Rating:

Mature

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 & Hayden Pike, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Hayden Pike, Rose Landry, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Hospitals, Episode: s01e05 I'll Believe in Anything (Heated Rivalry), Amnesia, Amnesiac Shane Hollander, Some Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Texting, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, POV Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander is Obsessed With Ilya Rozanov, Hopeful Ending, Pining Shane Hollander, Sexuality Crisis, Shane Hollander's Boston Lily, Identity Porn, Angst

Language:

English

Series:

Part 13 of all dwk heated rivalry fics

Collections:

Hollanov Fest 2026

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-17 Words: 4,680 Chapters: 1/1

know my love infinite

Summary

“It was nice of Rozanov to come check on you."

Shane understands that Rozanov must be a person, though when he scans through his memories—the ones of being sixteenish and the ones he’s made in this hospital room—he can’t conjure up any details.

“Who?” He asks, staring up at her.

“Oh, I should’ve realized. He’s the captain of the other team. You two are pretty serious rivals,” she chuckles. “He just came by to see how you were, and apologize I suppose.”

“Apol’gize? Did he hit me?”

“No, no. But, captain to captain, you know….”

After the nice, pretty nurse leaves, Shane is alone for a moment. He finds himself looking at the doorway, imagining a shadow there, a Rozanov. He has a professional rival? Maybe he’s like that Russian kid everyone says is going to give Shane a run for his money.

“Rozzzzanov,” Shane says to himself, his hand coming up to rub his chest. Distantly, there’s a beeping that’s getting faster.

--

When Shane is hit during the game, his injury is a lot worse, leading to ten years worth of memory loss. His parents and friends try to help him remember who he is, but something (or someone) is missing…

Notes

ilya haunts the narrative here <3

prompter, I hope you enjoy!!

title from positions by ariana grande

QUICK WARNING for a certain m-slur that used to(?) be used as a name for a level of hockey. it is NOT used as a slur in this context but if the word upsets you, just a warning that it is used once in this fic in the beginning section

Mom, Dad, and the doctors say that Shane is missing over ten years of memory. Apparently, he was hit pretty hard during a game—a professional game, because Shane is in fact a professional hockey player now. 

Shane doesn’t remember that, but like, it’s fine. He still made it, not that he’s ever really doubted that he would. And the doctors say he’ll probably remember it all soon. Okay… that’s not entirely true, they didn’t say it like that. They said it’s possible he will regain anywhere from some to all of his memories, and he shouldn’t give up hope.

Which he is taking to mean that he just needs to heal a bit more and get off the good drugs, and then he’ll be okay. 

When he says this to Mom and Dad, they give him weird, tense looks. Mom starts to say, “That’s not—Shane, it doesn’t work that way—“ before Dad puts his hand on her arm and she stops talking with an exhausted sigh. 

“We hope so, son,” Dad says, moving his face into a sad attempt at a smile. 

Mom’s smile is wobbly too. With shiny eyes, she goes to talk to the doctors again, and Shane has to close his eyes and stop watching because his head is killing him. 

At some point, a nurse comes by to check on him. She agrees to give him his next dose of painkillers, not because he asked but because it’s time. He doesn’t remember this, but he’s already asked several times and was really sad when he got denied.

“It was nice of Rozanov to come check on you,” she says conversationally as she gets everything prepared.

Shane understands that Rozanov must be a person, though when he scans through his memories—the ones of being sixteenish and the ones he’s made in this hospital room—he can’t conjure up any details. 

“Who?” He asks, staring up at her. She looks tired, but she smiles at him, and he likes it. She’s pretty, he tells himself. Shouldn’t this be a dream, having a pretty nurse? His teammates, the ones he remembers, would be so jealous if they knew.

“Oh, I should’ve realized. He’s the captain of the other team. You two are pretty serious rivals,” she chuckles. “He just came by to see how you were, and apologize I suppose.”

“Apol’gize? Did he hit me?”

“No, no. But, captain to captain, you know….”

No, Shane doesn’t know. He’s captained all of his teams for the past few years but that’s different. That’s peewee and bantam and midget. Not the National fucking Hockey League. It must be really different to lead a group of real professionals. A sense of pride flows through him, knowing that in this weird not-future, he’s talented and reliable enough to be a captain. At—wait, how old is he supposed to be again? Mom says it’s 2017. So he’s 27? Then he’s a captain at 27. Sick.

After the nice, pretty nurse leaves, Shane is alone for a moment. He finds himself looking at the doorway, imagining a shadow there, a Rozanov. He has a professional rival? Maybe he’s like that Russian kid everyone says is going to give Shane a run for his money. 

“Rozzzzanov,” Shane says to himself, his hand coming up to rub his chest. Distantly, there’s a beeping that’s getting faster.

Dad walks in then, his form breaking up the idea of the man standing in the doorway. He’s got a bag with him, but when he sees Shane, he frowns.

“Is your chest hurting you?”

He has to take stock of himself, floating as he is. It takes a moment but when he focuses, he realizes that yes, there’s an ache lurking below his ribs. Which is weird, because they just gave Shane the good drugs. He’s not supposed to feel any pain.

“Yeah,” he replies, his voice a little higher than normal for some reason. “Yeah, m’fine, Dad.”

Shane’s room is… oddly not that different from what he last remembers of it.

His head is still messed up, but it seems a little weird to him that nothing has changed in almost ten years. Really, other than some boxes sitting around that say things like “Brand Deals 2014” and “David Important Files 2015-2016”, everything is the same.

“Do I still sleep in here?” He asks, standing in the doorway, full of confusion.

His parents laugh at him, not rudely. He still feels a little insulted, but maybe that’s the slightly less good drugs making him sensitive.

“No, of course not,” Mom tells him, patting his good shoulder. “You have your own apartment, but it’s in Montreal. We thought it would be best for you to rest up for a few more days here, and then we can go visit, okay?”

The idea of a two hour car ride sounds miserable right now, so Shane agrees without issue. 

If he spends those few days wondering about his apartment, what it looks like, if it has all of the things he likes in it, and if it will bring back any of his memories, then… there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, once they’re on the road, Mom says as much—“I hope this helps, sweetie.”

He does too. No real memories come back over those few days, nor do they come on the road. 

Not until they’re in Montreal proper, and Shane sees some random street, and says, “Do we need to turn here?”

Dad hums in thought. “No, I don’t think so.”

It’s just—weird. Shane is pretty sure he remembers that that specific street leads… somewhere. Somewhere important. “Are you sure? Is my place in that direction?”

“No, you’re a bit farther from the city center. This is the long route to your place, son. We won’t be there for a while,” he says, gesturing to the map which shows at least thirty more minutes to go.

Shane’s positive there’s something that way, but he bites his tongue. He won’t be staying with his parents forever. Once he’s okay to drive, he’s free to live on his own again, memories returned or not. He’ll just have to explore it then.

He thinks that the weird sense of knowing something he absolutely doesn’t will go away when they get to his apartment.

Instead, it gets worse. 

The first thing he notices is that he really likes the place. 

The second thing he notices is that he feels kind of ill as he takes it all in. Not physically ill, but in his chest, like that ache he got at the hospital. Just like last time, he doesn’t know what could be causing it. The apartment is nice—exactly to his taste, who could imagine that—and it’s clean, just waiting for him to heal up and come home. His parents sit on the couch and don’t interfere as he pokes around, trying to find clues of who he is now.

He finds hockey books, ones he doesn’t remember reading but look interesting. The fridge is full of meat and vegetables, with a disturbing lack of anything sweet. Then there’s the trophy room, which is so full of everything Shane has ever wanted that he has to sit down and breathe for a little while. 

Everything seems perfect. Shane doesn’t know what’s normal for the future version of himself—or, the current version, but with full memories, but it feels like the future—but if he had to guess, he would say this is definitely it.

There’s only one thing that stands out to Shane as being maybe out of place. A dark hoodie, folded neatly and laid on his pillow.

Clearly, Shane grew up a lot in the ten years he can’t remember. A lot of things changed. But he’s positive that he can’t have changed so much he would leave clothes on his bed like that. 

Grabbing it, he immediately notices how soft it is. His whole body itches to put it on, even though he only has one good arm right now and hasn’t quite gotten used to getting his shirts on by himself. Rubbing the fabric between his fingers, he walks towards his living room.

The hoodie smells nice, he finds as he moves. Like cologne, but not one Shane remembers wearing. Even then, he feels he knows that cologne, the underlying musk, and the answer sits frustratingly on the tip of his tongue.

In the living room, his parents are talking quietly to each other, but stop when they see him. “Everything okay?” Mom asks.

Shane holds the hoodie out. “Is this mine? Or… do I have people over often?”

“It doesn’t look like yours,” Dad offers.

“It could be your friend Hayden’s,” Mom adds. “We know he comes by sometimes, and so does your other friend JJ. Or it could be Rose’s.”

Shane’s heart thumps a little painfully in his chest at that. He feels like he knows that name. “Roz…?”

“Your ex-girlfriend, honey.”

Mom and Dad look earnest, like they just want to help and have no idea that those words send a tornado through Shane’s brain. An ex-girlfriend? Roz is an ex-girlfriend? His thoughts fly around in his head, get spit out and sucked back in, and the worst part is that he can’t even see it all. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t remember. All he knows is that there’s something not right about that, and there are reasons why he feels that way, and he can’t access any of it.

Time doesn’t fly while he’s healing—he’s so tired and bored and in pain, and he can’t do anything active or watch TV or look at his phone to google himself or anything. All he’s allowed to do, it seems, is sit around or walk a circuit of the house, and wait for his brain to decide to stop hurting.

The second he’s allowed to start calling people, with minimal screen viewing, he goes right to his texts to see who to call first.

There are lots of conversations there, though he can’t look at them for too long yet. He decides to skip the group chats with his teammates, and handily ignores the concerned texts his parents sent him the night he got hit. What he’s looking for is Hayden—his teammate who came to visit him in the hospital, and who his parents say is his best friend—when he finds something else.

A text thread with someone named Lily.

No one has mentioned a Lily to him yet. His parents have tried to remember all of the names he should know, but deep down he’s wondered if there was more. He’s supposed to be twenty-seven, right? People in their late twenties don’t tell their parents everything. Not even Shane as he remembers himself, a teenager, tells them everything.

He’d thought it was possible there were people his parents didn’t know about, and now maybe he’s found one.  

He taps on their text thread. Immediately, he finds messages not just from the day he got hit but in the days after, too. Frantic, worried words asking if he’s okay, which hospital he was taken to. Apologies, for some reason. One last message that says, I’m coming to see you.

And then… nothing since. 

Swallowing hard, Shane stares at that last text until his head starts to ache, until it feels like he’s two seconds away from his skull splitting open. 

He doesn’t even know who she is, but his emotions rise in recognition anyway. She was worried about me. She went to see me. She’s… ignoring me.

Shane puts his phone down, nauseous. What could have happened? And who is she to him? Why doesn’t anyone know about her? 

Too sick to keep thinking about it, he goes to lay down. Mom finds him later and scolds him for pushing himself too far. He knows he did, he’s only supposed to have minimal screen time right now, but… he has to know. When he feels okay enough to look again, he rereads all of her messages and decides to send his own.

Shane: Hi. I just wanted to let you know that I’m okay. 
Shane: I’m sorry, I’ve lost a lot of memory from the hit. I don’t remember who you are. How do we know each other?

Once it’s gone through, he shoves his phone under his pillow and goes back to sleep.

He doesn’t end up calling Hayden until the next morning. It’s a little awkward, because Shane doesn’t really know him even though they’ve met since his bell got rung. But Shane is used to dealing with teammates, and Hayden is great at asking questions and keeping the conversation going. It’s a lot of ‘how are you?’ and ‘how’s your head?’ and ‘are you still in a sling?’ and ‘do you want to see pictures of your godchildren that you forgot you have?’.

Eventually, Hayden pauses talking about his kids, and offers to catch Shane up on everything that’s happened in the last ten years. 

“Please,” says Shane.

Which is how he finds out that yes, he’s really won two Stanley cups and a thousand other awards. He dated a movie star. He’s been at every All Star game since he was drafted. Apparently, he’s even an underwear model. Besides that, nothing much has changed with him as a person, which Hayden says so plainly it makes Shane laugh.

The conversation is enlightening, and Shane’s head is spinning from everything he’s forgotten. The only hiccup is—

Shane asks, “How do you know all of this stuff?”

Hayden laughs. “Um, we’re best friends? Of course I know it. Jackie and I even have a case of ginger ale ready for next time you come over.”

Shane can’t help but smile. “You’re really nice, Hayd.”

“Thanks, I try.”

“Can I ask? How long have we been friends?” It’s something he’s been wondering about. His parents act like Hayden is almost a second son, but Shane doesn’t remember him at all. They must have met after Shane got drafted, but when?

Hayden sounds proud when he says, “Dude, we’ve been friends for the longest of anybody. I met you before I even met Jacks.”

“Oh yeah, when was that?”

“Since rookie season,” Hayden begins, and without thinking at all, Shane blurts out, “Wait, no, I knew him before that.” 

They both pause. Shane blinks up at his ceiling, wondering where the fuck that came from.

A little carefully, Hayden asks, “Him? Him who?” 

Great question. “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t know who I mean.”

“Uh… okay then! Anyway, we met in our rookie season. We were both new to the team so we kind of fell in together, you know? And we’ve been tight ever since. You were at my wedding. Maybe someday I’ll—wait, shit,” Hayden curses suddenly.

“What, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t know he expects to hear, but it’s not Hayden hesitantly asking: “Shane, has anyone told you about Lily?”

His heart starts racing at the sound of that name. So someone does know about her?

“No,” he replies. “Do you know who she is?”

Hayden is quiet for a second. Finally, he sighs. “Look, man. You’re really private about her, okay? I know she exists. You guys have been talking for a long time, like years, and you’re definitely sleeping with her. I’m pretty sure she lives in Boston? But… sorry, I don’t know anything else about her, really. Like, maybe she’s your girlfriend? But you’ve never said. You might just be fuckbuddies, you know?”

“Oh,” Shane says. He feels a little lightheaded. “No, that’s… thank you, Hayden, seriously. I’ll, uh, try to figure that out. Later. Can you keep telling me about Arthur? Is that his name?”

Hayden is a nice guy, so he lets the conversation drop. 

Later, when Shane is exhausted from all that he’s learned and wishing his concussion would just heal already, his phone buzzes.

A text from Lily.

He reads it over and over again, but that doesn’t make the words make anymore sense. 

Lily: We don’t know each other. Is better if you don’t text me again. Get well soon, Shane. 

Shane doesn’t text her again.

He thinks about it a lot. He probably spends the entire next month and a half thinking about it. Sometimes he starts typing something out, only to reread her words and get a pit in his stomach all over again. The sense of wrongness hounds him, but he doesn’t know if it’s because he doesn’t know this person or because of what she said or because he thinks maybe they have strong feelings for each other, real feelings, and almost no one knows about her. 

Healing distracts him. Memories come back slowly. Mostly Shane remembers things about hockey and his parents and his apartment. It’s not a complete picture by any means, but he starts to feel less like a teenager magically transplanted into an adult body and life. 

Looking through his phone and apartment help a lot. Despite the seemingly large amount of deleted texts, there’s a lot to be gleaned about what he’s missing. (He rereads his and Lily’s conversations, then makes himself stop when it starts feeling like his heart is going to beat out of his chest.)

Probably the most shocking thing he finds is a fucking dildo hidden deep in the recesses of his closet. Luckily he’s alone then, his parents out in the city to give him time to get used to the place again. He would stay on his own, but his arm is still in the sling and he can’t drive yet. It sucks.

At some point, he watches the video of what happened to him, still having no memory of that whole day. 

The first time, he watches himself; the second, he watches Hayden fight the other player in his defense. It’s only on the third round that he sees that guy Rozanov. And he feels… really really weird about it all. He can see his mouth moving. What did he say? Is that why Rozanov came to visit him? He wants to ask—maybe it’s important for his healing or something, to know what he said then? Had he already lost his memory? Is that even how it works?—but Shane doesn’t have Rozanov’s number.

That night, he dreams of someone who he thinks is Rozanov, but he’s not sure. He can’t quite remember what his face looks like, but his brain is certain that yes, this is Ilya. 

The dream is weird. They’re in bed, and naked. Rozanov speaks to him in low tones with words that don’t make any sense, but leave Shane relaxed anyway. Then Rozanov slinks his way down Shane’s body, and sucks his dick so good that Shane wakes up mid-orgasm, somehow managing to muffle the noise he makes into his pillow. 

After he’s calmed down—and changed his boxers, and thrown them and his sheets into the wash like a guilty teenager—he tells himself that it must’ve just been his imagination running wild. 

But then he dreams it again. He dreams of other moments too, and in the day, he’s able to slowly recall more details about them, as if they were memories. Real memories.
Shane’s not gay, though. He’s not. He likes women. Isn’t Lily proof of that? 

This internal debate isn’t entirely what makes him finally reach out to Rose, who he’s been kind of avoiding, only replying vaguely to her texts. He doesn’t have many memories of her—almost none, really—but he knows that, for some reason, when he thinks about her he feels embarrassed and lightheaded and guilty. 

He pushes through it, maybe needing to prove it to himself that he could like her. (He would text Lily, but… no. That’s a can of worms that Lily has firmly shut the lid on. No matter how much it hurts, he doesn’t reach out to her again.)

As for Rose, no one knows why they broke up. Mom says he told them it was because their schedules didn’t line up enough. Privately, Dad pats him on his good shoulder and says, “You told me you weren’t compatible.”

But Shane tries anyway. It’s true that her schedule is busy, but since he’s basically unemployed at the moment, he’s got all the time in the world to get on the phone with her. And he finds that Rose is really nice, funny and sweet and perfectly blunt. She knows he has amnesia, and she’s great about explaining things he doesn’t remember. 

Late one night, when they’re on the phone, he psychs himself up to ask her about their relationship. It’s not something they talk about, but he has to know. Has to know if the dreams about Rozanov are a fluke, if she knows about Lily too, if he can be normal.

“Shane,” she says at some point, sounding fond and amused. “If you want to ask something, you can. Go ahead, ask anything. I’ll try my best to answer it.”

Yeah, he really likes Rose. Covering his face with his hand, he asks, “Why did we break up? You’re… perfect.”

Rose doesn’t react like he expects. She honestly laughs at him, her voice tinkling through the speaker.

“I’m missing some parts, I think,” she giggles. “Even if I had them, I don’t think you’d really want me.”

Shane’s not great at reading between the lines, but his face flushes with heat at the implication there. Does she know that he dreams of being fucked, then? And if she knows, does mean they are definitely real? 

But what about Lily? 

“I—I would—“ He stutters, trying anyway. It feels like one last death knell to the idea of his perfect, normal girlfriend.

“I’m pretty sure you have a secret boyfriend anyway,” she drawls. “One day you’ll actually introduce us.”

Shane freezes, and then—in a moment of terrible deja vu—so does Rose, and they’re both just sitting there holding their breath from a thousand miles away.

“A boyfriend?” Shane chokes out. “I’m not—I’m not gay.”

At the same time, Rose screeches, “Oh fuck! If you have a boyfriend, then no one knows about him, do they? Has anyone told him? Oh my god! Does he even know you’re still alive? Do you remember him? Shane—“

“I’m not gay, Rose,” he repeats a little frantically. 

“Wow, just so you know, the last time we had this talk it went really differently. But seriously, your secret boyfriend—“

Before she can go on any further, Shane interrupts, a little too loudly, “I don’t have a secret boyfriend, I have a secret girlfriend!”

Rose goes silent again. Then: “What?”

With his heart still pounding in his chest, he feels stupid and confused and like this whole conversation was a mistake. Still, he says, “One of my teammates knows about her. And it’s… it’s real, we texted a lot, before… this. I think I really liked her, Rose.”

“Shane Hollander,” she sighs. “I need a drink for this.”

“I’m sorry,” he says weakly. It’s not like he’s happy about being so confused either, but he regrets putting her in this position with him. Especially when he can hardly remember her.

“No sorries,” she swears. “You didn’t decide to crack your head open and forget about the very awkward conversation we had. Actually, made you should get a drink too. Do you have any beer?”

Shane isn’t really in the mood, but he still stands and goes to the fridge. Yes, there’s beer in there, an untouched six-pack. Taking a can, he asks, “What conversation?”

“Are you sitting?” She waits until he is to say, an equal mix of kind and blunt, “Yes, Shane, you’re gay. You realized this back in December. Let me catch you back up.”

And then Shane sits there for the next forty-five minutes and listens as Rose details their short relationship, the incredibly bad sex, and the peg-and-hole talk that makes them both cringe. 

He drinks his whole beer, both thankful and not that he can’t remember any of this. Yes, it does sound terribly awkward, but he also wishes he could just know all of this, could see it in his memories. Could recall living through all of it, and not have to experience his second sexuality crisis in the last six months, but with nothing to back it up except horny dreams about his competitor. He wouldn’t have to question every single thing and if it’s real or not.

Rose is an angel, and lets him freak out about it to her. But she doesn’t let him convince himself he’s straight or that it was all a mistake. 

How stupid is it that he’s had to be told he’s gay twice now, apparently?

“So, with all that said,” Rose finishes, clapping her hands on the other end of the line, “I think ‘Lily’ is actually your boyfriend, and you should really text him and tell him you’re still alive.”

Shane hisses out a sigh, dropping his head back and shutting his eyes. “I already texted her—him.”

“What!! Okay, what did he say? Did he pretend to be a girl?”

A pang of hurt hits him in the chest. “No, no. He just, uh, he told me we shouldn’t talk to each other anymore?”

With a scoff, Rose says, “Well, fuck that. You want to know more about him and what you guys had, right?”

“I do,” he says, his breathing picking up at the thought. There’s still the ghost of Rozanov lingering in the back of his mind, but maybe that’s all just a fantasy and this Lily guy(?) is the real deal. Maybe he’s just projecting his one meeting with Rozanov onto memories of him and Lily, because he can’t remember what his boyfriend(??) looks like and Rozanov just happens to be a pretty face he’s seen since he woke up.

“Great. Let’s make a plan to get him talking to you again,” she declares. 

Any hesitation he feels is slowly overtaken by something else: a feeling he can only describe as longing. Just the thought of getting to talk to this Lily has his messed up brain and heart in a tail-spin of want (and, if he’s being honest, the strong need for answers). 

Nodding, Shane grabs a notebook and another beer, and agrees, “Let’s do this.”

Shane: Hey.
Shane: I know you said not to text, but looking back on our old conversations, I don’t think I listen very well…
Shane: I’ve been feeling really confused lately about a lot of things, and I think you’re the only person who can help me. 
Shane: Your name isn’t Lily, is it?

Lily: Hollander, don’t do this. Just forget about me. Will be better for you in the long run.

Shane: I don’t think I can. 
Shane: Whenever I think about you, my heart starts racing.
Shane: I keep having dreams, and I think they’re supposed to be of you.
Shane: But I don’t know anything. No one does. I don’t know what to do about it.

Lily: Nothing. You do nothing.

Shane: That doesn’t work for me. I don’t want to let go of this until I know more. I don’t even know what we were (are?) to each other. I just want to ask you a few questions.
Shane: Please?

[Read 10:17 PM]

Lily: Fine. Fine. I can’t say no to you, don’t know why I try
Lily: I will tell you anything, but only if you tell me how you’re feeling
Lily: Okay?

Shane: Thank you. Yes, yes, I’m okay. I don’t have to wear the sling all day anymore, only at night, and my headaches are all gone. Some of my memories are coming back. 
Shane: There’s just a hole where you should be, and I hate it. I feel like I’m missing something all the time.

Lily: Fuck
Lily: What do you want to know?