Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Ilya Is Something Of A Generational Loverboy And He Doesn't Even Know, Episode: s01e02 Olympians (Heated Rivalry), Canon-typical Shane Hollander Autism, Canon-typical Shane Hollander Anxiety and Over-thinking, Explicit Sexual Content, This Is Just An Embarrassing Love Letter To The Greatest Guy Ever, AKA My Close Personal Friend Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-05 Words: 3,066 Chapters: 1/1

evermore

Summary

Regina, Saskatchewan. Ilya looked outside the window on the bus to the arena, taking the sight of one uninspired building after another and the strange, yellow-orange tint to the sky and thought that this might be the kind of city that would bore someone to death, which, he supposed, was why it made sense for it to be the place where he met Shane Hollander for the first time.

Shane Hollander aged seventeen and nineteen, as seen through Ilya's eyes.

Notes

big thanks to my friend scribbleScourge for reading this over for me before i posted, and massive shout out to connor storrie's ass for getting me through the worst era of my life (i'm employed and in my early twenties)

Regina, Saskatchewan. Ilya looked outside the window on the bus to the arena, taking the sight of one uninspired building after another and the strange, yellow-orange tint to the sky and thought that this might be the kind of city that would bore someone to death, which, he supposed, was why it made sense for it to be the place where he met Shane Hollander for the first time.

Ilya had heard all about Shane Hollander, of course. Reviewed tapes of him playing hockey all the way from his second-floor bedroom in Moscow, Russia with the window facing the half-dead garden and wrote his stats down on the notebook where he wrote everyone else’s stats for when he needed or wanted to take a look before a game. It was tucked into his suitcase, right next to the ugly sweater Svetlana had bought for him a year ago, because—he’d wondered, is the thing. If he would have anything he would want to remember about Shane Hollander once they were face to face and he was a whole person instead of a shadowy figure on a tape. Shane Hollander had a weak backhand and he didn’t seem like the kind of guy anyone would consider fun to be around, but he played hockey like he was born for it, like the stick was an extension of his arms and the thin blade of his skates were the soles of his feet. He was short, but he made up for it by being fast, focused and unyielding. Ilya had watched him skate circles around the Finnish team on his coach’s old brick of a computer screen and thought that he navigated the ice as if his spine was forged from steel.

This close in the light of the slow-fading sun, Shane Hollander just looked soft. 

“You’re an awesome player to watch,” he said, and perhaps the worst part was that he was absolutely sincere about it, too. He had a strange, hopeful look in his eyes that dug into Ilya like ice picks even as he stuck his hands into the pockets of his coat and shuffled awkwardly, like he didn’t know what to do with Ilya’s indifference and still wasn’t willing to duck out. A regular, upstanding fucking Canadian, then. 

“Yes,” Ilya agreed, because he was an awesome player to watch, and Hollander chuckled. If he was expecting Ilya to say something nice about him, then he had another thing coming. Ilya wasn’t in the business of flattering anyone, including Shane fucking Hollander, Canada’s golden boy, who had big, sweet eyes and a lovely smile and a smattering of freckles all over the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, like he’d been kissed open-mouthed by the light of the sun. The crucifix tucked close to his heart grew warm.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Hollander shuffle until he was leaning against the wall almost a whole stride away from Ilya. He paused for a minute, and then Ilya thought that maybe he might say something and keep the conversation going. But he just ended up kicking off the wall lightly, turning to Ilya  and saying, “Anyways, I, uh. I should probably go. They’re waiting for me, but good luck with the tournament.” 

He held his hand out again. Ilya wondered if he remembered that he had already done it before. He brought his cigarette back up to his mouth and studied Hollander. The light flush on his face, the awkward, ill-fitting smile on his lips. His sweet eyes, the freckles. He had a firm, strong hand and despite the temperature, the touch of his palm against Ilya’s was summer-warm. He had a reliable handshake, as if he had practiced to make himself seem serious. Ilya’s eyes flickered to his hat, pulled all the way down to his eyebrows to conceal his hair, and he wondered if his ears were red underneath the fabric too. 

Shane Hollander was two and a half strides away when Ilya said, “You will not be so nice when we beat you.”

He turned around. The look of slight disbelief in his eyes sent a frisson of thrill down Ilya’s spine, cold fingers against each knob under his thin skin. He was impressed to see that Hollander was still smiling, even though he probably thought that Ilya was a dick. Regular, upstanding fucking Canadian. “That’s not happening.”

Ilya shrugged. He tried very hard not to notice the shape of Hollander’s strong shoulders, backlit by the sun. “See you in final.” 

Hollander made a vague sound of acknowledgment and he was the first to walk away. He looked back just barely, but didn’t meet Ilya’s eyes and Ilya listened to the sound of his footsteps as he left. 

Later, on the ice, Ilya looked over during warm-ups while coach was yelling their ear off about something or another and he saw Shane Hollander in the seats, sitting with the drawstring of his hoodie in his mouth, watching Ilya like he was trying to peel his skin backwards and find the exact muscle in his hands that made him good at what he did. If he noticed that Ilya was looking back at him, he did nothing about it and simply continued observing. Ilya watched him until coach noticed his attention wavering, and for the rest of the briefing, he pretended that he didn’t feel Hollander’s eyes on the back of his head, like he was trying to see through him. 

A year and some months later, Shane Hollander sat up in the stuffy, impersonal bed in room 1410, the all-too familiar stiffness returning to his shoulders and the subtle pinch coming home to the space between his eyebrows, and he asked, “You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?”

At nineteen, Ilya liked a lot of things. He liked hockey because hockey was fun and hockey made him money and he liked hockey because he liked winning. He liked fast cars and booze and he liked cities with fast cars and booze. He liked girls and girls liked him right back. He liked boys too, on occasion, even if he had yet to meet someone who interested him since moving, and fucking America was a lot more forgiving of that than Russia. He liked casual sex, liked the feeling of hands on him, liked the illusion of access and closeness it gave him with none of the burden of expectation and love. He liked Boston. He liked his routine. He liked how Shane Hollander kissed him, boyish and a little awkward, like he had done this once or twice and still wasn’t sure where his hands went. He liked the sound Hollander made when Ilya slipped his thumb into the cave of his mouth, something quiet and animalistic, like a cornered prey animal. He liked the shape of Shane Hollander’s strong shoulders, backlit by the sunset-orange light as he stood over Ilya and watched him kick his jeans off. He liked that Hollander didn’t protest the fact that Ilya had his hands in his hair while he sucked him off, liked that he let his eyes close as he relaxed his throat to take more of him into his mouth. He liked the wretched, pitchy little noises Shane Hollander made when he came, like he was embarrassed about feeling so much at once. 

He should put that in the notebook he hasn’t used since the Worlds in 2009. Shane Hollander. Has a weak backhand. Skates like he was born for it. Isn’t a quitter when it comes to giving head and makes wonderful, lovely sounds when he comes. 

“Me,” Ilya deadpanned. Hollander was really lucky that he was good at hockey, because thinking was clearly not his strongest suit. “Yes, Hollander, I will tell everyone.” 

Hollander didn’t crack a smile, but the tension in him gave out, just a little. “Because no one can know.” 

Ilya studied him in the sunset-orange glow of room 1410. The shape of his ears, the slight, imperceptible flush at their tips. The tension in the elbow he was resting on his knee, the close-cropped hair at the back of his neck. The mottled freckles along the slope of his strong shoulders, like the skin there had been kissed open-mouthed by the light of the sun. He really was pretty, and his eyes reminded Ilya of volcanic rock. Fossilized grit. He watched Hollander squeeze the hand over his knee into a fist, hard enough to dig his nails into his palm. The first time Ilya had sex with a boy, his hands hadn’t stopped shaking and the other boy had helped him do the buttons of his shirt up. He had waited for the curdle of fear to go away but it didn’t until he said, Ilya, I won’t tell. We both have the same secret, don’t we? It was like the ghost of that part of him—perpetually sixteen and held prisoner under lock and key—recognized the soft underbelly of the scared thing that lived inside Shane Hollander’s bones too. 

“Hollander, look,” Ilya said, and Hollander turned away from him. “I’m not going to tell anyone. Okay?”

Hollander didn’t meet his eyes. The fist his hand was clenched into unfurled and his eyes grew distant, and Ilya thought, we both have the same secret, don’t we? “Okay.” 

“Okay,” he repeated, and Hollander nodded and they didn’t touch again. That was just the way things went. That was just the way things went, after all. 

After the time in the hotel room after the All-Star game, watching Hollander bite down on the side of his own hand hard enough to draw blood as he came in Ilya’s mouth because Scott fucking Hunter was next door and Hollander was a considerate, stand-up guy whose aversion to inconveniencing others would’ve made him behave even if the fear of getting caught didn’t, Ilya became slightly obsessed with the idea of fucking him properly. Operative word: slightly.

The thing about Ilya was that he’d always been like a dog with a bone if he found something interesting long enough, and it was unfortunate, but he found plenty of things about Shane Hollander interesting now that he’d seen and heard him come multiple times. He liked kissing almost as much as Ilya did and he was a little bit needy about it, fingers twisting harshly into Ilya’s curls so he could force their mouths closer, insistent like he wanted to crawl right into Ilya’s skin. He had a terrible habit of covering his face when he got overwhelmed or embarrassed, and he got overwhelmed and embarrassed a lot when Ilya had his hand or his mouth around his cock. Hollander, who had once been described as someone who was as fuckable as a sickly grandmother on a memorable occasion in the Raiders’ locker room, leaked like a faucet when he was turned on and said please when he was close, all pretty and desperate like it was his first time having his dick touched. He always went completely boneless after an orgasm, a puppet cut off from its strings mid-performance. 

Sex softened Hollander’s steel-forged spine and turned him sweet inside out, and against all odds, the only person who knew him like this was Ilya. Operative word: obsessed. 

They went all the way on Hollander’s terms, in Hollander’s bland, unfeeling condo in Montreal, and it was nice. It was nice because Hollander tasted like generic toothpaste and a good-bad-good idea and he kissed Ilya like he had missed him, a little bit boy-next-door and a little bit desperate about it. He smiled against Ilya’s mouth while Ilya slid his hands under his hoodie and his shirt and felt the touch of his palm against his skin like a brand. He let Ilya nose at the crook of his neck like a dog and let him press his mouth to the skin stretched over his pulsepoint, once he wrestled him onto his back on the impersonal bed with too many pillows. Hollander’s hands, like the rest of him, burned like they had been touched by the sun when they squeezed Ilya’s arms and said, I still want, and his eyes, usually barred and hidden under lock and key, betrayed his complete lack of composure, something close to desire swimming in them like moonlight in still water.

Hollander really was pretty, and it undid something in Ilya that he hadn’t realized was pulled into a knot, unspooled in him like a hand pulling out of a clenched fist. Ilya wanted to kiss him until he couldn’t breathe, he wanted to make him cry and lick the tears off the side of his face with his tongue just to be able to keep more of him later. 

He felt something dig into the spaces between his ribs, hard enough to bruise, and he was horrified to recognize that it was want, sharp and incessant, like a festering wound. Looking down at Hollander’s spit-slicked, well-kissed mouth and the look of devastating want in his eyes, he had this sudden thought that he wanted this to be good for him. He wanted Hollander to know that he was good, that he could be good, and that he wanted Hollander to have fun, too. He wanted to be inside Hollander, or maybe he just wanted to kiss him again. Ilya ducked his head and brushed his mouth along Hollander’s, and Hollander’s eyes fluttered shut as he chased the ghost of it, sweet and mellow. His steel-spine was completely soft, and left behind in its shape was Hollander like this, chasing Ilya’s kiss with hazy, hazy eyes. 

Like an idiot, Ilya fucked him face-to-face. Then, when that became a little too much, Ilya turned him over and watched his strong shoulders as he nearly went slack once Ilya gently dug his thumbs into the dimples on either side of his spine while he pushed back into him. Hollander made a high, keening noise and buried his face into one of his many pillows. It was still bruising him in the spaces between his ribs, this crushing sort of want he felt whenever he thought about sex and Hollander and sex with Hollander like this. He was littered with freckles all along his shoulderblades and his spine and Ilya wanted to touch him while he fucked into him, open-mouthed where the light of the sun had touched him and kiss his shoulders and the knobs of his spine until he could map the mottled constellations with his eyes closed. 

Ilya wanted. He wanted, and he wanted, and he wanted, and that never ended very well for him.

Hollander came with both his elbows under him and both of Ilya’s hands on his hips, untouched and overwhelmed. His shoulders heaved from the force of it and the tips of his ears were red and he made these sweet, devastating noises that Ilya was sure he’d think about the next time he had a hotel room to himself and a hand around his dick. Like an idiot, Ilya wished that he could’ve seen his face. He wanted to see if Hollander had tears in his eyes, wanted to see if Hollander would have reached out for a kiss as he came, wanted to see if he’d throw his head back and bare his neck to Ilya, the softest part of him just handed to him without him having to ask for it. After he came, he leaned in, shaking from the force of his own want, and pressed his open mouth to a nameless cluster of freckles on Hollander’s shoulder. He wanted. He wanted, and he wanted, and he wanted, and he wanted. 

“Worth the wait?” Ilya asked. His hair was wet and the skin of Hollander’s knuckles under his fingertips was warm. He was worried that his mouth would never forget the shape of Hollander’s mouth again and he should have wanted to put his clothes on and leave, but he didn’t.

He expected Hollander to say something. You wish, Rozanov, or whatever, man. Maybe yeah, it was good, if he was feeling sincere enough. But he didn’t say any of that, and instead, he held Ilya’s face very gently, thumb against his chin and four fingers against the column of his throat, and leaned down to press his mouth to Ilya’s, chaste and sweet. He smiled a little and then pressed a kiss to Ilya’s forehead, a bare brush of his lips. A nameless, faceless emotion blew through Ilya like a gust of wind, sharp and hard and almost painful. 

Ilya was abruptly reminded of the last winter before his mother died, when he had tried skating on a frozen lake and something vicious had dug into the knobs of his spine as he stood straight and heard the sound of the ice creaking under his body weight for the first time. In this memory, there were four and a half inches of ice between him and the brutal, unforgiving mouth of the lake. He was very little and still growing into his height and his hands were still unused to the sting of the cold on bruised flesh. The ice creaked every time he moved and the fear dug into him hard, but he couldn't bring himself to turn around and walk back. The sound of his mother’s sweet, lovely voice was carried by the wind and she said: don’t go far, my firefly. 

It had been many years since then, of course. His mother was dead and every blurry afterimage of him as a boy was a broken bone. It was quiet and still here, in Hollander’s impersonal bedroom with too many pillows and bad wallpaper and the weight of Hollander’s kind, sweet eyes holding him down, and he couldn’t bring himself to look away from him. The fear was splitting into Ilya’s spine hard enough for him to feel it in the marrow. Underneath his skates, the ice fractured and left him in its epicenter, all alone and standing on nothing. 

“I should go,” he said. Something in Hollander’s eyes flickered and he nodded, and then they were pulling away and moving out of each other’s orbits. Ilya ached, and he wanted, and he wanted, but this was the way things went. This was the way things went, after all. 

fin.