Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Players of Team Canada, Players of Team Russia, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander

Additional Tags:

Horny Teenagers, First Time, Consensual Underage Sex, Exhibitionism, Hazing, 2008 International Prospect Cup in Regina (Game Changers), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Shane Hollander, Alpha Ilya Rozanov, Hand Jobs, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Tin Roof Rusted

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-02 Words: 7,844 Chapters: 1/1

Think of England

Summary

Rozanov says, “I am new Captain. Is, um…in English, I think you say—”
“Hazing,” Shane mutters. “They’re hazing you?”
“Yes.” Rozanov pulls back. Shrugs his shoulders again. “Go back in your room, Shane Hollander.”
“And if I do,” Shane mutters, sliding his eyes sideways again. Siderov and Vasiliev look proud of themselves, basking in a kind of butter-wouldn’t-melt ease that only bullies ever truly know. Somewhere, their mothers are calling them princes. “Will that be, like, it? Or will they do something else?”
“Ah.” Rozanov rubs the side of his nose, sniffs. “Something else, probably. Or they will tell whole team you turned me down. No worries. Pretty omega turns me down, not end of the world. Guys on team will laugh. Also not end of the world.”
“That’s not…” Shane screws up his mouth, looks down at his shoes. He’s still massively keyed up, still just a little hard, and Rozanov is still very handsome. “That’s not…what’s happening.”

Regina, Saskatchewan, 2008. Shane Hollander is newly an omega and nobody is happy about it. Ilya Rozanov makes it interesting.

Notes

HEED THE TAGS.
Remember that choosing not to use archive warnings does not mean that none apply.
They are seventeen here, technically underage. Keep this well within your mind--and if that's something that might bother you, back out now!
You'll notice that this fic and its predecessor are now in a series. Tin Roof Rusted and the lore therein are, perhaps, required reading if you really want to understand some of the things happening in this story--but it's also readable on its own.

“Ilya Rozanov?”

Rozanov stops clicking his lighter and turns his face. It’s a hard, blank mask of an expression that Shane is starting to expect on some level from the Russian team. Although it feels stereotypical to say so, they don’t come across as a particularly friendly bunch of guys. Ilya Rozanov is particularly stunning, though. It makes the frown and the eyebrows look all the more intense. He has a beauty mark on one cheek that makes Shane think about old Hollywood and beautiful women in black and white smoking long, thin cigarettes.

It’s almost definitely the fucking hormones.

Shane holds out his hand. “Shane Hollander.”

Without speaking, Rozanov reaches out his hand and shakes. The wind switches direction and Shane can tell the exact moment that the cold, biting air of the plains in December delivers a waft of his own pheromonal scent directly into Rozanov’s nostrils. Shane is unsure what he smells like. He’s new to this, it’s all still disorienting. His ex-girlfriend said that he smelled nice. Smelled clean and a little sweet. She’d said this about fifteen minutes before breaking up with him because she isn’t gay and couldn’t stay with him now that his designation had changed. Her mom wouldn’t approve. Her friends wouldn’t understand. She’s not gay, Shane. Sorry.

He was equally relieved and ashamed, which was its own sort of tragedy.

Rozanov has a mild reaction, all things considered. His nostrils flair. He sniffs and clears his throat. Shane’s scent is milder now. For a while there, people couldn’t enter a room he was sitting in without stopping to cope with the wall of his pheromonal scent. Even his beta fucking parents, who had the privilege of drifting through life with only a vague fucking idea of what any given scent meant. Unfortunately, a teenage omega’s first heat is a burden to absolutely everyone, and now he has to live with the shame of knowing that his parents know how he smells when—

Fucking biology.

His presentational heat passed like a fucking kidney stone, and he’s been reliably assured that he’ll never have one that long or that intense ever again, but it’s been over for almost two months now. He wants to go on suppressants, which will dull his already-mild scent down to almost nothing. He can’t, legally, until he turns eighteen in May. His mom has had an appointment with an endocrinologist booked for May 11^th since the day Shane was discharged from the hospital back in September.

He realizes that Rozanov has gone back to his cigarette, which he has now successfully lit.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke here,” Shane tells him. By which he means What the fuck. By which he means Why are you smoking? Are you crazy? Do you know who you are?

“Okay,” Rozanov says, succinctly. He has the decency to blow the smoke out the side of his mouth facing away from Shane. It doesn’t really fucking matter.

“Dude,” Shane scoffs. “You could at least pretend like this shit matters to you. This fucking competition. This fucking sport.”

Rozanov’s eyes widen slightly. It’s clearly not what he’d been expecting. Or maybe he just doesn’t entirely understand what Shane is saying. He thinks the guy speaks a little English, because he’s seen him translating for teammates who clearly speak significantly less. That might not mean anything, though, when Shane is coming at him with this level of vitriol.

He can’t fucking help it. Right now, in this moment, Ilya fucking Rozanov represents a life that Shane will never live. And he’s standing in a parking lot in Regina smoking a fucking cigarette.

“Whoa,” Rozanov mumbles under his breath, eyebrows raising.

“I’ve watched you play,” Shane tells him. The anger simmers just below the surface, making his scalp tingle and his cheeks feel hot. “The Challenge Cup back in February. That fucking game against Belarus. How many sixteen-year-olds can say they’ve pulled a hatty?” It comes out sounding like an accusation. Almost like an insult.

“Belarus is shit team,” Rozanov says, blowing smoke again. His voice is deeper than Shane was expecting. It feels like it goes straight through him. Fucking omega hormones.

“You’re an awesome player to watch,” Shane says. “You shouldn’t be wasting it.” By which he means I’ve wasted my time watching tape of you. This is the only time we’re ever going to play against each other. What was the fucking point. What was the entire fucking point.

Shane’s mom wants so badly for him to be excited about the Male Omega Hockey League. The MOHL has spent the last few months salivating over Shane, scenting him like a shark in the fucking water. Everybody seems to have totally forgotten that the NHL was doing the same thing until September. In July, Shane had sat in the passenger’s side of his mom’s car and carefully said What if I get drafted by the Metros, mom? because Montreal was struggling, and probably would continue struggling until they got more depth at center, and Shane had just turned seventeen with all the confidence that being almost-a-man brought to a teenage boy—

And his mom had smiled a secret, satisfied smile like Shane had said some magic word. It had felt like a having a revelation. Like something that was meant to happen. Kismet, prophecy, something.

Then September rolled around. Shane walked into his billet mother’s kitchen at two o’clock in the morning and feverishly shouted that something was wrong with him, so fucking wrong, help. Help.

Presently, Rozanov bobs his head. Once, perfunctory. “Yes,” he says, in response to Shane’s compliment-that-wasn’t. He sucks on the fucking cigarette again.

Shane fixes his jaw and tries to put a stopper in the anger. Ilya Rozanov ashes his cigarette against the wall and slants a brief but visible fucking smirk in Shane’s direction. Sly, like he knows something Shane doesn’t and it’s so fucking funny to him.

“They’re gonna fucking draft you,” Shane snarls.

Rozanov’s face does something that isn’t not an eyeroll. “They will draft you too, Shane Hollander.”

“The fucking NHL!” Shane says. “The NHL is going to draft you! Probably first. Fuck.”

“Yes, probably.” Rozanov shifts a shoulder—a half-shrug, lips pouted. He’s so fucking beautiful that it makes Shane want to throw something. Makes him want to aim for Rozanov’s face next time he sends the puck high. Especially so when Rozanov adds, “No reason not to. Not now.”

“Fuck you,” Shane spits.

Rozanov says, “Maybe if you ask nicely.”

It’s par for the course, as far as chirps go. It’s nothing Shane hasn’t heard on the ice. It’s nothing Shane hasn’t heard a million fucking times, honestly. But Rozanov says it with the confident ease of someone who knows exactly how it will land. Shane is two months an omega, riding a level of hormone dysregulation that might not right itself until his next heat (“Could come any time in the next year,” the doctor had said. “Late bloomers like Shane are a little less regular on their cycles.”) and he makes a horrible fucking realization about himself in that moment.

There’s a wire crossed in his brain somewhere, caused or perhaps exacerbated by the hormones, and it is making him absolutely sick. That’s the conclusion he comes to when he realizes that he’s wet.

“The others are waiting for me,” he grits out. It’s not a lie, it’s also not the strict truth, and it’s his only defense against the situation building in his body. “I’ve gotta go.” In a moment of clarity, or perhaps just chagrin, he adds, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Rozanov asks. He tilts his head, hums, and smoke flows out his nose. “For being rude? Is okay. Was cute.”

Shane thinks he perhaps wants to gut him like a fish. Dad’s sharp little fileting knife, sunk into Rozanov’s belly and drawn up until everything spills forth just like the trout they caught together in the lake when Shane was a kid.

“For the fucking beating we’re gonna hand you,” Shane says. “If you guys manage to actually beat Sweden.”

“We will see,” Rozanov hums. “See you in final.”

God, Shane wants to kiss him. With a fist.

The Kingston Founders took Shane’s C when he presented omega. Shane’s mother raised hell about it. Lawyers were involved. It all went nowhere fast. The fact of the matter is this: Shane’s captaincy was a gift that the Founders Organization was well within its rights to take back.

It is the CHL’s prerogative that omegas can play for their teams, at least until age eighteen. The MOHL and the omegan rights organizations they lobbied with made sure of that back in the sixties. But as for who they make captains of their teams, there is a formula, a fucking typecast, and Shane just doesn’t match the specs anymore. They’ve danced around the omega of it all so aggressively that they said nearly everything but the word itself, but it’s no secret that Shane’s new designation was the first and last nail in the coffin of his captaincy. Shane is going to have medical concerns in the future that might impact his game attendance. Shane is a great player, and we’re behind him 100% as he transitions to a new phase of his life. Removing the stress of captaincy is one of the ways we’re willing to support him during this trying time. We want Shane to focus on his future with the MOHL.

It all went to say exactly one thing: Shane, a newly-minted omega, cannot possibly expect to keep control of a majority-alpha team of guys who no longer make eye contact with him in the locker room.

Ilya Rozanov is the captain of Team Russia. He’s seventeen and more than half the guys on his team are older, and Shane wonders if that’s hard. If the nineteen and twenty year olds on the team balk at his authority, such as it is. Shane hadn’t had that problem with the Founders, and hadn’t had the chance with Team Canada, but the Russian team is generally older, rougher and more physical. A few of the guys on the team had raised eyebrows, and Shane has heard some talk about the possibility that birthdates had been overlooked when filling out Team Russia’s roster. It’s hard to say if there’s truth to it, but some of the guys on the team are massive.

Rozanov is not necessarily one of them. He’s tall, certainly, and his shoulders are broad, but he is visibly seventeen. He’s handsome, boyishly so, with a clean-shaven face and curls that only make him look older when they are sweat-darkened and slicked to his forehead. He’s all angles like an adolescent lion learning to prowl. Shane watches him skate between his much larger teammates, commanding the ice. Watches him focus all of that intention and focus on drills, on scrimmages. On Shane himself.

The practices are open but most of the other guys aren’t interested in watching the other teams, would rather be doing anything else when it comes down to it. There isn’t much to do in Regina, so most everyone goes back and forth between the rink and hotel. They practice, they go back to nap or watch television, they play their matches. A lot of them crush into Jenson’s hotel room on evenings, because his mom let him bring his Wii with him. Shane’s mom is offered a seat on a sightseeing tour that some of the other moms booked, but Yuna sees it for the glorified barhop it is and turns it down. When Team Canada is not on the ice, she and Shane sit in the stands and watch other teams practice, and focus on the fucking hockey.

From the ice, the other teams watch them.

They’re noticeable, is the thing, because they can be seen well from the ice. Yuna Hollander and her lookalike son, and everyone knows who they are. Shane was that Asian kid long before he was that omega. Some of them probably don’t even properly know his name, but they know who he is.

Shane clocks the glances he’s getting from the Russian team right about the time someone skates up to Rozanov, nudges him, cocks his head in Shane’s direction and gestures with his mouth in a way that Shane can only hope his mother does not notice. Rozanov shakes his head, says something very brief, and skates away. When Team Canada has their own practice later the same afternoon, Rozanov is in the stands.

It continues. The teams share a hotel. A massive Marriot within walking distance of the Brandt Center. It’s nice, to walk into the lobby and hear boys laughing, yelling in at least six different languages. Ilya Rozanov likes to be in the lobby, likes to hold court with the guys on his line and a few of the younger players who look at him like their own little God come down to walk the Earth. Shane notices this the same way he does the Swedish team all gathered around one guy with a handheld game console, yelling in a chaotic half English/half Swedish slurry. The same way he notices two of the Swiss guys watching Iron Man subtitled in French on a laptop.

Shane is trying to avoid spending time in his hotel room. His roommate is Oliver Plante, the only other omega on the team and possibly the guy who hates Shane’s guts most in the world. Ollie seems to be placing a lot of misplaced anger onto Shane for the MOHL’s lack of interest in him. Shane, privately, thinks that Ollie is a subpar player at best and doesn’t necessarily think he’s MOHL material. He would also tell this to Ollie’s face, if he asked, though he decidedly has not.

“Have fun painting each other’s nails,” had been the joke when the room assignments were handed out. Ten minutes later, Shane and Ollie had nearly fought physically over who would occupy the bed closest to the heating unit.

So yeah. Shane, like Rozanov, is spending a lot of time in the lobby.

He’s sitting in a corner, folded into a not necessarily comfortable pleather armchair. He’s rereading The Boys of Winter for a third time. Someone sits down in the armchair directly across from him and someone else takes up a position in front of Shane’s feet. He looks up.

The guy in the armchair is Rozanov’s right wing on the first line. Anatoly Siderov. The guy standing, legs spread wide to lower him a few precious inches and to set him into what he clearly thinks is a firm stance, is the center on the second line. Vasiliev.

“Hollander,” says Vasiliev, whose first name Shane doesn’t know.

“Hey,” Shane says, folding his book.

Siderov says something in Russian. Vasiliev glances at him, grins, and looks back to Shane. “You know Rozanov? Him?”

Vasiliev gestures with a thumb jerked over his shoulder. Rozanov sits several seating areas away, still running his mouth to his willing audience. Shane would think he hadn’t noticed this little gathering in the corner, if the light didn’t catch his pale eyes in just the right way to betray the glance he throws in their direction.

“Yeah,” Shane says, shortly.

“He is, eh…what is…” Vasiliev glances at Siderov, who shrugs aggressively. Vasiliev changes tactic. “He think you pretty. He like you.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “Fuck off.”

Vasiliev laughs, because something about this is so damn funny to him. Shane feels himself crumple the dust jacket of his book.

“You are, ah, hot,” Vasiliev says, and Shane jerks his head back. Vasiliev adds, “Like, ah, gav-gav. Like little dog.”

“You mean bitchy?” Shane snaps. “Hotheaded? Fuck all the way off, dude, I don’t know you like that.”

“Ha, yes, yes, like this. Gav-gav.”

Siderov leans forward in his chair and says, “Ilyukha says you come up talking to him first day. Say you get mad and yell. He thinks is cute.”

Shane looks at Rozanov again. Someone has found a deck of cards and is dealing, and the two cards in Rozanov’s hand are dwarfed by his long fingers. He darts a glance at the corner, too furtively for it to not be clear that he is aware of the conversation that is happening.

“Why can’t he tell me that himself?” Shane demands, looking back up at Vasiliev, looming with his massive arms crossed over his massive chest. “Does he always make you guys pull for him? Have you thought about playing fucking hockey instead? I hear you can learn how to skate and handle the puck at the same time.”

Siderov opens his mouth and scoffs nastily. He says something in Russian that contains the word omega, which Shane knows because it’s the exact same word as in English, and Siderov spits it out like a slur. Maybe it is, in Russian. Who the fuck knows.

“Ilyukha never fuck other hockey player,” says Vasiliev. “In Russia, no omegas. In Canada, let you play. Is, eh, fun.”

The thing is—Shane knows what this is. Some fucking humiliation ritual, probably just as much for Rozanov as it is for himself. Maybe even more so. Rozanov’s teammates are older. Vasiliev is one of the guys whose five o’clock shadow had inspired doubts over whether the Russian team was falsifying birthdates. Rozanov is an international prospect in the truest meaning of the phrase. Young, photogenic, fucking meteorically talented. Even his own teammates want to take him down a peg. The goal here is to work Shane up to the point where he makes some sort of scene, embarrasses them both in front of several dozen internationally-ranked hockey players. No less than a dozen of the guys in the championship this year are looking at the draft in the summer and Rozanov is their fucking overlord, looming head and shoulders above them in his greatness. Shane just knows that they would love see him dragged back down. Knows they would love for Shane Hollander, already the subject of a very public failure, to be the one who does it for them. Two birds and one stone type shit.

Shane opens his mouth to express some of this. Any of it.

What comes out is, “If Rozanov wants to fuck me, he can come find me himself.”

Vasiliev barks out a laugh. Possibly to hide the fact that he is genuinely shocked. Siderov has no such qualms—his mouth is hanging open, like he’s forgotten how to keep it closed.

Shane’s shoulders and neck feel hot and cold, rapidly and at turns. Six months ago, this would be the most embarrassment he’d ever felt. After the year he’s had, it doesn’t even qualify in the top five. There’s something almost freeing about it. That, and the fact that the hormones melting his brain are actually a little excited to see where this goes. Rozanov is gorgeous, he’s still staring from across the room, and Shane hates him just as much as his dick seems to like him.

“You give room number, I give to Ilyukha.” Siderov, limp against the chair again, chuckling to himself as his lip folds over his bottom teeth.

“705,” Shane mutters. Because he’s insane.

Siderov and Vasiliev take up a rapid-fire exchange in Russian, and Shane makes a bee-line for the elevator. Rozanov sees him go, raises half out of his chair, then seems to think better of it and lets him skitter around the corner.

What follows is possibly the weirdest three hours of Shane’s life. The buzzing under his skin alone makes it hard to sit still. Feeling ill at ease in his own body is becoming a familiar sensation, but it’s never felt quite this…electric. The combination of dread and anticipation makes him want to jump at shadows—makes him wonder if anyone can tell what he’s done. He’s fighting a low, constant level of arousal even while Ollie putters around their shared space, scowling as usual, and turns the lights off on Shane’s consistent fidgeting on the opposite bed. At some point, Shane’s mother texts to ask him if he wants to come to her room to share room service. The idea of being seen by his mother right now makes him feel utterly combustible. He doesn’t answer.

The knock comes just past ten. Shane rises from the bed with such alacrity that he almost walks straight into the opposite wall.

Rozanov is wearing his coat again, and the toque he’d been wearing outside the rink earlier in the week. His curls sneak out underneath it, boyish and sweet. Shane makes eye contact with them almost exclusively as he stands in the doorway, mouth half-open.

Leaning against the wall slightly further down the hallway, Siderov says, “Here is Ilyukha, ready for date.”

Rozanov looks over his shoulder, says something in Russian with a grin sharp enough to slice skin. When he turns back to Shane, something softens in his expression as he buries his hands into his coat pockets. Quietly, he says, “Was not expecting you to answer.”

“I’m not chicken,” Shane spits.

Rozanov sucks on his teeth, rolls his shoulders. “Was not what I meant.”

Shane, who’s been curious about this for hours, asks, “Did you put them up to it?”

“Up to…?”

“Like, did you make them talk to me?”

“Ah. No, opposite.” Rozanov clears his throat. Leans in a little closer to eliminate the possibility of being overheard. His breath tickles the side of Shane’s ear in a way that sends a shiver along his back. It’s unlike the normal skin-crawling reaction Shane is used to when someone talks too close. It’s fucking erotic—and he doesn’t know if he knew what that felt like until just now.

Rozanov says, “I am new Captain. Is, um…in English, I think you say—”

“Hazing,” Shane mutters. “They’re hazing you?”

“Yes.” Rozanov pulls back. Shrugs his shoulders again. “Go back in your room, Shane Hollander.”

“And if I do,” Shane mutters, sliding his eyes sideways again. Siderov and Vasiliev look proud of themselves, basking in a kind of butter-wouldn’t-melt ease that only bullies ever truly know. Somewhere, their mothers are calling them princes. “Will that be, like, it? Or will they do something else?”

“Ah.” Rozanov rubs the side of his nose, sniffs. “Something else, probably. Or they will tell whole team you turned me down. No worries. I have lots of skin.”

Shane snorts. “Thick skin?”

“Mm. Yes, thick skin. Pretty omega turns me down, not end of the world. Guys on team will laugh. Also not end of the world.”

“That’s not…” Shane screws up his mouth, looks down at his shoes. He’s still massively keyed up, still just a little hard, and Rozanov is still very handsome. “That’s not…what’s happening.”

Rozanov’s mouth quirks. “Oh?”

Shane shakes his head. Slow. “No.”

Rozanov takes a very slight step forward. The hem of his coat brushes Shane’s knees. “Okay.”

Shane cocks his head towards Siderov and Vasiliev. “They can’t come in. Actually—” He jerks his head over his shoulder. “I have a roommate. So. I’ll…get my coat.”

“Yes.”

In order to get his coat, Shane has to slink back into the dark hotel room and rummage in the closet directly opposite the end of Ollie’s bed. He knows, of course, that Ollie is going to say some shit—because he’s been glaring this whole time. Shane has felt it on the back of his neck like a buzzing gnat. When he pulls his coat off the hanger and turns to the foot of his own bed to find his shoes, Ollie is scowling from behind a pillow that he is clearly using to block any view of himself from the doorway.

“We have a curfew,” Ollie mutters.

“Yeah,” Shane responds, as he toes his shoes on. “Nobody’s gonna find out, though.”

“Why.”

“Because,” Shane mutters. He slides one arm into his coat, tosses a glare in Ollie’s direction, never quite meeting his eyes. “You’re not gonna tell anyone.”

Ollie scowls, even as he shrinks back from what Shane knows other people consider one of his more unsettling expressions. Hayden, one of the guys on the Founders with Shane, has repeatedly told him that the way he can willingly siphon all of the emotion from his face is eerie. Shane doesn’t know that it’s all that willing, but he does know that Ollie already finds him to be odd and off-putting, and he’s not above using it to his advantage at the moment.

“Maybe I fucking will, you don’t know.”

Shane puts his other arm into his coat. “Nobody would believe you.”

“Fuck you, Hollander.”

Shane zips his coat, spares Ollie one more glance, the barest hint of a shrug, before he’s walking out the door and following Rozanov down the hallway.

They take the stairs all the way down to the lobby. Single-file—Rozanov first, Shane, and then the other two. Their footfalls are loud and unsubtle in the echoey stairway, taking up space the way only athletes know how to do. Rozanov is wearing heavy boots that absolutely slam into the metal stairs. Shane’s tennis shoes squeak with every step. When they burst out onto the frigid night, sharp prairie air stinging throats and noses, they settle into an odd procession. Siderov up ahead, strutting. Shane and Rozanov walking abreast, elbows brushing occasionally. Vasiliev pulling up the rear some distance back.

They walk across the enormous parking lot that the hotel complex shares with the conference center and ice rink. It takes about five minutes to reach the nearest intersection, where they hang a left and take turns jumping a fence. Shane is left for last, and the three alphas all seem to be experiencing an odd shared moment of chivalry as they watch him notch the soles of his shoes against posts of the fence, hoist himself up and swing a leg over.

“Fuck off,” Shane says, waving away the hand that Vasiliev, of all the people, offers as he drops down onto a half-melted patch of snow. He huffs, mostly just to show his displeasure in the mist of his breath, and says, “Where are we going, anyway?”

Siderov gestures towards the treeline and says, simply, “Trees.”

What the Russians don’t know and Shane unfortunately does is that they are on the grounds of Government House. There are no less than a dozen Canadian flags fluttering overhead in various spots along the trail. The lights of the mansion itself are visible in the distance, and Shane wonders, inanely, if the Lieutenant Governor is in residence.

“That way,” Rozanov says, nudging him to follow Siderov, who’s hotfooting it across the grass now. Please keep off the grass, say a dozen signs visible from the spot where Shane stands. Shane doubts that Siderov cares what they say, even if he can read English or French, or Latin script at all.

Rozanov nudges him again, releases a sound that almost sounds like a giggle. “Hollander, go.”

Shane finds himself giggling back, pointing to the mansion. “The fucking lieutenant governor lives there. Do you know that?”

“I do not know what this means,” Rozanov says, shaking his head. More of his curls are spilling out from underneath his toque, smile stretching his face. It shows the world his crooked bottom teeth and turns his lips into a kind of heart shape. Shane cannot believe how fucking hot he is.

“The Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan,” Shane says. “I don’t know his name, but that’s his house.”

Rozanov looks at the bright windows through the trees, even as they follow Siderov at a light jog. “Is this important?”

“Maybe if you live in Saskatchewan. It’s a historic building, I guess. I think the Queen stayed here once.”

Rozanov laughs again and says, “We are Moscow boys! We pass palaces on way to school. Little house on the prairie is nothing.”

Vasiliev pulls away from their group to throw himself onto a bench underneath a nearby pergola. Siderov prances around in a lopsided circle, gestures to a copse of trees and bushes, one of which is a relatively large weeping willow that, even at this time of year, offers some protection from the wind and sightlines with its thick overhanging branches covered in glittering icicles. It’s pretty and very eerie.

Siderov says something in Russian, runs his eyes up and down Shane in a way that feels weirdly proprietary, and jogs off to join Vasiliev under the pergola. They strike up a conversation loud enough to be heard from across lawn, which Shane supposes is probably on purpose. A bystander would notice the two loud Russian guys before they noticed two people in shadow under a tree.

“What did he say?” Shane asks, genuinely curious, but Rozanov just gives a slow, subtle shake of his head. His eyes are narrow as he watches Siderov retreat. His mouth is twisted into something that isn’t a smile, though it pulls his jaw forward in a similar way. It isn’t a kind expression.

“Are we going to…?”

Rozanov glances at him, jerks his head in a single up-and-down nod and jerks his chin towards the thick trunk of the weeping willow. They duck under the icicle-laden branches and circle until the trunk completely obscures Siderov, Vasiliev, and the view of the path.

Shane leans back against the trunk, something alive in his stomach. He kicks a foot back against a root at the base of the trunk and says, “So…”

“Be still, okay?” Rozanov mumbles as he steps close again. Closer than he was in the hallway earlier, even, when his coat had brushed against Shane’s knees. Now their knees fully touch, and he can feel the toes of Rozanov’s heavy boots tap against the toes of his sneakers. Rozanov lifts a hand, shakes the cuff of his coat out of the way, and presses the inside of his wrist underneath Shane’s jaw.

“Oh,” says Shane, because it’s the first time he’s been scented and this—this is now the most erotic thing that’s ever happened to him.

“Tolik say to make you smell like alpha,” Rozanov rumbles.

“Mm?” Shane says, unable to really reach for any other response. Rozanov smells like smoke—tobacco that clings to his coat and skin, yes, but also something reminiscent of wood. He smells like the best memories of Shane’s childhood, sitting cocooned in a blanket while a campfire flickers. Smell of the nearby freshwater. Damp soil. Earthy and fragrant all at once. He smells, absurdly, like safety.

“Siderov,” Rozanov clarifies. “Well. What he said was—” He speaks Russian. A single, rough sentence that Shane supposes is what Siderov had said a moment ago. He’s willing to take Rozanov’s word for it, anyway—as he drags his wrist from one side of Shane’s neck to the other, Shane finds it difficult to focus on anything else. It settles into him in a way that aches between his legs. A part of himself that he’s been trying not to think about for three months throbs and makes itself unignorable.

“What,” Shane mumbles. Swallows. “What does that mean?”

“Is Russian saying, I don’t know real translation. The words mean ‘put alpha on him’, but is more like…”

“Mark your territory,” Shane says, shuddering. “We have it in English too.”

“Yes. But in Russian, is specific for omegas. Is not nice thing to say.” Rozanov leans in, presses their cheeks together. “Is also a way to say blowjob.”

Shane barks out a single, startled laugh. The loud conversation behind them pauses for a moment. Rozanov pulls back and grins in a startled, charmed way and Shane says, “So you know the word blowjob.”

“Yes,” Rozanov says, with a nod that threatens to unseat the toque entirely from his head. “I know all important English words.”

Shane chuckles and leans further back into the tree, knees a bit wobbly now. He worries at the inside of his lip with one pair of his canine teeth and mutters through the clench, “He told you to give me a blowjob?”

Rozanov chuckles. “No. Was not what he meant.” Tilts his head, raises an eyebrow. “Do you want a blowjob?”

“Um…” Shane turns his face, feels it heat, though the smile doesn’t seem to want to slide completely away. “I don’t really…”

“You’ve never had?”

“No, I have, but before.” When Rozanov’s face stays stationary, he adds, “Before I…presented.”

“Ah.” Rozanov, of course, smirks—and Shane remembers that he’s an asshole, and also that he finds that sexy in a kind of mind-melting way that has to be at least partially the fault of his current hormone dysregulation. No way would he find this—any of this—so fucking hot if his body wasn’t churning out sex hormones like a volcano ejects smoke and ash.

“Okay,” Rozanov says, clearly picking up on Shane’s attempt to slide into his own thoughts, to withdraw. He finds Shane’s wrist, presses it against his own. “So no blowjob. Is fine. You will smell like alpha tonight, anyway.”

“Okay,” Shane shudders. Then, “Hey. Um. Do you want to—”

“Yes?” Rozanov is humming now—a low, pleased noise that Shane isn’t sure he realizes he’s making.

Shane runs down a list of ways to say it, all of which would probably have been cooler and more composed than what he ends up saying, which is, “Kiss?” in a voice that both cracks and sounds more like a plea than the calm and collected offer he intended it as.

Rozanov, unexpectedly, groans and presses his forehead to Shane’s shoulder. He mutters, “What. You are so—fuck, you’re cute.”

“I’m not—”

“Oh, you are,” Rozanov says. “Very fucking cute. Is—wow, is crazy.”

Shane is beginning to think that his pheromonal scent is a little stronger than he thought—or else that Rozanov is more affected by it than any of the myriad other alphas that Shane has had to endure interactions with since his sudden presentation. Where the others almost unanimously have sniffed and avoided eye contact, Rozanov’s nostrils flare like they had behind the rink and his pupils dilate in a way that Shane has only ever seen in nature videos. The adolescent lion again, the thrill of the hunt.

He leans in and—wow, just immediately there is tongue. Shane had done this with that ex-girlfriend, maybe a handful of times, and some of the sensations are familiar. The swoop of guilt in his stomach, though it feels better this time, like a secret and not like a mistake. Most of it feels entirely new. Rozanov is confident with his lips and tongue, overwhelming and dominating as he drags his mouth across Shane’s over and over again, and Shane is just along for the fucking ride. It’s all he can do to keep his mouth open, pliant for the next thrust of Rozanov’s tongue. It is all wet heat and the high, smacking sound of lips on lips.

Shane has never been kissed like this. He has never been more turned on by the press of another body against his. He has never wanted another person so badly.

Rozanov trails away from his mouth, moves down his jaw and onto his neck in a series of open, filthy kisses. Shane’s head clocks back against the tree trunk ungently, and his foot shifts against the root it was propped against, and then there is a hot, firm pressure against his thigh.

“Oh,” Shane says out loud. “You’re—”

“Fucking yes,” Rozanov hisses. “Of course.”

“I—” Shane scrambles a hand down, jams it inelegantly between his own thigh and the crotch of Rozanov’s jeans. His palm lands off-center somewhere near the base of Rozanov’ hard dick. Touching it feels like Shane’s hand has been set on fucking fire. Just the idea of it, the crazed sensation that swoops through his gut when he lets himself think that he is touching another man’s dick, that it is hard and that it’s hard for Shane, makes his eyes try to roll back in his head.

He’s heard people called boy crazy before. Derisive and with a lot of judgement, especially for omegas. In the moment, Shane thinks that might just be the natural state of the fucking world. How could anybody not be crazy for this feeling.

“Oh fu—,” Rozanov hisses through his teeth, braces himself on a hand planted next to Shane’s ear and rips at the fastenings of his jeans. He unbuttons and unzips in one mostly elegant movement—practiced, Shane can’t help but think—and then yanks Shane’s hand by the wrist all the way inside the open fly. He presses his fingers on the back of Shane’s hand, ruts against his palm, and Shane feels himself clench around nothing. He hadn’t even realized that was something his body might do.

“Okay, okay,” Shane rambles to himself, looking for a way past the final layer of Rozanov’s clothing; a seemingly impenetrable wall of cotton. He snorts through his nose. “Okay, where’s—"

Rozanov laughs too—high, half-hysterical. “Can you—I believe in you—”

“Oh my God,” Shane giggles, and presses his forehead to Rozanov’s shoulder. The lengths of their bodies are entirely hidden from view, coats and sweaters and any number of layers between themselves and the frigid air and each other. His hand seems to just disappear from existence somewhere between his wrist and the rucked-up hem of Rozanov’s sweater. He cannot see a damned thing. Finally, for lack of anything else to do, he closes his hand around Rozanov’s still-clothed dick, watches his own breath fog out in front of himself and says, “It’s so cold, you’ll probably—”

“Probably,” Rozanov agrees, with a single shrugged shoulder. “This is—is good.” He presses kisses up Shane’s neck, lips cold and hot at the same time. Shane breathes yeah as he twists his head to offer more, and his fingers knead around inside Rozanov’s pants.

Eventually, Rozanov goes still against him and murmurs, “Da, da, like that, ohh—” and Shane, who hasn’t been moving with any particular goal in mind aside from reveling in this experience, only belatedly realizes what’s happening when Rozanov’s dick jerks hard against his palm, and then there is warmth.

“Fuck, uhn, oh my God.” Shane doesn’t entirely know what an orgasm feels like for himself anymore. He’s been a little too unsettled by the new strangeness of his own body, and too self-conscious to find out. He doesn’t think this is it—he doesn’t think he could possibly come untouched just from the excitement of feeling Rozanov come. But for a moment, his whole body tenses, and everything fucking throbs.

Before he can regroup, and before Rozanov can do more than sigh, kiss Shane’s jaw and wrap most of his hand around Shane’s wrist, the distant sound of a power whistle crosses the lawn, followed by Siderov barking something in Russian. Shane flinches, but Rozanov just scoffs and mutters under his breath. Not an emergency, then.

“He says, is too fucking cold,” Rozanov snorts, pulling away. He tugs Shane’s hand out of his pants—Shane blushes to realize it’s still there—and adjusts himself. A grimace crosses his face. He mutters, “Blyat,” and then chuckles, and Shane can’t help but echo it. He’s still so hard it hurts, and wet enough that it’s uncomfortable to walk.

“I thought you were Russian,” Shane says to Siderov as they approach, feeling like an almost entirely different person than he did ten minutes ago. Rozanov’s chuckle from beside him is a boon. “Don’t you guys have sixteen different words for snow? This should be nothing for you.”

“Russia is cold,” Siderov says. “Canada is—fucking north pole.”

“Yeah, well. Welcome to the Great White North, Moscow boys.”

Siderov looks to Rozanov, pulls a disgruntled face and gestures to Shane with the hands still in his pockets. He actually does look quite chilled. Shane takes a moment to consider that Siderov and Vasiliev have not been afforded the luxury of shared body heat this entire time. Shane’s nose is cold, but the rest of him is almost remarkably warm.

Rozanov speaks Russian, low and a little hoarse, obviously still recovering. Siderov draws near, audibly sniffs, and barks out a laugh that, at the very least, does sound impressed. Some part of Shane, buried under the shame, congratulates itself on a job well done.

“Hey, Hollander. Lemme talk to you.”

Shane has gotten used to the alphas in the locker room ignoring his existence, for the most part. Shane thinks it’s partly a misplaced sense of chivalry, and partly because none of them know how to address him now, especially after spending several years playing alongside him under the assumption that he was a beta and would be staying that way. Shane and Ollie don’t undress completely in the room, take their showers in separate stalls and put on their compression garments there too. Unlike Ollie, who’d presented at a vastly more normal time, Shane had undressed with these guys. Had showered with them. And they’re fucking incapable of not being weird about it.

He’s surprised, then, that Liam LaPointe is speaking to him. LaPointe, who was hurriedly made captain of Team Canada after Shane’s awful autumn.

“Yeah,” Shane says, stepping into the corner LaPointe beckons him toward.

“Uh.” LaPointe is making very concentrated and direct eye contact with Shane’s shoulder. Shane, who is also staring anywhere other than LaPoint’s face, doesn’t mind. “So. Someone heard something. And I don’t really—I know that guys just talk, Hollander, and I don’t even really wanna ask—”

“Is this about Hollzy spreading his legs for half the Russian team?” Ollie asks, from the wall he’d apparently been inching along unnoticed. “Because that’s fucking true, Cap.”

Before he can think better of it, Shane is saying, “It wasn’t half the team—” and then he’s trying to rip the words back out of the air, because everyone fucking heard that, and Ollie is standing there looking smug, and LaPointe looks like he would very much like to hit something, which—Shane would, too, honestly.

“Hollander,” LaPointe grits out.

“And hey, fuck you,” Shane snaps, turning to Ollie again. “What the fuck do you know?”

“I know those three Russians showed up in our room, you left with them, and then someone said—”

“You know,” Shane says, stepping to him, feeling absolutely out of control in his own body for the second time in as many days. This, too, is the hormones. “The whole Russian team could fuck me and I’d still be a better hockey player than you.”

Ollie reddens, mouth flapping uselessly.

“Maybe if you focused on your fucking stickhandling,” Shane says, “and not on being a jealous bitch, you’d have a shot at the draft this summer.”

Ollie opens his mouth, hawks, and spits in Shane’s face. Shane has him on the ground within the next two seconds flat, and there is a pain in his side from Ollie kicking him, a pain in his eye socket from Ollie’s nose slamming into it on the way down, and a pain in his knuckles from slamming them into Ollie’s jaw.

“Fuck!”

“Okay! Bitch fight!”

“Whoa, whoa—”

“Someone grab his arm—no, idiot, the other—”

“Tabarnak!”

“Oh my God, Hollzy’s gonna kill him—”

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

Shane, all at once, is being dragged off the floor by several people. The same is happening to Ollie. Shane flings his head around, taking in the room at a wild tilt—Coach DuBoise is in the middle of the room, looking like a hurricane localized onto the exact dimensions of the locker room. There are no less than a dozen extra people crowded into the room, most of them parents—Shane can’t tell who’s holding him, but Ollie’s being held back by his own father and two other men Shane doesn’t recognize.

“Dad,” Shane says, and one of the hands on him loosens, tightens again.

“Shh, son,” he hears his father say, and the fight drains from him like blood from a slaughtered animal.

“Are you kidding me?” Coach is shouting. “What the fuck is this? Do I need to bench you two?”

“No, Coach,” Shane and Ollie both yell.

“Fuck, if we weren’t about to play this final, I might just do it anyway.” Coach takes off his baseball cap, smacks it against his thigh in anger. To himself, but also to the room at large, he says, “This is why the major leagues don’t do this fucking mixed teams bullshit. Territorial fucking teenage alphas, hormonal teenage omegas—Christ, it is more than I’m paid to deal with! Pull yourselves together!”

Coach thunders out of the room, taking most of his entourage of confounded parents with him. The only person touching Shane now is his dad, who has a hand on either of Shane’s shoulders and who Shane still hasn’t looked it.

“Shane,” David says softly. “Buddy. What’s going on?”

“I don’t—” Shane gulps, inhales. “Can we talk about it later? Can we not tell mom? At least not—not right now?”

David sighs, hems and haws for a moment, but Shane knows his dad. His dad, who brought him a bowl of ice cream to cry into after almost every fight he and his mom ever got into. Who taught Shane how to drive with a hand gripped hard enough onto the grab handle and a resolutely calm voice as he said Wrong lane, Shane, wrong lane. His dad, who only ever raised his voice twice in Shane’s memory—once when Shane skated over some thin ice as a kid, and once this fall, when he’d shouted Someone tell me what’s happening to my SON, in an ER in Kingston.

“We’re gonna have to talk about this, kiddo,” David sighs. “But right now, I know, you’ve got a game to win. So.”

“Thank you,” Shane whispers. “Sorry, Dad.”

His dad pats his back, firm between his shoulders, grounding. Shane still doesn’t look at him. Team Canada shoots glares at him out of the side of their heads and Shane, an edge of hysteria even in his own mind, thinks, I don’t have to play with any of you again after this. Fuck you. Fuck you.

For the first time, he’s grateful that the NHL won’t be calling his number.

At center ice, Shane meets Ilya Rozanov. Because he is the best fucking center on Team Canada, omega or no, and it would be an objectively stupid decision not to face him off against the best center on Team Russia.

Rozanov looks at him from under his visor, takes in the shiner on Shane’s left eye, and says, “Was not there last night.”

“Shut up,” Shane growls through his mouthguard.

Rozanov smirks, settles further into his hunch over his stick, and says, “Looks pretty.”

Shane has to hide his smile as the puck drops.