Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Post-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Autistic Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Relationship Timeline Reveal, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-20 Words: 1,733 Chapters: 1/1

in between a thousand and one kisses

Summary

Yes, Shane is like the sun come down to earth, but for hockey. Yes, he married Ilya. Thank you for noticing.

Notes

The problem, Ilya has realized, is that neither “do you want to go?” nor “should we go?” are the right question when it comes to getting Shane's opinion on going somewhere, particularly somewhere with the team. The answer to the first question is nearly always no, and the answer to the second question is a terrifying level of social calculation that nearly always ends up at yes, but Shane wishes it were no.

Ilya has never met anyone who does the level of social calculation that Shane does, and honestly he's not sure how Shane has the energy to play hockey when he's doing that. It makes Ilya exhausted to just listen to it.

It takes a few months of hit or miss—mostly Shane going to things he clearly doesn't want to because he thinks they should or that it will make Ilya happy, a few times Shane saying he doesn't want to go to something and then Ilya feeling bad because he does want to go, and specifically he wants to go with Shane—but eventually they settle into a pattern.

If Shane has a bad practice—rare, but it happens—Ilya doesn't bother to ask. They stay in. They fuck. It is magical.

If Ilya has a bad practice and there is something, they go, at least for a while. It helps keep him from wallowing in his own head. And being able to show off his husband makes him feel so good.

He has a husband. He is in Canada and he has a husband and nobody can take Shane away from him. He is married to Shane fucking Hollander, and everyone is going to watch them kiss.

Otherwise, they go to things that are whole team events, especially Bood’s barbecues, and some of the things with the rookies, because they are their little ducklings and Ilya will not abandon them to the cold cruel world.

Also he loves seeing them look at Shane with the adoration Shane deserves. Yes, Shane is like the sun come down to earth, but for hockey. Yes, he married Ilya. Thank you for noticing.

A few times he goes to things on his own, but he usually hates it. Why would he be not with Shane when he could be with Shane?

People call them codependent, which Ilya has to look up, but he doesn't actually care. He tried living further away from Shane, and it was terrible. Maybe there's a version of him who never met Shane, who never fell in love with him, and maybe that version of him would be happy living not with Shane, but he thinks the more likely option is that that version of him would have been dead by twenty-five.

Ilya thinks sometimes that he is not an entire person, that there is some fundamental bit missing from him, buried with his mother or maybe with his father, and like a doll missing a leg, he will fall over if he does not have another person to hold him up. 

People think he is what makes Shane a person, but that is only because they have never known him without the part of him that is made of Shane. Shane is so much a person that sometimes his skin can't contain it all, and Ilya isn't enough of a person to fill his own skin, so he filled it with drinking and fucking and, best of all, Shane.

Shane rolls over in bed and shoves his face into Ilya’s pec, and Ilya pets his soft hair and murmurs, “You can climb into my skin if you want to, moya lyubov.” And then he closes his eyes and goes to sleep.

–

They usually go to the cottage for the summer, but now that they’re both in Ottawa, they try to go to at least some of the team building events. It was a good run this season, out in the playoffs but no serious injuries and only honest losses, so everyone’s mood is good, which makes attending things easier.

Both of them have attended team building events before Ottawa that were just thinly veiled rage-fests, everyone drinking a little too much and the WAGs pressed a little too close like they were the only things keeping their husbands from exploding.

Ilya thinks Montreal was probably worse, but he thinks Montreal was worse about everything ever, so he might not be the best judge.

But now it’s warm and Ilya is full of food and Shane even ate without making faces at his food, and they’re all sprawled out on the grass in Bood’s backyard, and Harris says, “Okay, I have to know: when did you get together?” 

Shane, who has been sitting on the grass next to Ilya, flops down and throws an arm over his eyes.

“Moya lyubov is embarrassed to admit how our relationship started,” Ilya says, delighted by Shane’s reaction. He knows Shane doesn’t really mind Ilya telling it, because Shane would make it very clear if he did, but he also loves seeing how Shane’s face looks when he’s flustered and squirming.

To that end, Ilya pulls Shane’s arm off of his face so Ilya can tangle their fingers together and press kisses to the back of his hand. Being able to see Shane’s scowl is just an added benefit to being able to kiss him, which Ilya always loves to do.

“Okay, now I’m curious,” Cassie Boodram says. She was lying down with her head in Boodram’s lap, but now she sits up to look at them. Bood makes an offended noise and tugs her back down. “I thought it was after the Scott Hunter kiss.”

Shane tries to tug his hand back from Ilya, but Ilya ignores him to keep kissing it instead. His hand now. Shane will have to pay ransom for its return. Preferably in the form of more kisses.

“There are…theories,” Harris says, sounding like he knows more about it than he wants to admit. “On the internet. Latest point people put it at is after the kiss, because Roz switched to Ottawa the next season, and we all know that was for Hollander.”

“I could not bear to be so far from my love for any longer,” Ilya puts in helpfully. Shane gives in on trying to take his hand back and just sighs loudly.

Ilya loves him so much.

“What are the other theories?” Cassie asks.

Harris hesitates, then says, “Okay, but none of you are allowed to make fun of me for knowing this much about this because, in my defense, it was literally my job to track this sort of stuff.”

There’s a murmur of unconvincing agreement. They will definitely make fun of him for it at some point.

But it will be nice making fun. Ilya will not let them do mean making fun, not of Harris.

Harris sits up, rolling his beer bottle back and forth between his hands. Troy sits up with him, looking at Harris the way Ilya looks at Shane. “So the next theory is after Shane’s injury, which is not that far off from the kiss. Some people saw Roz in the hospital to visit him, but a lot of people were saying that was just him being a good captain. Some theories have them getting together being why Rose Landry broke up with Shane—sorry Shane. There are some other sort of outlandish ones, but most start sometime after the breakup.”

Oh, this is fun.

“Anyone have any other guesses?” Ilya asks, delighted by the whole conversation.

It’s not a secret, not like their original relationship, but they also haven’t really spoken publicly about it because we spent years non-exclusively fucking is a hard thing to explain to an internet that doesn’t care about nuance, and Yuna is pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to get people to believe that Shane wasn’t cheating on Rose Landry if they knew the true timeline.

“My vote is the 2017 All-Star Game,” Bood says. “Ilya was being touch-y even for him.”

“2014 MLH Awards,” Hazy says. Then, over the rising noise of disbelief, he says, “I’m a goalie. I watch people. They had a thing.”

“I’m with Boodram,” Dykstra counters. “No way were they together back in 2014. I think it was 2017.”

“Anyone else?” Ilya prompts.

Into the silence, Haasy says, “2011 All-Star Game.”

That gets a whole round of skeptical laughter that only ends when Haasy tosses an empty beer can at Holmberg’s face.

Haasy really is Ilya’s favorite little fanboy. “One of you was close,” Ilya says.

“It was Hayes, wasn’t it?” Dykstra says dejectedly. “Damn. I should have trusted the goalie eyes.”

“You should always trust the goalie eyes,” Hazy tells him solemnly. His wife Lisa snorts next to him.

“Was Hayes right, then?” Harris prompts. “Was it 2014?”

“Nope,” Ilya says cheerfully. He kisses Shane’s hand again.

“Was it one of my guesses?” Harris asks.

“Nope,” Ilya says again, even more cheerfully.

“You said one person, so who does that—” Harris bites off his words as everyone turns to look at Haasy, whose face starts turning a brighter and brighter pink, until he looks like someone drew on his face with the Pike children’s markers. “No. Since your rookie year?”

Next to him, just loud enough to be heard, Shane says, “The summer before.”

Ilya’s heart thumps in his chest so hard he thinks everyone must have seen it through his shirt. He knows how scared it makes Shane to talk about their relationship to other people, still. So for him to be the one to say it, to say how long they’ve been together—

Ilya has to bury his face in Shane’s shoulder, because nobody is allowed to see what his face is doing right now.

“I love you,” he says in Russian into Shane’s shoulder, just loud enough that hopefully Shane can hear him. If not, at least Shane’s shoulder can hear him, and that will be enough until he can say it a thousand times more in between a thousand and one kisses. He will make Shane count all of them.

Around them, the air erupts into noise, but Ilya doesn’t care about the surprise anymore, because Shane is patting his hair with a hand that feels decidedly confused, and Ilya loves him so fucking much he might explode from it.