Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Angst, The hazards of supporting your bestie’s fuckbuddy situation

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-27 Completed: 2026-04-08 Words: 7,779 Chapters: 2/2

In Which Hayden Pike Saves Hollanov With the Power of Being a Toddler Dad

Summary

Look.

Hayden knows he isn't the most observant guy. His teammates tell him, Jacki tells him, Ruby and Jade tell him - well, they say, "Daddy, you ran into the coffee table again" - but even he's not so unobservant that he won't notice Shane leaving in one outfit and coming back in a significantly different one that's a size too big.

Or, Hayden Pike learns some things he wishes he hadn't but ultimately figures it's for the greater good.

Notes

Shane busting back into the hotel post tunagate has plagued me since I first watched the show. Like, Hayden may not be the most observant guy in the world, but your bestie leaving in one outfit and coming back in an outfit that 100% does not belong to him is noticeable. The thought didn't really go anywhere until one of my roomies brought up how much therapy/consent speak in scenarios where it doesn't make sense irks her (ie, traffic light system in MDZS, darth vader knowing about good managerial practices) and I very jokingly said, "the only exception is characters parenting people like they're toddlers because that's the age bracket their own children are in," and now we're here.

This fic is exactly what it says on the tin, please don't take it too seriously. This is minimally proofread, same as all my more ADHD whimsy fics, so just pretend any grammar weirdness isn't there thx.

Chapter 1

Hayden startles out of his nap as the door bangs open, ricocheting off the wall.  It takes him a second to orient himself and another to find the switch for the bedside lamp.  The light is anemic in a room this size, but it’s bright enough that Hayden can make out the shape of Shane in front of the door.

Shane is standing with his back pressed to it, wild eyed and chest stuttering.  His hands are planted behind him like he’s trying to keep the door shut against something.

“Is everything okay?” Hayden asks slowly, sitting up.

Shane looks up, startled, like he’d forgotten he was rooming with Hayden.  As if they haven’t been doing this for six years, which sets off alarm bells in Hayden’s head and has him getting off the bed and turning on the overhead light, illuminating a Shane that looks more bedraggled than Hayden has ever seen him.

Shane is definitely not wearing the clothes he left in.  He’s wearing the same jacket, sure, but Hayden knows that Shane left in a white t-shirt and jeans.

Now, he’s wearing a black shirt and a pair of black sweatpants that both look a size too large.  The neckline sits lower than Hayden knows Shane prefers and the sweats are way baggier than anything Hayden has ever seen him wear.

“Did something happen?  With Lily?”

Shane’s eyes take on a haunted quality and Hayden immediately goes dad mode.  He grabs the ice bucket and shoves the accompanying bag in.

“Sit,” he orders.

Shane crumples to the ground like a puppet cut from its strings.  Hayden crams the bucket between Shane’s knees just in case he has to puke, arranging Shane’s arms so he’s hugging it.  He gets the back of his hand against Shane’s forehead to feel for a temperature.  It’s not the best method, but he doesn’t have the temperature gun with him, so it’ll have to do.

No fever, despite how pale and shaken Shane looks.  Might be a stomach thing.  There’s ginger ale in the mini bar and Hayden retrieves a can of it, cracking the tab before handing it over.  Shane clutches it but doesn’t drink.

“Hey,” Hayden says softly, the same tone he uses after one of his kids has a nightmare.  He rubs a hand along what little of Shane’s back he can reach.  “Hey, you’re safe.  You’re okay.  Wanna tell daddy about it?”

Shane chokes out a laugh.

“Oh fuck you,” Hayden grumbles.  “Shut up.  It was autopilot.  The kids get nightmares sometimes.”

“Fucking hell, Hayd,” Shane warbles and presses his lips tight as tears start pouring out of his eyes.  His shoulders shake with the effort of holding any sounds in and his eyes squeeze shut.

“Oh shit.  Fuck.  Nonono, ohhhh fuck.”

Hayden thinks desperately of what to do but everything he knows about comfort is either for toddlers and babies or Jacki.

Fuck it, Jacki is at least a grown adult and he doesn’t exactly have dino nuggets or a pacifier on hand.

He grabs the bucket out of Shane’s hands and pulls him away from the door into a hug.  The positioning is terrible.  They’re both on the floor - Shane sitting with his knees up, Hayden kneeling - and there’s no good way to slot together.  Hayden is awkwardly hunched forward as he runs his hands soothingly up and down Shane’s back while he talks about everything and nothing.  Shane’s arms are a vice as he clutches desperately at Hayden’s hoodie while quiet heaving sobs wrack through his body.  The icy can of ginger ale is pressed against Hayden’s neck at this angle and the cold of it is starting to hurt a little, but he shoves the discomfort down.

“—Ruby and Jade are doing great on the ice.  They’re starting to figure out cross steps but I think the size of the skates is what’s actually tripping them up.  They aren’t swinging their legs enough for how chunky the kid skates are.  Ruby’s the better shot so far but Jade is the better skater.  Jacki got this stroller for the ice so she can bring Arthur too when they’re all on the rink—”

Inch by inch, under the relentless babble, Shane stops squeezing Hayden like a toddler holding onto a prized stuffed animal and the shuddering hiccoughs under Hayden’s hands even out into deeper breathing.  He eventually drops his arms and Hayden switches to sitting with his legs crossed with a sigh of relief as his quads stop yelling at him.  There’s a big wet patch on the front of his hoodie that’s soaking through the thin layer of the shirt he has underneath but he ignores it.  He has three children under the age of four; tears are the least offensive substance that could be on him right now.

“Still need the bucket?” He asks.

“No, I’m—fuck—I’m good now.”

“Drink your ginger ale,” Hayden says.  He’s still dad voicing Shane, but it gets Shane to take a healthy swig from the can so he can’t feel too bad about it.

“So,” he says after a bit.  “Want to tell me what happened?”

It takes Hayden a minute to figure out what the expression on Shane’s face is supposed to be because he’s never seen it before.

He’s seen angry Shane, happy Shane, focused Shane, Uncle Shane, Captain Shane, teenager-caught-by-parents Shane, awkward Shane.

None of them are the expression Shane is currently wearing.  He almost looks…ashamed.

Shane scrubs at his eyes with the back of his knuckles while blowing out a long shaky exhale.  They’re red with irritation and puffy from crying when he puts his hands down.  He stares at something behind Hayden and a little to the left, trying to fortify himself for whatever nuclear bomb of information he’s finally ready to drop.

“I think I’m gay,” he whispers.

Oh.

Well that explains the too big clothes.

Wait.

The way Shane came barging back in someone else’s clothes suggests he had to leave in less than ideal circumstances, like he was running from something.

Or someone.

“Shane,” Hayden says, careful to keep his tone even.  “He didn’t…do anything to you, did he?”

Shane looks at him in confusion.

“Like—,” he was hoping this was a conversation he’d never have to have with his own children, let alone Shane, “—he didn’t do anything you didn’t expect?”

“He made me a tuna melt?”

Shane sounds so confused.

Right.  Straightforward wording it is.

“Rape.  Shane.  Did he touch you if you didn’t want it?”

Fuck, he has no idea what he can do about that other than grab JJ and hunt this motherfucker down.  It’s not like the MLH is particularly known for its stellar handling of sexual assault cases when the perpetrators are players.  Somehow, Hayden doesn’t think they’ll be any better about a case involving a gay player as the victim.  And that's only if Shane wants to say anything.

“No!” Shane denies loudly.  “No.  He didn’t do anything.  He just.  He said my name.”

It’s Hayden’s turn to be confused.

“People do that, Shane.  It’s kind of how it works.”

“Fuck off, Hayd.”  Shane rolls his eyes.  “He said my first name.”

“Okaaaaay?”

Hayden can wait this out.  He has toddlers, which are creatures with inexplicable and whimsical demands without the vocabulary to express them.  Hayden is a fucking wizard at the “guess what I’m thinking” game.

“He said it when we were…um.”  Shane makes a small circle with his hand.  He keeps his gaze on whatever it is that’s behind Hayden.  Probably the lamp if he had to guess based on general positioning.

“When you were what?”

“Y’know.”  Shane says, blushing heavily as he makes the gesture again, more aggressively this time.

“Ah.  Okay, yup.  Got it.”

Shane’s eyes shift to Hayden and his expression makes Hayden feel like he should have all the pieces to put it together.  It’s remarkably similar to the look Ruby and Jade use and maybe he shouldn’t be letting Shane babysit anymore.  They’re clearly picking up bad habits from him.

“Bud, you’re gonna have to help me a little more with this because your long term hookup calling you by your first name while getting your freak on doesn’t feel like something to cry over.”

“We, uh.” Shane takes a nervous gulp of ginger ale and taps his fingers against the can, “We’ve never used first names before today?”

“Are you asking me this or are you telling me this?”

It’s exactly like dealing with his toddlers, jesus fucking christ.

“Telling.”

“Okay so, you what?  Were you just calling each other by your full last names like we do guys from different teams?”

Shane goes redder and Hayden boggles at him.

The first name freak out makes sense now.  If Shane and Boston Lily have been calling each other by their last names for—god—for fucking years now, a switch to first names is definitely a jump in intimacy.  Which is an area Shane is particularly cagey about in general even when it doesn’t involve his secret male hookup.

How did they even start with last names?  Presumably, if this is some guy Shane met on a dating app or on the street or something, first names would have happened pretty immediately.  There’s really only one reason Hayden can think of to call someone by their last name frequently.

Fuuuuck, this just keeps getting more complicated.

He can do this.  He’s in dad mode and dad mode means saving the freak out for after the kid - or Shane, in this case - has gone to bed.

“The only reason I can think of for calling someone by their last name habitually is if they’re another player,” he says, careful to keep his tone mild instead of demanding.  It’s important that Shane doesn’t feel like this is an interrogation.  Even though Hayden is dying to know the identity of Boston Lily, he knows better than to push.  He suspects that if he does, Shane - like Jade tends to do - will just shut down entirely.

Shane gives Hayden a nod so small he almost misses it.

Okay.

Okay, okay, okay.  He can work with this.

“It’s not someone on our team, is it?”

Hayden is the alternate captain, which means he has the authority to sit whoever it is down and give them the shovel talk by couching it in the guise of figuring out what to do so this doesn’t affect team cohesion.  There aren’t a lot of options, to be honest.  Most of the guys are either married or steady.  The only ones who aren’t are JJ, Couillard, and Olsson but something tells Hayden it isn’t any of them.

“No.  Not Montreal.”  Shane’s fingers tighten on the can enough to crinkle it a bit.

“Not a Metro, got it.  Are they—”

It hits him and he could slap himself for being so stupid.

Boston Lily.

Oh no.

Noooooo.

“Please tell me it’s not a Raider,” Hayden begs.

Shane’s silence is as good as confirmation.

Ugh, Shane has terrible taste in men.

“You have terrible taste in men.”

He needs Shane to know that.

Shane laughs, a little wet and sniffly, and nods.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Man, you really don’t do things by halves, huh.  A Raider.  I mean, as long as it’s not Rozanov,” Hayden says jokingly, with a lopsided smile.

Shane is suddenly extremely invested in the label on the can.  The smile slides off Hayden’s face.

“Shane.  Please.  For the love of god.  Please tell me it’s not Rozanov.”

“It’s not Rozanov?”

“Oh my god, you’re such a bad liar.”

Hayden gets up and grabs a beer out of the mini bar because this feels like the kind of situation that needs one.  They don’t play until tomorrow afternoon, one beer won’t fuck up his game.  He starts pacing, which doesn’t help as much as he wants it to, so he flops onto the ground next to Shane.  Having the wall for support helps a little.  It gives him something to focus on instead of spiraling about the absolute insanity he’s just learned about.

Shane looks like he’s trying to fold into himself until he disappears and ugh, fuck, they can leave the Rozanov conversation alone for a bit.  It’s another layer of complexity to the whole situation, but there’s other things he can address first.

He takes a fortifying sip of beer while figuring out what to tackle first.

“First things first, I don’t care that you’re gay.”

That one feels like the easiest.

Shane looks up and the relief on his face is so heartbreaking that Hayden has to sling an arm around him and haul him into a tight side hug.

“Dude.  I have some thoughts on choosing Rozanov but liking men doesn’t change anything between us.”

“Thanks,” Shane says, sniffling again.  “I just.  What the guys say.  Y’know.”

Hayden does know.  He has no way of estimating, but he knows some percentage of the guys in the league are genuine in their homophobia.  Beyond that though, it’s baked into the culture; the casual insults that no one thinks anything of are a part of everyday speech.  He’s never participated in them but he hasn’t done anything to stop them either.  It’s never occurred to him that he should because he’s been surrounded by it since the second he touched skates to ice.

It’s just a part of hockey.

It’s an incredibly shitty part of hockey.

“Fuck, Shane.  I’m so sorry.”

“Swear jar,” Shane replies, automatic.  And then he inhales, still shaky but less bad than before.  “It just…”

“Hey, let it all out,” Hayden says, reverting to his soothing-the-kids-post-nightmare voice again.  “I got you.”

“I’m scared all the time,” Shane admits quietly.  “It’s not even Rozanov.  That’s something else.  But just.  The being gay.  In general.  I’m fucking terrified someone is going to find out and that’s it.  That's the end.  Because Shane Hollander is supposed to be the Canadian golden boy of hockey and he’s not supposed to be gay.”

The words stream out of Shane like a dam bursting and Hayden has to take a bit to think of what to say next.  This is way more complicated than checking the closet and under the bed to prove to Ruby that there are no monsters there.

He takes a little too long, apparently, because Shane starts withdrawing out of the bro hug and mumbles, “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Hayden tightens his grip.

“Nope, you’re not getting out of this.  I just needed a second to think.”

Technically, he needs a lot of seconds to think.  He still has no idea what to say.  Anything about it being okay if people find out is just empty platitude and they both know it.  But Hayden also knows that if he fucks this up, it’ll only prove every fear Shane has.

Truth feels like the best option, so that’s what he goes with.

“I’m going to say it one more time.  I don’t care that you’re gay and I’m always in your corner, no matter what.”

Shane’s shoulders drop and his shoulder blades slide apart at the reassurance and now Hayden is the one who wants to cry because he’s been a horrible friend if Shane was that tense about his reaction.

“I’m sorry I made you scared to tell me.  I’ve been a really shitty friend.”

And fuck, he really means it.  He prides himself on being the guy people on the team can talk to.  It’s the part of him that Jacki told him she first fell in love with and he wants to be the kind of dad his kids can talk to about anything without fear.  But he’s made Shane - his best friend of six years - feel like he couldn’t come to Hayden about this.

“That’s not it,” Shane says quickly and now Hayden’s going to cry.  Of course, Shane - who’s the one actually going through shit - is still trying to be polite.

“You don’t have to pretend.”

“It’s not,” Shane insists.  He pulls away and Hayden lets him go this time.

Shane looks directly at him and repeats, “That’s not it.  I promise.”

He turns so that he’s perpendicular to Hayden, knees hugged to his chest.

“I haven’t even told my parents.”

Knowing that does actually make Hayden feel a bit better.  He waits patiently while Shane figures out what he wants to say.

“I wasn’t sure for a long time and I’m still not sure.  I mean I’m pretty sure.  But there’s part of me that’s telling me I just haven’t tried hard enough to be not gay.”

Shane pauses, frowning, mulling over whatever is in his mind.  He goes to take a swig from his ginger ale before remembering that it’s empty.

Hayden holds out his hand and Shane passes the empty, slightly crushed can over.  He tosses both the beer bottle and the can into the trash and grabs another ginger ale and a sprite out of the mini bar.

“Thanks.”

Hayden nods, settling back into his spot with his legs straight out in front of him.

“It’s not that I didn’t think you would be okay with it.  Same with my parents.  I think they’d be fine.  I’m just scared, y’know?  That if I say it out loud, it’s real and I can’t change it.  What if I find out too late that I’m wrong and then everyone thinks I’m a liar?”

The only advice Hayden has is for his kids and while the scenario isn’t quite the same as Jade insisting her favorite color is blue for six months and then switching suddenly to green, he thinks it still fits.

“You’re allowed to change your mind.  Even if you’ve said it out loud.  It’s okay to do that.”

Shane looks at him like…like it hadn’t occurred to him he was allowed to do that.  And it occurs just as suddenly to Hayden that Shane very likely genuinely hasn’t ever had anyone tell him it was okay before.

He’s familiar with the pressure Shane is under as an MLH player, but there’s extra expectations on his shoulders that aren’t on Hayden’s.

Hayden isn’t half Asian, he’ll never understand the racial pressure.  He’s not being lauded as a once in a generation talent and the scrutiny of that title feels unbearable even without the actual experience.  He doesn’t have brand deals with Rolex and Reebok and Speedo.  He doesn’t have a Golden Boy moniker to uphold.

Shit, no wonder Shane doesn’t feel like he can say or change his mind about anything.  He’s a house of cards built on sand.

“You don’t owe the world everything about you.”

It’s something Hayden is trying to emphasize to his kids and it’s becoming clear that Shane needs to hear it too.  That he needs to be given permission from some external source to allow himself the ability to just be.

“Yeah,” Shane says, wiping at his left eye with his thumb.  “Yeah.”

They’re quiet for a long while.

Hayden vows to himself that he’ll be better about shutting shit down in the locker rooms.  The how of which he might need to discuss with Jacki because she’s always been better about being diplomatic, but he’s going to do it.

Now that that’s sorted, it’s probably time to talk about the Rozanov shaped elephant in the room, which Hayden would have been alright with ignoring forever, but he’s going to soldier on.  If only because Shane is his best friend and it’s killing him to see Shane look like he’s trying to fold himself small enough that he just vanishes. 

“So…Rozanov?”

Shane goes crimson and Hayden closes his eyes, thunking his head back against the wall.  He’s been telling Shane to go hook up with Boston Lily for years before games because it makes him play better.

Except it’s apparently been Rozanov all along.

He smothers his face in his hands and groans.

“There wasn’t anyone else you could’ve hooked up with?”

Man, you’d think doing all those pressers would teach Shane that silence is basically admittance.  But nope, it’s either silence or a frantic denial because Shane can’t lie for shit.

“Sorry, man.  I’m still stuck on the fact that not only are you banging a Boston Raider but that it’s Ilya Rozanov.  Montreal has hot guys, right?  We can find you a hot guy in Montreal.”

He doesn’t really mean it.  Sort of.  Mostly.  Kind of.

He’d prefer it if Shane wasn’t fuckbuddying and maybe possibly more with Rozanov of all people.  But Shane is a level of stubborn that Hayden only otherwise witnesses when Ruby and Jade are holding something they definitely shouldn’t be.

The Prime Minister himself could physically manifest in front of Shane and tell him to stop seeing Rozanov and Shane would absolutely just dig his heels in and double down.

Hayden doesn’t stand a chance to convince Shane otherwise if the guy himself doesn’t want to leave Rozanov.  Plus, not that Hayden will ever admit it until he dies, Rozanov has been making Shane happy, current situation notwithstanding.  That doesn’t mean he isn’t going to give Shane a little bit of crap about it — it’s just what friends do.

“I didn’t really check,” Shane admits.

“I guess he’s hot.  If he doesn’t talk.”  Hayden squints at the ceiling.  Objectively, he knows Rozanov is attractive.  But he’s such an asshole.

Maybe Shane’s being, like, swindled.  Hayden dismisses the idea as soon as he has it.  There’s literally nothing Shane has that Rozanov couldn’t get on his own, except maybe his golden boy reputation and Rozanov has made it abundantly clear that isn’t his vibe.

“Yeah, he’s an asshole,” Shane agrees.

“Exactly!  So why Rozanov?”

Shane shrugs.

“It kinda…just happened.”

“It kinda just happened,” Hayden echoes flatly, rolling his head to the side to raise disbelieving brows at Shane.

“And then it kinda just…kept happening?”

Hayden sighs.

He thinks about it for a bit and he does think he gets the shape of Rozanov and Shane’s combined reasoning.

If he were gay and sussed out another player was gay and he found them attractive, that would be the safest possibility.  It’s a shared secret and there’s no good way of outing the other person without implicating yourself as well.

So, basically, at some point Rozanov - and Hayden has zero doubt this is definitely Rozanov’s fault - saw Shane, divined that he had some kind of interest in guys, and lured Shane into his candy house in the woods.

Or however Hansel and Gretel goes.

“Sure, fine, whatever.”

He needs a snack.  There’s still a couple hours to the dinner he’s planned with some of the guys and he’s used way too much brain power on this situation to wait until then to eat.  And the next part of this conversation probably requires chips for emotional support.

He has a bag of the ketchup ones in his luggage because it’s the only flavor Shane will eat - begrudgingly - and Hayden doesn’t really have a flavor he’s ride or die for.  Besides, he’s used to curating snacks based on his kids anyway, so it’s not really an extenuating ask to stock chips for Shane.

“Here,” he says around a mouthful as he passes the bag over.

They get through the bag while discussing stats so far for the season and whether or not they think the west coast conference will expand.

“Tell me about the tuna melt,” Hayden says when they’re done with the bag.  “And the freak out clothes.”

“Freak out clothes?”

Hayden gestures to Shane’s general existence.

Shane looks down and seems to realize for the first time that he isn’t wearing the clothes he left in.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s how you knew something was wrong.”

“Coming back in clothes that are too big for you and aren’t what you left in is usually a pretty good indicator of that.”

They were getting back onto stable ground but Shane looks wrecked again, eyes going shiny.  He fiddles with the empty chip bag, which crinkles ridiculously loudly.

“How did you know you loved Jacki?”

Well, that’s certainly a question Hayden wasn’t expecting to have to field until his kids were teenagers.

Shit, is Shane in love with Rozanov?

No, wait, he’s just asking.  It doesn’t mean he’s in love.

Except it probably does.

Shane’s not the type of person to ask a question like this if he hasn’t already tumbled it smooth in his own head.

“I didn’t until I did,” he says honestly.  “Just woke up one day because she was yelling at the coffee maker and walked out and saw her in my shirt and thought that I wanted to watch her yell at coffee makers forever.  And there were probably a hundred times before that where I knew but I didn’t know.”

Shane nods like Hayden has said something valuable and coherent instead of whatever the hell that actually was.

“He asked me to stay.  Overnight.  I said I told you I was coming back.”

“You do you, man.  I’m not your mother.”

Shane chuckles.

“That’s pretty much what he said.”

“Please never tell me Rozanov and I agree on that ever again.” Hayden cringes.

The amusement falls off Shane’s face, fading back into that not quite crying, not quite not crying state.

“The clothes are his,” Shane says, plucking at the shirt collar.  “I don’t like wearing outside clothes inside so he gave me some stuff to wear.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” Hayden ribs gently and Shane rolls his eyes.

“He, uh, he made me a tuna melt for lunch.”

“And the shocking part wasn’t that it was edible?”

“No, it was…it was a good sandwich.”

“So the freak out clothes and the sandwich aren’t why you busted back in here like the kool aid man.”

Shane shakes his head, staring hard at his knees.  The edge of that earlier shame starts creeping back in, distinct and all encompassing.

Hayden could leave it.  He could cut the conversation here and roll Shane into bed to have him sleep this off as much as he can.  But, once more, he has that nagging sensation that if he does, Shane will never talk about it again.  That he’ll just cram it all into a box labeled “Shane Hollander’s feelings” and shove it where it will never see the light of day while he pastes on a professional smile and pretends he isn’t dying on the inside.

Fuck that.  So what if this is the most uncomfortable conversation Hayden has ever had (yes, he’s including the time his dad explained sex to him with diagrams), Shane is his best friend and he deserves to have someone to talk to.

Also, it sounds like he really, really, really fucking needs it.

Hayden takes a fortifying inhale and tells himself that this is good practice for when one of his kids inevitably goes through heartbreak.  This is just like when Ruby and Jade found out there wasn’t going to be a new season of Kim Possible.  Not really, but it’s the best frame of reference Hayden can think of right now.

“The first names, yeah?”

Coaxing, gentle, safe.

That’s the name of the game.

“Yeah.  We were—,” Shane makes the same circular gesture as before that Hayden’s interpreted to mean fucking, “—y’know.  And he said my name.  And I said his.  And we’ve never done that.  Ever.”

“And you panicked.”

“And I panicked.  I told him I had a team meeting in the morning I forgot about.”

Ah, that’s where the shame is coming from.  Maybe not specifically the lie itself, but some combination of panic combined with the pathetically transparent lying to flee.

Hayden exhales long and loud, turning the problem over in his head.  There’s really only one thing he can see that’s immediately fixable.  Everything else needs a qualified therapist or Yuna Hollander single handedly overthrowing the MLH.

Panicking about suddenly realizing you might be in love with your fuckbuddy is, as problems go, relatively solvable.  Uncomfortable and awkward to solve, sure, but solvable.  The outcome of said solution may not be ideal but there will at least be an outcome and Shane can either skip into his happily ever after with, ugh, Rozanov or he can channel their breakup into beating him on the ice.

“Do you want it to be over?”

Shane shakes his head a little.

“Did you like calling each other by your first names?”

A nod.

“Do you want to keep calling each other by your first names?”

Shane hesitates, but he nods eventually, slowly.

Well.  There’s only one thing for it and Hayden is pretty sure Shane is going to like the solution about as well as Ruby and Jade do.

“I hate to say it, but you need to talk to him.”

Shane’s face does something interesting, like he can’t quite figure out what reaction he’s supposed to be having so he’s having them all at once.

“You need to sit down and talk about whatever this—,” Hayden waves his hands broadly over the room to try to encapsulate the enormity of the whole situation, “—is with him.”

“Do I have to?”

Great, they’re back on grounds Hayden knows how to deal with.  Whining toddler is way easier than fuck buddy freak out.

“Yes.  And you have to do it today.”

“Can’t I wait until after the game?”

“Are you going to actually do it if you wait until after the game?”

“Sure.”

Wow.  Hayden’s heard more conviction from Arthur and he can’t even talk yet.

“Text him right now.”

“Later.”

“Do it now.”

“I’ll do it after dinner.”

Hayden launches himself at Shane — who is a hundred percent not expecting it and yelps, “what the fuck, Hayd!” as Hayden lands on him.  They wrestle for Shane’s phone and Shane is scrappy, but he’s an only child and Hayden is the middle child of four brothers and a sister.  He shoves his hand into Shane’s right pocket and extracts Shane’s phone while hooking his other arm around Shane’s head to keep him locked in place.

“Fuck—Hayd—why the fuck are you so heavy?”

He has Shane’s passcode from the time he texted Yuna for Shane when Shane was wiped out with a nasty flu that left him too delirious to see straight.

One, four—

“Ow!  Jesus fucking Christ, Shane, your elbows are sharp!”

He holds the phone as far as he can and thumbs the last two digits in while Shane slaps at his face, obscuring his vision.

One, zero.

Shane’s struggling gets more urgent as Hayden swipes into the messages and opens the chat with Lily.

Omw

He hits send just as Shane bites the arm Hayden has slung across his face to keep him pinned.

“Did you just bite me?” Hayden shouts, incredulous, and rolls off.  He chucks the phone at Shane, who catches it with a baleful look.  He glances down at the phone screen and terror lights up all over his face.

“What?  What’d he say?”

Shane turns the screen around to show Hayden the reply.

Fine

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

The last thing Ilya is expecting after Shane runs out is to get a text from him an hour later that just says “omw”.

Anger rushes through him.  And sadness.  Some crushing rejection, if he’s being honest.  All chased by something that feels remarkably like hope.

His hands are shaking as he types a response.

Fine

Twenty minutes go by, which is about how long it took Shane to arrive earlier in the day.  When no knock comes, Ilya swears, irate at himself for getting his hopes up.

Another ten minutes go by and he pours himself some vodka.  Shane either didn’t mean to send that text or is regretting that he sent it and it doesn’t matter either way.

Ilya is going to get drunk.  Even though he has a game tomorrow and shouldn’t.

Fuck, he shouldn’t have poured the good vodka.  He can’t shoot it — that would be a massive waste — but the rate at which he would prefer to drink it won’t get him drunk like he wants.  He sips at it slowly anyway, stewing on the couch.

He’s a quarter of the way through it when there’s a knock.  A loud one.  A different kind of knock than Shane’s.

Ilya sets the vodka down on the end table and gets up to answer it.

When he opens the door, Hayden Pike of all fucking people has Shane in a headlock on the other side.

“What the fuck.”

Shane jerks his head up as much as he can in Hayden’s hold and he stares at Ilya with his eyes as wide as a deer caught in headlights.

“Hey, Rozanov.  Shoes off?” Pike asks, irritatingly casually.

Ilya is too dumbfounded to do more than nod his head and step back to let Pike drag Shane in.  Pike only lets Shane go once the door shuts, though he stands in front of it like he thinks Shane might make a break for it, which doesn’t seem all that unlikely given the way Shane alternates between glaring at Pike and casting sad doe eyes at Ilya while Pike stands there with his arms crossed and his brows raised.

“What is going on?” Ilya asks after no information on why the hell Pike is with Shane in his house is forthcoming.

“You two need to talk,” Pike declares.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ilya replies.  He stays very, very still.

Pike scoffs.

“You’re at least a better liar than Shane is.”  He gives Shane a pointed look.  There’s a tilt to his brows that gives weirdly paternal vibes and Shane shuffles out of the entryway sulkily, socks swishing across the hardwood.  He turns those eyebrows on Ilya next.

“Talk,” Pike says, so immovably that it actually makes Ilya wonder if he’s been tossed into a parallel universe for a moment.

Ilya is reminded of his first grade teacher the time he and another boy got into some stupid fight Ilya doesn’t even remember the root of, but his teacher had stood there looking at them with ancestral levels of disappointment until Ilya and the other boy had talked and apologized.  It’s uncanny to have Pike overlapping with that particular memory and Ilya decides talking with Shane will at least prevent Pike from invading more of his memories.

“Remote is on couch,” he tells Pike.  To Shane, he says, “Bedroom.”

Shane turns a pleading look at Pike, but the man is already heading for the couch to dig the remote out from between whatever cushions Ilya tossed it into.

As Shane follows him to the bedroom, the sound of some show starts up behind them.

“So Hayden knows,” Shane blurts out as soon as Ilya closes the door.  “About us.  I mean.”

“Yes, I figured this out somewhere between when  he showed up with you like sack of potatoes under his arm and when he said we need to talk.”

Ilya sits back against the nightstand, waiting.  Shane looks distraught, but not in the same panicky way he did earlier.  This is closer to the moments Shane gives himself before having to plaster a smile on for the press.  He wants to go to Shane, to soothe the furrow between his brows and to kiss the frown off his lips, but he’s still smarting from the way Shane ran with only a transparent lie sitting like lead between them.

“IthinkI’mgay.”

Ilya blinks, not quite sure he heard correctly.

“What?”

“I think I’m gay,” Shane repeats.

Ilya can’t help the laugh that snorts out of him.

“Fuck you,” Shane spits, shoulders rising.  “You’re not gay.”

“No,” Ilya says because it’s true that he’s not entirely gay.  “Not completely.”

“Yeah, well, I think I am.  Completely.”

“And Pike helped you realize this?”

“No.”  Shane takes a deep breath.  “He told me it was okay.  That I was gay.”

“Okay?  And?  Pike says is okay you are gay.  So what?”

Ilya can’t figure out where Shane is going with this and it frustrates him.  He doesn’t know how Pike figured them out and if it’s something he has to worry about other people piecing together.  And now Pike is just sitting in his living room with the tv on, waiting for Ilya and Shane to have this talk.

“I’m sorry,” Shane says quietly.  “About earlier this afternoon.  I—,” he inhales sharply, “—I freaked out.”

“Freaked out over nothing,” Ilya grumbles.  The hope from earlier is coming back, blooming in his chest, and Ilya doesn’t know if he’ll be able to survive it if it’s misplaced.

“It wasn’t nothing,” Shane snaps.  “This is hard enough without you being an asshole.”

His thumbs are shoved into the pockets of his sweats — Ilya’s sweats — and his fingers twitch anxiously against his legs.  He’s still wearing the clothes he left in and that dangerous hope expands further, creeping outwards like ivy.

Ilya slides off the nightstand to sit on the bed and pats the space next to him.

“Sit.”

Shane does.  His hands move from his pockets to wring together in his lap.

“Why is Pike here?”

“He said I had to talk to you.  About everything.”

“And you listened?”  Fuck, Ilya doesn’t want to be jealous of Hayden Pike but he sure is feeling it right now.

“Well, uh.  No, not really.  He stole my phone to text you.  And then he stole it again to call the uber.  And then he had to wrestle me into the uber.”

The jealousy evaporates, replaced with a stinging hurt that Shane apparently didn’t want to see Ilya again enough to fight Pike.

“Because you did not want to see me.”

“No!  No, I did.”  Shane untangles his right hand to slide his thumb over Ilya’s where it’s resting on the bed.  “I was scared you wouldn’t want to see me.”

“I always want to see you,” Ilya admits quietly.  It’s his heart on a platter and he just has to trust that Shane won’t carve it open.  Shane sucks in a shocky breath and lets it out slow.

“I always want to see you, too.  So much so that it scares me.”

The traitorous hope in Ilya’s chest overflows, warm and fizzy, tingling in his veins and buzzing across his skin.  He nudges his thumb against Shane’s and the reward is Shane’s hand sliding fully against his, their fingers slotting neatly together.

“What else does Pike tell you?”

“He says I have terrible taste in men.”

“This is lie.  You like best hockey player in MLH.  This is fantastic taste.  Pike is fifteenth best Metro.  What does he know about good taste in men.”

Shane giggles and Ilya turns to admire his face as he does so.  He brings his hand up, cupping Shane’s cheek so he can stroke the pad of his thumb over the spray of freckles.  A soft sigh escapes Shane as he leans into the touch, all but melting into Ilya’s hand as his eyes go half lidded.

“You’re not the best player.”  Shane’s eyes are bright, happy, as he says it and this is much better than that look of devastation.  “But I like you anyway.”

Ilya inhales, sharp, and he leans in, Shane mimicking the movement until their foreheads touch.  His hand slips from Shane’s cheek to the back of his neck, fingers playing through the short hairs at the base of his head.

“If I am not best player, then I can say I have perfect taste because I like best player.”  He closes the distance between them and kisses Shane, just a chaste press of their lips.  Shane dissolves into it all the same and he only breaks the kiss long enough to clamber into Ilya’s lap.  He slides his hands into Ilya’s hair and sinks into another kiss, tongue pressing against the seam of Ilya’s lips.

“I like you,” Ilya breathes into the millimeter of space between them when they pull apart, shedding light on a secret he’s held for what feels like an eternity.

“I like you, too,” Shane whispers and fuck, that makes it all worth it.

Ilya wraps his arms around Shane and falls back.  They land with a soft thump, the sheets puffing up with displaced air before slowly settling back down.

“I am sorry,” Shane murmurs, brushing the hair out of Ilya’s face.  His eyes are a myriad of brown and hazel and gold in the light of Ilya’s room and they bore straight into Ilya’s, alive with so much aching affection that Ilya’s heart stutters in his chest.  “For freaking out.  For running away.  It just got too real.”

He moves his hand to pet his thumb back and forth over Ilya’s cheekbone.

“But this is real, right?”

“Yes,” Ilya says with as much conviction as he can, reaching up to trace his knuckles against the smooth slope of Shane’s cheekbone.  He moves slowly because it feels like the moment will shatter if he goes too fast.  The heat of Shane’s skin is vivid and he carefully lets his ribs expand on his next inhale to feel the responding motion in Shane’s body.  “Yes.  This is real.”

They make out lazily — pressed so close together Ilya can feel the thump of Shane’s heart — until they’re interrupted by knocking.

“You guys still alive in there?” Pike asks through the door.

“We’re talking!” Shane’s voice cracks on the lie.

There’s a beat of silence as Shane blushes and Ilya smirks at him before Pike sighs loud enough to be heard through the door.

“You’re such a shitty liar, Shane.  Whatever.  Have fun.  Use condoms.  I’ll see both of you tomorrow,” Pike calls out.

Ilya hears his footsteps retreating.

“Maybe Hayden is your mother.  Telling you to use condom.”

Shane groans, the noise vibrating through his chest.

“Ew, no.  Never say that again.”

Ilya rolls them over, reversing their positions.  He captures Shane’s wrists loosely, reveling in the way it makes him melt into the mattress, body going lax.

“No?  Mama Pike has abandoned you here to be ravished by big bad Russian man.”

“Is it really abandonment if I want to be here?”

“Eh, potato, tomato.”

Shane laughs.

“That is not the saying.”

“Whatever.  I ravish you now, yes?”

“Yeah.”

Shane’s gaze is achingly soft and adoring and Ilya can’t help but be drawn in by it.  He plants a kiss to the hinge of Shane’s jaw and draws his nose down the plush hollow of his cheek, breathing in the faded scent of his face wash on Shane’s skin.

“I like you,” he repeats, just because he can.  It’s a marvel, being able to say the words out loud.  It’s even more wondrous when Shane answers him again with a smile and says, “I like you, too.”

***

“So.”

“Jesus, Hayd!” Shane yelps, dropping his shin guard.

Hayden grins, evidently pleased that he managed to sneak up on Shane.

“You and Boston Lily.  What’s the verdict?”

Shane blushes, heat spreading across his cheeks up to his ears.

“We’re good,” he mumbles.

“So are you fuckbuddies again or is it official now?”

Hayden is smirking like he already knows the answer and just wants Shane to say it out loud.

“We’re official,” Shane confirms, feeling almost giddy as he does so.  It’s one thing to say it to Ilya in the privacy of his home.  It’s an entirely different beast to say it out loud in a relatively public space to Hayden, even if it is currently empty.

There’s no one else in the locker room yet because Shane is forty five minutes early as usual, which means Hayden specifically got in early to ambush him about this before anyone else got in.  It’s heartwarming and annoying in equal measures.

“Cool, I’m happy for you, Shane,” Hayden says, eyes crinkling at the edges as his smile softens.  “I mean.  I have thoughts on it being, y’know, but I’m happy for you.”

“You’re just pissed he called you the fifteenth best Metro.”

“Yeah, but now he owes me for getting you two together, so that’s not too bad.”

“He’s going to die when he realizes that,” Shane groans, letting his head thunk back against his locker.

“One can only hope,” Hayden teases as he starts pulling his gear out of his bag.

“Hayd.”

“What?  You held out on me for years, buddy.  It’s only fair and right that I get all my teasing in now.  It’s the sibling experience.”

“I don’t want the sibling experience.”  Shane scrunches his nose at the memories of the guys laughing about siblings they both want to suplex through a table but would also bury a body for.

“Too late,” Hayden says loftily.  He turns a lopsided smile on Shane.  “I turned in the adoption papers and everything.  You’re going to get the full brother and boyfriend fighting package.”

“I’m asking them to trade you,” Shane says, petulant, and Hayden barks a laugh, reaching over to ruffle Shane’s hair.

“I’ll go straight to Boston,” Hayden quips and wanders off to check the basket of extra tape while Shane groans dramatically at his back.

Shane’s phone buzzes rapidly in his pocket and he picks it up to see several texts from Ilya.

Ilya: tell Pike 🤢

Ilya: thank you 🤢

Ilya: for wrestling you into uber 🤢

Ilya: he is good brother in law 🤢🤢🤢🤢

Shane looks up at Hayden, who’s mumbling as he digs through the basket for his preferred tape, and bites his lip to ward off a smile as he texts back.

Shane: You should tell him yourself.

Ilya: this is against Geneva convention

Ilya: counts as torture Shane!!!

He can’t help it.  A laugh burbles out of him and he waves Hayden’s curious look off.  Shane goes back to his skates with a lightness to his body that he hasn’t felt in a very long time.

***

Hayden gets home a couple days later to an enormous basket of chocolate sitting on the kitchen counter and when he opens the attached envelope with his name on it, there’s a card inside.

To fifteenth best Metro, Shane is very mean and says I should say thank you but this is method of torture so instead I send chocolates for your ten thousand children to eat.

And then, at the very bottom, in the tiniest possible scrawl, is Thank you, Ilya Rozanov.

The card goes up on the fridge, right in between Ruby and Jade’s latest drawings, and when she sees it and gets the story behind it out of him, Jacki laughs herself breathless.

Chapter End Notes

I had a lot of fun writing this because I think that Hayden gets a lot of flack for not liking Ilya for Shane right off the bat and while some of it feels over the top, a lot of it has always just felt like being a good friend/sibling. Of course it's difficult to reconcile that this guy who you're supposed to hate and has been a huge asshat to you for years with someone your friend is in love with. Does he go about it in the right way? Eh, debatable, but IMO it would be way weirder for him to just accept it at face value. You're asking for Hayden to essentially shift his entire worldview of Ilya without any proof. Part of being a good friend is seeing their partners without the rose tinted glasses.

(Also, I've seen a lot about people saying it's unfair of Yuna and David to have reservations about Ilya when they haven't properly talked to him and, y'all. They are Shane's parents. Yuna, specifically, is from a culture where compliments are not freely given and often times the highest praise is not being criticized. When one of my sister's ex-boyfriends met my mom, she called me after to say, "He's not tall enough", which is essentially the equivalent of getting an A because she couldn't find anything else to poke at.)