to comment on other potentially queer MLH players, journalists would be less likely to ask him about it.

Ideally, the statement would have just said 'no, I won't tell you who's gay, don't fucking ask me, and also Léo Tremblay can get fucked,' but his mum had talked him down from that. In the end they compromised, and agreed the statement would be equal parts firm, apologetic, and passive-aggressive.

On any other day Shane would have let his mum and Farah send drafts back and forth all morning if they wanted, debating the minutiae of the public perception of saying 'not aware' versus 'unaware'; but by 2 pm he was so desperate to call Ilya that he'd subtly typed up the last version of their statement on his own rarely-opened Instagram app and published the damn thing himself.

The twin 'dings' of his agent and momager's phones cut off their not-an-argument as they, in synchrony, looked down at their phones and then back up at him, matching expressions of disbelief on their faces.

"Shane Hollander," Yuna scolded. "Did you just—"

"Hey, sorry," Shane interrupted. "I think I'm losing connection. I'm going through a tunnel."

Farah's lips twitched up into a poorly-hidden smile. "This is a Zoom call, Shane; we can see you in your kitchen."

"What was that?" Shane continued, blithely. "You're breaking up."

And then, before either of them could convince him to make any edits to his post, he shut the laptop, ending the call.

"Fuck," he cursed aloud. The sound bounced across his open-plan living room and kitchen, a hollow echo of frustration. Hayden had left before Shane's meeting—shuffling out the door with a pair of borrowed pants and a to-go cup of the smoothie he'd reluctantly made for the two of them after he'd realised that Shane didn't actually have eggs or bacon in his fridge—and suddenly the apartment seemed very quiet.

After they'd texted earlier, Shane had promised Ilya he would call after he met with Farah and his mom, but then he'd had to turn his phone off to avoid spiralling at the number of unanswered messages, emails, and voicemails he'd been bombarded with since last night. The day after the Cup win was always overwhelming, even when he hadn't gotten drunk and said something stupid to some dickhead reporter, but today was a new level of intense.

Well, time to get this over with. He pulled out his phone and turned it on, swiping across the dozens of new notifications that popped up, and clicking on Ilya's contact. The phone was barely through its first ring when the line connected.

"Solnyshko, are you—"

"I'm so sorry, Ilya," Shane interrupted. "I completely fucked up. I almost outed you—fuck I might still have outed you, my mom says that the internet is speculating, and people could figure us out, and it's all my fault, and what if the Centaurs fire you, or Russia revokes your passport, or—"

"Hey, no, moya lyubov, we are okay. I promise. We are okay," Ilya soothed. "The Centaurs will not fire me, and Russia has bigger problems right now than one gay hockey player who does not even go back to Russia in years. They are too busy with protests in Moscow and trying to censor Russians who are actually in Russia, yes? Maybe they fine me, or freeze my Russian assets, but Canada will not send me back to them, and they cannot touch me here. My PR card will come any day now. I am safe. We are safe."

"But what if—"

"Ah, no. No more 'if's. Besides, does not matter. You did not out me, moy malen'kiy p'yanitsa."

Shane paused. "Little drunkard? Seriously?"

Ilya laughed. "Yes, or do I pretend you were not drunk last night? So drunk you tell whole world about bisexual MLH captain you know?"

"Ilya! It's not funny! People could still guess," Shane protested.

The line went quiet again.

"Ilya? Are you still there?"

"Ah. People will not guess, solnyshko."

"But how do you know."

Ilya snorted. "Because people are trying to guess. Whole internet wants to know which MLH captains are sucking cock. Only thing they agree on is 'not Ilya Rozanov'."

"Ilya ..." Shane hesitated to interrupt the silence that sat heavy across the fine line as he'd scrolled frantically through the social media links that Ilya had sent him. "Is the internet ... stupid?"

Ilya burst into delighted laughter, the sound crackling through Shane's phone speaker. "Da, moya lyubov. Internet is very stupid."

Chapter End Notes

The work skin is once again largely not mine. Thanks this time goes to shysonata for their instagram posts work skin, worlds_end_valentine for their twitter workskin, and once again cottongod for their twitter trending page workskin. Literally couldn't be writing this fic without the help of all the AO3 creators out here creating the coolest work skins. I also learned how to hyperlink so I could link you to them (edit: and then it didn't work anyway, but please enjoy these work titles and authors until I figure it out).

Used for the first time in this chapter:

Twitter Workskin Template by worlds_end_valentine

Twitter Trending Page Work Skin by cottongod

Work Skin - Instagram Post by shysonata

 

Used in the last chapter:

THE AO3 CSS GRIMOIRE by ShelovesmeNott

409_conflict's iPhone Notification Screen by 409_conflict

HTML/CSS SHenanigans by nerdzeword

How to Make iOS Text Messages on AO3 by CodenameCarrot, La_Temperanza

Also, this is my fic, and so I say that Ilya started applying for PR through Express Entry when he was hired by the Centaurs (i.e. the beginning of the 2018/2019 season), and it was processed fast bc that's the perks of being a celebrity athlete