Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son

Additional Tags:

Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Lack of Communication, Explicit Sexual Content, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Minor Ilya Rozanov/Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, POV Alternating, Minor Ilya Rozanov/Original Female Character(s), Angst with a Happy Ending

Language:

English

Collections:

Brain Twin Collabs, StormVandal's Heated Rivalry works & reclist

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-06 Updated: 2026-10-12 Words: 25,787 Chapters: 7/10

nothing you can live without (nothing you can do about)

Summary

“So, uh, look, we should forget that happened in there, okay?” he says, glancing quickly up at Rozanov before remembering he absolutely cannot do that.

“Is what you want?” Rozanov says, so goddamn nonchalant. For a second, Shane hates his guts.

Shane fully intends to say ‘yes’. He needs to forget what happened, and even more so, he needs Rozanov to forget what happened. He can’t have Rozanov telling anyone that Shane Hollander got a hard-on in the locker room showers.

He intends to say ‘yes’, but what he says instead is, “No.” He swears he opened his mouth and formed the word ‘yes’, but that’s definitely not what came out. He tries again, hoping it was just some Freudian slip, but what comes out is, again, “No.”

---

Soulmates can't lie to each other. Somehow, this fixes absolutely nothing.

Chapter 1: Summer 2010

Chapter Notes

Those of you who've read our fic headfirst into shallow pools may recall our A/N stating that neither of us are proficient smut writers and that smut is outside our comfort zone. Well, for some reason, immediately after finishing shallow pools we decided to write this fic which kind of unavoidably has a bunch of smut in it. This is turning out to be very difficult and stressful but we really like the concept so we're going for it anyway. Truly, we are brave.

There's a bunch of dialogue in this chapter that's lifted straight from the show, but that won't be happening in later chapters! Or at least it will be happening a lot less. We just needed to establish how much things play out almost identically to canon in this chapter to set the scene. So, the stuff you recognize is from the show.

Summer 2010

Shane really doesn’t know what to do with the information that Ilya Rozanov had suggested they do this shoot together.

The two of them haven’t even actually started their MLH careers yet, and they’ve already been forced together so many times — into the same conversations, vying for the same spots, already being positioned as rivals even though they barely know each other — that he’d assumed this CCM campaign was more of the same. He’d even been kind of irritated about it — the season hasn’t even started and he already can’t get away from Rozanov. Why the hell does Ilya Rozanov want to play into it even more? Surely he’s as sick of not standing alone on his own merits as Shane is.

He’s trying not to stew on it, and he’s especially trying not to let his irritation show. Rozanov hasn’t technically done anything wrong, and they’d even had a pretty good time filming together. But yes, he’s been undeniably off-kilter ever since Rozanov said that this whole thing was his idea, and he’s trying not to let himself think too hard about what Rozanov’s motivations could be — especially since he keeps coming back to what if he knew what I was thinking, last time, which could only be very bad. But it’s probably not that. Even if Shane can’t really think of what else it would be.

By the time the shoot wraps and Shane gets to hit the showers, he’s wound tight and more than ready to get the fuck back to his hotel room and away from Rozanov. If he just gets away from him — and he will, since they’re playing in different cities and will only see each other on the ice a few times a year — then he won’t have to think about how he feels drawn to him like a magnet. Won’t have to think about jerking off to the way Rozanov had looked at him in the gym instead of thinking about his girlfriend, or how he’d broken up with her as soon as he got back to Ottawa because he was consumed with guilt about it. She didn’t ask why, and he sure as hell didn’t offer the reason.

Rozanov could have picked a shower on the other end. They’re the only people there, and he had plenty to choose from. Instead, he only leaves two showers between them and Shane’s eyes keep getting drawn to the way the water cascades down his naked body. He’s really trying to stop looking. He knows that it’s bad that he has to try in the first place. If Rozanov catches him looking, he’s done for. It’s not normal to watch another guy in the showers, and Shane needs to be normal. He needs to be normal and stop thinking about Rozanov; probably he should find another girlfriend, or at least find a way to think about literally any girl when he jerks off.

But Rozanov is so… distracting, right there in Shane’s peripheral vision, tilting his head back into the shower spray and smoothing soap suds over his muscular thighs, and — fuck, Shane is staring. His eyes, rather than snapping to the wall in front of him the way he wants them to, go to Rozanov’s face, and when they do, he finds that Rozanov is staring back at him. Fuck. And then Rozanov’s gaze lowers, and his eyebrows raise, and that’s when Shane realizes that he’s more than a little hard.

He’s mortified, even though later he’ll think about how Rozanov only spotted it because he was looking too. He’s expecting a barbed comment at best (maybe to get punched at worst), but Rozanov doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look away, either. “Fuck off,” Shane bites out after what feels like the longest moment of his life. He turns away again, his heart pounding in his chest. This can’t be happening.

Instead of fucking off, Ilya goddamn Rozanov starts jerking himself off lazily while watching Shane. It’s the sound that draws Shane’s eyes back, more than anything, and then he really can’t look away. Rozanov’s not even trying to hide it. He has his whole body angled towards Shane, his chin tilted up almost defiantly as he strokes himself. When he nods towards Shane’s still-hard dick, Shane intends to tell him to fuck off again, but he’s mesmerized by the way Rozanov’s hand glides up and down. He wishes that he could get his hands on Rozanov instead.

When he finds his voice again, instead of ‘fuck off’, what he says is, “Not here.” As though there’s somewhere else that they can, what, jack off together? This is insane. He needs to get out of here. He shuts the water off, far more forcefully than necessary, and practically flees for the locker room. He dresses quickly, but as he’s about to put his shoes on, he realizes he needs to say something to make it clear that they can’t do this. Not just not here, but not ever, not anywhere. It was a stupid thing to say.

He waits for Rozanov to finish his shower, and when he arrives with his towel slung low around his hips, Shane busies himself with his sneakers. He absolutely does not look. He does not notice the way water trickles down Rozanov’s chest. He doesn’t think about what it would be like to chase the droplets with his tongue.

“So, uh, look, we should forget that happened in there, okay?” he says, glancing quickly up at Rozanov before remembering he absolutely cannot do that.

“Is what you want?” Rozanov says, so goddamn nonchalant. For a second, Shane hates his guts.

Shane fully intends to say ‘yes’. He needs to forget what happened, and even more so, he needs Rozanov to forget what happened. He can’t have Rozanov telling anyone that Shane Hollander got a hard-on in the locker room showers.

He intends to say ‘yes’, but what he says instead is, “No.” He swears he opened his mouth and formed the word ‘yes’, but that’s definitely not what came out. He tries again, hoping it was just some Freudian slip, but what comes out is, again, “No.”

Fuck. Fuck. Rozanov looks delighted, but Shane can barely register that past the panic attack he’s about to have. His fingers have completely forgotten how to tie shoelaces. Then Rozanov abandons his locker and walks over to him, stopping just a pace or two away.

“What is your room number?” he asks, and Shane can’t stop himself from looking up at him — more slowly than he should, his eyes insisting on lingering on the trail of hair that disappears under Rozanov’s towel.

Lie to him, he thinks wildly to himself. At least don’t tell him the truth, come on—

“1410.”

Rozanov is grinning at him now. He adjusts his towel and says, “Well, if I come to 1410 at… nine o’clock?”

Shane’s mouth is dry. He swallows and says, “I’ll open.” It’s another betrayal — he should have said ‘don’t’ or ‘I’ll tell you to fuck off’ or literally anything else. What is wrong with him?

Rozanov’s grin, impossibly, gets wider. “I’ll knock.”

His mom doesn’t insist on going out to eat or doing some Toronto sight-seeing or anything, which means Shane is free to spend the rest of the afternoon however he likes. She does ask a couple of times if he’s okay — no wonder, if he looks even a fraction as freaked out as he feels — and it turns out he can still lie to her. Thank God, because he can’t exactly confess to her that no, he’s not okay, Ilya Rozanov jacked off in front of him in the showers and he was really into it. He can’t even ask her if she knows what’s wrong with him, not without explaining way too much. She already hates Rozanov, and she’d probably hate that he even spoke to him more than absolutely necessary, let alone… everything else.

He manages to brush off her concern with some excuse about how it had been weird to be in front of the cameras all day, how he could use some alone time. She goes off to do… whatever she’s doing, and Shane spends half an hour staring at the ceiling of his hotel room trying not to have a total meltdown. Why the fuck can’t he lie to Rozanov? It’s not even like he just had a series of Freudian slips or whatever — he actively tried to say something and something completely different came out. Nothing like this has ever happened to him before. Maybe he needs to go to the hospital or something. What if it’s, like, some kind of brain injury? A brain injury that means he can’t lie to Ilya Rozanov, specifically — yeah, that sounds likely.

He eventually accepts that the ceiling is not going to provide any answers, and he goes down to the hotel’s business centre to see if the internet has any idea what’s going on with him. He ends up on Yahoo Answers, which thankfully does have people asking why they can’t lie to one specific person. The bad news is that every single person who asks gets the same answer, one that can’t possibly be true for Shane: you can’t lie to your soulmate.

Shane knows, vaguely, that soulmates exist. They’re rare, and mostly the kind of thing chick flicks are built around, but they do exist. He’s never spent any time considering whether he might have one, because most people don’t, and because he’s always been more worried about hockey. But if he had spent time considering it, he never would’ve imagined this. Rozanov can’t possibly be his soulmate. First of all, Shane’s not gay. Second, Rozanov is his rival, as decided by the media, which the MLH is playing into even before either of them play a single game. Third, Rozanov will play for Boston, and Shane cannot have a soulmate who plays for Boston. Fourth, he’d probably get thrown out of the league if they knew he had a fellow MLH player as a soulmate. So obviously it can’t be true.

He can’t find a different answer, though.

When someone comes in and selects a seat where they can see Shane’s screen, he hurriedly closes all the windows he has open and goes back to his room. At least in his room he can panic in peace. He gets room service for dinner, but he just ends up pushing it around on his plate. He can barely taste the food he does get down, even though this is a nice hotel which presumably has good food. He paces circles into the carpet, tries and fails to get comfortable in the armchair by the bed, and flips through the free channels on the TV a half-dozen times before he gives up and turns it off; nothing can distract him from the discovery he’s just made, or the question of what the fuck he’s going to do.

As the time grinds closer to nine, he realizes there’s only one option: he can’t let Rozanov know he can’t lie to him. Whether the connection goes both ways or not, he’s absolutely certain that introducing the concept of soulmates will make this far more complicated than it needs to be. He can’t deny how much he wants Rozanov tonight, but it won’t go any further. They’ll have one ill-advised hookup before the season starts and then never interact off the ice again. It’s fine.

He goes into the bathroom, stares hard into the mirror, and tries to make sure he looks normal. Like someone who’s ready to — to hook up, to have casual sex, and not like someone who’s panicking. Someone who’s marching to their doom. Someone who just found out he has a soulmate. He thinks he looks normal enough, but he’s not sure it’ll stand up to scrutiny. Hopefully Rozanov’s not going to want to do much talking.

Rozanov doesn’t want to do much talking.

He arrives a few minutes after nine. Shane pauses a moment before opening the door, play-acting like he wasn’t waiting on the edge of his seat. When the door has shut behind Rozanov, he looks at Shane a little like a lion might look at a wounded gazelle, and Shane doesn’t even bother to pretend that it doesn’t work for him. He flushes, but doesn’t look away or try to hide his face. Underneath the lion-gaze, Rozanov looks almost impressed.

“I thought you might chicken out,” he says.

“I’m not chicken,” Shane says, firmly.

He backs Shane up against a wall with a lazy grace that goes straight to Shane’s dick, takes Shane’s jaw in his hand, and kisses him. It feels right in a way he’s never experienced — is this why people like kissing? The sensation of Rozanov’s tongue in his mouth and Rozanov’s hands roaming his body feels electric, just this side of too much, and when he sinks to his knees, his mouth waters even before he actually gets Rozanov’s dick out to suck it.

This part doesn’t feel natural like kissing did — he’d had some experience with kissing, after all, and even if his prior experience had been entirely lacklustre, he still knew the mechanics. This — well, he’s received a few blowjobs, and the mechanics are pretty straightforward in theory. He doesn’t let himself hesitate. Rozanov’s already hard after only a few minutes of kissing, but so is Shane, so he can hardly judge. There’s no particular taste to it, when Shane takes him in his mouth, but there’s the weight of it, the way it fills his mouth.

He uses what he remembers of past girlfriends giving him blowjobs, and when he gets into the rhythm of it, Rozanov moves his hand from Shane’s shoulder to run his fingers through Shane’s hair. Not holding Shane there, just touching him, and Shane moans, which makes Rozanov swear from above him. He would like Rozanov to direct where his head goes, he thinks. To put enough pressure there so he’d have to make an effort to resist him, if he wanted to.

Too soon, Rozanov tells him to stop, and he pulls away. He wants to ask what’s wrong, if it was bad, but he realizes with a start that that’s a question Rozanov might want to lie about to spare his feelings. (He doesn’t strike Shane as someone who wants to spare others’ feelings very often, but he presumably wants Shane to get him off at some point tonight.) He gets to his feet in silence instead.

“Don’t want to come yet,” Rozanov says, as if he can hear Shane’s thoughts. Maybe he could see Shane’s unasked question on his face. Rozanov runs his hands down Shane’s sides, like he can’t stop touching him. “Is your first time with a man?”

Is his technique really that bad? It probably doesn’t matter that much if it is, since they can never do this again and it’s not like Rozanov can tell anyone about this (right?), but Shane still feels a stab of embarrassment. He nods wordlessly, but instead of laughing at him, Rozanov kisses him again.

“You are fast learner,” he says, and Shane flushes. Fuck, it’s probably not great news that that made his stomach swoop. A smirk comes to Rozanov’s face. “Did you like sucking my cock?”

“Yes,” Shane confesses. He almost feels like he should lie, preserve his dignity, but — well, he can’t. So. No point trying. Maybe he could have deflected and just not answered, but that only occurs to him after he’s already spoken.

Rozanov’s smirk widens, and it looks almost gleeful around the edges. “Want me to get on the bed and let you do it more?”

Instead of immediately blurting out a ‘yes’, Shane huffs out a disbelieving laugh and says, “Let me?” It’s slightly undercut by the fact that he’s already walking Rozanov backwards towards the bed. He must have done stuff with a man before — surely no one can fake this kind of confidence. Perhaps it’s even another player, but he stops himself just as he opens his mouth to ask; that’s the kind of thing you lie about, at least for safety. And he really doesn’t want Rozanov to try to lie.

When they’re both naked on the bed, Rozanov asks, “So… what do you want to do?”, and Shane doesn’t even bother to answer out loud. He shifts down the mattress and takes Rozanov back into his mouth. Even if he is bad and inexperienced, he can’t deny that this is what he wants to do.

Maybe this angle is better for Rozanov somehow, because he makes more noise while Shane sucks him. This time, it does feel a little like his hands are directing Shane’s head, still more gentle than he imagined but it’s not as if he can ask him for more — he hardly needs to give Rozanov even more ammunition against him. Thank God his mouth is occupied so he can’t start blurting out truths like I think I want you to fuck my mouth. (Is that how it works? Do you just start blurting things out? It can’t be, because if it was, this would’ve all come to a head back in that hotel gym in Los Angeles. Whatever.) It’s not that long before Rozanov is pulling Shane off him and coming, hand working his own dick, and Shane lets himself settle against Rozanov’s shoulder to watch. He only thinks to glance up at Rozanov’s face at the end, and for a moment, he thinks next time I should watch his expression as he comes before sense slams back into him. There’s no next time. They’ll probably never see each other off the ice again, except perhaps at All-Star games. That should be a relief — it’s the knowledge that he’d been clinging to before Rozanov had shown up. It shouldn’t make his stomach twist horribly, but it does.

The twisting gets worse when, after a brief kiss, Rozanov makes like he’s going to leave. Maybe it’s good for Shane that he’s not going to reciprocate, because then he can be secure in the knowledge that Rozanov is an asshole who wouldn’t even get him off, so there’s no point in thinking about seeing him again. Although maybe it says something about him that his soul is apparently tied to an asshole who won’t even get him off. (He refuses to think about how giving Rozanov pleasure was more fun than any orgasm he’s ever had.)

It’s almost a disappointment when Rozanov, instead of leaving and giving Shane extra motivation to never want to see him again, rolls on top of him and informs him that he was teasing. Then he says, “Let me show you how to do this good,” which answers whether he’s been with men before.

Surely blowjobs shouldn’t be different depending on the gender of the person doing it. Shane’s been given good blowjobs before! But somehow, the fact that it’s Rozanov makes all of Shane’s nerve endings feel electric. He can’t control his mouth, and his hands have curled into Rozanov’s hair of their own accord. He lasts an embarrassingly short time, but he was already so worked up from giving Rozanov a blowjob that he can’t stop himself. He tries to warn Rozanov, but Rozanov doesn’t move, just sucking him through it and swallowing. It is, unfairly, extremely hot. His past girlfriends (okay, two, he’s had two girlfriends) never wanted him to come in their mouths, which is completely fine — the texture is probably unpleasant — but holy shit. Fuck. What the fuck. Is he really into the way Rozanov just swallowed it, or is it because his soulmate did it, or — no, no, those are the only two options. It has to be one of those.

Rozanov waves off his apologies and settles down beside him on the bed, and Shane can’t help himself — he rolls onto his side and says, “You’re not going to tell anyone, right?”

“Me?” Rozanov sounds disbelieving. He rolls his eyes and says, with what Shane’s pretty sure is heavy sarcasm, “Yes, Hollander, I’m going to tell everyone.” Apparently sarcasm doesn’t count against whatever fucked up soulmate rules the universe has imposed on them, because Rozanov doesn’t look like he’s having some kind of startled revelation. Shane will look it up when he gets home, just to check.

“No one can know,” Shane insists. He wants Rozanov to confirm for real, to promise him, not to brush it off like it’s a joke. Maybe Rozanov thinks he could weather it, but Shane knows it would be the end of his career. He already has so many eyes on him, the first Asian-Canadian to be drafted in the top three, and there just can’t be another thing about him. Especially not before he’s ever gotten to skate on MLH ice and prove that he fucking belongs there.

Rozanov mutters something in Russian and says, “Hollander, look, I’m not going to tell anyone. Okay?”

“Okay,” Shane says, hoping he sounds calm.

When Rozanov says he has an early flight and needs to go, Shane agrees, and absolutely has no thoughts about wanting Rozanov to stay longer as he dresses to leave Shane’s room. Once he’s left, Shane swears into the empty room. What the fuck did he just do? Why the fuck did he do it? At least it won’t happen again. He won’t let it.

Chapter End Notes

Please let us know what you think so far! We're not the best at responding to comments (😭 SORRY!) but this story has been d i f f i c u l t so far, so we'd really appreciate some feedback. Thanks for reading! ❤️

Chapter 2: January 2011 - Fall 2012

Chapter Notes

thank you to izilen for the beta <3 and thank you all so much for the support and feedback so far! we really appreciate it!!

January 2011

Ilya can’t stop thinking about Shane fucking Hollander. His first season in the MLH is going amazing — he’s on track for fifty goals this season, his chemistry with the rest of the Raiders is good, and he’s in America instead of Russia, which counts for a lot. There’s less bribery than he expected to let him into clubs and bars even though he’s underage in this stupid country (who the hell is waiting until they’re twenty-one to drink?), and he has beautiful women throwing themselves at him. And yet. Shane fucking Hollander.

Hollander’s inexperience had made him a little clumsy, but that hadn’t mattered half as much as Ilya thought it would. Maybe it was cancelled out by his enthusiasm? Or maybe he really was just an exceptionally fast learner. Either way, Ilya can’t stop thinking about his dark eyes, half-lidded as he lowered his mouth over Ilya’s cock; his pretty lips, wet with spit, and the freckles scattered over his flushed cheeks.

He hadn’t been expecting Hollander to be so… eager. For fuck’s sake, the first time he ever met Hollander, he’d started telling Ilya off about no-smoking signs. He hasn’t spent that much time with him, but from what he has seen — in the media and in person — Hollander is a polite, laced-up, all-Canadian boy. He’d realized that he was really pushing his luck in those showers in Toronto, and he’d been pretty surprised — pleasantly so — when Hollander had just come out and admitted he wanted Ilya.

The two of them have only met once since then, and only spoken a few words during a face-off. Ilya didn’t say any of the things he wanted to say, because if he propositioned Hollander in the face-off circle, he’s pretty sure it would be counted as an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Also Hollander might have had a heart attack and died, given how anxious he is about no one knowing. Of course Ilya’s never going to tell anyone. It wouldn’t just be career suicide, it might as well be literal suicide, which is a train of thought he really doesn’t like to linger on. Even though the media hates that he’s betrayed the KHL by going to America, they’re still proud that he was drafted first overall. He’s not quite a household name in Russia, but he plans to become one — and that will never happen if anyone finds out he wants to fuck men. Or, if it does, it will be for very bad reasons.

Well, whatever. No one will find out that he’s thinking about Shane Hollander. And he’s sure he’ll get past it, eventually.

He gets chosen as an All-Star, unsurprisingly, and it’s even less surprising that Shane Hollander does too. As he dresses for a game against the Philadelphia Aviators, he wonders if the captain, Girard, feels disappointed that his rivalry with Campbell in Pittsburgh has been upstaged. They put so much energy into genuinely hating one another, and for what? An entirely manufactured Cold War-style knockoff. Perhaps theirs is manufactured, too, but there’s so much animosity there that Ilya likes to think it’s real. It’s funnier that way.

Boston rides a winning streak into the All-Star break, where it’s Team Europe against Team North America. Ilya wishes he could flirt with Hollander with the excuse that they were on the same team, but the consolation prize of actually getting to speak Russian with fellow players is worth it. He feels so slow and stupid in English, and some people treat him like that, too — like just because he doesn’t get English grammar right, he must not understand what’s happening.

Perhaps he hasn’t spent enough time with Hollander, but he’s never got the impression that he thinks Ilya’s stupid just because his English isn’t perfect. Hollander has called him an asshole more times than he can count, but he’s never talked down to him.

Maybe it should be that that motivates him to give Hollander his room number, but he knows it’s just that he desperately wants to see him on his knees again. He would probably sound completely insane if he tried to explain to anyone that watching Hollander break his shot accuracy record literal moments after he set it was one of the hottest things he’s ever seen.

Hollander is exactly as annoyed as Ilya expected he would be when Ilya leaves him in the corridor for a few seconds. Maybe the risk does it for Hollander as much as it does it for him, because Hollander all but pounces on him as soon as he’s done berating him. He doesn’t argue when Ilya orders him to get on his knees — no, it’s not that he doesn’t argue, it’s that he doesn’t even hesitate. It’s like he came to Nashville just so he could do this, have this blissed out look on his face as his lips stretch around Ilya’s cock. Ilya’s never had sex with anyone so desperate to give him a blowjob, and he hardly knows what to do with the feeling it evokes in him.

He pulls Hollander back up so he can kiss him again, because he’s embarrassingly close already. Hollander still has all his clothes on — hell, Ilya’s still technically wearing pants — and he’s not letting this opportunity go to waste. He’s thought about seeing Shane Hollander naked more than he wants to admit for months, and there’s no way he’s going to settle for an encounter where neither of them even takes their pants off. He wants to be inside him, to hear the little punched-out sounds he’s imagined Hollander would make as he fucks him, to feel how tight he is.

He carries him over to the bed and divests Hollander of his clothes in short order, kissing down his stomach and sucking him into his mouth. Hollander’s already hard and leaking precum just from giving Ilya a blowjob, which is very flattering, and Ilya can’t help but take the evidence of that and taste it, a satisfying weight on his tongue. Hollander covers his face with his forearm, as if he’s ashamed of the expressions he’s making, and Ilya makes a mental note to train him out of that later. For now, they’re on something of a time limit, and he doesn’t want to waste it.

Hollander’s a little slower to turn over onto his stomach than he was to get on his knees; he looks a little confused by the direction, maybe a little apprehensive. It makes Ilya’s stomach flip when he does it regardless. He climbs onto him, presses himself up against Hollander’s back, and he’s pretty sure that the press of his erection against the flesh of Hollander’s ass makes his intentions clear. Hollander makes no attempt to push him away or to get out from under him. Instead, his breath hitches, and he goes very still except for the way he’s trying to look over his shoulder at Ilya.

“Have you ever?” Ilya asks, even though he’s positive the answer is no — there’s just no fucking way that Shane Hollander has been pegged by some girlfriend.

Hollander shakes his head, and Ilya continues, “Do you want to?”

The silence stretches for long enough that Ilya realises Hollander’s breathing has gotten shallow, and he says, “You’re scared.” That’s understandable — Ilya was nervous when he first fucked Sasha, afraid he would accidentally hurt him or do it wrong. He hates to admit it, but he’s nervous now — not about the fucking itself, obviously, he knows he’s pretty good at that, but about how Hollander will react to this proposition that Ilya’s been wanting to make for months.

Another silence follows, but this one is eventually broken by Hollander saying, “Yeah,” very quietly. He audibly swallows and turns away to look down at the bedspread a few inches from his face, clearly embarrassed, and Ilya’s heart does something unpleasant and unwelcome inside his chest. He ignores it in favour of shifting off of Hollander slightly — not taking his weight off entirely, but canting his hips away — and pressing a kiss to the back of his shoulder.

“Is okay,” he says against Hollander’s skin. “Makes sense. Is kind of intense, yes?”

“Yeah,” Hollander says around a huff of laughter. Ilya can feel him starting to relax under him. He looks up from the bedspread, once again craning his neck to try to look at Ilya, so Ilya relents and rolls him over, leaning down to press kisses up his neck and along his jaw.

“We’ll do it when you’re ready,” he murmurs. “But you do not need to be scared of me. I will be careful with you.”

“I want to, I just…” Hollander looks frustrated, and Ilya smooths over the furrows on his forehead with his thumb.

“Do not need to defend it. Is okay,” he repeats. Hollander doesn’t change his expression at all, so Ilya kisses him to distract him from whatever is going on inside his head. It seems to work. Hollander is still hard, and when Ilya pulls away to kiss down his body again, he tries to chase Ilya’s mouth with his own.

By the time Ilya’s had his lips around his cock for a few minutes, Hollander is practically melting into the mattress. Watching Hollander’s face carefully, fully prepared to pull away at the first sign of displeasure, Ilya pushes a hand up between Hollander’s legs and brushes his fingers lightly over his entrance. Hollander shudders, but doesn’t tense up or try to pull away; if anything, he somehow relaxes further, and Ilya’s not going to push him — not tonight — but it’s good to know that Hollander probably does actually want to. Ilya just needs to make him comfortable enough for it. Maybe in a more familiar environment, or at least one where there aren’t other MLH players on either side of the walls. Perhaps next time it could be just fingering, taking Hollander apart until he’s begging for more but refusing to give it to him.

That thought has only just crossed Ilya’s mind when Hollander takes him completely by surprise. “You can, um,” he says, his voice quiet and trembling, “you can maybe, like, put your fingers in? If you want to.”

Ilya’s momentarily speechless, but he manages to kick his brain into gear fast enough to respond before Hollander starts panicking and backtracking. “Is what you want?” he asks, impressing himself with how steady he sounds. He definitely wants to, but he doesn’t want Hollander to do this out of some strange sense of obligation.

“Yeah,” Hollander says instantly. “I — I’d like that.”

He sounds very certain for a guy who told Ilya that he’s never done this before. Then again, maybe he specifically meant that no one else has ever fucked him. Ilya pushes his fingers down with more pressure, watching Hollander curiously, drinking in the way his eyelashes flutter. “Do you ever touch yourself here?” he asks, because he needs to know what he’s working with, and Hollander nods. He’s full of surprises tonight. “Do you think about me when you do it?” Ilya adds, teasing this time and fully expecting a ‘no, fuck off’, and then Hollander really shocks him, because he flushes bright red and nods again.

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya breathes, and moves back up the bed to slide his fingers into Hollander’s mouth. Hollander sucks on them with just as much enthusiasm as he sucks Ilya’s dick, and even though Ilya was fantasizing about making Hollander come apart, he’s starting to worry that he’s going to come apart first.

It doesn’t take long for Ilya to work two fingers into Hollander, and after that it doesn’t take long for Hollander to come into his mouth. He makes these helpless little whimpering noises that drive Ilya crazy, and he only has to stroke his own cock a few times before he comes onto Hollander’s stomach.

He sits back on his heels and admires his work for a few moments, until Hollander flushes and tries to turn away, the attention apparently too much once he’s started to come down from his orgasm. Ilya gets off the bed and kisses Hollander once before he goes to the bathroom, wets a washcloth and uses it to clean Hollander’s torso. The effectiveness is somewhat decreased by him kissing Hollander some more and not watching where he wipes, but he succeeds eventually and throws the cloth on the floor to deal with later.

“Next time, I will—” Ilya starts, but Hollander cuts him off.

“What do you mean, ‘next time’?”

Ilya stares at him for a moment, and then says, “When we play in Montreal in two weeks.”

Hollander shakes his head, and Ilya hates himself for the way it makes his heart fall into his stomach. “No, I — we can’t. We can’t do this again, Rozanov, it’s — we shouldn’t.” His eyes are wide and his breathing is getting shallower, so Ilya runs his hand through Hollander’s hair in the hope that it will calm him down. It doesn’t really work, probably because Hollander’s not wrong. They shouldn’t be doing this. But Ilya does a lot of things he shouldn’t do.

“We will be very careful,” he says, but Hollander looks unconvinced. “Okay, yes, maybe we shouldn’t do this. But do you want to?”

“You know that I do,” Hollander mumbles, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Then we will figure it out, yes?” Hollander gives a tiny nod, so Ilya says, “Give me your phone. Will be easier with phone numbers.”

Hollander gives Ilya his phone and only then does he seem to realize something, making a move as if to take it back and saying, “I can’t have you in my phone! What if someone sees?”

It’s like Hollander thinks Ilya has never had an illicit affair before. “We use fake names,” Ilya says. He puts his number in as “Lily” and sends himself a text before handing the phone back.

“What am I going to be saved as?” Hollander says, leaning over to peer at Ilya’s screen.

“Jane,” Ilya says, showing Hollander his brand new contact book entry. The names were too funny not to use. Hollander rolls his eyes, but Ilya can see the smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

Everyone is probably still downstairs getting very drunk, but Hollander should probably get back to his own room before people start wandering the hallways. “You are alright?” he asks softly, putting his fingers under Hollander’s chin and tilting his face up so that Ilya can see his expression properly. He doesn’t look quite as panicked as before, so Ilya counts that as a win. Hollander even leans in to kiss him and moans a little as Ilya licks into his mouth. They could probably go again if they waited a little longer but he had told Hollander they would be very careful, so that’s what he’s going to do.

No one is around to witness him smiling at the closed door when Hollander leaves.

Fall 2012

It’s a long time before Ilya sees Shane Hollander again properly.

That Montreal game two weeks after their last encounter had been cancelled by a snowstorm, and Ilya had brushed off his teammates’ teasing over his disappointment. Really, he had no reason to even be disappointed. He could get laid at home. Hollander was probably going to chicken out anyway. When they had the rescheduled game, there was no opportunity to meet — the way they had squeezed it into the schedule meant all Ilya could do was fly to Montreal, sleep, play and then get right back on the plane again. The most they spoke all game was to greet each other at opposite sides of the face-off circle.

They’d seen each other at the awards in Vegas, where Hollander was a fucking baby about not getting the opportunity to gloat at Ilya in front of an audience. Ilya had been trying to smoke away the inevitable dressing-down he’d get from his father when he returned to Russia. What was a Canadian doing winning Rookie of the Year when Ilya should have won it instead? Clearly a sign of Ilya’s laziness and failure to uphold the family name on the international stage. He hadn’t even been able to fully enjoy the fact that Shane Hollander was drunk, which was a phenomenon Ilya had reason to believe was rare. He’d overreacted, he knew it, but then Hollander had also overreacted when Ilya kissed him, so maybe they were even.

Since then, they’ve played each other three times, texted each other maybe half a dozen times, and been alone together exactly zero times. Ilya can’t believe that he made the playoffs before he finally got to fuck Shane Hollander. Hollander’s been dodging him, never deigning to make concrete plans to actually get together, but he’s still been answering, and Ilya’s not sure how to take that besides as interest. Hollander could easily just block Ilya if he actually didn’t want to meet up again.

He’s nervous — he’d told Ilya as much last time. So, at first, Ilya tries not to be too pushy, keeping the tone of his messages light. But the first time they play each other in the ‘12-13 season, he escalates, sending his address, and then when that isn’t enough, a dick pic. He and Hollander had texted each other over the summer, and he knows that Hollander wants this. He’d said so. Hollander doesn’t reply, but twenty minutes later he’s knocking on Ilya’s front door. If he’d known a dick pic would be so successful, he wouldn’t have waited so long.

Hollander looks rumpled, like he’d left his hotel in a hurry, and he has his hands shoved in his hoodie pockets in a terrible attempt to look casual. But the flush high on his cheekbones and the way his eyes keep darting up and down Ilya’s body give him away. Ilya barely has time to close the door before Hollander is surging forward to kiss him, hands roaming over Ilya’s already-bare chest. It’s the second time Hollander has kissed him like this — like he needs it, like he just can’t help himself —and it feels different from anything else Ilya’s done with other people, even though there’s no logical explanation for it. Hollander’s a little too eager to use much skill, or maybe he really is just so inexperienced he doesn’t have much skill, but Ilya can’t bring himself to mind. He’s been waiting for this for months. He’s spent over a year fantasizing about this just on the basis of two encounters, so he’s clearly over-eager himself. He hauls Hollander up into his arms, forcing him to wrap his legs around Ilya’s waist so as not to fall, and carries him through to his bedroom, ignoring the protests that Hollander is making vaguely into his mouth.

Chapter 3: Fall 2012 - Winter 2013

Chapter Notes

i (storm) checked our gdocs version history and discovered that we finished this chapter a full 3 weeks ago 😐 why didn't we post it sooner, you may ask? i truly do not know. we lowkey forgot. also when we started writing this fandom we were like "we should make sure we only have one wip at a time!!!" and now we have uhhh...... three, i think? we are disasters and we appreciate your patience 🫶

THANK U to izilen for the beta <3 we love u. This chapter is dedicated to Snow, who has sent such lovely messages about our fics. ❤️❤️❤️

Fall 2012

Every time Shane responds to a text from Rozanov, he tells himself this is the last time he’s going to do it. Every time they meet is a chance for Rozanov to realize that they’re soulmates, and he can’t let that happen. He already avoids topics that Rozanov might lie about — his family, what exactly he does in the off-season in Russia, what he’s been up to since the last time he saw Shane, basically anything but mundane things. He’d discovered early on that he also can’t lie over text, but what’s nice about texting is that he can just put his phone down and not answer. But it also means that Rozanov could catch on over text message, too, and so Shane always has to have his guard up.

He’s done as much research as he can. It’s not like soulmates have been super extensively studied or anything, but the Internet has plenty of first-hand accounts. The consensus seems to be: lying requires intent to deceive. Sarcasm doesn’t count, and if you sincerely believe something to be true, you can say it even if it later turns out to be false. So Rozanov’s sarcastic comments (and the times he’s confidently asserted that Boston will beat Montreal, only for Shane to trounce him) don’t prove or disprove anything. The question of whether the connection is reciprocal is an open one. (The fact that soulmate bonds can be unilateral is fucking insane to Shane, but it’s a pretty clearly established fact.)

Shane hopes like hell the connection is one-sided. That would probably be the best-case scenario. No chance that they fall into something they won’t be able to get out of. One day Shane will finally succeed in cutting Rozanov off, and he’ll go back to just focusing on playing hockey, and everything will be fine. The second-best option on the table is, if the bond is reciprocated, Rozanov never finds out. So Shane is being careful, trying his best to gather up the shreds of his self-control.

His task is complicated by… well, the rest of what having a soulmate entails. Not being able to lie is the tell, immediately apparent and impossible to explain away. The more subtle aspects — being drawn to the other person, feeling good when touching them, the intensity of wanting them — are the ones that are really making Shane’s life difficult. If he had to see Rozanov more than a handful of times a year, he’d be completely screwed. He never should’ve given him his phone number, because it really does take an embarrassing amount of effort not to text him every day — hi, I’m thinking of you, great goal tonight, and so on. More than once, he considers just blocking Rozanov’s number, but he never manages to go through with it.

So Shane’s been avoiding texting Rozanov, but having absolutely no success not thinking about him. Every time he jerks off he ends up replaying the sensation of Rozanov giving him a blowjob, even when he tries watching some porn where none of the participants look anything like him. (Well, mostly he fails at watching porn, because it just makes him feel embarrassed. And then his thoughts always stray to Rozanov again, the way he somehow manages to cut across any embarrassment Shane might feel when they’re together. So really, it’s a futile effort.)

He finally caves the night that Rozanov sends him a dick pic. It’s a reckless, stupid thing for him to have done — Hayden is right next to Shane, what if he’d seen? — but Shane can’t bring himself to care about that. Can’t make himself stop looking. He’s spent a year wanting and refusing to let himself have, and apparently his willpower can’t stand up to a visual reminder of how easy it would be to get exactly what he wants.

Hayden smirks at him as he puts his shoes on and leaves, calling out, “Have fun! Be safe!” as if he were a child. Hayden’s only two years older than him! But Shane doesn’t stop to glare at him or point this out. He tugs a hoodie on over his head as he strides down the hotel hallway, and he doesn’t text Rozanov back to tell him he’s coming over, as though he’ll be able to talk himself out of this between here and Rozanov’s front door.

Hopefully, like the first time, they won’t do much talking. Last time, Rozanov had asked questions and Shane had had no choice but to say things he really would’ve preferred not to say. It’ll be even worse for him this time around if Rozanov gets inquisitive again. What if he has to say, I’m okay, you don’t need to go so slowly, I have a dildo and sometimes I use it and wish it was your dick instead? Or, much worse, I was dodging you for months because I was scared you’d find out we’re soulmates?

He’s so doomed. But he goes to Rozanov’s place anyway. If Rozanov starts asking questions, Shane will just make sure his mouth is otherwise occupied so that he can’t answer.

Rozanov answers the door shirtless because of course he does, and Shane kisses him immediately so he doesn’t have the option of making conversation. Lucky for him, that play seems to work. Rozanov clearly has no problem with it, because they end up in his bedroom in short order. When Rozanov gives him a chance to catch his breath, he looks around the room. He had no idea Rozanov would be into whatever abstract art is hanging above his bed. Did he get someone in to furnish his place like Shane did? He thinks maybe not, because surely anyone competent would not have put in the insane number of lamps in this room. He’s about to ask when he remembers the danger and thinks better of it. If Shane had this many lamps and someone asked him about it, he would definitely lie.

His attention is drawn from the lamps by Rozanov, who had apparently undressed while Shane was distracted by the décor. His hands land on Shane’s hips, making him jump, and then he starts pulling Shane’s hoodie up. Shane takes the hint and helps Rozanov strip his clothes off, and then goes easily when Rozanov guides him backwards and pushes him onto the bed. He’s still a little bit scared, but not as much as he was last time. Last time, the thought of Rozanov fucking him hadn’t really even occurred to him before; this time, he’s been thinking about it for months.

Rozanov, though, must be remembering how this went last time, because he’s pressing Shane down into the mattress and kissing him deeply without making any real moves to get them going. Not that Shane’s not enjoying it, but he’s a little concerned that either his fear or his capacity for reason is going to catch up with him before they can actually get this done.

“I thought you wanted to fuck me this time,” Shane says as Rozanov is kissing his neck. “You talked a pretty big game about it in all those texts.”

“You want?” Rozanov asks, pulling back to look Shane in the face. He sounds almost disbelieving.

“I want,” Shane says, feeling giddy as Rozanov grins at him like Shane has just announced Boston is in the Stanleigh Cup Final. Like Shane’s just handed him some incredible prize. He climbs off of Shane entirely, getting off the bed to fumble in his bedside drawer, and Shane whines involuntarily at the loss of contact, feeling his cheeks heat up when Rozanov smirks at the sound.

“Been almost two years and now you’re impatient?” Rozanov teases. “You liked that picture of my cock so much that you need it in you this instant?”

Shane knows there’s no point in even trying to lie about this. “Yeah,” he says, and Rozanov only smiles wider.

“I will have to send photos more,” he says as he returns to the bed with a condom and a bottle of lube.

“You really shouldn’t,” Shane says, his words stuttering as Rozanov grips his dick. “Too risky.”

Rozanov murmurs something in Russian instead of acknowledging him, and Shane doesn’t even have the chance to press the issue before Rozanov is circling his hole with one lubed-up finger and Shane’s brain short-circuits entirely.

Rozanov fingers him agonizingly slowly, pressing languid kisses over Shane’s thighs and torso and occasionally looking up to meet Shane’s eyes. Shane’s done this to himself often enough that this shouldn’t feel foreign but the fact that it’s Rozanov doing it is so overwhelming that he can barely string enough brain cells together to nod or give an affirmative hum when Rozanov asks if what he’s doing is okay at every step.

He thought maybe Rozanov would want Shane on his hands and knees facing away from him, but Rozanov fucks into him while looking intently at Shane’s face. Somehow that’s the most overwhelming part of it all. Shane should look away from him. He should close his eyes. He should ask if they should switch positions. Instead, he reaches up to thread his fingers through Rozanov’s hair, lets him watch as Shane falls to pieces underneath him.

It feels so good, and Shane realizes suddenly that he shouldn’t have fucking done this. This is not going to be a “just once and now it’s out of my system” sort of deal, he can tell. Rozanov handed him a shovel and he cheerfully dug his own grave with it. Is this how people get addicted to drugs? Probably.

He wants to stay in this moment forever, but Rozanov is relentlessly hitting his prostate with every thrust, and all too soon his orgasm hits him like a freight train. Neither of them even touched his dick, and he would feel mortified about it if Rozanov didn’t follow him after only a few more thrusts.

Rozanov pulls out, leaving Shane feeling uncomfortably empty. For a few moments, all they can do is lie side by side, breathing heavily, before Rozanov looks over at him and starts laughing. Shane has no idea what’s funny, but it’s contagious and he starts chuckling too before long.

When Rozanov’s laughter dies down, he rolls over and slings an arm over Shane’s chest, pressing his face into Shane’s shoulder. “I think,” he announces, “that you found someone else since last time I saw you. Is no way that was your first time, unless your hole was made to take cock.”

The afterglow leaves no room for Shane to feel embarrassed as he confesses, “I have a dildo.” He ignores the pleasantly squirmy feeling in his guts at the suggestion that he might be made to get fucked.

“Bigger than my cock?” Rozanov asks. “What colour?”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, pushing at Rozanov’s chest to no effect. Rozanov leans down to kiss him, and they make out lazily for a while before Shane really can’t take the sensation of his own come drying on his skin for a second longer.

“Can I use your shower before I go?”

“Of course.” Rozanov pulls away from him, and Shane bites down on his tongue to stop his noise of complaint from making it past his lips. “Through that door there. Spare towels under the sink.”

It takes an absurd amount of effort for him to peel himself off the bed and get into the shower. He wants to ask Rozanov to come with him, but he manages to resist the urge. He feels, irrationally, like that would be showing some kind of weakness.

He stands under the spray for several minutes just focusing on the water running over his body, trying to pull himself back together. Rozanov’s shampoo is for curly hair, so Shane decides to forgo it. He feels like he’s moving very slowly, but he can’t tell if he’s imagining it. Everything feels a little unreal, as if having Rozanov’s dick in his ass has fundamentally shifted the universe, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Rozanov is still lounging on the bed when Shane comes out. He’s disposed of the condom, but he hasn’t even bothered to clean himself up besides that, which baffles Shane — how isn’t he going insane from how sticky he must be feeling? Rozanov seems wholly unbothered though. He smiles lazily at Shane when their eyes meet.

“I, uh, should go,” Shane says.

“Yes, you have more hockey games to lose,” Rozanov says, and Shane rolls his eyes.

“Fuck off. A shootout barely counts.” He ignores Rozanov’s dismissive handwave. “Bye, Rozanov,” he says, and Rozanov stands up to give him one more kiss before Shane leaves. One kiss turns into two and three, each lasting longer than the one before, but Shane somehow manages to pry himself away eventually because he really does need to go.

“See you in December,” Rozanov says. Shane’s stomach swoops at the idea that Rozanov knows exactly when they play each other next.

When Hayden asks if he had fun getting laid once Shane gets back to their hotel, he just flips him off.

Winter 2012 - Winter 2013

Shane fails to convince Hayden that he’s not going out to get laid the next time they’re in Boston, too. Hayden even tells him he’s allowed to go get laid, and that Hayden isn’t judging him for it, which is probably true, except that he absolutely would judge Shane if he knew exactly who he was getting laid by. Even Hayden knowing he has someone in Boston he texts and goes out to hook up with feels way too close to the truth for comfort. He wouldn’t be able to answer any questions if Hayden got more curious about it — when did he have the opportunity to even meet a girl he texts regularly? Why won’t he talk about her? Does he have any photos of her?

At home, at least, he can avoid post-game plans by claiming he’s tired from the game instead of having a neon sign over his head saying GOING TO FUCK SOMEONE IN BOSTON. He doesn’t know what Rozanov’s telling his team, and he doesn’t ask. He tries his best not to ask Rozanov anything, even though sometimes he wants to. It’s not only that he doesn’t want to put Rozanov in a position to lie (though that’s the most important thing), but also that every time they actually talk beyond things immediately relevant to sex, their relationship threatens to involve feelings. It’s just sex. It has to just be sex.

He never, ever lets himself think that maybe he wants it to be more.

Chapter End Notes

everything is fine, shane is chill and normal and fine :) nothing to worry about

Chapter 4: February 2014

Chapter Notes

sorry for the long wait, it probably will happen again -- this story is kicking our asses for some reason 😭

thank you as always to izilen for the beta <3

February 2014

Before Sochi, Ilya would have said that the only opinion he had on Latvia was that Ozols over in Anaheim had a killer slapshot. Now, he hasn’t so much formed an opinion on Latvia as he has developed a visceral hatred. In a distant way, he knows that it’s childish — it’s not even really that Latvia bested them, it’s that the Russian team fell apart. But if he doesn’t put his feelings into hating Latvia, he’s going to drown in the humiliation and disappointment.

He can’t stand the Russian quarters in the Olympic village — the misery is suffocating, and when he tried going into a communal space instead, everyone could see him and they knew he was done. So instead he’s hiding at the top of the stands watching the men’s figure skating. The same prickling feeling that’s been under his skin since he landed in Russia is still irking him, demanding his attention — he’s sure he must be under surveillance, and even though as far as he can tell, he’s alone up on this balcony, he really doesn’t trust his own assessment. He’s been trying not to think about it, because it makes him want to scream. Since he went to America, he’s been more worried about being caught during the summers. It seemed like a ridiculous thing to worry about when he was fucking Sasha before he made it to the KHL, but he has a life he wants to protect now. He’s on the world stage, one of the faces of the MLH already, and now he’s here as the captain of the Russian national team. It’s like he can feel their eyes on him everywhere.

As he watches, one of the American skaters falls and lies on the ice for so long Ilya thinks he might need to be stretchered off, but he eventually gets up and completes his program, noticeably deflated. It feels a little grim, but his score apparently isn’t even that bad. How nice for him.

The next skater is Canadian, and he does much better, at least to Ilya’s inexpert eyes. He tries to concentrate on the man’s routine and not allow his thoughts to stray to Shane Hollander. Shane Hollander, whose team is all but guaranteed a spot in the gold-medal game and who had sent Ilya a concerned text that Ilya had had to put some effort into not being furious with him for. He doesn’t want Hollander’s pity, and he especially doesn’t want it when his phone might be tapped.

His phone buzzes with an angry text from Alexei, which he doesn’t reply to. It’s not like replying will make Alexei or his father less angry with him.

Then, as if summoned by his fucking thoughts, Shane Hollander appears next to him, in his fluffy (adorable, Ilya’s brain supplies unhelpfully) Team Canada jacket, and says hello. Casual, as though they’re people who make small talk with each other, as though they can be sure they’re alone up here together.

“Not here,” Ilya replies immediately, and looks away — focuses his gaze back on the ice — because he doesn’t trust himself to be able to act normal if he keeps his eyes on Hollander’s face.

Hollander says he just wants to see how Ilya’s doing, as if it’s not obvious. Hollander may be perfect but he’s lost a fucking high stakes game before. How’s Ilya doing? Terribly. Fuck off. But he doesn’t want to say that. What he intends to say is that he’s fine, not because he thinks Hollander will believe him, but because even he can’t miss that clear indication that Ilya doesn’t want to talk.

He forms the mouth shape to say ‘fine’: his top teeth come out over his bottom lip and he blows the air to make the F sound, and yet in spite of that, the word he actually says is, “Bad.”

And he knows. He knows immediately, and it’s a small miracle he stays standing. He can hear his mother’s voice in his head, her bedtime stories about finding the one, about souls that are made for each other, and his fingers automatically fly up to clutch at his necklace. He’s going to be sick.

For one entirely irrational moment, he panics that the FSB must know, and he’ll get arrested or have his passport confiscated. That can’t be true, of course, because they can’t read minds, and neither Ilya nor Hollander have said anything incriminating — but he’s glad he’s not looking at Hollander. Maybe his panic showed on his face for a moment.

“Do you, uh, want to talk about it?” Hollander asks, as if they have a relationship that involves talking. As if Ilya could talk right now even if he wanted to.

“No,” Ilya says. His heart is pounding harder than it had in any of the games he’s played in Sochi. “I don’t want to talk about it, Hollander. I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”

He watches hurt flash over Hollander’s face, but it’s gone as soon as it appears, his expression carefully schooled back into blankness, and if he wasn’t already sure of the situation, he is now.

“Okay, I’ll go,” Hollander says. As he’s walking away, Ilya hears him swear angrily under his breath. Good, Ilya’s upset him. Maybe he’ll never text him again. This would certainly be easier that way.

He has no idea who’s skating now or how many skaters are left. People are periodically clapping, so the skaters must be doing something impressive, but he doesn’t take any of the information in. His brain doesn’t have space around all of the panic that he has a soulmate and it’s Shane fucking Hollander.

He wishes suddenly, so powerfully that it aches, that his mother were here. It’s not like she would have advice — he knows for a fact that she never found her soulmate, if she even had one — but at least he’d have someone to talk to about how awful this is. How much it hurts. The stories she always came back to the most often were the sad ones, the ones with unhappy endings — the ones where the connection only went one way. She would probably at least be sympathetic, that Ilya’s story has an unhappy ending.

Hollander, surely, would have brought it up by now if it were requited. He must have tried to lie to Ilya — it’s clear just from the way he holds himself that he keeps most things close to the chest. He’s lying to his teammates about where he goes when he’s actually with Ilya; Ilya’s seen him lie to the press, telling them that he’s happy with any goal when Ilya knows good and goddamn well that Hollander loves to beat him. Ilya knows enough to be fairly certain that Hollander lies easily and often, and the idea that he’s just never once tried to lie to Ilya strains credulity. The alternative — that he’s tried and failed to lie to Ilya, and then simply never mentioned it for years — isn’t much easier to imagine. No, there’s not going to be some joyous moment of discovery at the end of the film, where the leads kiss on a beach at sunset. Just Ilya alone in his empty house.

He escapes any further conversation until the event is over (if Carter Vaughn had tried to talk to him, he might have straight-up committed a murder; just like Hollander, he would be way too earnest about Ilya’s wellbeing, and probably harder to dissuade) and when he receives another text from Alexei, he accepts his fate and goes to see his father.

Grigori Rozanov has always been cold and demanding, and he hasn’t changed while Ilya’s been away in America — at least, not in any fundamental way. He’s angry that Ilya lost (and it’s Ilya’s loss, no regard for hockey being a team sport) but halfway through yelling at him, he forgets which country beat them. He falters, and just for a moment he looks vulnerable in a way that Ilya has never seen him. There’s nothing Ilya can do but remind him that it was Latvia so he can resume berating Ilya. This isn’t the first time he’s forgotten things while speaking to Ilya — sometimes he forgets Ilya lives in America now, and asks him to buy something on the way home — but it’s the first time Ilya’s seen his face when it happens. It rattles something in him that he thought was impossible to rattle, and he experiences the entirely foreign sensation of feeling sorry for his father. It’s an extra dose of heartache that he doesn’t think he actually has the capacity to handle right now. He feels fragile and tired, and the last thing he wants to do is go spend the evening with his deteriorating father and a bunch of government officials. He wants to go to his room and get very, very drunk.

Instead, he reports to where his father wants him to be when his father wants him to be there, shakes the hands of several politicians, and pretends to listen to Sergei Vetrov. He’s no longer the age where he can say, Sergei Ilyich, can Sveta and I go skating on the pond? and escape into the snow, and must instead say, Sergei Ilyich, I am deeply sorry for humiliating our country on the international stage. He nurses his drink instead of slamming it down the way he wants to, and tries desperately to think about anything but Hollander.

Has Hollander ever had to suffer through a gala full of politicians who hate him for losing to fucking Latvia? Of course not, Hollander has never done anything so pathetic as to lose to a country that half the men in this room think should still be part of the Russian Federation. Canada is a stupid country where the press nodded sympathetically back in 2008 as Hollander said, Russia was just the better team this year, but I’m looking forward to proving we can beat them next year. If Team Canada got knocked out of the Olympics without even medalling, the Prime Minister would probably apologize to Hollander personally for not giving him a good enough team. If only your jackets had been fluffier, he would say, I’m sure you would have triumphed. But we’re proud of you anyway.

Eventually, Svetlana rescues him from his own thoughts and their fathers, bringing him to an opulent bathroom that contains none other than Alexander Kuzmin. Just the person he wants to see.

Sasha is snorting a line of blow off the marble countertop when Ilya and Sveta walk in. Where Ilya is wearing a formal tuxedo, he’s dressed in an airy floral top that’s not even buttoned up all the way. Ilya hates him all of a sudden. What is he even doing here? He doesn’t have to present before the jury to answer for his crimes. Shouldn’t he still be in Paris, living it up? Ilya can’t even use him as a distraction — not here, not now.

Sveta manages to give him a pep talk about Boston winning the Cup that doesn’t sound like a pep talk at all, and instead sounds like she’s some fortune teller who has an agent in every locker room in the league. After that performance, she declares her night done, and Ilya is left with a smirking Sasha who’s still sniffing the remnants of coke out of his nostril.

Sasha talking about how hot the boys are in Paris is made bearable only by the alcohol Ilya has been drinking straight out of the bottle that Sveta has helpfully left for him. Part of him does want to take Sasha up on his offer of drugs, but he can only imagine the trouble he’d be in if he were caught doing drugs at the Olympics, regardless of the fact that he’s been knocked out.

“You used to be fun, Ilyukha,” Sasha complains as Ilya doesn’t bother even flirting back.

Sasha has no connection to Ilya’s new life. He doesn’t even watch hockey, he doesn’t visit America, he’s not in Russia during the summers, and he’s sure as hell not interested in spilling any of Ilya’s secrets to people who matter.

The words come out before he consciously decides to say them, not forced out by fate but by desperation. “I just discovered I’ve been fucking my soulmate for years, and I don’t know what to do about it,” he says.

Sasha freezes for a moment before a grin takes over his entire face. “Ilyukha! Congratulations. Why do you sound like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?”

Because it is, Ilya almost says, but that wouldn’t be true. It’s ranked pretty highly, though. Easily top three.

“Do you want a list?” he asks instead, hoping that his dry tone will effectively communicate that this isn’t as straightforward as Sasha might think.

“You’re not fucking one of the Latvian players you just lost to, are you?” Sasha says. He thinks it’s so impossible that he can’t even get the question out without giggling. One of the Latvian players would be a far preferable option — he’s never been compared to the Latvians in the MLH. Only ever Hollander. Always Hollander.

He shakes his head, taking another swig of vodka, and says, “It doesn’t matter who it is.”

“Come ooon,” Sasha says. “There must be a reason you’re unhappy about it. Tell your good friend Sasha, and I’m sure I can cheer you up.”

Ilya can’t even muster a smile in response. “It’s just me.”

“You’re your own soulmate?” Sasha asks, scoffing.

“No, of course not. It doesn’t matter.”

“It really, really does. I will die if you don’t tell me. Alexander Vladimirovich Kuzmin, found dead from suspense in Sochi. He had a promising life of clubbing, drugs and faggotry cut short in the most tragic way.”

“For fuck’s sake. I’m telling you that the — connection, or whatever, it doesn’t go both ways. So it doesn’t fucking matter, Sasha. Okay?”

“Oh,” Sasha says, freezing, like he can’t remember how to be anything but an idiot who’s high on cocaine. “Sorry. I mean, they don’t matter, right?”

Ilya thinks about telling him how the sex with Hollander is better than the sex he’s had with anyone else, how he has to resist gravity pulling him towards Hollander in any room they’re both in, how fucking endearing he finds the fact that Hollander folds his clothes before sex. Soulmates might not matter, but whatever the fuck this is matters to him, and that’s worse.

He shakes his head; he can’t help himself. “He matters,” he says, as quietly as he can, conscious of the way his voice echoes off the marble.

“Well, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,” Sasha says, apparently recovering his high spirits. “Or on top of. Stop fucking him and let me suck you off.”

That’s what Ilya probably should do, except they’re at a gala at a minister’s house.

“Nobody’s going to come in here,” Sasha says, apparently reading his mind. “Live a little! I still have some cocaine if you want it. But it’s not as good as my mouth — or so I’ve been told.”

When Ilya doesn’t protest, Sasha leans in and kisses him. He smells different from when they used to do this as kids — presumably he got a decent cologne in Paris — but he still tastes the same. And instead of pushing him away, like he should, Ilya leans into it and kisses him back. He lets Sasha get on his knees without protesting, just clamps his teeth down hard on his lip to keep himself silent. The sounds of the gala outside are faint but audible, and though he doubts very much that anyone out there is straining to hear what might be happening in this bathroom, they could be overheard. He can’t fully concentrate on the feeling of Sasha’s lips around him, occupied as he is by listening for footsteps, his heart pounding in his chest. But at least he’s not thinking about Hollander. He probably would be, if he weren’t in this bathroom, in this country; he’d be comparing technique without meaning to, would be cataloguing every single way that Sasha isn’t Hollander whether he wanted to or not. He only has so much mental capacity when he’s getting blown, though, and the low hum of adrenaline and fear coursing through him is keeping his thoughts on his surroundings.

Sasha knows what he likes, and it’s almost a relief to know precisely what he’s going to do. And when he returns the favour, he won’t be experimenting with what makes Sasha gasp and buck his hips, because he figured that out years ago in Sasha’s bedroom while his father was out.

For a moment after he comes, he thinks not as good as with Hollander and shakes his head as if he can physically dislodge the thought. It lingers. Ilya kneels and feels the cold tile through his pants, and focuses on Sasha’s cock filling his mouth. It’s not boring, but it feels routine and safe in the moments he forgets about where they are. He lets Sasha fuck his mouth just to feel the sensation of it, and doesn’t think of the little noises Hollander makes.

Sasha always enjoys kissing afterwards, reveling in the taste of both of them in their mouths, but Ilya turns away after only a perfunctory moment. He wants to leave, but he probably needs to go back upstairs to do another round of ritual humiliation.

“Bye, Ilyukha,” Sasha says as Ilya turns to go. “Have fun in America.” It’s a parting jab Sasha can’t help but make, and it follows Ilya all the way through the rest of the gala and into bed.

A few days after Ilya gets back to Boston, Sveta practically bangs down his front door.

He hasn’t called her since he’s been home — hasn’t spoken to anyone, really, outside of the one practice he’d attended. He’s alternated between watching terrible American movies about soulmates, all of which are filled with completely insignificant obstacles for the sake of generating conflict and absolutely all of which have happy endings, and reading coverage from back in Russia about the debacle that was the national team’s performance in the Games. He’s self-aware enough to recognize that he’s being maudlin, but he still hasn’t been able to bring himself to do much else.

“I have been patient,” she starts as she pushes past Ilya to walk in without so much as a hello. “But I don’t think you’re going to tell me unless I make you, so: why the fuck does Sasha know you have a soulmate but I don’t?”

Fuck. When Ilya decided to fill Sasha in, he’d only been thinking about the fact that he wouldn’t spill Ilya’s secrets to any state officials, and he’d forgotten that Sasha is a gossipy bitch.

For all that she’s keeping her tone light, Sveta does actually look a bit upset. She has her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and her mouth is pulling down into a genuine frown. He didn’t mean to hurt her feelings by telling Sasha without telling her, but it’s clear that he has. It makes sense; she’d be hurt by him keeping any big news from her, but especially this. They’d spoken so many times as children about soulmates; she’s the only person on Earth who knows about Ilya’s half-forgotten longing to have one. Someone who almost couldn’t help but love him. Even as a child, he’d been afraid that one day he’d end up like Mama, so sad and all alone even in the home she shared with her husband.

Telling Sveta will make it so much more real, and he knows he’ll have to tell her who it is. She’ll see the gravity of it immediately, and he doesn’t want to be so known. She’ll recognize, deep down, that this is some defect on Ilya’s part, and even though she’s far too kind to say it out loud, that fact will be the third person in any conversation they have about it.

“Sorry,” he manages past the lump growing in his throat.

Sveta huffs, but uncrosses her arms to pull Ilya over to the couch. She flings herself down and pats the spot next to her, waiting until Ilya is seated before she launches into her questions. “So? Tell me everything, Ilyusha. Who is it? When did you find out? Is it wonderful?”

He wants to tell her to stop asking, that it’s not the happy news she’s expecting to hear, but he can’t even speak. When he opens his mouth to try, his chin starts trembling, and the next thing he knows, there are tears flowing hot and fast down his face.

It catches him off guard as much as it does Sveta. The last time he cried, he was… fuck, he must’ve been twelve. It was not long after Mama died. But he’s missed her this past week, in a way that’s fresh and raw and new, so maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that he can’t help himself. It feels like she’d be the only one in the world who could possibly make it hurt less that nobody who’s supposed to love him does.

Sveta hugs him and runs her fingers through his hair, silently letting him cry, even though it’s an odd response to asking about a soulmate. Finally, his tears slow and he can get out actual words: “It’s not requited,” Ilya says quietly, not pulling away to look at her.

“Oh, shit,” she sighs, her hand stilling on the back of his head. “Are you sure?”

“I can’t see how it could be.”

“So you’re not sure.” Her voice has taken on a cautious note, like she’s afraid she’s going to spook him. But it’s not like Ilya hasn’t thought about it. Despite his best efforts, he’s definitely spent some time over the past few days torturing himself by wondering if Hollander really has just never tried to lie to him. It’s not like they spend that much time together, and when they are together it’s not like they really talk. Ilya himself only figured it out now. But Ilya is very practiced at dodging questions and veiling the truth; he does it without thinking. He doesn’t usually need to lie. Hollander’s not like that. Everything about him screams repressed. No, Ilya can only see two possibilities: Hollander can’t lie to him and has gone years without mentioning it, or Hollander lies to him all the time. Neither option is promising for Ilya, but the second one seems more likely.

“I know him,” Ilya says, still not looking at her. “If he can’t lie to me, then he must have found out years ago and not said anything because he doesn’t want this. And he has so many reasons not to want me. At that point, does it even matter?”

“A hockey player, then,” Sveta says, almost to herself. Ilya always manages to forget that she’s weirdly psychic. “Who is it?”

Ilya sighs. He considers lying to her, and then realizes that there’s no point, because there’s no safe answer. She wouldn’t believe him if he named some random player on the Colorado Landslides, and if he names someone in the Eastern Conference, she’s just going to scheme about it. Sveta also has an uncanny ability to tell when he’s lying most of the time.

“Hollander,” he says, whispering it into her shirt.

Sveta freezes. “Really?”

“You think I would joke about this?”

“Of course not,” Sveta says apologetically. “Fuck, what a situation.” They sit in silence for a moment before Sveta straightens up and says, “Wait, Sasha said you’d been fucking your soulmate for years. You’ve been fucking Hollander for years?”

Ilya nodded, even though it wasn’t a terribly useful move with the way they were entangled. “Whenever we play each other, yes.”

“That’s not very often,” Sveta says. “How long have you two been fucking — what, four times a year?”

Ilya finally pulls away from her so he can see her face, though his eyes flicker away to look at her shoulders once he discovers she doesn’t look angry at Ilya keeping this from her as well. “The first time was before our rookie season,” he says with a sigh. “I know it’s stupid, but he’s so—” He can’t find the words to describe a fraction of what he feels for Shane Hollander. “I can’t stop.”

“So you’re just going to keep torturing yourself?” Sveta asks, and Ilya blinks. It had never really occurred to him that he could or should do otherwise. Fucking Shane Hollander has never been a good idea, and Ilya’s been doing it anyway, enthusiastically and at every opportunity. The fact that now it might come with some heartache hadn’t seemed to him to be a reason to actually stop having sex with him.

“Right,” Sveta sighs before Ilya can answer. “Of course you are.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Ilya asks. He doesn’t expect her to have an answer, but he desperately wishes she could — if there’s anyone who has some magical solution to this, it would be Sveta.

“You could talk to him,” she says, but it’s clear from her tone that even she doesn’t think that’s a good idea. What would it change? If Hollander wanted to be his soulmate, he would have said something. That’s if there’s even anything to say.

There’s only one person Ilya really wants to talk to about this, and she’s not around.

He doesn’t say that to Sveta, because he’s scared that if he does, he’ll never be able to stop crying.

“I’m staying the night,” Sveta announces suddenly. “Don’t argue with me, Ilyusha,” she adds when Ilya opens his mouth. “I understand that you’re miserable, but don’t expect me to let you be miserable alone. We’re going to watch at least three Fast and Furious movies and order pizza. Okay?”

So Ilya eats pizza and watches Vin Diesel drive cars very fast and it’s not enough to forget, but it’s enough to dull the ache a little. But that night, Sveta falls asleep next to him, and Ilya stares at his ceiling for a very long time.

Chapter 5: Spring-Summer 2014

Chapter Notes

Spring-Summer 2014

Shane refuses to text Rozanov at all after he gets home from Sochi.

Maybe there’s something to his suspicion that only he has this stupid soul bond or whatever, because he can’t square the hostility Rozanov had shown him in Russia with the idea that he could be Rozanov’s soulmate. Rozanov doesn’t want him — or, at least, doesn’t want to talk to him — and had told him so in no uncertain terms.

He decides that if Rozanov texts him, he’ll answer, but they get all the way to the end of the season with complete silence on Rozanov’s end. He tries to say hello at a face-off when they play each other for the last time in the regular season, and Rozanov ignores him entirely — doesn’t even look up from the ice to meet his eyes — so this whole thing they’ve been doing is probably over. Shane tries to convince himself that this is a good thing — every time they hook up it’s another chance to get caught — but by the playoffs, he hasn’t managed to stop dreaming of Rozanov fucking him and waking up embarrassingly hard, and he is apparently incapable of not thinking of Rozanov when he jacks off.

Montreal gets knocked out of the playoffs in the second round by Boston. Honestly, it’s a feat that they managed to get into the second round at all, with Mitty injured and not playing at 100%. Hayden gets his nose broken and JJ gets his shoulder fucked up by Ryan Price in game three and four of the second round, respectively, and the sheer build-up of injury dooms them. At least they kept their dignity, pushing Boston to game seven and then losing 3-2. Shane doesn’t even try to talk to Rozanov, because it’s the playoffs, and even if they were on speaking terms, it’s not like they would do anything. He expects Rozanov to at least chirp him about something, but he remains silent, even as he directs comments towards other Metros.

Boston keeps winning, including sweeping the Eastern Conference finals. In June, Shane finds himself sitting with a bunch of his teammates at Hayden’s house, watching the clock tick down on game six of the finals, where Boston is two goals up on San Francisco. Rozanov’s about to win a Cup, and maybe Shane should hate him for getting there first, but he finds that he can’t do it. He should be able to, because Rozanov’s been an asshole to him ever since Sochi, but he can feel his anger dulling at the edges as he watches. In fact, there’s a swelling feeling of pride in his chest. He feels dangerously close to tears, which is stupid. Is this some bullshit soulmate thing?

“Shane hates him the most,” someone says, bringing it sharply back into focus that Shane is surrounded by his teammates — most of whom are now looking right at him.

He clears his throat. “What?” he says, trying to buy himself time to get his emotions under control.

“You hate Rozanov,” Hayden repeats, and Shane barely stops himself from laughing. Or maybe screaming. He doesn’t take his eyes off the television, and he doesn’t respond. Maybe everyone will think he’s just that locked in on the game, or that he’s too beside himself with rage to speak. God, he’s watching his fucking soulmate win a Stanleigh Cup, and he can’t even tell anyone that he’s happy for him.

Maybe he should have thought of it earlier, but it’s this specific moment that makes him realize that if any information about him and Rozanov comes out, there will be instant suspicion that they have thrown games for each other. There’s no way anyone in the league would understand the nuance that Shane hates that Montreal isn’t winning the Cup, but if someone else has to, he’s glad it’s Rozanov.

It’s not a completely alien sentiment for hockey players — Gordie Knight was asked last year how he felt about his little brother winning the Cup before him, and he was allowed to have a complex emotion about it, but it would be different for Shane and Rozanov.

The final whistle blows, and it’s only minutes before Rozanov is lifting the Cup over his head. There are tears streaming down his face, and he’s screaming something at the top of his lungs, and the corners of Shane’s mouth are twitching upwards despite himself. He really hopes no one is looking at him or paying attention. He couldn’t begin to explain the reaction he’s having.

Around him, his teammates are grumbling complaints, getting off the couches and going to grab their leftover beers from the kitchen. Apparently they’re not going to turn the TV off and hang out now that the game is over. Shane’s not complaining. The less time he has to spend keeping it together in front of everyone else right now, the better.

By the time ESPN has moved onto talking heads discussing the upcoming BBNL draft, people are filtering out. Shane would usually stay behind to help clean up, but he can’t help but feel on edge, like if he sticks around someone will realize he’s not angry about Boston winning the Cup. As though that someone would then also realize why. Hayden’s focused on the sudden eruption of his baby crying, so Shane just nods to Jackie, gets slapped on the back a few times by teammates who vow that next year will be their year, and escapes to his car.

Once he gets home, he sends Rozanov a text that just says “Congratulations”. He doesn’t get a reply.

Shane’s been telling himself that he doesn’t have to face Rozanov again until October, at the very earliest. They might both be at the MLH Awards next week, but even if they are, Shane will be able to avoid him. He lives in this fantasy world for maybe two days before someone from the MLH’s media department contacts him and says they want him to do some stupid skit on stage with Rozanov at the Awards. The joke is that Shane hates Rozanov, of course, and he almost says no when he receives the script. But if he says no, they might ask him why, and there’s no good answer he can come up with. He thinks maybe Rozanov will turn it down and he won’t have to go through with it, but then he doesn’t hear anything about the segment being called off.

They don’t get an opportunity to rehearse — well, they could have on their own time, technically, but they’re still not talking, so they don’t — and Shane waits at the curtain increasingly antsy until Rozanov turns up at the last possible second like a massive dickhead.

“What were you even doing?” he can’t help but ask, and he’s pretty sure he sees Rozanov literally bite his tongue rather than answer. He doesn’t have time to ponder that, though, before they’re both being ushered onto the stage and a spotlight is glaring directly into his eyes.

He stumbles his way through the stupid skit, keeping his eyes locked desperately on the teleprompter. He’s sure it’s not a good performance, but he’s equally sure no one was expecting it to be. As Rozanov takes the photo, he gropes Shane’s ass, which has to be some kind of fucked up psychological warfare. Shane barely manages to keep his smile frozen on his face. The audience is laughing way too hard for how basic this joke is. He’s also fairly certain that he hears one woman go, “Aww,” which is possibly the worst part of the whole thing.

Shane reads out the winner, Rozanov hands the guy his award, and then Shane walks offstage — away from Rozanov — without a glance back. He has an assigned seat that he should return to, but instead he goes to the nearest public bathroom, checks no one is in the stalls, and then just leans over the sink trying to get ahold of himself. Being so close to Rozanov after all this time, even with Rozanov behaving like a total prick, has Shane feeling shaken and off-kilter. It’s stupid that Rozanov can do this to him still. Maybe there’s some way to like… surgically extract whatever part of you has a soulmate. The offseason is the perfect time for minor surgical procedures, so he should look into it.

They’re up against each other for MVP, and as much as Shane wants it, he’s sure it’s going to be Rozanov. Rozanov had led Boston to the Cup, after all. He’s even able to recognize that Rozanov deserves it. But he still needs to get back to his seat before the award is announced. He’ll be on camera regardless, and he needs to look normal. Just as he considers splashing water on his face to shock himself into regaining common sense, the worst possible person walks in: Rozanov himself.

He leans against the wall, regarding Shane coolly, but there’s something off about the way he’s holding himself, something about his smirk that isn’t reaching his eyes. Shane fully opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong before he comes to his senses and snaps it shut again.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asks instead. There’s absolutely no reason for Rozanov to have followed him into this bathroom.

Rozanov’s face does something strange that Shane can’t even begin to parse. After a long pause, he says, “What do you think?”

Shane stares at him in disbelief. “You haven’t texted me in six months so I guess you want absolutely nothing, except to grope my ass in front of hundreds of people? What the fuck was that?”

“Nobody saw,” Rozanov says dismissively.

“Somebody could have.”

“And what, you’re afraid they would guess that you liked it?” Rozanov rolls his eyes. “Hollander, the worst thing that could have happened is they make me talk to HR.”

“Normal guys don’t do that!”

“The Washington Monuments posted a video last season of them walking their rookies like dogs. They had human-sized collars. Whatever the fuck is happening over there is way weirder than groping your ass.”

“Whatever,” Shane huffs, unable to come up with a counter-argument. “What do you want? You didn’t come in here to piss.”

“I want you to suck my dick,” Rozanov says, and images of Shane doing just that flood his mind immediately. He wants to, is the worst thing. He genuinely wants to kneel on this disgusting tiled floor and suck Ilya Rozanov’s dick because he knows it would settle something in him that’s been rattled loose since Sochi.

There are, of course, many reasons why that absolutely can’t happen, starting with the fact that this is a public washroom and continuing with the fact that whatever there was between them has been declared pretty forcefully over. When Rozanov walks over and takes Shane’s chin in his hand, Shane keeps his mouth shut because if he opens it, he might do something monumentally stupid like take Rozanov’s thumb into his mouth.

Then Rozanov ducks his head as though to kiss him, and Shane shoves him back before he can let himself sink into it. Again, something strange flashes over Rozanov’s face, but Shane doesn’t — can’t — focus on that, because now he’s let himself look at Rozanov’s mouth. He groans in frustration, pushes Rozanov back against the door, and smashes their lips together.

He hears Rozanov chuckle, and then — so fast that Shane couldn’t stop him even if he wanted to — Rozanov flips them around so that Shane’s against the door instead. He hates how much he prefers it this way, hates the way his whole body relaxes instinctively.

“Well, Hollander?” Rozanov murmurs, bringing a hand up to cup Shane’s jaw.

Shane swallows, hard. He really is tempted to just do as Rozanov says. But he resists the impulse. “Fuck you,” he says, his voice coming out embarrassingly weak. “You suck my dick.”

“Hmm,” Rozanov says, running his thumb along Shane’s bottom lip. “If you win, maybe.” He pauses as if he expects Shane to reply, but Shane’s busy trying to stop being embarrassingly, achingly hard in his slacks. “If I win, I get to do whatever I want,” he continues, a curl to his lips that indicates he absolutely knows what he’s doing to Shane right now.

Rozanov steps back, and Shane locks his knees so he doesn’t do something humiliating like wobble down until he’s sitting on the floor. “I will find you at the afterparty,” Rozanov says. Shane swallows and nods, and then there’s a beat before Rozanov gestures behind Shane and says, “The door?”

Shane lurches forward, and Rozanov doesn’t even take the time to mock him for it before Shane is left alone.

Rozanov wins. Of course he does. They both attend the afterparty, and Shane keeps Rozanov in his peripheral vision the entire time. Rozanov gives him a quick smirk as he picks up another champagne glass from a passing waiter, the kind of smirk that communicates he knows exactly how desperate Shane is and is enjoying making him wait, and Shane scowls a little in response but keeps sending sidelong glances at him anyway.

Logically, he knows that Rozanov — reigning Stanleigh Cup champion, tonight’s MVP awardee — can’t just slip away from the afterparty unnoticed. It’s natural that he’s getting attention, that so many people seem to want to talk to him. That doesn’t make the itching under his skin any more tolerable, though. He wants to go upstairs and get out of this goddamn tuxedo, but Rozanov had said that he’d find Shane at the afterparty, so what if he took that as a rejection?

He listens to Simon Campbell talk about how excited he is to see his sister when she’s back from college and about how he thinks he’s finally perfected his banana bread recipe (the secret ingredient is apparently chocolate chips). Another Pittsburgh player comes over just as Campbell is clearly running out of steam and gets the three of them talking about who they’re training with over the summer. Campbell invites Shane to train with him, saying he has a great guy a bunch of people train with in Nova Scotia, Brad someone-or-other. Shane politely refuses.

After what feels like approximately seventeen hours, Rozanov nods at him and excuses himself to go to the elevator bank. Shane can’t follow him immediately, of course, and the five minutes he waits feels even more difficult than the waiting before it. Finally, he gets in an empty elevator and starts working on the knot of his bowtie. His phone buzzes as he steps in and he checks it automatically, feeling something loosen in his chest when he sees the newly-provided room number on his screen.

Rozanov gets to do whatever he wants. Shane’s not completely sure what that will look like, but he knows that he wants it. Even if it’s literally just Rozanov demanding Shane kneel with Rozanov’s dick in his mouth while Rozanov scrolls on his phone. He assumes it will be something like that, what with the level of disinterest Rozanov’s shown him all season, and yet he wants it anyway.

When he gets to the penthouse, Rozanov opens the door wearing his white dress shirt unbuttoned and looks bored. Or… maybe he doesn’t. There’s something strange about his expression that Shane can’t quite figure out, and he quickly decides that he shouldn’t try. He hates that part of him feels grateful that Rozanov is willing to see him.

“Congratulations,” he says stiffly.

“Thank you,” Rozanov says, equally stiff, without any of the gloating that Shane had been expecting. Shane had expected some kind of lazy grin, some magnified version of the expression Rozanov wears after Boston wins a game against them. Instead, the way he’s acting makes Shane wonder if the thing Rozanov wants is to end this for good. Not even to fuck one more time, just to make it clear that they can’t meet off the ice again, because this is monumentally stupid and dangerous and it’s insane that they’ve carried on for years already. Because it doesn’t matter that he’s Shane’s soulmate — it never has, and it never can. Hockey won’t care.

Rozanov just stands in front of him, staring at him so intently Shane doesn’t even breathe. And then, like some switch had flipped or some timer had dinged, Rozanov launches himself at Shane and kisses him like a drowning man. Shane doesn’t push him away to ask questions. As always, he gives in. He reaches up with one hand to tangle it into Rozanov’s hair, his fingers pulling curls free from the gel slicking them back; his other hand automatically goes to Rozanov’s waistband and starts trying to fumble his pants open. But Rozanov stops him, pulling his wrist away to guide Shane’s hand around his waist instead.

It’s all strange. It’s all wrong. Shane should ask what the hell is going on, but it occurs to him that he really doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to ask that kind of question, the kind that would invite a lie in response. Rozanov kisses like he knows Shane wants to speak, and like he’s just as scared of the ensuing conversation.

Eventually, Rozanov moves them to the bed and removes Shane’s shirt, but he still refuses Shane’s attempts to remove their pants. Even removing his shirt seems to have been just so he has a wider expanse of Shane to kiss. Shane can feel his erection, so he tries to rub them together but he doesn’t have the right angle to be able to do it. Rozanov, of course, prevents him from moving. Perhaps this is what Rozanov wanted all along, to torture Shane by refusing to get him off.

He makes a frankly embarrassing pleading noise, and Rozanov’s face does something that Shane can’t even begin to decipher. Then he finally, finally strips Shane’s pants off, folding them once over his arm and placing them neatly onto the bed instead of throwing them on the floor, and that does things to Shane that it shouldn’t. Shane doesn’t meticulously fold his clothes when they have sex anymore — he only did it because he was nervous, and these days he generally knows what to expect. Even so, seeing Rozanov take such care with his clothes… It makes him feel like this is something, and while he will inevitably stew on that later and hate it, in the moment it makes him breathless.

Rozanov places more kisses down Shane’s body and then, no hesitation or teasing, swallows him down. That’s a major disruption to Shane’s denial-based torture theory, but he doesn’t have the brainpower to think that through right now. Rozanov works his mouth on him intensely, and his hands are everywhere, and it’s quite possibly the best blowjob he’s ever had. Shane has already been near the edge for however long they’ve been doing this — time has ceased to exist, syrupy and unmeasurable — so all too soon he gets to a point where if this continues, he’s going to come in Rozanov’s mouth, and if he does that, this will be over. Rozanov will expect him to put his clothes back on and return to his own hotel room. Will he ghost him again when the next season starts?

Urgently, he tightens his fingers where he’s once again worked them into Rozanov’s hair. “R-Roza — wait,” he gasps out. “Stop, I don’t — I need —”

Rozanov pulls off the second Shane says stop, which simultaneously sends him sagging onto the bed in relief and makes him want to cry from desperation. “You need?” he prompts, with none of his usual bravado. He’s quiet, like if he raises his voice something about this will crack and let the real world in. Shane hasn’t seen his face this serious since Rozanov first fucked him, constantly asking him if he was okay as if Shane’s answer was the most important thing in the world.

“I need you,” Shane whispers, by which he means please fuck me right now. Or please don’t say this is the last time. Or I know it doesn’t matter at all, but my soul is literally connected to yours, and I wish you would text me back.

Does Rozanov look like his heart is breaking, or is Shane projecting?

Instead of immediately getting the lube, Rozanov returns to kissing him, briefly on the mouth and then over his body, his neck and his pecs and briefly his nipples. The planes of his torso, his hip bones and then as he gets lower he skips Shane’s dick and prompts Shane to roll over. He kisses the backs of Shane’s knees and up the inside of his thighs, and ends up hovering over Shane’s hole, his hot breath making goosebumps erupt over Shane’s entire body.

“Can I?” Rozanov says.

Shane shakes his head before he realises Rozanov might not be able to see it. “That’ll be too much,” he confesses. “I want you inside me.”

Rozanov hums in acknowledgement, and Shane wonders what his face is doing. If he finally looks smug, the way Shane’s been expecting him to look all night. He doesn’t peer over his shoulder to check, just focuses on breathing deeply and not completely losing it as Rozanov fingers him open.

When Rozanov finally pulls away, Shane settles more comfortably into position, pushing his thighs further apart and grabbing onto the pillow — and then he’s taken totally by surprise as Rozanov guides him back onto his back. Rozanov usually prefers to fuck him into the mattress, holding Shane down as he does it. That’s perfectly fine with Shane because it means he doesn’t need to think about what his face is doing. They’re the same size, but Rozanov’s hand on the back of his head is one of the only things that makes him feel small. It’s freeing.

Rozanov fucks him slowly, and he kisses Shane thoroughly as he moves. At first it’s almost distracting, the feeling of Rozanov’s lips on his, his hands on his skin, but before long the only thing Shane can concentrate on is the way Rozanov’s dick drags over his prostate. Then Shane’s reduced to begging, breathless babbling, not even sure what exactly he’s saying. He just needs Rozanov to go a little faster, a little harder, and then he can come. Thoughts about this being over as soon as they both finish have flown out of his head entirely.

He can feel it as Rozanov starts to lose control, just breathing into Shane’s mouth instead of kissing him, and making small involuntary noises with every thrust. And finally, finally he speeds up, and Shane comes. He thinks he might black out entirely with the force of it, because when his senses return to him, Rozanov has collapsed on top of him, having clearly followed him over the edge. Shane has no memory of it, and he feels a pang as he realizes this might have been the last time he had the opportunity to watch Rozanov’s face as he came.

He can’t tell if he’s being overdramatic or rational. He doesn’t know why he’s reading so much into every move Rozanov makes, as though that will help him somehow. As though he can analyze his way out of being at Rozanov’s mercy.

Rozanov kisses his shoulder and for a moment Shane thinks that maybe this will all be fine, but then Rozanov freezes for a moment before getting off him, pulling out and leaving Shane feeling empty and cold. He watches numbly as Rozanov goes into the ensuite bathroom, emerging a few moments later with a damp cloth that he offers to Shane. Shane casts around for something to say as he cleans himself off, something that will break the tension without being dangerous, and comes up blank.

Even as Shane’s still wiping his stomach, Rozanov finds his underwear on the floor and puts it back on. He even produces a t-shirt from somewhere and pulls it over his head. That feels like a bad sign. Shane doesn’t comment on it though, just follows his lead and starts putting his tux back on. Once he’s fully dressed, he offers a weak, “See you next season?” even though he knows it’s pushing his luck.

Still, it somehow comes as a shock when Rozanov, almost defeatedly, shakes his head.

“We can’t keep doing this, Hollander,” Rozanov says quietly, looking at the floor instead of Shane. “It’s not a good idea.”

Shane’s been waiting for this shoe to drop, but for a moment, it takes his breath away. This is stupid. Rozanov is right — they can’t keep doing this. So why isn’t he satisfied that Rozanov is doing what Shane has always been too much of a coward to go through with? “It never has been,” he says, and tries not to sound like he’s attempting to convince himself.

Rozanov smiles wryly, but he doesn’t look up. “Exactly. Every time, it gets more dangerous. And it’s — we will be the defending champions next year, even more eyes than usual.”

Shane, for whatever reason, wants to argue. He’s told himself a million times that he needs to break things off with Rozanov — he didn’t even want to look at Rozanov the first time he saw him earlier today, still smarting from his rejection in Sochi — but now, in the face of it, it feels like Rozanov is asking him to saw off his own arm. But Rozanov is right, so instead Shane nods.

“Okay,” he says, just as quietly as Rozanov has been speaking. For a moment, Shane wonders if this means Rozanov will never find out they’re soulmates. Shane has been working hard to make sure he doesn’t figure it out, and yet the idea that he never will… but him finding out is a terrible idea, so Shane shouldn’t feel conflicted about it. The fact is that this has always been just fucking, and even that was clearly too much. This can’t be as bad as it feels. Surely Shane can find someone who can fuck him as well as Rozanov can.

He pushes aside the voice in his head whispering that he doesn’t want to find anyone else.

“Well, uh, goodbye,” he mumbles and heads to the door. Rozanov doesn’t stop him or say anything, but he thinks that as the door closes he hears a faint Goodbye, Hollander. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking, though. He presses the elevator call button three times, even though he knows that won’t make it come faster, because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.

When it finally comes, Shane takes the opportunity to lean his head against the wall of the elevator. He feels hollow, and before he knows it, there are tears in his eyes. It makes no sense. This is good! This is sensible. This is what Shane has meant to do almost every time they hook up. So why is he about to cry?

There’s a jolt as the elevator stops and Shane hurriedly wipes his eyes before he steps out, leaving his emotions behind him.

Chapter End Notes

facingthenorthwind a/n: The Washington Capitals did make a video of them walking teammates like dogs except they didn't have human-sized collars. We do know that at least one Caps player does own one though (TJ Oshie). We here at Brain Twin Collabs HQ believe firmly in YKINMKATO, and wish peace and love to the washington capitals and their puppy play. Weird choice to do it on main but being weird about each other is basically their brand, god bless.

Chapter 6: May 2015

Chapter Notes

"It's good!!! I think you're going to possibly get murdered by your readers but -"
-our beloved beta reader, Izilen, giving her thoughts on this chapter <3

May 2015

Ilya’s season is not going the way he wants it to so far.

To be honest, he’s not surprised. Some of the other guys in the locker room had been talking a big game in the pre-season — there’d been lots of proclamations about how they’re going to dominate this year, how they’re going to go back-to-back — but Ilya kept hearing Sveta’s voice in that bathroom in Sochi in the back of his head, explaining the array of particular circumstances that had opened up Boston’s path to the Cup.

Still, though, Ilya wants to win. Of course he does. And they are winning, mostly, but he’s not putting up the kind of points he put up last season. He has a nine-game scoring slump that has talking heads convinced that he’s lost his touch entirely and should be taken off the first line; when he watches their game tape, he constantly sees scoring chances he missed, passes that failed to connect, turnovers that he was responsible for. He’s tired all the time. There are some off days where he doesn’t even bother to get out of bed. LeClaire talks to him and tells him to get his head on straight. One of the athletic trainers suggests seeing their sports psychologist. Of course, the sports psychologist is reporting back to management, so it’s not as if Ilya can actually tell her how bad it is, and he definitely can’t tell her why.

The only saving grace is that the team doesn’t strictly need him in order to win games. Their Cup run last year proved they have the depth, and Hammer and Sebs have both really stepped up their production. These are facts that don’t make him feel as excited as they should.

By the point in the season where the Metros clinch their position in the playoffs, Ilya has improved. He’s still not playing the best hockey of his life, maybe, but commentators have stopped talking like he should be taken out back and shot. He knows, though, that the Raiders aren’t going back-to-back the way they’d all dreamed of doing. They can’t make it past Shane Hollander.

Hollander, in contrast to Ilya, has been having one of the best seasons of his career so far. He’s been playing with unmatched intensity and skill, even moreso than usual. Every single time Hollander’s name comes up, Ilya’s inevitably follows, with Ilya found wanting. For the first time, Ilya wishes the rivalry would just fucking go away. It was fun when they were both at the top of their game, standing together so far above every other player in the league, but now it just feels like he’s rubbed up against stinging nettles every time he hears about it.

The first game the Raiders played against the Metros back in November, Hollander had opened his mouth as if to say something when they got in position for the opening face-off, but he closed it without making a sound. The rest of the face-offs in the game were similarly charged with an energy Ilya had never experienced before, but when they played again in January, Hollander had just treated him like any other player, barely looking Ilya in the face. They still fought for the puck, checking each other into the boards, but there was no thrill to it. No satisfaction. The Metros win three of their four regular season match-ups, and the Raiders scrape their way into the playoffs by the skin of their teeth, taking one of the wild card spots.

When they find out they’re facing Montreal in round two of the playoffs, everyone in the room knows they’re not going on to the conference finals. Nobody says it, but Ilya can feel it in the air. LeClaire must feel it too, because he spends more time giving them encouraging pep talks than just yelling at them in between periods.

It happens in game four. If Boston loses this one, the Metros will sweep them just like they swept the Buffalo Broadswords. Ilya expects these face-offs to be the same as every other game: completely silent and with no eye contact. Instead, just before the game starts, Hollander says, “You going to have fun watching me win the Cup, Rozanov?” There’s a smirk on his face, but almost a genuine challenge in his eyes. Like he wants to see what Ilya will say.

And Ilya, before he can even think about it, says, “Of course. You deserve it.”

Hollander freezes. It’s hard to say whether that’s a reaction to Ilya’s words themselves, or to Ilya’s own reaction to saying them — the way his eyes had widened in horror, his sharp intake of breath. They just stare at each other at centre ice, Hollander’s pupils flicking back and forth rapidly across Ilya’s face. Ilya, for his part, is breathing way too fast, trying his best to look away — as though that would undo the way he just completely showed his hand — and utterly failing. Distantly, Ilya’s aware of the puck being dropped onto the ice in front of them, but for a long moment, neither of them moves. Finally Shane’s muscle memory kicks in and he takes the puck, sending it to one of his teammates behind him. It takes Ilya’s body several beats too long to respond, and when he moves it feels clumsy, like there’s a delay between his muscles and his mind.

It’s a short shift. LeClaire says, “What the fuck was that, Rozanov?” and all but forces him to inhale the smelling salts he shoves under Ilya’s nose. There’s nothing Ilya can say to defend himself, not that LeClaire would be interested if there were, so he just keeps his head down and dutifully sniffs. Dubek snorts as he sees Ilya’s face contorting in pain from the burning in his nostrils.

His poor beginning seems to set the standard for the rest of the team, because the first period of the game is a mess of turnovers and missed passes. Montreal already has a two-point lead by the time both teams file back into their locker rooms for the first intermission. LeClaire yells at them for their sloppy footwork, sloppy passing, and inability to play like they had ever seen each other on the ice before. Ilya doesn’t think it’s quite that bad, but LeClaire probably thinks Ilya cursed them by losing that first faceoff in such an embarrassing way, so there’s no way he’s bringing it up.

The second period is a little better — they even get eight shots on goal, which is eight more than they did the first period. None of those shots actually succeed, but it’s something. Towards the end of the period, Hollander skates up to him during a TV stoppage. Ilya can’t avoid him — skating away would be conspicuous, and he’s sure there must be eyes on them already, journalists salivating over the possibility of actual Hollander-Rozanov beef. He has to act normal.

“Do you fly out tonight or tomorrow?” Hollander asks. “I want to see you after the game. To talk, I mean.”

“Tomorrow. Early,” Ilya says, searching Hollander’s face for a clue as to what this “talking” would entail. Hollander is completely unreadable.

Hollander nods, drops his gaze. “Come over?”

What is Ilya supposed to do but agree? “Okay,” he says, then nods once and gets the hell away from Hollander.

Ilya aggressively avoids thinking about all of it for the rest of the game, because even if they’re unlikely to make it through the series, getting swept is humiliating. He scores twice in the third, which makes LeClaire give him an approving look, but it’s not enough to save them — Montreal wins, 4-2. He and Hollander both manage to pretend to be normal about each other in the handshake line, which takes far more effort than Ilya would like. It helps that these lines are always the losing team mumbling a half-hearted good game to the other team’s more sincere-sounding repetition, which just feels like a humiliation ritual. At the press conference afterwards, reporters who had been wondering whether he would ever get back to his previous skill instead congratulate him on playing a good game. As captain, it’s his fault that the team lost, regardless of his personal performance, so he brushes off the praise and focuses instead on being as humble as possible. He congratulates Montreal for a series hard-fought, even though everyone there knew the fighting wasn’t actually that hard, and then finally it’s over.

He catches the bus back to the hotel to avoid questions, begs off the rest of the team’s plans to go drink until their playoffs exit doesn't hurt, and then catches a taxi to a house a block away from Hollander’s place. Sometimes he gets out a little closer, but he needs the walk to steel himself for whatever is about to happen.

Hollander is waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs up to his condo. He doesn’t look like a guy who’s almost definitely going to win the Stanleigh Cup in a matter of weeks; he looks nervous. Ilya’s not completely sure what Hollander thinks happened earlier, but he knows none of the options are good. Even putting aside the problem that is Ilya’s soul bond, they’re not sentimental with each other like that. Why would they get sentimental about this monumentally stupid arrangement?

Of course, it’s impossible to just put aside Ilya’s soul bond. Ilya can almost feel it weighing his body down as he follows Hollander into his condo. Hollander awkwardly asks if he wants a drink, and despite the fact that he wants as many drinks as it will take to get absolutely shitfaced, he knows that Hollander isn’t the kind of person to have bottles of liquor in his house. It would be impossible to chug enough Molson’s to get drunk in a dignified manner, so he declines the offer entirely.

Hollander gets himself a ginger ale and gestures at the leather couch behind them. Ilya takes a seat at one end and then Hollander sits right next to him instead of at the other end like Ilya assumed he would.

“Look, what happened on the ice doesn’t matter,” Hollander says. “I’m fine to move on if you are.” Ilya doesn’t respond immediately, too busy trying to parse what the fuck Hollander could possibly mean by that, and Hollander seems to take his silence as agreement, because he then does the thing that Ilya least expected: he shifts over and kisses him, putting his hand in Ilya’s hair and cupping his cheek, as if this were normal and they had somehow time-travelled back to 2013 when Ilya thought this was uncomplicated.

Still, Ilya can’t help but melt into it, just for a moment. He’s well aware that he’s the one that broke things off, but the feeling of Hollander’s lips on his is like a salve on a wound. He’s not sure how long the moment is — it’s far too easy to get caught up in kissing Hollander — but eventually his brain catches up to his body, and he manages to pull away and push Hollander away from him; he backs up, only to find himself up against the arm of the couch with nowhere to go.

“Stop — what do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” Ilya says. Whatever he thought Hollander would do if he found out he was Ilya’s soulmate, this had never been on the list of possibilities.

Hollander blinks at him. “You said something you didn’t mean to and we had a weird moment. I just don’t think it has to be a big deal.”

Ilya opens his mouth to respond but words desert him, leaving him gaping at Hollander like a fish. “Hollander, it wasn’t just a… a ‘weird moment’, it was — I couldn’t lie, because you’re my soulmate.”

If Hollander hadn’t figured it out, then maybe Ilya shouldn’t be telling him. But he can’t just sit here and let himself fall into this (the way his entire body is screaming at him to). He knows he’ll regret it later if he does, and clearly telling a partial truth last time — pointing out that this is, and always has been, a very stupid idea — hadn’t been enough. He feels like his lungs have shrunk inside his chest, like he suddenly can’t quite get in enough air, but he manages to keep his eyes on Hollander’s face, and he waits for the news to land — for Hollander’s expression to drop, or shock to appear on his features.

Neither happens. Instead, Hollander blinks again and says, “Yeah, I know.”

“You… know?” Ilya repeats numbly. He’s not sure if Hollander means that he figured it out in that moment on the ice, or if he’d figured it out in Vegas, but either way, he’d expect him to realize that this is kind of a big deal —

“I’ve always known,” Hollander says with a frown. Somehow, he seems just as confused as Ilya is, even though he’s the one saying something fucking crazy. “I mean… I didn’t really think there was anything we could do about it, so it kind of seemed like it didn’t really matter, I guess?”

Ilya can’t even begin to address that last point. “What the fuck do you mean, you’ve always known?”

“Well, I figured it out pretty quick when you kept asking me stuff like ‘do you want to suck my cock’ and I kept opening my mouth to say ‘no’ and saying ‘yes’ instead.”

From the beginning. Hollander had known from the fucking beginning and he’d said nothing for five entire years. For a long moment, Ilya can’t even speak. Hollander knew, and he let Ilya figure it out for himself in Russia. He knew, and he let Ilya think that he was going through this completely alone.

“And you didn’t think to fucking say anything?” he manages eventually.

Hollander shrugs, but he looks a little uncertain now. “It wasn’t important. I tried not to ask you questions you might want to lie about — I didn’t, like, take advantage. I mean, you started it, so I just thought — you know, it’s easier this way. What’s the point in thinking about something we can’t have? You’re the one who said we can’t keep doing this because of hockey, so I don’t see why it bothers you.”

Ilya scrubs his hands over his face. “Jesus Christ, Hollander,” he says, more harshly than he means to. He doesn’t know what else to say. He feels hot all over.

“What?”

He flails his arms a little. He can’t figure out how to express to Hollander how insane this is — he doesn’t even think he could get the words right in Russian. “What, you just… decided that the fact that we are soulmates is not as important as fucking hockey?”

“Isn’t that literally exactly what you decided last year?” Hollander snaps. When Ilya looks up at him, he has his arms crossed over his chest protectively, and his mouth is twisted into a frown.

“I thought it was only me!” Ilya says. “What the fuck else was I supposed to do?”

Hollander’s expression doesn’t change, although Ilya sees a muscle twitch in his jaw. Obviously, he doesn’t understand why Ilya is upset, and is annoyed to have to deal with it.

“It was stupid to torture myself with something I desperately wanted and could never have, since I was sure that I wasn’t your soulmate. Sveta pointed that out, so I took her advice. And you did not argue. Don’t pretend this was only my decision.”

“You want this?” Hollander says, disbelieving, as if that’s not what Ilya has said several times in this conversation by now.

“How could you not?” Ilya says, and curses internally for saying it almost immediately. Didn’t Hollander grow up with stories about it? Didn’t he dream of his soulmate helping him escape the life he was living?

Well, Shane Hollander had nothing to escape from. That’s probably the difference.

Hollander doesn’t answer him, just looks away. Ilya’s stomach twists painfully. He shoves himself to his feet and starts to walk towards the door. Despite everything, he still catches himself hoping that Hollander will stop him. But Hollander doesn’t move.

“I’m leaving,” he says, unnecessarily, as he starts fumbling with his shoes. “Enjoy your Cup win, Hollander.”

When he rights himself and gets a hand on the doorknob, though, Hollander finally speaks.

“Ilya —” he says, something strangled in his voice, and Ilya freezes. Just for a second. Just for long enough to decide that he’s not going to turn around — he can’t do that to himself. He yanks the door open, and slams it behind him.

The Montreal Metros win the Cup in five. Ilya watches from his couch, alone in his dark house, as Shane Hollander gets everything he’s ever wanted. He wishes he could be bitter about it. He wishes he cared about hockey at all in this moment. All he can bring himself to care about, though, is the beaming smile on Hollander’s face as he lifts the Cup over his head. Hollander takes a lap and then passes it to some grizzled old-timer who isn’t good enough for Ilya to remember his name. The camera doesn’t follow Hollander, but it might as well have for all that Ilya can’t take his eyes off him. First he hugs Pike, then Boiziau, and then Ilya can’t even see who he’s embracing as the camera moves away from him entirely. He seizes the opportunity to turn his television off. He won’t let himself sit here, waiting hungrily for another glimpse of Shane Hollander’s joy-filled face.

It’s eleven-thirty but Ilya heads out anyway — he still has a couple of hours to distract himself with alcohol and the sweaty heat of other bodies before he finds someone to go home with. A good fuck is just what he needs. He makes out with three different women on the dance floor, fingerblasts one of them in a toilet cubicle, and then decides he’s not drunk enough if the sensation of a beautiful woman coming on his fingers reminds him of Shane fucking Hollander. He does several shots with a different beautiful woman and then goes home with her, eating her out as she tugs at his hair. He focuses on the taste and the sensation of it, completely different to anything he’s done with Hollander. Her body isn’t hard with muscle, and there are no scars from hockey injuries. Her perfume, when he kisses her after she’s come with his tongue inside her, is something floral mixed with vanilla.

She offers to give him a blowjob, but he asks to fuck her instead, which clearly delights her. The tight wet heat of her is different enough that he doesn’t think of Hollander once, this time. It’s perhaps not his best performance, the alcohol making him a little clumsy, but she still comes again around him.

After, he calls her a cab and insists on paying for it. She doesn’t seem offended that he’s not asking her to stay. She leaves her number, suggesting they could do this again in the future, and he replies with something noncommittal but not vague enough to sound insulting. After she leaves, he puts her number in his phone — he had fun, and she clearly didn’t expect anything more than another bit of fun. So maybe there will be a next time. He doesn’t have much else to look forward to right now, anyway.

He only has two weeks to kill. Two weeks and then he’ll be in Moscow, where yes, he’ll most likely be rebuked for not getting a back-to-back championship (teasingly by some, and more harshly by his father), but he’ll be able to drink real vodka, and probably very few people will bring up Shane Hollander. That feels like the best he can hope for.

He leaves a day before the MLH awards. His teammates all roast him in the chat for being a sore loser — Shane Hollander is nominated for league MVP, but he isn’t nominated for anything — but he just sends multiple middle-finger emojis and doesn’t bother making up an excuse. He needs to get out of North America. He can spend two and a half months not speaking a word of English, meet up with some other Russian MLH players for training, and return in time to fulfil his pre-season obligations. Maybe the time away will be enough to take away the sting of the confirmation that his soulmate doesn’t want him.

Chapter End Notes

both of us: Ilya is of course being an unreliable narrator when he says Shane has nothing to escape from. it's just that Ilya hasn't considered the racism Shane has faced his whole life (and a soulmate isn't going to help with that anyway, unfortunately).

facingthenorthwind: Who the captain passes the Cup to after accepting it from the commissioner is a Whole Thing, and you can read about it here. It's super interesting!

Chapter 7: Summer 2015

Chapter Notes

thank you as always to our beloved beta, izilen <3

Summer 2015

Lifting the Stanleigh Cup is the best moment of Shane’s life. They say it’s thirty-five pounds, but it feels like it weighs nothing as he hoists it above his head to the roar of the crowd. Some moments of the night, like that one, are etched into his brain in perfect detail, but most of it is a blur of champagne and hugs and yelling.

For how long he’s wanted this, he’d never put very much thought into what would come after — how it would feel to wake up in the morning as a reigning Stanleigh Cup Champion. Truthfully, he soon discovers that it doesn’t feel much different than usual. He rides the euphoria for a few days, accepting congratulations as they come in and smiling much more than he’s used to (as well as drinking more alcohol than he ever has in his life), but in the days after the Cup parade, when teammates began leaving for the respective places they usually go in the off-season, he finds that some part of him feels empty. He has everything he’s ever wanted — the Stanleigh Cup, the captaincy of a top MLH team, multiple other league trophies — but he keeps looking at his phone. Sometimes he even opens his texting app and then pauses before closing it again. There’s no one to text; his friends have all celebrated with him, and his parents are off at their cottage, just like he will be soon. Of course, telling himself that he’s opening his phone because he wants to text his parents or teammates is a very flimsy excuse.

He only gets two weeks at the cottage this summer. They’re not even consecutive weeks. Between the obligations of a Stanleigh Cup-winning captain and new endorsement deals that come from winning the Cup, he’s lucky to get that much time at all. He’s still looking forward to it — he can’t think of anything else that’s going to help him clear his head, after all this drama with Rozanov. His cottage is always where he gets to decompress, where he doesn’t need to worry about saying the right things or making the right faces, and where he can sort through his feelings and finally make sense of them.

His parents know not to bother him for the first few days he’s at the cottage. Being quiet and keeping mostly to himself right after the season ends is something he’s done since he started in the OHL and everything started to have stakes they didn’t before. It felt suffocating the first summer he had his own cottage and his parents asked him over for dinner every night. He’s not sure what he did to make his parents pick up on that discomfort — he hadn’t said anything, knowing that them cooking for him was a gesture of love after so much time living in completely different cities, first while he was billeting and now with him in Montreal — but they stopped asking him, just leaving the offer open, and it’s always a relief to spend a few days talking to absolutely no one.

A few days into his first week, though, something happens that he genuinely can’t remember ever happening before: he wakes up and he feels… lonely. He lies there in his empty bed and feels a sort of misery set in. It pulls at his bones, weighing him down. He’s slow to get up, slow to make breakfast, and the feeling trails along with him when he takes his coffee down to the dock and looks out over the water.

He wishes Rozanov were here with him.

The realization turns his stomach. He’s completely fucked everything up. He should never have opened his hotel room door all those years ago, and he definitely should never have given him his number. He’s in too deep, and now it’s all out in the open. Rozanov, like… wants something with him; he even can’t get his head around that. And what if, even worse, he wants something with Rozanov?

It can’t be done. There’s just no way. Nobody would ever accept it. It would destroy both their careers. The MLH won’t care that neither of them chose this. And he’s always known that, and he let this happen anyway.

By mid-August, he’s desperately counting down the days until training camp starts. The only times that he ever finds any relief from his racing thoughts are when he’s right in the middle of a hard workout. Getting back on the ice properly instead of skating by himself in between ad shoots: that’s what he needs. He needs something to throw his energy into, but more than that, he just needs to move the way the game lets him move. He can go back to overthinking his own performance, what he needs to do to be better, instead of the look on Rozanov’s face when Shane told him that he’s always known.

His parents come to Montreal for a few days — one of his dad’s university friends is having a big birthday party, and they’re using the opportunity to catch up with a bunch of other people as well. They offer to stay in a hotel, but Shane insists they can take his guest room and waves off their concerns that they’ll be in his way. He has nothing, right now, for them to get in the way of. It’s not like he’s going to be bringing anyone home, regardless of whether they’re there or not.

His dad insists on cooking because he’s “finally perfected roasted Brussels sprouts” and promises the secret is not an entire pound of butter. When Shane raises his eyes at how much butter there is (okay, it’s not a pound, but it is a whole stick, and his dad’s defence of how many Brussels sprouts there are doesn’t help as much as he clearly wants it to), his mom points out that it’s the offseason and he needs to be putting on weight anyway. Shane surrenders when his mom adds, “They’re really good sprouts.”

His parents are right. They’re really, really good sprouts.

As they’re finishing up their dinner, his mom sighs and says, “Shane, honey, are you okay?”

Shane glances up at her, startled. Nothing in the conversation, as far as he can recall, should’ve prompted that question. Going over the plan for the shoot tomorrow, then making small talk about his plans for the rest of the summer — how did he suddenly give the impression that he’s not okay?

“What?” he asks.

“You’re quieter than usual,” she says. “You don’t even seem that excited for your time with the Cup.”

“Oh,” he says, a little blankly. He’s not sure what to say to that. He can hardly explain what’s been on his mind. “I guess I’m just… thinking about next season, you know? There’s some stuff we’ll need to tighten up if we’re going to hold on to the Cup.”

“Right,” says his dad, who — to Shane’s alarm — is wearing his patented we’re-here-to-listen face. “But you know, Shane, this has been your dream for… gosh, as long as I can remember. It’s okay for you to just enjoy it for a while.”

“I am enjoying it!” Shane insists. “It’ll be great seeing all the kids coming to look at the Cup.”

Neither of his parents speak for a moment, and Shane feels oddly like they’re communicating telepathically without even looking at each other.

“That’s not enjoying it,” his dad says. “We’re glad you’re looking forward to that, and I know you love talking to kids about hockey, but you don’t seem very happy for yourself.”

Is he happy for himself? Well, of course he is. He’s happy to have won the Cup. It’s just… sort of hard to focus on that, or to feel particularly good about it, when he feels so awful about how things went down with Rozanov. Which he obviously can’t talk about.

He forces a smile. “Well,” he says, trying his level best to sound lighthearted, “I guess it just already feels normal.”

Neither of them look very convinced, but they don’t press the issue as he stands up to start clearing the table. “If there’s anything bothering you, you know you can come to us, right?” his dad says just as Shane clears the last things away.

“Of course,” Shane says, trying to sound like he would take them up on the offer if he had anything to talk about. Which he doesn’t.

He doesn’t want to talk about how he keeps remembering the look on Rozanov’s face when Shane finally told him that he’s known all along, and how every time he does it feels like there’s a vice tightening around his chest. He doesn’t want to talk about how he must be one of the only people ever who’s unlucky to have a soulmate. He doesn’t want to talk about how this thing that he has absolutely no say in could end the career he’s worked so hard for, and he definitely doesn’t want to talk about how it feels to know that the sport he loves only loves him back so conditionally that having a soulmate could jeopardize everything.

His stomach is starting to hurt just thinking about it. He starts filling the sink to do the dishes. Filling the machine with tableware and then manually washing everything that can’t go in the dishwasher has become part of his routine. Usually it’s calming, an opportunity to just zone out while doing a repetitive task, but tonight he’s haunted by the way his parents have already seen through him.

“We’re going to watch the tennis,” Shane’s mom says as he puts the second-last dish in the drying rack.

Shane nods and says, “Have fun.” If they’re occupied by the DVR, that will give him some reprieve from their questioning looks.

It will be a temporary reprieve, though, he realizes. He’s definitely failed to convince them that nothing is wrong, and now that they’re worried, they’re not going to drop it. If he talks to them, maybe they can even help him figure out what to do. He just doesn’t know where he’s supposed to start: with the gay thing, the soulmate thing, or the Ilya Rozanov of it all? Probably not the third one. That would likely derail the conversation pretty significantly. He should at least see how they feel about Ilya being a man first.

He takes more time than he needs to wipe down the counters; he even considers, like, getting out the Swiffer and mopping the floor, before he decides that procrastinating any more is just going to make this harder. Feeling a bit like he’s walking to his doom, he goes over to the living room where his parents have settled and takes a seat on the other couch.

“Joining us?” his dad says, sounding a little surprised.

“Yes. Well, no, not for tennis. Um, I wanted to talk to you guys.”

His mom pauses the tennis instantly, and they both give him their full attention. Fuck, maybe he shouldn’t have, like, announced himself. He should’ve just mumbled it out over one of Nadal’s serves and hoped that neither of them would actually hear it. That would defeat the purpose, though.

He takes a deep breath and says, “Um, I guess… you were kind of right. I mean, of course I’m happy about winning the Cup, but it’s been… not the best summer ever. There’s been a lot on my mind.”

His dad nods encouragingly, but neither of them say anything. Probably because he hasn’t actually said anything yet.

“I, uh, have a soulmate,” he says, and barrels ahead without waiting for their reactions to that. “I found out a few years ago, and I was really hoping it was unrequited, but it turns out it’s not. Not unrequited, I mean, like… it does go both ways. So I guess I’ve just been… stressed.”

“You… wanted your soulmate bond to be unrequited?” his dad asks, after a long beat of stunned silence.

“Well, yeah. It would’ve been way easier.” Both his parents look completely mystified by this statement.

“Why?” his mom asks. “Do you… not like her, or something? Can that even happen?”

“No, I…” he starts, and then cuts himself off. He swallows in an effort to make his throat less dry before he says, “No, it’s a man.”

“Oh,” his mom says, her tone not betraying how she feels about that at all. His dad nods like he expected Shane to say that, which is so disquieting that Shane decides he can’t think about it.

“So… so it’s complicated,” he says, probably unnecessarily. “You know, because of hockey.”

“Yeah,” his dad says, almost to himself. His mom still hasn’t said more than “oh,” and her eyes look suspiciously glassy.

He really can’t take the uncertainty, so he says, “Mom, can you please say something?”

“I’m sorry, honey,” she says; the tremble in her voice is slight, but noticeable. “I’m really sorry that you felt like you had to hide that from us.”

Shane feels like squirming, but he’s had enough media training to resist the urge. “I was hiding it from him, too,” he says. “It’s not like I was only hiding it from you.”

From her reaction, that didn’t make her feel any better. It bothers Shane that he can’t figure out why she looks so upset. It doesn’t really seem like it’s about the gay thing, and she doesn’t know that the man in question is Ilya Rozanov, so he’s not sure what’s left for her to be upset about.

His dad puts his hand on her knee, as if to steady her, which only adds to Shane’s confusion. “Okay,” he says, almost overly-calm. “If hockey weren’t a problem, would you want him to be your soulmate?”

Shane shrugs miserably. “There’s no point in thinking about that, is there? Hockey’s everything.”

“Humour me,” his dad says.

He seems like he’s trying to be encouraging, but Shane is starting to feel hot with panic. He can’t detach Rozanov from hockey or the fact that hockey is a problem, and he’s pretty sure he can’t explain that to his parents without spilling the beans (or at least coming dangerously close). He’s spent years trying to know as little about Rozanov as possible. All he can say for certain is that Rozanov is good at sex (which he does not want to get into with his parents) and that he is, if they’re being honest, the only one who can keep up with Shane on the ice. And, a small voice says, he seems to genuinely care about Shane. But that’s not enough for this thought exercise.

He’s thinking for so long that his dad says, “Maybe… pretend you’re straight and your soulmate’s a woman. Just for a moment.”

“Dad, I don’t — that isn’t going to help.” He sinks down into the couch cushions. “I’m pretending I’m straight and my soulmate is a woman I know basically nothing about? Like, sure, that would obviously be totally fine. That would be great. I’d get to know her and we’d get married and have babies or whatever, and no one would have a problem with it. But that’s not the situation, is it?”

“You know nothing about him?” Yuna says, baffled by this admission. “Didn’t you say it’s been years?”

“I mean, I know plenty about him, but nothing that would translate. There’s not much left once you take out him being a man and, y’know, hockey.”

He realizes he’s said too much in the same moment his mother realizes what he just confessed. She gasps softly; his dad looks at her in concern, but her gaze doesn’t leave Shane’s face.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. “Who is he? Which team?”

He can’t tell her. He can’t say Boston, he can’t say Ilya Rozanov, because he can’t imagine that she’ll be able to restrain her reaction, and he doesn’t think he can handle that. As though to prove that he’s too fragile right now to finish this conversation, tears well up in his eyes, and he swipes them roughly away with his hoodie sleeve, ducking his head as though that will hide it.

“Um,” he says, his voice wavering traitorously, “I really don’t want to say.”

He looks up as soon as he’s got the threat of tears beaten back, and finds that his mom looks like she wants to argue with him. Something about that is so ridiculous that it almost makes him want to laugh. As though there’s an answer that he could give that would mean she’d be able to solve this.

His dad glances at his mom and then says, “Could you… see each other in secret? It’s not ideal, but… just for now.”

Shane shakes his head. “Too risky. If anyone finds out, it would mean the end of our careers, probably.”

“You’re the best player of your generation, Shane,” his mom says, no-nonsense. “There’s no way they’d have grounds to kick you out of the league over being soulmates with another player. I mean, you didn’t even choose it.”

Shane huffs. “They could say we’ve been cheating, or buy out my contract, or suspend me indefinitely until my contract expires, or —”

“Unless you have been cheating,” his mom says, “then they have absolutely no grounds for that accusation, and if they suspend you we can sue them. I’m not even going to touch anything else you just said. They wouldn’t dare. Suspend you indefinitely? Montreal would riot.”

“And the Metros would riot if they found out about—” He barely manages to stop himself from saying Rozanov. “If they found out about me. Being gay and stuff. Even if Coach and the MLH tried to let me keep playing like normal, there are people on my team who wouldn’t let that happen.”

“Then they don’t deserve you. If they can't see you're the same man they followed through the playoffs over and over, and if they’re too stupid to realize how much they owe you, you can go win Cups for a team that understands your worth.”

It sounds so simple when she puts it like that. His dad is even nodding along, like everything she’s saying is correct and reasonable. But it’s just not that simple. Montreal drafted him, and he’s always imagined he’ll retire in Montreal. He has a legacy here, one he’s proud of, and he loves this city and this team. So why sacrifice all of that? Most people don’t even have soulmates, so it’s not like he has to act on having one. (His brain provides an image of Ilya’s face just before he’d walked out the door. He had looked some horrible mix of gutted and resigned, and Shane doesn’t know what to do with how that makes him feel.)

“I guess,” he says, because he has to say something. He can’t believe his mom is even suggesting he leave Montreal — what happened to the photo on their mantel of his grandparents and a tiny Yuna, all decked head to toe in red, blue and white in front of the Bell Centre? It’s just as much for that Yuna as for the current one that he writes her name on his stick before every game. “You don’t need to, like… I don’t know, you don’t need to pretend that you’re not upset. I know Montreal is really important to you.”

Maybe she’d forgotten somehow that Montreal is really important to her, because she tears up when he says that, and her voice breaks as she says, “Oh, Shane.”

He feels like shit immediately. He obviously didn’t mean to make his mom cry. With no idea what to say to make it better, he sinks back into the couch and looks down at the floor. He mumbles, "Sorry," as if that's enough.

There’s silence for a few seconds; his mom says, “Excuse me, I just need to—”, and he hears her leave the room. He wishes he could just disappear, or at least rewind this conversation and never tell his parents any of this. Fuck.

When he risks glancing up at his dad, he’s looking at Shane with concern, and Shane immediately looks back at the floor. He’s upset both of his parents, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

“I didn’t mean to upset her,” he mumbles.

“Shane,” his dad says softly, “your mother loves you more than she could ever love the Metros. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I never said Mom doesn’t love me. I just meant that it’s okay if she’s disappointed in me.” He pushes his toes into the carpet, determinedly watching the way the fibres move so that he won’t give in to the temptation to look up again. “I mean, she is, right?”

“Of course not,” he says, with enough conviction that he clearly believes it. That makes no sense. His dad saw what just happened, didn’t he? “We have nothing to be disappointed in you for.”

Shane grits his teeth a little in frustration. “I get that I didn’t choose this or whatever, but if it gets out and my career is over, that’s a lot of your guys’ hard work down the drain too. That’s disappointing.”

“Shane, even if you had got some career-ending injury in your first season and never played again, we would never be disappointed in you, or think anything we did was wasted. It was worth it to make you happy. Everything else is just extra. We know you don't have any control over who your soulmate is, but even if you had just fallen in love with another player without being soulmates, we would love you and want to help you find a way to be together.”

“Maybe you feel like that, but you saw how upset she is!” How can his dad be so calm about this?

“She’s upset because we made you feel like you couldn’t come to us about this, and you felt like you had to deal with this alone. I think she’s upset at herself, mostly. But I know for a fact she’s not upset with you, or disappointed in you.”

“How can you know that?” Shane asks. His throat feels tight and he can’t stop thinking about what a fucking terrible son he is. He should have just realised this is all impossible and gotten over it before his parents noticed.

“I’ve been married to her for twenty-seven years. Trust me, Shane. I’m sure she’ll be back in a second and she’ll tell you herself.”

As though summoned, he hears the powder room door open and his mom reappears. She doesn’t go back to sit next to his dad on the couch; instead, she kneels in front of him so he has to look at her. Her eyes are red-rimmed, but when she speaks, her voice is steady. “I love hockey,” she says. “I know you do too. But it's just a game, and your happiness will always be so much more important than hockey could ever be. Do you hear me, sweetheart?”

He can’t speak, or else he’ll start crying and then she’ll start crying again and it will just be a mess. He settles for nodding. When she reaches up to hug him, he has to squeeze his eyes shut, but he doesn’t lose it.

His dad insists on getting a hug in too before the two of them finally let Shane excuse himself to his bedroom. He feels, unexpectedly, a tiny bit lighter, for all that they solved nothing. His parents still don’t know the most important part, and he’s not sure they’ll react so well if they do find out, but they aren’t disappointed in him for being gay, which is… something.

He hadn’t actually thought through what he’s going to do in his bedroom; he just wants some privacy after the intensity of that conversation. Almost out of habit, he sits down on his bed and pulls out his phone. He finds that he wants to text Rozanov about what just happened, which is ridiculous — they don’t talk outside of arranging hookups, and now that they’re not doing that, they don’t talk at all. Boston and Montreal have a pre-season game against each other in three weeks, and he’s struck by the urge to ask if they can take the opportunity to meet up and talk. He has no idea where that desire came from or what to do with it.

He sits there and stares at his phone for ages before he finally accepts that he’s not going to do it. Whether or not Shane’s parents are okay with him being gay is totally irrelevant to Rozanov, given there’s no way they can act on the rest of it. Besides, Rozanov is already furious with him; it’s probably not going to help if Shane texts him to say, “Hey, never mind, maybe this does matter!”

He’ll see Rozanov sooner or later. Maybe he’ll be able to find a moment to apologize to him — for handling the whole thing kind of badly, if nothing else. For now, he turns his phone off to resist the urge to do anything, and instead picks up the book about the founding of the MLHPA that he’s determined to get through before training camp starts. It’s not really enough to distract him, but nothing would be.

Chapter End Notes

facingthenorthwind endnote: yeah captain's practices with external skills coaches happen during the off-season, shh, I forgot. let shane be extra miserable. also this chapter contains my favourite paragraph in the whole fic (so far?). feel free to try to guess which.