Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, Troy Barrett, Wyatt Hayes, Lisa Hayes (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Centaurs Plane Crash, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, Suicide, Grief/Mourning, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Spoilers for Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Time Travel Fix-It, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Widowed Shane Hollander, everyone is alive at the end of this fic

Language:

English

Series:

Part 12 of all dwk heated rivalry fics

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-24 Words: 4,172 Chapters: 1/1

agony

Summary

After Ilya dies, Shane tries—very hard and for as long as he can—not to kill himself.

Notes

Formatted this on my phone, so if anything is janky, I will fix it later sorry!! Please let me know if I've missed any tags, thank you.

Thank you to anon for writing the fic that inspired this. I stayed up all night crying about Shane in the torment nexus, but I loved the idea of some of the Centaurs surviving, and I had to explore it

• Inspired by a year safe in your heart by Anonymous

After Ilya dies, Shane tries—very hard and for as long as he can—not to kill himself.

He knows that Ilya would want him to keep going. There’s so much to be done still, there was a whole life stretching ahead of them, and someone has to be around to take care of the Irina Foundation. Someone has to make sure that Ilya’s niece gets her money. Someone—Shane—has to execute Ilya’s will and go through all five thousand steps you have to take when someone—Ilya—dies. 

So he can't. He can't kill himself.

Ilya would be upset if he did it. His parents would be crushed beyond what Shane can even comprehend, so he just doesn’t think about it. 

He doesn’t want to do that to Hayden and Jackie and the kids, or to Wyatt and Troy and the few other survivors of the plane crash. Not that he’s really friends with any of them, but… they know, now. What Shane and Ilya are—were. And they would probably be upset.

Shane does whatever he can to find excuses. 

He has to stay one more day because Mom is coming over tomorrow. He can’t do it this morning because there’s a meeting in a few hours about Ilya’s estate that he can’t miss. He’s just got to make it through this awkward, agonizing session with the therapist his parents begged him to get. 

Things are bad. He can’t pretend otherwise. Without Ilya, he’s half a person, dragging his hollowed-out body everywhere he goes, simply because he knows Ilya would want him to. 

He never used to be like this. Even in his lowest moments, he never thought about… it. Harming himself. Not intentionally, anyway. All those times he hit himself on the head when he was having panic attacks don’t count. 

But now he’s stuck deep in the sludge of a life without his soulmate, and there’s no way out. 

Except one.

But, no. No, he’s not thinking about that. He’s not going to do it. Ilya would be upset….

Staying with the Pikes doesn’t help. Staying with his parents doesn’t help. Letting Svetlana come and stay with him, sleeping in the same bed because being alone is unbearable, doesn’t help.

He tries and tries to stay at Ilya’s place, but he always ends up having terrible dreams—ones where Ilya is there, in their bed, whispering concern into the crook of his neck. What is wrong, moya lyubov, he asks endlessly, his voice still a strong memory. The softness, the cadence, the lack of teasing. His accent is rougher when he’s sleepy. Why are you crying?

Shane wakes, and every single fucking time, he reaches across the bed, tears spilling down his face, calling out, “Ilya,” like he’ll get a response. Like reality is the bad dream, and Ilya is fine, healthy and alive and just out of reach. 

Mornings are the hardest to make it through. They're insurmountable, and he knows how to make it stop. How to see Ilya again.

But he can't. He can't do that.

So Shane stays at his own place, most of the time. He doesn’t go back to the cottage, ever. 

He tries, he tries so hard to stay alive. And everyone around him tries too.

Dad says he should get a pet, so he’ll have someone with him, some kind of accountability. (Ilya wanted a dog. Shane said no so many times.) Jackie offers to have WAGs hang out with him in a steady stream so he's never alone when he doesn't want to be. (He can’t stomach the attention, no matter how well-intentioned.) Rose asks if he wants to come stay with her in LA for a while, to get some space. (It’s too far away from everything that was Ilya’s.)

Then Troy invites him out for drinks. 

He sends it as a text. Simple, a little distant. Hey, Shane. Would you want to get drinks together sometime? Maybe we could talk.

Shane has said no so many times to so many people that he feels guilty, like Ilya is watching over his shoulder disapprovingly. And Troy was Ilya’s close friend, possibly his best friend in Ottawa, and Shane was awful about him. He was so fucking jealous and paranoid, and now he and Troy are just two people who should know each other and don’t, not at all. 

So Shane accepts. 

They meet at a bar, some random one neither has ever been to before, and it’s awkward. It’s painful. They have almost nothing to talk about other than their ghosts, and Shane doesn't want to say, Ilya told me about you and Harris. I know he didn’t make it. I’m sorry.

Mostly they drink. And when they’re tipsy enough, past the initial barrier of weird silence, they talk about their shitty teams. 

At some point, Shane has a nasty thought that at least Troy is away from Toronto. They can’t hurt him anymore. Which is so fucking unfair, because Troy’s new, better team is dead now, and that’s a thousand times worse. 

But he can’t help it. Montreal hasn’t let Shane go, digging their fingers in and trying to force him to get back on the ice. To do pressers. To be fucking normal, like the love of his life didn’t die in a blazing explosion. Coach told him that bereavement can only last so long, that grief doesn’t equal IR time, that as far as anyone is concerned, Ilya was only his work friend and nothing more. He can’t keep letting “life” distract him from hockey.

The only reason Shane hasn’t quit full-stop is because of Ilya. 

Ilya wouldn’t want this. It’s something he thinks every goddamn day. 

It’s what he thinks when the night ends, and he and Troy are so drunk they can’t stand and can’t stop crying like children, and Wyatt has to come and get them. Shane can’t remember his address—he gives Ilya’s. 

Wyatt gives him a look that Shane can’t read at all. He takes them both to his house instead, and they sleep over, two fuck ups who have no more light in their lives. 

Troy gets the couch. Wyatt tries to put Shane in the recliner, but Shane prefers the floor. It’s quiet and cool there, painfully hard against his back, but the pain makes him feel more like a real person. 

“Whatever, man,” Wyatt says, shaking his head and giving up on trying to convince Shane otherwise. “I’ll have pain meds ready for you in the morning.”

“Okay,” Shane says blankly. He doubts he’ll take them.

“Alright, well… goodnight,” Wyatt says. He goes to check on Troy, who has not stopped crying, though he’s silent about it now. In a whisper, he asks, “Are you okay?”

Troy makes a strangled sound. From the floor, Shane watches with detached concern, too drunk to know what to do about it.

“They’re all fucking dead, Hazy,” Troy whines. It sounds like the words are ripped from him, dragged past his teeth to taint the air around them. “I want a reset button, fuck. I miss them. I want them back.”

“I do too. I wish we could just go back and do it all again, but do it right. Never get on that stupid plane.”

“I can’t… I can’t do this. I can’t keep—” and Shane wants to know what he’s going to say, but Wyatt cuts him off, telling him strongly, “No, stop it, don’t say that. Harris wouldn’t want you to think that way.”

A low wail spills out of someone’s mouth, and the room goes silent, grief hanging so heavily over the three of them that it’s suffocating. 

Shane turns away from them before he can figure out which one of them made that horrible noise. It doesn’t matter anyway. 

In the morning, so early it’s still dark out, Shane feels worse than he has in a long time. 

The physical effects of the hangover aren’t fun, but it’s more than that—there’s a bone-deep ache that just won’t let go of him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, trying to be friends with the people that Ilya loved, that he was too stupid to meet before it was too late. Wyatt and Troy don’t ever say or make him feel like he’s intruding, but he knows he is. He wasn’t on that plane. He didn’t experience that. He wasn’t part of them, not even as Ilya’s fucking WAG, and he has no place with them now.

Wyatt’s wife Lisa looks dead tired when he steps into the kitchen and looks around a little helplessly. She sets down her cup of water and offers, “I can make you some toast? It might help.”

“No, that’s fine. Thank you.” 

“Are you sure?”

His skin itches uncomfortably. They don’t know each other. They only met at the memorial and once or twice since then. 

“I’m sure. I’m gonna go, actually. Will you tell Wyatt and Troy I said… I said thank you? For last night.”

Lisa has blue eyes that are see-through in the morning light. They’re a different shade than Ilya’s, but he still can hardly look at her face, trying not to get caught up in the whirlpool. 

“I can give you a ride, I’m not asleep yet,” she says firmly. “Please let me, Shane.”

In another life, they could’ve been friends. He would know her from going to Bood’s BBQs or seeing her in the stands, or joining that stupid groupchat Ilya asked about once. It would make sense for her to care about him, because they wouldn’t be strangers held together by a fraying thread. 

“No,” he says, and goes before she can try again. 

He gets an Uber, which is a bad choice because the driver cannot stop asking questions. Shane doesn’t bother answering, just stares out the window and feels his resolve slip away with every passing minute. 

Nothing is right. Everything is wrong.

He fucked it all up, every step of the way. 

He’s so fucking lonely, and it will never get better. 

The whole rest of his life will be this, feeling nothing and thinking of what ifs and regretting everything he never did. 

Ilya wouldn’t want this. But Ilya isn’t here anymore.

When he finally arrives at Ilya’s apartment, Shane goes to the bathroom and finds Ilya’s anti-depressants. It’s a full bottle, like he got them topped up just before he left for the roadie all those months ago. 

Thank you, he thinks exhaustedly, going to lay in their bed. I’m sorry. I’ll see you again soon, my Ilyusha.

The thing about killing yourself is that you expect to be dead. At least, Shane did.

He doesn’t really believe in any specific afterlife. It doesn’t matter to him what came next, as long as he can be with Ilya again. Whatever that looks like, he at least hopes it will be less terribly lonely. 

When he wakes up, he assumes he’s in a hospital bed. 
Maybe Lisa somehow knew what he was going to do, and they found him in time. His parents will be so angry with him, but he’s too exhausted to even think about that. 

He drifts, for a while. Opening his eyes feels like a nightmare.

The room is quiet, at least. Maybe he’s not in a hospital—maybe he’s still at home, and he just failed at overdosing. Somehow still alive like a cruel joke.
Underneath his nose, the bed doesn’t smell like Ilya, but that’s not weird. It’s been long enough that his scent is fading. Shane didn’t clean his sheets for weeks after the crash, shoved his nose into the pillows every night and stole the last crumbs of Ilya he could find, but. Eventually he had to wash them. Svetlana told him it had to be done, and held him when he broke down in front of the washing machine.

Shane opens his eyes, needing to think about anything else.

He finds that he’s not in a hospital or any of his and Ilya’s homes. No, he’s pretty sure this is a hotel room. The walls are bland and unfamiliar, yet known in the way all hotels are at this point in his life. 

Why the fuck is he in a hotel room?

Sitting up gingerly, Shane tries to understand what’s happening. Everything he thinks of is ridiculous—maybe he went into a coma or a fugue state, maybe he got drunk again or maybe he’s on a roadie with the Metros, maybe this is a terrible dream or maybe everything else was, Christmas and Boxing Day and the fight and the plane—

On the bedside table, a little jingle begins, soft at first and growing louder. A phone. His phone? He can call someone, he can call Ilya. Then he’ll know, because if Ilya doesn’t pick up, it must’ve been true. And if he does, he’ll tell Shane what the hell happened.

Turning his head, he’s already reaching out to grab the phone before he even sees it. His fingers wrap around a weird, bulky shape, and it takes Shane a moment to realize what’s different.

It’s a flip phone.

After a minute, Shane shakes himself out of it. Okay, whatever. He remembers Ilya’s number. It doesn’t matter that it’s not his phone.

Then he opens it, and again he has to pause, has to breathe. Frozen in the strange bed, he reads the date several times. 

December 23rd, 2008.

What the fuck.

There’s a remote on the table too, so he grabs it and turns the TV on. The TV is an older model too, thick with a staticky screen, but he ignores that as he searches for a news channel. He finds one, two, three. All of them say that it’s 2008.

Shane stands on shaking legs, goes to the bathroom, and proceeds to have a panic attack in the bathtub. 

Later, Mom knocks on the door to the hotel room. When he doesn’t answer, she uses the extra card to come in, telling him through the door to get up, it’s a big day, you can’t afford to sleep in Shane! 

Leaning over the sink, he splashes water on his face. It wakes him up a little, and it feels too real for this to be a dream. He can feel the water droplets sliding down his skin, a little too cold to be comfortable. 

He has no idea what’s going on. If this is real or if it’s all a big prank or something. But when he looks in the mirror, he sees that he looks younger. His hair is shorter. He’s smaller around the shoulders and biceps. These aren’t things that could change overnight, unless he’s hallucinating? Is this him reliving everything in his last moments? Is he still laying in their bed, dying, dreaming of the life they briefly had together?

“Shane! Come on, we’re going to be late,” Mom calls, sounding a little irritated. “What are you doing in there?”

Standing straighter, Shane meets his own eyes in the mirror and feels the sludge again, crawling up his throat. 

He throws open the door, and Mom is there, younger too and dressed in clothes that even he knows haven’t been in style for years. More than that, though, her hair isn’t so gray. She has less wrinkles. She doesn’t look so fucking sad. 

“Mom,” he rasps. “What is going on?”

She blinks at him. “What do you mean? You have a game in a few hours, sweetie. World Juniors? Remember? Shane, are you okay?”

World Juniors. December 2008. 

He sucks in a breath, his chest rattling wetly. “Mom, please. If this is a prank or if I was in a coma or something, please just tell me. I can’t… I can’t handle….”

“A coma?” She repeats. 

Her hand comes up to press to his forehead, and despite himself he leans into her touch, because he’s so fucking starved for it. He sees his parents as often as he can bear it, and they hug him when he allows, but it’s not enough. And right now, when nothing makes sense, he just wants his mom. He wants Ilya. Ilya would see that he’s freaking out and stop whatever was happening, or he would tell Shane point-blank that he’s gone crazy, that he’s okay because Ilya has him.

“Shane, honey, what are you talking about? Are you okay?”

Shane looks at his mom, forcing himself to meet her eyes. Concern, real concern, is writ all over her face. She wouldn’t prank him, he thinks. She would never taunt him like this. If there’s anyone who has seen how badly Shane’s fallen apart the last few months, surely Mom has seen it the most. He slept in their fucking bed for two weeks after the plane crashed. She would never do this to him, not if she knew.

Weakly, he asks, “Is it um. Is it really 2008?”

Her expression clears, pushing into that something is wrong but we are all going to be so calm about it mode he’s very familiar with. “Shane,” she starts, “did you hit your head last night?”

“No,” he says, and it’s not a lie. He did not hit his head in December 2008 or in April 2021. “Sorry, Mom. I think I had a bad dream. It’s just kind of—clinging. I’m fine. Can you get out so I can get dressed?”

For the rest of the day, Mom gives him big-eyed worried looks. She must tell Dad, because he—also looking younger and less destroyed by loss—pulls Shane aside a few times just to ‘check in’. 

Shane knows he’s being weird. He drifts behind them in the hallways of Regina’s practice rink like a ghost, trying to remember the names of all the people who clearly know his. It’s pointless, though. He can’t remember anything except that this was the day he and Ilya first met. 

When it comes time for him to play, he manages to pull himself together. 

With the Metros, playing hockey has been difficult lately. They all know what Shane isn’t saying, and they have no sympathy for him. Not enough for it to matter, anyway. In their eyes, he was sleeping with the enemy, and now he’s letting his feelings ruin everything they’ve worked for. Being on the ice is painful, surrounded by people who should be his friends, remembering with every movement that he will never play with Ilya again. 

But here… here, it’s not so bad. These people don’t know him. They’re just kids, and they want to win, and know he can get them there.

It’s not the best game he’s ever played, but he doesn’t let it drag him down. He does his best, and when he’s not actively in the middle of playing, he stands back and stares into the stands.

There’s someone there. Alone, drowning in a sweater and a toque, staring down at Shane. 

He’s buzzing the whole time the Canadian team plays, undresses, and start leaving.

Of course, he doesn’t leave. He goes to the stands and watches Russia play. It’s hard to see from so far away, but his eyes stay locked on that 81 jersey. Mom talks to him about their play, and he vaguely hears what the coach is saying, but it all goes in one ear and out the other. 

All he can focus on is Ilya.

After, he wonders if this is real, too. Is that really his husband? Is he a figment of Shane’s desperate mind, conjured in his last moments? Is this a memory, and he’ll act exactly the same as he did when this really happened, or is this a dream? Will he remember Shane? What if he doesn’t? 

Part of Shane doesn’t even want to see him. It’s a small, vicious voice that exists in the back of his head. All of this has hurt so fucking much, it’s torn him and his heart and his life apart. Loving Ilya has been painful from the beginning, and their brief pockets of joy have only ended this same way, with Shane a pathetic mess and completely alone. He’s cried so much on all of his friends that no one can look at him the same anymore. No one says Ilya’s name, except to say, he wouldn’t want this. He would want you to be happy. As if they know anything, as if that’s even possible.

How can Shane go and face this seventeen year old version of him? How can he put them both through this again? Ilya ruined him, and he let it happen over and over and over again. Shouldn’t he spare them both?

But… what if it’s the last time Shane ever gets to see Ilya? He can’t pass it up. So what if it’ll kill Shane all over again? 

It’ll be worth it, to see him alive one more time. To tell him he loves him, and he’s sorry, and he would do anything to prove it to him.

Forcing himself outside, he keeps his eyes down until he’s just around the corner from the spot. From Ilya. 

Two summers ago, Ilya convinced him to have a drink with him. They sat by the bonfire and talked, not about anything serious or heavy. It was early on in their stay at the cottage, so they just wanted to enjoy their time together.

At one point, with Shane’s head in his lap, Ilya said, “We need code word,” apropos of nothing.

“Hmm? A code word? Why?”

“What if we get stuck in a time loop,” Ilya said seriously, petting Shane’s hair and neck with a soft hand. “Or there are aliens?”

“Aliens?” Shane had a good laugh at that, but he still turned around to face Ilya. There in his lap, his scent was strong, and soon after this conversation, Shane would turn his face down and press his mouth to certain body parts. But that was later. Right then, he only looked up at Ilya with an adoring look and said, “Okay. Aliens, sure. What should our code be?”

Something ridiculous. Something only they would understand. Something that could prove it was really them. 

Shane hasn’t thought about that code word in years. He thinks about it now, his fingers clenching in his pockets. What will happen if he messes this up? If it doesn’t go the same way it originally did? Does it matter?

Taking a deep breath, he moves.

And there, under the No Smoking sign, is Ilya. There's a cigarette in between his fingers, already lit. He looks so young, more slender and with a few more moles than he did last time Shane saw him. Every part of him catches Shane's eye, from his fluffy hair to his pouty mouth to the clothes he's wearing and the way he holds his body.

His eyes are puffy. He looks… fragile.

Shane forces himself forward. Forces himself to speak. He says, “Ilya Rozanov?” and his voice cracks.

Ilya whips his head around, and they stare at each other for an eternity. All Shane can think is, he’s alive, he’s here, he’s right here in front of me. He's seconds away from having a break down.

Leaning down, Ilya stubs his cigarette out, then steps closer. His hands are shaking, and he can’t stop staring at Shane’s face. In a whisper, he says, “Моя газонокосилка?”

Shane inhales, tears flooding his eyes, the dam finally burst. “Yes,” he half-laughs, half-sobs. “Yes, I’m your lawn mower. Fuck, Ilya.”

Their bodies crash together, and Shane decides he doesn’t give a shit what this is, because Ilya is real and solid underneath his hands, and he knows Shane. He knows him.

They collapse to the ground together, both of them weeping. 

“Shane, Shane,” Ilya keeps saying. His hands draw over every part of Shane's body, though they return again and again to his neck, his jaw. Wherever he touches, he leaves the skin tingling and on edge, and sweet torment. He's so frantic, his voice cracking under the weight of his emotions.

Getting to his knees, Shane cups Ilya's face, meeting his eyes. He never wants to look away again. He lets himself get sucked into the whirlpool.

“I love you,” he swears, vows. The words he's agonized over for months spill out of him uncontrollably. “I love you and I'm so fucking sorry, Ilyusha. Please believe me. You're—you're everything to me, more than hockey, okay? I shouldn't have said those things to you. I can't believe I ever let you think—”

“Shh, shh.” Ilya pulls him close until they're a tangle of limbs, every part of them touching. “No, no, my love. It's okay. We will talk later. I love you.”

A tiny, tiny piece of his grief breaks off in his chest. Sucking in a breath, Shane hides himself in Ilya's neck, swearing he will never let go of this man again.