Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander

Additional Tags:

Introspection, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Family Bonding, References to Depression, Fluff and Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Banter, Protective Yuna Hollander, bonding with the in-laws

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of But I'm not a real person, just the shit you can't make up

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-30 Words: 3,455 Chapters: 1/1

still in the process (making progress)

Summary

Growing up, their neighbor had a cat.

A beautiful Russian Blue from a long line of show cats, Anastasia after the duchess that Mrs. Petrova was certain her dear kotik was a reincarnation of. Ilya would chirp and miyau at the kartoshka, too round to compete in the cat shows like its mama, if he saw it laying in the sun. But he didn't see it laying still very often.

No, it was much more common to see the beast strutting through the streets with a trophy in its mouth: a small bird, a mouse, a hamster, once the small lizard that he'd been trying to coax into his room as a pet.

"It's how she shows she cares, Illyusha, by showing she can provide for her family."

Notes

title once again from Against the Kitchen Floor by Will Wood which is an Ilya song to me I'm so sorry

Growing up, their neighbor had a cat.

A beautiful Russian Blue from a long line of show cats, Anastasia after the duchess that Mrs. Petrova was certain her dear kotik was a reincarnation of. Ilya would chirp and miyau at the kartoshka, too round to compete in the cat shows like its mama, if he saw it laying in the sun. But he didn't see it laying still very often.

No, it was much more common to see the beast strutting through the streets with a trophy in its mouth: a small bird, a mouse, a hamster, once the small lizard that he'd been trying to coax into his room as a pet.

She wasn't eating them. Anastasia was better fed than Mrs. Petrova's human children, but he didn't need to know that to hear her shriek when she stepped on the corpses left on the front step or when she scooped one up with her morning paper. (His most imaginative chirps are still ones he learned from her on those mornings.) Young, distraught over the loss of a pet he wasn't old enough to know wouldn't have survived long in his care anyway, he had gone to his Mama for answers.

"It's how she shows she cares, Illyusha, by showing she can provide for her family."

He's not thought about that in a long time. But it's what he remembers as the same nauseous feeling churns in his stomach at the sight of the first emails from Yuna Hollander.

First is just a series of links, Linked-In profiles for sport agents. He deletes it, thinks of blocking her account before pulling it out of the trash where the professional subject line looks out of place among the deleted coupons from his online shopping.

Then another, this time lawyers. Immigration, paternity, slander — all specialists in their fields, he is sure — who charge enough per hour to make Ilya look poor.

After the third, he sets up a special noise for her; and regrets it immediately, when the dread joins his nausea the first time he hears it. Late at night, it's like a horror movie made worse when he peeks at the preview line, "Attached are some statements if something were to break." He turns his phone off just to stop him from looking at it again.

When she sends him a contract to preview, one that would put him and Shane in the same campaign, that's when he loses it.

"Did something happen?" He's surprised by neither Shane's quick answer nor his lack of hello.

"Yes, your mother. Either give her my number or tell her to leave me alone, I feel like I should start paying her commission."

"Jesus," Ilya tucks his concern for the stress he can hear in Shane's voice behind his breastbone. They are hundreds of miles apart, on the road again, and worry will just distract him.

His phone beeps beneath his ear, and he knows without pulling it away that it is Yuna Hollander again.

"I'll talk to her, okay." Shane is still talking, but even the way he slows his words like he is girl in American horse movie is not enough to slow the frantic pulse of Ilya's heart. "She just wants to help."

That's the worst part, and he knows Shane knows this. They haven't talked about family, not beyond his attempts to push Shane away. Threats of his father and brother and Russia that felt more like a lover's frightened confession than threats of why they should just forget all of this. Still he knows that sometimes help, the loving providing that Yuna Hollander does, can feel like death at the front door.

"I know," it leaves him in a whisper, weak in a way that he lets himself be with Shane. Still his eyes roll up to the bland white ceiling of his hotel room and he stares at it hoping that either the tears he feels stinging at his eyes will dry up or that he can blame them on the dust in the room. "Solnishko, I know."

"What's that one mean?"

"Son of overbearing mother."

"Asshole."

"You played well today." Ilya changes the subject, he gets so little time with Shane he doesn't want to waste it arguing.

"I play well everyday."

Well, he doesn't want to waste it doing the unsexy kind of arguing. Just the kind that makes Shane's eyes light up and draws out the challenging smirk that he tries to hide. Perfect, Canadian Shane Hollander cannot be smug; but Ilya's Shane can. He can be vain and proud and boastful and asshole.

Tonight he cannot see that on Shane's face, too dangerous to facetime and risk Shane seeing the things only he can in Ilya's expression. So he presses the phone harder against his ear. Risks cracking it with the force of his head against the glass because speakerphone is unreliable, might take the sound of Shane's smile or the edge of his smirk.

It doesn't matter that it's harder for him to get off, twisted into the mattress like he's trying Shane's yoga, it matters that he can hear the sound of blushing. The way gasps are muffled as Shane tries to hide in his pillow. The way it means he is desperate and hiding it. Like he could hide anything from Ilya.

They are still panting in the afterglow — a word he learned from hockey romance book, so perfect for the way Shane is after sex: rosy and his — when there is an unsexy kind of moaning in his ear. "What? What is wrong?"

"She's calling me now."

"Probably about sexy ad campaign she wants us both in, tell her I do but only if you are shirtless whole time. I want it added to my contract, I'll even take pay cut for this."

"You are unbelievable." Shane says, Ilya is pretty sure this means 'I love you.'

"Ya tebya lyublyu, Lastochka."

Shane hums in response, a distracted little sound, half of his mind likely already on what his mother might want or what the Shane Hollander answer he was supposed to give her was. "Some of that sounded familiar."

"Yes, it means 'answer your phone, little swallow.'" He mixes just a bit of honesty in with his lie.

"Ilya!" His voice is scandalized. Always so easy when he's not in the moment.

"Like bird, Hollander, hockey players all so dirty minded. Is sweet name."

"Oh like you-"

"Answer your mother, Hollander. Give her my number, tell her no more emails, da?"

"Da, I mean yes." He imagines the flustered blush that must take over Shane's face, more red than the pink of his post-sex glow. He's probably wincing, closing his eyes so hard that it wrinkles his nose like a bunny the way he does when he's made what he thinks is a mistake. Never mind that it gives away the slip that no one else probably would have noticed.

Would not have noticed if they weren't Ilya, who notices everything about Shane, especially a mistake that hints he might be adding one more language to his tongue.

In a different world, a kinder one, he would never have to hear the stupid beeps of Shane hanging up on him. They would fall asleep together on the phone, Shane's quiet breathing in his ear every night that they cannot be in the same bed together.

But they live in this world and he has to sit with those beeps and with Shane leaving to answer a phone call from his mother, that can only be about controlling the damage that Ilya has caused to his future, both career and life. Because Ilya is the kind of person who does that, the kind that hurts good people.

It's not a new realization, it settles dark, heavy, and familiar in his chest alongside the phone he pulls away from his ear.

And like every time this feeling has come in the last decade, he does something stupid. Something he knows will hurt. But there's no club to go to this time to watch his love grind against someone else, no fight to start on the ice, nothing in this stupid hotel room to break.

He was right though, there is an email from Yuna Hollander waiting for him.

Ilya,

I want to apologize. I realized I have spent the last few days worrying about Shane through the guise of worrying about you. I feel certain you can understand what it feels like to love and worry about him; but it means I haven't been as kind to you as I wish I could have been from the beginning.

I can't turn off the part of me that worries, that tries to solve a problem before offering condolences. I hope you can see a bit of Shane in this, in me. We will get you through this, we will get through this with you. This isn't the kind of situation that anyone should have to experience, so I want to emphasize how much I am in your corner. Мне очень жаль.

Please take the links below for what they are, an offering to use if you need them. I don't want to overstep, I know I have the reputation. If you need me for anything, if I can help with anything, reach out.

Yuna

It aches. God, it aches. Nothing like what he was hoping. None of the shock. He had picked up the paper expecting the sharp sting of death to be waiting for him, instead he is met with the gentle clawing of a paw outstretched in love. Stupid мета́фора, who is he Tolstoy.

He clicks through to the first link, curious — another fucking cat.

It takes him a second to recognize what he's looking at, to parse the words on the screen and translate them into words that he knows. But when he does that ache digs its claws in deeper, drawing out a sob. It puts a word to what happened to him, one that Ilya is still unwilling to use for himself.

When he sets the phone down, he's careful, aware no matter how badly his hands are shaking and how badly he wants to scream that this is his only lifeline to Shane. So he places it on the table beside the bed and fists his hands in the sheets, pulling so hard that there's no way they haven't ripped.

This is something he was never warned about.

There are a lot of things he was never warned about.

But he doesn't care, as much, about advice that says, 'Don't say anything to reporters that can be clipped.'

Or, 'Don't chirp if you can't back it up when the gloves come off.'

Where were the people to say, 'Everyone will touch you and think that they are owed you because you are someone they see on the TV. They do not care that you are Ilya, they do not care that you have feelings. To them you are Rozanov the Russian terror that they love to hate and hate to love and desire to fuck. They do not care what you might have secret or at home. They care that you are hot and here and cannot really say no without it becoming just as valuable to them because then it is gossip.'

The threads tearing beneath his white knuckled fists sound a lot like an extra charge on the hotel bill that someone is going to ask about, make assumptions about. Which annoys him just as much as the thought he still can't ignore, even with his phone turned away from him. He pushes his head back, deep into the pillows, looks up at the ceiling because it at least is blank.

Only it also lets him down.

There is a spot up there, little and black, in the far corner by the top of the bed. If Shane were here they would have to sleep on the other mattress, Ilya would have to point him toward the end of the bed. His lastochka so strange about things like that, spots and diet and really it is quite easy to make Shane talk. That is a game he has to play more carefully. The wrong kind of joke is worse than a bad hit to the boards, Shane will not yell and chatter he will shut down or hang up or leave texts as delivered.

The thought of Shane, fussy and lovely, is usually enough to lift his spirits.

Shane, Hollander, Shane Hollander the thought of him in all his forms has been enough to drag Ilya from bed on some of the worst days. To be able to compete with him or to see him or even just message him back. Now it sits like rain on this wet miserable feeling.

Would he let Shane feel this much if this were happening to him?

That thought hits him like a lit match, sparking something finally besides misery.

If this happened to Shane it would be the last thing that ever happened.

But, if it were his Marly who this happened to he would not say to him the things that his father's voice whispers in his ear.

And that is as much of what Shane calls 'good sense' as he can manage for the situation. One almost positive thought that says don't be so mean to yourself. This isn't your fault.

Smoothing the ruined sheets beneath his hands, he thinks Hollander would say something about how the hotels put them in bleach instead of cleaning them, that's why it was so easy to rip. It's a thought he will remember when Hammersmith is giving him shit about the girl he smuggled into his room and making bad jokes about the 'freaky shit' he must get up to.

Like he has wanted anyone but Shane in years. Like Shane hasn't been his only partner, minus… Well, minus something that wasn't in his control.

The feeling of his phone in his hand is more normal than not, like his stick, it's an extension of himself some days.

So even though the world around him has a vin'jetka from the wet in his eyes he will refuse to call tears, he opens his phone again.

He memorizes the website that Yuna has sent him, so he can still find it, if he wants to, when he deletes his website visiting and the email she sent. Her providing, her love, are noted but — and maybe this is more of Shane rubbing off on him in the unsexy way — the possibility of reveal is too much, too frightening. A hack would be the shit on top of the shit pile of this whole ordeal. Then he presses donate because he isn't ready to look anywhere else. Ilya adds zeroes behind his trusty 81 until his thumb stops shaking every time it comes near the keyboard.

And when the least subtle anonymous donation goes out, and he's sent a curt note to his accountant — the only one on his team he keeps in contact with closely — he opens up his messages with Jane 💙

21:38 To Jane💙: call when you are done with your mother

His phone shakes before the message can even be marked as read.

"What's wrong? Mom says she's sorry- Or is there news?"

Even upset, the rapid patter of Shane's voice soothes something in him. What was it Shane had said when they told his mom, 'You're freaking out so why should I?'

"Nothing happened, мой паникер, I just want to hear you."

"Oh." This isn't something they do. Wasn't something they do? The conjugations of the way they do not do this confuse him, but they have come out to Shane's mother and they may have to tell the world. They should get to have eachother when they want. Maybe this is what Shane's little noise is realizing.

"What did Yuna Hollander want?"

"You don't have to call her by her full name, you know. I only know one Yuna, and even you can't possibly know more than one."

"Bah, even me. Tell me what Mommy Hollander wanted from her synochek."

Shane's sigh is not real even as he tries to make it seem so. He probably has that pouty frown he wears when he is trying to pretend he is serious. The one that fades into a smile so quickly. "It was actually my dad, he lost his charger again, and told mom to call for him."

"Ah and what did Mr. New Yorker need to share? Big story about the housing market?"

This is the time, if they were together, that Shane would hit him. A shove to his shoulder that actually pushes the two of them closer together, pushing Ilya deeper into the bed and Shane further on top of him.

"Asshole!" He says, but he is laughing meaning Ilya was right. "He was excited because he had gossip that would even impress his famous son."

"Oh, so he knew I would be hearing it soon."

The sharp inhale over the phone line is nothing like the sudden drop he feels in his chest. What the fuck was that? Where had it come from?

"I said famous son, not obnoxious son, is your connection bad?" There's a waver in the tone of Shane's voice, nerves like offering an answer to the press for a question he hadn't prepared for.

Ilya knows he's smiling, can feel the way the muscles strain after not doing it for days, and hopes Shane can hear it when he says, "Just tell me already moi komik, what boring gossip happened at boring Canadian job."

"It's not boring he works for the Treasury Board."

Settling down into the pillows of his bed, Ilya pretends to snore relishing in the choked off laugh it drags from Shane. When he's cozy, his phone snug against his ear he says, "So sorry, I didn't know Papa Hollander worked for fascinating Treasury Board. What reality TV scandals are happening there."

Shane ignores his teasing to focus on the part of the question he wants to answer. "So Sandra who does, I don't actually know what she does that's not the important part. What's important is that she's important," Ilya hums, so Shane knows he's still listening as he draws the blanket up over top of himself. "And she's getting divorced."

"Divorce is hot gossip from David Hollander?" Ilya asks through a yawn. "Didn't your terrible right defenceman get divorced last year?"

"No, that was Stedland not Schneider and that was an annulment not a divorce."

"Very different from scandalous Sandra."

"It is different," Shane has a passion that Ilya can't manage right now, not when this bone deep contentment has started to sweep away the weary sadness he'd been carrying. "Sandra's getting divorced because she got caught having an affair with her nineteen year old intern."

"Well how old is Sandra?"

"I don't know, older than Scott Hunter."

"Older than dinosaur? Is not possible."

"There was actually a lot of time between certain kinds of dinosaurs-"

"Hollander."

"Shut up, no, that's not the best part. The intern got hired because she knew him from her son's junior league team, they've been playing together since they were squirts."

"Squirt, huh."

"Don't be gross."

It's getting harder to keep his eyes open, but he tries his best to make his smirk audible for Shane. "I am just confirming facts, tell me more about oldest dinosaur Sandra and her squirting child lover."

"You are disgusting."

"One of us has to react the right way to this story, you probably did not ask father a single question he could tell about."

"I asked questions! That's how I know that the divorce isn't happening because of the affair but because…"

He never hears what comes after the because. The lull of Shane's voice and the ease that finally settles over him after hours, days, of tension puts him to sleep. Relaxing, deep, and, after nothing but worst case nightmares of tabloids and disappointed mother-in-laws, blissfully dreamless.

The next morning, Ilya wakes up on his back with his head still nestled in the pillows. His phone is hot and dead against the side of his face, and he's thankful for their late departure time if only because it gives him time to charge it before he has to be in the air.

A desperate curiosity has it back in his hand the second there's enough power for it to turn back on. The history he wants is already opened for him.

22:01 From Jane 💙: Sweet dreams, Ilya 💛

Call ended 3:25:17