Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander/Dallas Kent

Additional Tags:

Implied Sexual Content, Sexual Coercion, Alternate Universe

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Proving Ground

Collections:

Proving Ground Essentials

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-06 Words: 2,074 Chapters: 1/1

Veal

Summary

Ilya has lost. Ilya has lost, and he is chainsmoking in a corner, again, and it is cold as shit, again, and Shane Hollander is approaching him, again.

Notes

Shout out to smug for coming up with this AU with me, freya for helping me workshop some of these concepts and telling me to sit down and write more, and maria for the excellent beta reading.
Here there be dragons. Blanket warning for implied dub/noncon.

Ilya has lost. Ilya has lost, and he is chainsmoking in a corner, again, and it is cold as shit, again, and Shane Hollander is approaching him, again.

It’s January 2010. Canada has just won World Juniors. The snow banks piled up on the curbs are nearly as tall as Hollander; he looks at home among them. Perfect Canadian, doesn’t mind the cold, born to be on the ice. Born to be part of the MLH. Hollander has no problems being a prospect. Not like Ilya.

See you at camp—that is what Hollander had said, in the handshake line. And he will, in a few weeks, so Ilya has no idea why Hollander is walking up to him now.

The distance is not quite as far as the first time they’d met, with Hollander crossing a whole frozen Saskatchewan parking lot just to shake Ilya’s hand. But it isn’t short. Enough time for Ilya to notice him, think about it, consider fleeing through the unmarked gray door he propped open with a rock. Victorious, perfect Hollander.

“Does Hunter really let you smoke?”

The short answer is no, of course, but what Hunter doesn’t know can’t hurt him. Ilya looks around, exaggerated. “Is Hunter here right now?”

Hollander makes a face. “Lucky,” he says. “Kent insisted. I’ve only got half an hour before I have to be back at the hotel with him.”

“Big party planned? Celebrate your win?”

“No,” Hollander says, slowly. He’s stiffened up, staring off across the parking lot. “I don’t know. I hope not.”

Ilya takes a drag, hot smoke on the back of his throat, too long since he’s been able to have a single fucking cigarette. Hollander’s hat forces his hair flat against his forehead. The effect is not flattering, and it’s certainly not cute. “Can you get away later?”

“I—no. I mean, probably not. I’ll text you if I can. But don’t text me, okay?”

The cold and nicotine have already given him a headache; that’s the only reason Ilya does not roll his eyes. “You are too paranoid,” Ilya says.

It is sometimes as if Hollander thinks Kent can watch him through walls, ceilings, from hundreds of kilometers away. Kent owns Hollander’s ass for a year, but that doesn’t mean he can run Hollander’s whole life. Even Hunter can’t manage to keep Ilya locked up and well-behaved all the time. See: the fucking cigarettes. Hunter will probably find some way to punish him, but fuck Hunter anyway. Unlike Hollander, Ilya doesn’t plan to spend the whole year happily taking it and swallowing all the shit about inter-team cohesion and cultivating responsibility.

Ilya hadn’t known what he was signing up for. Hollander had.

Hollander looks at him like he’s crazy. “Kent checks my phone, Rozanov. I’m not being paranoid.”

“Is he—” Ilya says, then stops. Sucks his teeth. “Do they let him do that?”

“It’s not like I’m going to complain,” Hollander says.

And that’s true: Hollander is not going to complain. Hollander feels lucky to be there. If Ilya had thought at all about the Prospect Orientation Program—which he hadn’t—he’d have thought it was a stupid American internship program to teach future MLH players how not to be total fuckups. None of the scouts told him anything real, anything other than, it’s a great opportunity. Other than, anyone serious about the league applies as soon as they turn eighteen. Other than, you spend a year boarding with a respected, veteran player, and after that the league knows you’re worth the investment.

Nobody mentioned the mandatory dick sucking. Apparently everybody else already knew about that.

He hasn’t been able to smoke in weeks; that’s why Ilya feels sick. “Okay,” Ilya says. “They do whatever they want to us, and we shut up and thank them. Right?”

Hollander shoves his hands deeper in his pockets and leans against the wall. Shuffles closer to Ilya and bumps their shoulders together. His gaze flickers over Ilya’s face, just like the first time, at the prospect retreat, when they were alone in the showers. “It’s just a year,” Hollander says. There are faint shadows under his eyes. “Then we’ll get drafted, and it’ll be over.”

Ilya decides against another cigarette. Better to save the rest of this pack, anyway. A well-timed cigarette is Ilya’s favorite way to piss Hunter off; the consequences tend to be more bark than bite. He presses closer to Hollander, side by side. Perks of January in Ottawa—there’s no one here to see.

Hollander fidgets, then says, “Have you seen your family at all?”

There is no easy way to say that he would kill himself before letting his father or brother know a single thing about the prospect program. It is a pre-draft fellowship with training camps—that is what the paperwork says, and that is what his family knows. He will see them next summer, maybe, once he is signed and out of Hunter’s house. Ilya rolls his head to the side and looks at Hollander. Raises his eyebrows.

Hollander blushes. If he hates feeling stupid so much, he should stop saying stupid shit.

“I had lunch with my mom and dad yesterday.”

“Mm,” Ilya says.

“Kent came too,” Hollander says, “so it was kind of awkward. I mean, my mom doesn’t know everything. But she’s heard… you know. She’s got an idea.”

“I thought she was your agent.”

Hollander nods, then shrugs. “She didn’t get the full contract. Kent told me—it would just be weird, right?”

“That the league whores us out? No, Hollander, why would she think that?”

“Jesus, shut up,” Hollander snaps. “They’re not whoring us out. Fuck off.”

“Okay.” Hollander enjoys lying to himself, but Ilya does not. If there was a way out of Russia and into the MLH without making it through this program—if he had known what this pervert fucking league wanted—

But there isn’t, and he hadn’t. Hollander is right about one thing: in less than a year, it will be over.

Hollander pulls up his left sleeve, coat and sweater, and makes a show of checking his watch. Winter-pale skin on the inside of his wrist. “I have to go,” he says. He won earlier; there’s no reason he should look so defeated.

“Three weeks ‘til next camp. Try not to miss me too much,” Ilya says. Hollander’s eye roll says one thing; the curve of his lips says another. Hollander takes too long to say goodbye, and even longer to stop looking back at Ilya over his shoulder as he walks away. Ilya can’t remember, just then, why it’s so important that he doesn’t look.

There are phone calls to make back at the hotel. His father, for one, wants to remind Ilya that he has failed his country and embarrassed his family. “The American teams will not take you if you do not prove yourself,” his father says, and Ilya replies, “Yes, sir,” even though Ilya has spent his whole life proving himself. He bent over for Scott Hunter and signed his life away to the league to prove himself. He will prove himself for a year, and then some team will sign him and pay him millions of dollars, and he will never have to go back to Russia again if he doesn’t want to.

His father lets him go, finally, and then he calls Hunter.

“You played well, kid,” Hunter says. He is so much kinder than Ilya’s father. It’s a shame about the fucking.

“I lost.”

“Can’t win ‘em all,” Hunter says. “And you didn’t lose; your team lost. Hockey is a—”

“Yes, Hunter, I know,” Ilya says, and rubs at his face. Hunter lectures are best avoided if possible. If not, vodka helps. Speaking of: one of Ilya’s teammates took pity on him and snuck him a mostly empty fifth. Ilya retrieves it from his duffel and lies back on the bed. Takes a swig. Doesn’t choke, even though it’s been a while. Hunter is still saying something about teamwork, but Ilya’s input is entirely unnecessary.

“Anyway, you’re going to be in situations where it doesn’t matter how good you are, or how many goals you score. Next year, the teams you’ll be playing against—they’ll be good enough that sometimes you’ll lose even if you do everything right. No matter who you sign with,” Hunter says. “But hey, that goal in the third was beautiful. Good work. Any plans for the night?”

“I am allowed out?” Ilya asks, snidely.

Hunter sighs. “No drinking, no smoking, curfew at nine, Ilya. Use protection. Remember you’re representing me. Besides that, of course you’re allowed.”

Hunter does this—acts like Ilya is the unreasonable one for bucking under his rules. “These are for your benefit,” Hunter says. Or, “this is MLH tradition.” Or, “I went through this too, you know.”

Ilya would rather not hear it again. “Okay,” he says.

Hunter lets him go without another lecture, which is a minor miracle. It leaves Ilya free to drink himself into a stupor alone. Ottawa must have exclusively shit hotels, because the mattress is too soft and there’s nothing good on TV. Ilya allows himself to check his texts only once every fifteen minutes, just in case his volume had spontaneously turned off.

Ilya could go out, probably. There are plenty of other prospects among the national teams, guys he recognizes from the retreats or from training. They’d let him join; prospects stick together. Perhaps all the Canadian prospects are out together, or in together. He could text someone who isn’t Hollander. It is even possible that there are girls in Ottawa, though he is not certain. He could get laid with someone who isn’t Scott-fucking-Hunter. Pretend his body still belongs to him.

By eleven, Hollander has not texted. On one hand, this is good: Ilya is perhaps too drunk to get it up. Also, he jerked off an hour ago. His thumbs are hovering over the slide-out keypad.

How’s the party? He types. Deletes it. Having fun?

Are you okay?

He sends nothing. Ilya has been trying not to think of Kent checking Hollander’s phone, like he’s been trying not to think of anything else Kent does to Hollander, maybe even right now. For all he knows, Hollander is semi-happily drinking with his teammates and talking about what tape he’s planning to watch next, or whatever the hell Hollander finds interesting.

Ilya falls asleep facedown in the stiff, starchy sheets. He wakes up to a text from Sveta, text from his brother, text from Hunter. He sees Hollander only once, while sitting in the lobby of the hotel and nursing a black coffee and a hangover with two of the guys on the team, Chernov and Shastin.

They have already claimed one of the wood laminate tables around the breakfast buffet by the time Ilya blearily makes his way out of the elevator. Shastin played well; Russia’s penalty kill kept the loss from being acutely embarrassing. He’s hearing whispers, Shastin says. Expects to be drafted, perhaps third round. Ilya nods along and congratulates him.

“But you two,” Shastin says to Ilya and Chernov, “you already know. You’ll play next year, right? It must be so nice to be certain about it.”

Ilya tears a chunk off of his huge, dense cinnamon roll. Hunter would disapprove.

Chernov hums diplomatically. “The certainty is good. But Prospect Orientation is a stupid program. Stupid.” His gaze flicks to Ilya.

They’re both waiting for Ilya’s input. He has nothing to say; Chernov is a prospect for some asshole out in Minnesota and already knows how it is. Everyone outside of the program—at least, everyone from Russia—is clueless and will stay that way. So: “They pair us with the oldest, most boring players,” he says. True and inconsequential. “If they did not make the Americans and Canadians do the program too, I’d think it was sabotage.” Also true, and thankfully does not capture what Ilya felt the moment Hunter explained to him that he’d be spending part of his training on his knees.

Ilya stares off into the distance. His eyes catch on the elevators, the numbers slowly counting down. Three, two, one, ding.

Across the lobby, Hollander’s buttoned-up, pretty in a light blue shirt. He trails behind Kent. Pushes the luggage cart, nice and neat, well-behaved. The model of good behavior.

Hollander’s limping: maybe he strained something during the game.

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