Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Yuna Hollander, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Player Shane Hollander, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Player Ilya Rozanov, Post Tampa All-Stars Game, Trade Deadline, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Secret Relationship, Coming Out, Team as Family, Forced Proximity, sort of. does the same team count, author knows puck but doesn't really care about logistics if he's being honest

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of boston bear shane hollander propaganda

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-04 Updated: 2026-07-11 Words: 18,584 Chapters: 4/5

i really hope you're gonna get out soon

Summary

“We want you to at least consider waiving your no-trade,” his general manager is saying, but the words barely register in Shane’s head. “Ahead of the playoffs, we want to make sure our team cohesion is as strong as possible, and there have been concerns about locker room dynamics . . .”

And of course there are. Of course that’s what this is about.

OR: When Shane comes out to the Voyageurs, a breakdown in team dynamics results in a last-minute trade to their divisional rival. In Boston, Shane and Ilya are forced to figure out whatever it is they're actually doing.

Chapter 1: leave on a high note

Chapter Notes

It's manageable. That's what Shane tells himself.

And it is. It’s tolerable. He’s used to keeping his head down and eyes forward, turning down the volume in the room around him and zeroing in on what’s in front of him. It’s what makes him good at hockey: He detaches himself until he’s processing everything he sees as only puck-goal-obstacle. This is no different. It’s an obstacle he can plan around. 

And really, it’s an obstacle he’s dealt with before. It’s just locker room chatter. Functionally, it's no different than anything he's been hearing since Juniors. He’s used to hearing cocksucker and faggot tossed across the room as punchlines and casual insults, echoing off the tiles. The only difference is that now the team knows that what they're saying is directed at him, and they don't care. 

He mentioned this to Ilya, once, on a day where his head wouldn’t stop mulling over what might have happened if he’d just never told the team he was gay. He finds himself thinking about that possibility more and more, lately. “It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does,” he’d said, flat on his back on his couch as he held the phone to his ear. “It’s not like I haven’t heard it before. It's just . . . locker room talk. As long as it stays off the ice, it's fine."

"Is it?" Ilya had asked back. "Staying off the ice?"

Shane hadn’t answered, because he hadn’t needed to. Of course it wasn’t staying off the ice. It was obvious enough to be mentioned in sports columns—loss of cohesion, people were saying then, and breakdown in team chemistry, until it turned into people commenting on how Shane was coming out of games more bruised and battered than he was last year, and how no one but Hayden and J.J. seemed to celebrate when he scored. No one needs to say it out loud. Shane already knows what the team is trying to tell him: They don’t want him there anymore. 

So he avoids eye contact, keeps his captain’s speeches brief and to-the-point, comes in early and stays on the ice long after practice is finished so he doesn’t have to change or shower at the same time as the rest of the team. Politely declines offers to go drinking after games. Reassures Hayden he’s fine and changes the subject whenever he asks. Keeps his posture straight and his expression carefully flat and impassive. 

And when he goes home, he spends hours doing endurance training, reviewing tapes of every game, filling spreadsheets with mistakes and missed opportunities. This year, this year, they’re going home with another Stanley Cup, because he won't accept anything less from himself, and because maybe rounding things out with a third Cup will make his team stop looking at him like that.

It won't, he knows that. But he pretends it will. 

∗ ∗ ∗

Practice ended nearly an hour ago, but Shane is still on the ice. It’s habit, now, to linger there until the facilities manager tells him the Zamboni needs to come out, the rink silent except for the sound of his breathing and his skates on the ice and the quiet hum of the overhead lights. He’d stayed late to work on his flip shots last week. It had been snap shots the week before. Today it’s chip shots, methodical and repetitive, twenty in each corner of the net, starting over when he misses one. 

He doesn’t notice the general manager watching from the bench until he calls, “Hollander!” Shane’s shot goes wide and glances off the goalpost, and he looks over, half-startled. “Got a minute?”

There’s a long moment of silence before Shane can jolt himself out of his state of numb surprise. “Sure,” he says, starting towards the bench. “Let me just—um.” He gestures lamely to his skates. 

“Sure,” his GM says, waving him off. “Take your time. Just come up to the office when you’re ready, eh?”

So Shane goes back to the empty dressing room. The motion-sensing lights flick on when he opens the door. He takes off his skates. Tosses his practice jersey into the laundry. Gets dressed. Quick, methodical. He doesn’t let himself think about why management wants to meet with him. Doesn’t let himself speculate or spiral. If he knows the answer already, he doesn't want to.

The door to the general manager’s office is open when he reaches it, and he pushes it open without knocking. His GM looks up as he does, giving him a smile that reads as slightly uncomfortable. “Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to one of the blue-upholstered chairs in front of the desk, and Shane does. The GM clears his throat. “There have been . . . complaints, from some of your teammates,” he says. His voice is tight, a little awkward. “Concerns about team unity. People are noticing that you don’t seem to be meshing well with the team anymore—not just the coaching staff, or even just Voyageurs fans. They can tell that your relationship with the team seems . . . strained. Is that accurate?”

Strained. That’s a tactful word for it. It borders on hostile more often than not, now. The temperature seems to drop whenever he walks into the room. 

Shane doesn’t tell him that. “It’s been a difficult few weeks,” he says instead. His GM looks like he’s waiting for Shane to elaborate, but when he doesn’t, he just sighs. 

“Well, I won’t dance around the topic,” he says. “Have you considered whether you might do better on a different team?” 

Shane’s palms begin to sweat immediately. “I’ve been captain here for four years,” he says, and his voice comes out stiff and stilted. “I’ve gotten us two Cups in that time. It’s hard to see how I could be doing better than I currently am.”

The GM raises his hands. “Of course,” he says, placating. “I didn’t call you here to insult your performance, or your—your leadership. You’ve done fantastic work here, Shane. But ahead of the playoffs, we want to make sure our team cohesion is as strong as possible, and there have been concerns about locker room dynamics . . .”

And of course there are. Of course that’s what this is about. He should have known the second he stepped foot in the office. He bites down hard on his lower lip to keep himself from interrupting as the GM explains himself, rationalizing the benefits of a trade. “We want you to at least consider waiving your no-trade clause,” he says, but the words barely register in Shane’s head. Complaints from some of his teammates. Concerns about locker rooms dynamics. He’s being iced out because he’s gay. He can feel the life he’s spent twenty years working towards crumbling beneath his feet. 

It takes Shane a while to realize that the GM is looking at him, waiting for an answer. “I’ll consider it,” he says finally. He barely recognizes his own voice. 

“That’s all we’re asking,” his GM says, even though both of them know it’s a lie. “Think it over.”

Shane knows what the correct answer is. 

∗ ∗ ∗

That night, he sits on the couch in his apartment, staring down at his phone. Ilya’s contact is open on the screen. The dishes are drying in the rack. His hair is wet. He’s wearing clean sweatpants and trying not to press the call button. 

It’s not that they don’t call. Their relationship has changed since All-Stars—still carefully ambiguous, skating the edge of casual and something else, but . . . different. Closer. More honest. 

But this seems risky. Vulnerable. It’s late. He’s alone. He’s afraid. Ilya has a game tomorrow, he knows. He shouldn’t call. If he were stronger he wouldn’t even consider it.

He’s never been strong about Ilya. 

Shane

Are you alone?

His phone is ringing barely ten seconds after he sends the message, and after a moment he answers, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Hey,” he says, hoping Ilya doesn’t hear the way his voice cracks on the word. 

“It’s late,” Ilya says, voice teasing and nonchalant. “Missing my pretty face?”

Yes, Shane wants to say, but instead he says, “Montreal’s trying to trade me,” blunt and unadorned. There’s no other way for him to say it. 

There’s a brief moment of silence before Ilya asks cautiously, “But you have a no-trade, yes?”

“They want me to waive it,” Shane says. “Management asked me to. Today. There’s—” He swallows hard, mortified to find his eyes stinging. “There’s problems with—team cohesion. So they’re trying to offload me before playoffs.”

Ilya goes silent again, and for a moment Shane almost thinks he’s hung up, but then he hisses, “Blyat.” There’s rustling from his end of the phone. “Let me—I have to put out my cigarette. Not having this conversation outside.”

“You shouldn’t be smoking,” Shane says automatically. He barely thinks about it before it comes out of his mouth, but Ilya just huffs out a laugh. 

“Maybe you should start,” he says. “I think you would like. With your oral fixation.”

Shane snorts out a laugh despite himself. “Who taught you the words oral fixation?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Ilya says, and the echo on his end of the phone changes as he goes inside. “They are trading you?”

“I could say no,” Shane says, even though he knows he won’t. “They could . . . they’re just asking. I could stay in Montreal, if I wanted to.”

“Do you want to?” Ilya asks carefully, like he's afraid Shane will vanish if he asks too directly. 

Shane says nothing for a long time. “Sort of,” he says after a while. He has to blink fast to keep his vision from blurring with tears. “I used to, at least. I thought I was going to retire here. I love Montreal. But I don’t think I like it anymore.”

And fuck, that hurts to say, because he’s realizing for the first time that he really doesn’t. “You’d want to leave,” Ilya says. It’s not a question. 

“Yeah,” Shane whispers. 

Silence for a moment. “Are there teams you would be—okay with?”

Shane blows out a breath. “Pittsburgh?” he offers half-heartedly. “Um. Colorado, maybe. They need better forwards if they want to get anywhere in the playoffs. The Admirals are good, but I don’t think they can afford me.”

“Wow. No mercy for Colorado,” Ilya says, and Shane can hear him smiling on the other end of the phone. 

“Shut up. You know I’m right,” Shane fires back, and just like that, a little bit of the tension has eased. 

Neither of them speak for a while. “You could come to Boston,” Ilya offers after a moment, and Shane doesn’t say anything for a long time. 

“Boston,” he echoes. 

He can practically hear Ilya rolling his eyes as he says, “Da, Boston. What, cell service is not good in Montreal?”

“Shut up,” Shane says without heat. It’s practically reflexive. He swallows. “We—you could—can Boston afford me?”

There’s the rustle of a shrug on the other end of the phone. “Maybe. Don’t know,” Ilya says. “Worth a shot, yes? Would be fun to see Montreal dump their star center directly into lap of their rival.” Neither of them mention any of the other reasons Shane could come to Boston. It feels dangerous to say it out loud. 

“Is your team . . . good? About this sort of thing?” Shane asks after a long moment.

Ilya seems relieved at the change in subject. “What, being gay?” he asks. “They cannot be much worse than Montreal.”

“Shut up, Ilya. I’m serious.”

Ilya sighs. “I think they would be,” he says, more sincerely. “There are no slurs in our locker room. And we always check Dallas Kent harder than we need to. Plus, Oregan gets hit on by men every time we go out, and the only thing that happens is that he blushes and gets flustered. He gets teased about it, but it is all good-natured, I think.”

“Strong evidence,” Shane says flatly, but really, it is strong—stronger than anything else he’d expect to see in an MLH locker room. Finally he asks, voice wavering, “You really—you think they wouldn’t care?” 

“No, they would not care that you are gay,” Ilya says softly. “They would be more hung up on the fact that you are Shane Hollander, I think. If Montreal was smart, they would remember that, too.”

Shane is crying properly now, throat tight and face wet. He sucks in a ragged breath, trying to keep himself from making any audible sound, but Ilya must be able to tell anyway, because he asks after a moment, “You have called your mother?” 

Shane swallows, scrubbing a hand over his face. “No,” he says. “I don’t—I don’t know what to say to her. I’ll probably call tomorrow.”

“Call,” Ilya says firmly. “Your mother is—fucking—what is the word. Like mitochondria.”

Shane snorts wetly. “A powerhouse?”

“Yes. Yuna Hollander is a fucking powerhouse. She will fix. Do not worry.”

“I don’t think I can not worry about this.”

“Then go to bed,” Ilya says, more gently than Shane has ever heard him speak. “Eat something. Shower.”

“I ate already.”

“Good. Then sleep.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” There’s silence for a moment. Then, softly, “Goodnight, Shane.”

Shane swallows hard and ignores the way his eyes have begun stinging again. “‘Night, Ilya.”

He doesn’t sleep for a long time. He lies awake, staring at the wall of his bedroom, because he can’t stop thinking about Ilya saying Shane, soft as anything.

Chapter End Notes

the timeline is whatever i want it to be but if you’re looking for a landmark i’m calling this february 2017 post all-stars

there is no update schedule here. stay tuned. whatever

work title from "mangetout" by wet leg
chapter title from "my moon my man" because of course it is

Chapter 2: then look at a place far away from here

Chapter Notes

There are headlines in his phone notifications when he drags himself out of bed bleary-eyed the next morning: MONTREAL CONSIDERING TRADE FOR SHANE HOLLANDER, SOURCES SAY, and TRADE NEGOTIATIONS FOR VOYAGEURS CAPTAIN BEGIN JUST WEEKS BEFORE DEADLINE, and IS SHANE HOLLANDER WAIVING HIS NO-TRADE CLAUSE? For a moment he wonders how the news has made headlines already, but of course there would already be feelers out, ideas phrased as hypotheticals sent out to neighboring teams. Of course the front office wouldn’t have waited. The crumbling pit of dread in his stomach grows as he scrolls through his news alerts. 

Below all of them, there are two missed calls from his mother, one from Farah, and a jumble of messages from his team. “Fuck,” Shane whispers, almost inaudible, dragging a hand over his face. Then, louder, “Fuck.” He tosses his phone to the foot of the bed, fingers twisting in the hem of his shirt. His teeth are chattering slightly. He digs his teeth into his lower lip to make it stop. 

With difficulty, he pushes himself to his feet, goes into the kitchen, and grabs a handful of ice cubes out of the freezer. Squeezes them in his fist until water drips between his fingers and onto the floor, until his palm is numb, until the pain of cold has burrowed through the shell of panic in his skull. This is fine, he tells himself. This is manageable. He will survive this just like he’s survived everything else. He presses his cold, wet palm to the back of his neck and shivers as water drips down his spine. 

Then he goes back to his bedroom and calls his mother. 

The phone only rings twice before she picks up. “Shane, are you waiving your no-trade?” she asks without preamble, and she doesn’t sound angry, just stunned. Shane takes a shaky breath.

“It wasn’t my idea,” he says, hoping his voice is steadier than he feels. “The front office called me into a meeting, yesterday. They said—” His breath hitches, and he has to start the sentence over. “They said that, um, that it was an issue of team cohesion. That they’d gotten—complaints, from other players. About locker room dynamics.”

“Wh—locker room dynamics? Two Stanley Cups, and they’re trading you because of locker room dynamics? What could you possibly—”

And oh, God, he’s going to have to tell her. She’s going to find out somehow; frankly, he’s surprised it hasn’t made its way back to her already. “I, um,” he starts, then stops, swallowing hard. “I’m gay,” he manages finally, voice wobbling, and there’s silence on the other end of the line. “I didn’t want to tell you like this,” he says, and he blinks fast to clear the tears from his vision. “I really—um, I really did try. I just can’t—I can’t help it—”

“Oh, Shane,” his mother says, and she sounds devastated. “Oh, honey, no. That’s—you have nothing to apologize for. That’s why—?”

“Yeah,” he says, voice cracking, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. “They, um—I mean, Hayd and J.J. are cool. And I think some of the rookies, probably. But the rest of the guys are—I don’t know. I mean, obviously some of them went to management about . . . me.”

“Idiots,” his mother says firmly. “Complete idiots. Less than a month before the deadline, after everything you’ve given them—I mean, four years as captain—Shane, you don’t have to go anywhere. We will get this sorted out.”

“Okay,” he says, almost a whisper. He hears her continue talking without really comprehending anything she’s saying. He thinks he’s interrupting her when he says, “What if—” His voice trembles, and he swallows hard. “What if I do want to waive my no-trade?”

There’s silence for a moment. “Oh, honey,” his mother says, concern audible in her voice. “Is it—is it that bad?”

“Kind of,” he says, voice cracking. “They’re not—I don’t know, attacking me, or anything. But they won’t pass to me, or defend me on the ice. And they chirp me more than the other teams do.” He doesn’t say that the things they chirp at him are mostly slurs, but he thinks his mother probably knows without him needing to say it out loud. 

There’s another second of silence. “Okay,” his mother says, almost a whisper. She clears her throat. Then, louder, “Okay. Do you mind if I tell Farah, to fill her in?”

“No, that’s fine. Can you—” He blinks fast, swallowing. “Will you tell Dad? I don’t know if I can. Right now.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to tell him yourself?” she asks hesitantly, and Shane shakes his head. 

“I don’t think I can,” he says, voice cracking. 

“Okay,” his mother whispers again. “I’ll tell him. And I’ll call Farah.” Shane nods before remembering she can’t see him, but she must hear the rustle of it. “Eat something, okay?” she says firmly. “We’ll handle this.”

“Okay,” he says out loud, swallowing. 

“Okay. I love you, Shane.”

“Love you too,” he whispers. 

He hangs up first, because he knows his mother won’t. He makes a protein smoothie and drinks it without tasting it. He sits at the kitchen counter for several minutes after the glass is empty, staring at the grout in the backsplash without really seeing it. He makes himself stand up. Washes the dishes. Showers in water that borders on lukewarm and scrubs his skin until it’s raw. 

Then he calls Hayden. 

“What the fuck?” Hayden says without preamble when he picks up, and Shane sighs.

“Swear jar.”

“Fucking—are you kidding me right now? You’re leaving?”

And suddenly Shane is pissed. “I’m not leaving, I’m being dropped,” he snaps. “They want me out before playoffs so I stop interfering with team dynamics.” 

Neither of them speak. Shane is breathing hard. “Shit, man,” Hayden says after a while, and Shane laughs humorlessly.

“Yeah. Fuck me, right?”

“Where are you going? I mean, what teams are you hoping for?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says bitterly, even though he does. “Pittsburgh, maybe.” 

“Jesus,” Hayden says. “Dude, that sucks.”

“I know,” Shane says. The exhaustion is settling back in, bone-deep. All the fight is draining out of him like water. “I didn’t want this,” he says after a moment. 

“I know.”

“I was going to retire a Voyageur.”

“I know.”

“I’ve won them their only two Cups in the last twenty years.”

“Shit, dude, I know,” Hayden says. “Everyone knows that. Management is insane if they want to throw you out after that.”

“It’s not management,” Shane says. “The team is complaining. Apparently.”

“Jesus. Of course they are. It’s probably Comeau. I’d bet money on it.”

“Probably. It sounds like it was more than one.”

“Jesus,” Hayden says, sounding guilty and angry and exhausted all at once. Shane knows the feeling. 

“Can you tell J.J.?” Shane asks after a while. “And Jackie? I don’t . . . know how to tell them.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that,” Hayden says. He clears his throat. “The kids are gonna miss you, you know.”

“I know,” Shane says, swallowing. “I’m sorry.”

“What? No, no, don’t apologize,” Hayden says, sounding almost frantic. “Dude, it’s not your fault. I’m just saying we’ll have to make plans to like, meet up during the summer, or something.”

It feels like his fault anyway. “I’ll call,” he says. “Jesus, Jackie’s due in, like, three months, right?”

“Yeah. The beginning of May sometime.” 

“I’ll see if I can come back up for you guys.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Hayden says firmly. “We love you, man. Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, almost a whisper. “Love you too.”

There’s a text on his phone from his mother when he hangs up on Hayden. Dad and I love you, it says. Farah is taking care of everything. Don’t worry. 

So he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel anything at all. 

Farah calls him later that morning. “You’re sure you want to waive your no-trade?” she asks seriously, and Shane barely has to think about it. 

“Yeah,” he says. 

Farah blows out a breath. “Okay,” she says. “I can make some calls. Do you have preferences for teams? Do you want to stay in Canada? Or the Eastern Conference?”

“I don’t really care,” Shane says. “Actually—” There’s a brief moment of silence. He takes a breath, steadies himself. “Can you get me to Boston?”

∗ ∗ ∗

By the time Farah calls him back that afternoon, he’s sitting on the floor of his living room surrounded by moving boxes, carefully taped and labeled: Clothes, Dishes, Non-Perishables. He’s called realtors in three different cities just in case and sorted out what he’ll need in the first week and what he can leave for the moving company. His phone is muted for everyone but his parents and Farah, and when it rings from the floor next to the couch he picks it up without checking who’s calling. 

“Good news,” Farah says. “Boston wants to pick up your contract. Same terms, no pay cut. They’re trading two of theirs for cap space.”

“That was fast,” he says, even though he knew it would probably go faster than normal. 

“You’re Shane Hollander,” Farah says, like it’s obvious, and it probably should have been. “They saw how you played with Rozanov in January. They’re not going to pass that up, especially not when I told them they were your first choice.”

“Okay,” Shane says. He doesn’t know what else to say. 

Farah seems to take pity on him. “I’ll email the paperwork to you,” she says. “You’ll probably need to drop by the Bell Complex in person to sign off on a few things and turn in your ID badge.”

“Okay,” he says again. He’d expected that. “I could drop in today.”

“I’ll tell the office you’re coming,” she says. 

So he drives to the training facility. Signs his name half a dozen times. Shakes hands with every person in the office. Hands in his badge. Cleans out his stall in the dressing room. He moves on autopilot, lets his media training and muscle memory take over. Doesn’t think. Doesn’t linger in the hallway knowing it’s the last time he’ll ever be here as a Voyageur. He doesn’t think he’s really been one for a while. 

By Friday, he’s signed a short lease on a furnished apartment in Boston, hired a moving company, and filled his Range Rover with a week’s worth of clothes and essentials to make the five-hour drive to Boston. His alarm goes off mid-morning on Saturday. He showers, gets dressed, loads the car with the last of his belongings, and leaves his apartment key in an envelope on the kitchen counter. He listens to CBC Radio for the first hour of the drive and NPR once he crosses the border, and a play-by-play of the Washington-Boston game when it starts at 12:30. The first period ends 1–0 for Washington. Boston bounces back hard in the second and third. Ilya clocks two goals, one assist, and four penalty minutes, because of course he does, he’s Ilya, and Boston wins 3–1, because of course they do, they’re Boston. 

Shane barely listens to the post-game commentary. The hosts’ voices overlap and blur together into a haze of background noise. 

“And we couldn't finish off this game without at least mentioning that Boston has acquired Voyageurs captain Shane Hollander—”

Shane turns off the radio. 

Traffic gets worse the closer he gets to Boston. This doesn’t surprise him. What does surprise him is how much brighter Boston feels than Montreal. It’s three degrees further south, five degrees warmer, and much less overcast than Montreal had been that morning, bright enough that he has to squint against the light when he steps out of the car. Ten degrees is warm enough that he barely needs a jacket. He feels off-balance, like the ground is tilting beneath his feet, every step an adjustment. He parks on the street by the apartment building and goes inside to retrieve the key from his mailbox. They haven’t had a chance to print him a parking pass yet. He takes the elevator to the seventh floor, setting his duffel down in the entryway of the apartment and closing the door behind him. The room smells faintly of dust and Lysol. It’s furnished the same as it was in the photos, with a sectional and coffee table and bar stools at the kitchen counter, and through the bedroom door is a dresser and a bed frame with a bare mattress. 

In an hour his car is empty, boxes stacked neatly in the living room. He’s mopped the floors and cleaned the bathroom and wiped out the inside of the refrigerator, and all the cleaning is probably unnecessary, but he doesn’t know what else to do and it makes him feel marginally better about everything. He makes the bed and puts his toothbrush in the bathroom and schedules a grocery delivery to the apartment, then stands in the middle of the mostly-empty living room and tries—unsuccessfully—to ignore the buzzing under his skin. 

He wants to call Ilya. 

The game ended barely an hour ago. He’s probably out celebrating their win. 4:00 is a little early to get drunk, in Shane’s opinion, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Ilya were three drinks deep by now. He sits down on the plain navy-blue sectional and fiddles with his phone, debating for a long moment.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to be strong about Ilya. 

Shane

I’m in Boston

Lily

Finally

Send address

Ilya responds fast enough that Shane thinks he must have been waiting for the message. Shane doesn’t let himself think about the way his stomach tilts at the word “finally,” as if Ilya’s been waiting for him, or at the way the speed of his response means he’s either ditched the usual celebrations to wait for Shane to arrive or has been checking his phone nonstop since they arrived at the bar. 

Shane

345 Harrison Ave

Lily

Not hotel? 

Mr. Real Estate buying whole building already

Shane

Fuck off

715

Lily

10 min

And in twelve minutes, there’s a knock on his apartment door, and Shane opens it, and there’s Ilya, curls still shower-damp, hands buried in the pocket of a Bears hoodie. Shane lets him in without speaking, and Ilya takes his shoes off in the entrance without being asked. Shane doesn’t let his expression show how his throat tightens at that small gesture. Ilya looks around the room, one eyebrow raised. “Nice place,” he comments. “Mr. Real Estate buying property sight unseen, now?”

Shane shrugs, deliberately casual. “I saw photos,” he says. “Talked on the phone with the realtor.”

“Surprised you have not hired interior decorator yet. Seems like something you would do, with your stylist.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, grinning a little. It’s an ordinary conversation, consciously so, reassuring in its normalcy. “I saw the game,” he says. “Or—well. I listened to it. Congrats on the win.”

“Are you surprised we beat Washington?” Ilya asks, raising his eyebrows, and Shane snorts. 

“No,” he says. “It’s Washington. Nice work on the Gordie Howe, though.”

Ilya sighs dramatically. “Is a shame you were only listening,” he says. “The fight was very sexy.”

“I’m sure,” Shane says dryly. “You’re not out celebrating?” 

Ilya shakes his head. “More important things to do.” 

Shane doesn’t let himself think about what that sentence implies—about him, about both of them. He swallows back the emotions that bubble up without his permission in response to it. “What did you tell your team?” he asks instead. 

“The truth,” Ilya says, shrugging. “Second-best hockey player in league just arrived in Boston and needs help figuring out his Dunkin’ order.”

“It’s just going to be black coffee,” Shane says, and Ilya blows a raspberry. 

“Boring. At least try the signature latte. Better than Tim Hortons.”

And it’s ridiculous, that this is what pushes him over the edge—as if he ever goes to coffee shops often enough to have a particular loyalty to any of them. But he’s in Boston now, and it’s nothing like Montreal, for better or for worse, and it’s not just that he’s starting over in a new city where the ground won’t stop moving beneath his feet, it’s that he can never go back to Montreal, or if he does it'll never be the same as it was last year, and some or all of this must show on his face because Ilya is saying, “Hey,” brow creased with concern as he reaches for him. Shane shudders as Ilya’s hand grasps his arm, steady and warm through the sleeve of his shirt, and Shane sees a flash of guilt cross Ilya’s face as he begins to pull away, but Shane grabs his wrist and presses his hand back to his chest before he can go too far. 

He can see the surprise on Ilya’s face, the bob of his throat as he swallows. His thumb strokes briefly over Shane’s breastbone, as if feeling for the pulse there. “Okay?” Ilya asks, and Shane nods, and Ilya’s other arm lifts hesitantly to curl around Shane’s waist, thumb stroking gently over his side. Another shudder runs through him as he tucks himself against Ilya’s front. The buzzing under his skin finally begins to ease, dissolving into static instead of vibrating metal.

“What do you need, malysh?” Ilya asks softly, but Shane just presses his face into Ilya’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to risk breaking this. He’s being vulnerable, and Ilya is being tender, and he doesn’t know if either of them will let it happen again. “Come on,” Ilya coaxes, tilting his chin up with a finger. “Tell me.”

Shane takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Take me out of my head,” he says, and it’s dangerously close to begging. Just tonight, he asks silently. Just tonight, and then we can both go back to pretending we don’t want anything from each other besides sex. 

So Ilya does. It isn't a feverish and desperate hookup like the ones they usually have. Ilya opens him up gently, carefully, like Shane is something precious. He mouths at his chest, sucks at his neck, not hard enough to leave marks but hard enough to ache. They’re face-to-face, and Ilya can see the way Shane’s eyes close and teeth dig into his lip as he strokes slowly over his prostate, deliberate, unhurried. Taking him apart. 

By the time Ilya finally presses inside him Shane’s face is wet, and if Ilya notices he doesn’t say anything. He fucks him with languid grinds of his hips, never changing the pace, only the intensity, until Shane is gasping out broken little moans and bucking his hips up to match each thrust. He’s close, and he says so, and Ilya adjusts the angle of his hips just slightly until Shane is sobbing out a moan and coming between them, trembling, fingernails digging into Ilya’s shoulders. 

Ilya finishes on his stomach, and they lie there for longer than usual, skin-to-skin, until Ilya gets up to retrieve a washcloth from the bathroom. They haven’t turned on the overhead lights. The only brightness in the room comes through the slits in the blinds, illuminating Ilya with stripes of dim early-evening light as he wipes down Shane’s stomach and thighs, careful and thorough. He returns the washcloth to the bathroom. Comes back to the bedroom. Bends down to pick his clothes off the floor. There’s the rustle of fabric as he shakes out his boxers and pulls them over his hips. Shane sits up slightly in the bed and props himself up on one elbow, voice slightly hoarse as he says, “Can you stay?”

Ilya pauses, long enough that Shane thinks he’s going to say no, but then he shimmies back out of his shorts and puts his clothes down on top of the dresser. He slips under the sheets, into the space Shane left for him, and when Shane shifts hesitantly closer to him he opens his arms without being asked, allowing Shane to press himself against the warm expanse of his chest. Ilya’s hand settles on his waist naturally, instinctively, and the tension bleeds out of Shane’s body, a shuddering breath escaping him. His body hasn’t stopped humming since Wednesday, but it’s in a lower gear, now. 

He lets himself breathe, lets himself soak in the smell of sweat and skin and Ilya’s shampoo, faintly citrus. Just tonight, he promises himself. Just tonight, and then he’ll let Ilya leave. Let them go back to pretending they don't like each other. 

Chapter End Notes

we’re ignoring the logistics of the trade because my puck knowledge ends when the players leave the ice and i know you guys aren't here for that anyway

“why would mtl ever agree to trade their captain in the middle of the season????” why would the blackhawks give away their captain the day of the deadline in exchange for thoughts and prayers. i’m not complaining but what’s happening

chapter title from “i’ll believe in anything” by wolf parade

Chapter 3: don't be another one of 'em (be one of us)

Chapter Notes

On Sunday, Shane shakes hands with the Bears general manager and Coach LeClaire and signs a second set of paperwork. He meets the PR manager, who gives him a tour of the training facility and has him pose for a few inoffensive social media posts welcoming him to the team, none of which mention the rivalry or the reason he left the Voyageurs. Everyone is blandly polite. He hears the phrase “glad to have you” at least half a dozen times. 

He returns to the training center for practice on Monday, early enough that the dressing room is nearly empty, save for a rookie—Johansson, maybe?—who looks at him wide-eyed as he enters and just as quickly averts his eyes. It should be Shane, he thinks, who’s too wary to make eye contact—a newcomer who still doesn’t smell enough like the pack to avoid scrutiny. 

Instead, he finds a stall with a new brass nameplate, S. HOLLANDER, clean and empty except for the practice jersey hanging there. From the back, it looks identical to his old one from Montreal—HOLLANDER in white letters across his shoulders, 24 on his back, only the jersey is black instead of navy blue. It’s persistently, aggressively normal. He’s being welcomed to the team, made space for, and he doesn’t know how to respond to it. 

What he does know how to do is get ready for practice. 

The room fills slowly, players trickling in through the doors one or two at a time, and there’s a slight lull in conversation as each of them enters, footsteps stuttering as they catch sight of Shane and then recover. There’s an atmosphere of mild tension, the feeling of being off-balance, as if Shane displaced something when he entered the room and the air still hasn’t moved to fill the empty space. He sits in silence with his stick in his lap and a roll of tape in his hand, not looking up at anyone who enters, focusing entirely on the overlap of tape on the blade. 

There are Ilya’s footsteps in the hall; Shane would recognize them anywhere. His leg begins jittering where he’s seated on the bench. He hears the door swing open and shut again, and the sound of sneakers on the tile behind him, and then a bag is slung unceremoniously into the stall next to his. For the first time, Shane looks over at the nameplate to his right, and finds I. ROZANOV stamped into the brass. Part of him is irritated, but a much larger part of him isn’t surprised at all. He wonders briefly which equipment manager had the idea before realizing it was probably all of them. 

“Morning, Hollander,” Ilya says cheerfully, grinning. “You did not get lost on the way?”

“Pretty sure I can find my way around a hockey rink, thanks,” Shane says dryly, but he can’t hide the twitch of his lips. The tension in the room eases as Ilya speaks, a collective exhale. 

“You did not go to the visitors’ dressing room by mistake?” Ilya pushes. “Did not get confused by all the black and gold? Maybe you have stepped into alternate universe, where maybe you were first draft pick. Unbelievable, I know—”

“Fuck you, Rozanov,” Shane says, shaking his head, lips twitching into a half-smile. There’s no heat to it, and the whole room seems to hear it, because all the apprehension of the past half hour has vanished. “I’ve got twice as many cups as you.”

“Yes, and we are about to have three times as many,” Ilya says, eyes sharpening with a kind of feverish, single-minded focus. “Montreal has made the biggest fucking mistake of their lives, and we are reaping benefits. Listen!” he shouts, turning to face the rest of the room, and the team falls silent. “I am sure all of us have heard the news,” Ilya says, one hand on Shane’s shoulder, loose but present—not holding, just steadying. “We have acquired Shane Hollander, who I famously get along very well with—” There’s a ripple of laughter through the room— “because Montreal decided they wanted to stop at two Cups and give the rest of us a chance. So! We will exploit him relentlessly, and limit our hatred to chirping and not physical violence, yes?” 

“Yes, Captain!” twenty-two voices holler, sticks tapping, and Ilya claps Shane on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble before he turns back to his stall. It’s easy, natural. Casual. Ilya’s treating him like anyone else, and something in his chest aches, and he doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to keep pretending everything is normal. 

Ilya strips his shirt over his head without fanfare, and Shane turns away, face hot as he sits back down on the bench, pulling another strip of tape off the roll. Head down. Eyes forward. Narrow the focus to a thirty-degree field of view. Ignore the way his throat tightens. It’s an obstacle he can plan around. 

∗ ∗ ∗

He joins them on the ice and it feels natural. This he knows how to do. This he understands. They set up for three-zone timing drills—testing chemistry, Shane thinks, trying to work out line changes. Ilya is chatting with Coach LeClaire, leaning over the boards to crane his neck and look at LeClaire’s notes, eyes flicking between the clipboard and the ice. When they finally rattle off names, he’s paired with Hammersmith and Zadonsky—a rookie defenseman, Shane learns, who he’s fairly sure spends more time getting playfully harassed by the veterans of the team than he spends doing his job. 

Shane paces himself at first, assuming he’ll have to slow down to match the rest of the team, but Zadonsky is faster than he was expecting. He’s short, and most of his bulk seems to come from his padding, not muscle, but he’s fast. Aerodynamic. Not too fast for Shane to match, but fast enough that he’s caught off-guard. Their first few passes are clumsy, naturally, but they settle. 

Shane meshes with the team more easily than he expected to. It’s a good drill, he thinks. Rhythmic. Swing low, receive, pass, loop back up, alternate. Watch your teammates, their tells and idiosyncrasies. Learn to read the shifts in their weight and the direction of their shoulders. 

When they break, Shane finds Zadonsky by the bench. “You’re fast, and your puck handling is good,” Shane says without preamble, and the rookie startles, looking at him wide-eyed. “But you’re focused on where it is, not anticipating where it’s going to be. By the time your brain can process where the puck is on the ice, it’s already gone. You’ve got to stop reading the puck and start reading the play."

Zadonsky opens his mouth to say something, then chokes, doubles over, and starts coughing. “Are you okay?” Shane asks immediately, concerned, but Zadonsky just gives him a thumbs-up, still coughing, red in the face. 

“‘M fine,” he manages hoarsely. “Sorry. Choked on my own spit.”

“Hollander! Do not kill my rookies on first day here!” Ilya shouts from across the rink, and promptly receives matching middle fingers from Shane and Zadonsky.

Hammersmith snorts as he approaches them. “Don’t pass out, now,” he says good-naturedly, jostling Zadonsky’s helmet, and Zadonsky swats his hand away. 

“Shut the fuck up,” he grumbles, still a little red-faced, but there’s no real heat in it. 

“Didn’t react like this to me,” Hammersmith teases. “What, I’m not good enough for you to start blushing and stuttering? I’m a little offended—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Zadonsky says again, flush returning in full force as he turns to face the neutral zone and protests, “Roz, he’s bullying me!”

“Smitty, leave him alone!” Ilya shouts. “He is trying to impress his celebrity crush!”

“Fuck you, Roz!” Zadonsky shouts back, and Shane’s lips twitch despite himself. Part of him is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but a larger part of him is realizing slowly that Boston isn’t like Montreal at all. 

They set up for a scrimmage, five-on-five. Shane and Ilya are placed on opposite teams, and Shane can’t tell whether it’s because the coaches are worried they’d be stacking talent or worried they’ll kill each other if they have to exist in the same fifty feet of ice. Regardless, it’s almost always a center who takes the opening faceoff, and there’s some enthusiastic whooping and stick-tapping as Shane and Ilya meet at center ice. 

Shane just shakes his head at the noise as he bends down, smiling slightly, but Ilya bathes in the attention, giving a dramatic mock-bow to both ends of the ice. He shakes out his shoulders and settles into a faceoff position, grinning over at Shane. “This is familiar,” he chirps, seemingly oblivious to the assistant coach waiting to drop the puck. Then, leaning in slightly and lowering his voice enough not to carry, “You look good in black and gold.”

Shane doesn’t know where the boldness comes from, but he says, “You wear it better,” and tries to ignore the twisting in his chest as Ilya’s grin widens. 

Shane wins the faceoff. 

It’s a fast-paced game, short shifts in ten-minute periods, line changes quick enough that his heart rate never really slows to rest. Checks are brief and efficient, no one interested in really injuring anyone else. The sound is the same as any other game, only without the crowd: the rhythmic tap of sticks slapping against ice, skates skidding and scraping, the occasional ringing, metallic sound of puck against goalpost. The adrenaline is the same. If he looks straight ahead, he can forget his jersey is the wrong color. 

LeClaire signals Cadyn to swap out, and Shane hops the boards to replace him, skates biting into the ice as he pushes off. There’s a split-second of hesitation, but then instinct kicks in, and he shoves off toward the puck as it streaks across the ice in front of him. Thighs pumping, edges clean. He scoops the puck away from Connors, loses it during a brief check against the Plexiglass, and steals it back again on an intercepted pass.

He feels Ilya coming up on his right more than he sees or hears him, and he’s twisting to the side and turning on his heel to avoid him before he even realizes he’s doing it. He hears Ilya’s barked-out laugh, half-startled, as Shane slings the puck toward Hammersmith. Sebbin is backing him up, he knows, a contingency plan if Shane completely whiffs it, but Hammersmith clearly trusts him enough to pass between Zadonsky’s feet in his direction. 

The pass isn’t great but it’s fine, good enough that Shane can lunge forward and scoop the puck out of Zadonsky’s reach, and then there’s the barest hint of an opening in front of the goal and he takes it and slaps the puck through Dubek’s five-hole.

The net trembles. Shane exhales. It feels like relief, like he’s proven something. That he can pull his weight. That he’s Shane fucking Hollander. He’s barely reached the neutral zone to reset when a body collides with him, and he doesn’t have to look to see who it is. Ilya claps one gloved hand to the back of Shane’s helmet and jostles him enthusiastically. “What the fuck!” he yells. “You know is not real game, Hollander, yes? No need to show off! We get it, you play!”

Shane is grinning despite himself. “Just establishing a baseline,” he says. Then, bolder, “What, can’t keep up? Need me to slow down?”

“Oh, Hollander,” Ilya says, eyes narrowing, and Shane has to suppress a shiver, heat blooming in the pit of his stomach. Then, leaning close enough that only Shane can hear, “You will be begging me for a break by the time I’m done.”

Shane whips around, face burning, but Ilya is already skating casually to center ice. “Reset!” he calls, like he hasn’t just made Shane’s dick twitch in his jock, and Shane tightens his grip on his stick and joins him, pointedly avoiding eye contact as they position themselves for the faceoff. 

And he makes damn sure he wins. 

∗ ∗ ∗

They end up playing two half-hour scrimmages, the first with Shane and Ilya on opposite teams. During the second the coaches stick them hesitantly together, Ilya on first line and Shane on the second, but by their third goal the team has begun complaining about giving the rest of them a chance, and they both spend the last two periods benched. Ilya had complained that the rest of the team should learn to catch up, but in the end had no objections to bothering Shane for twenty minutes, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the bench. 

In the dressing room, Shane strips out of his gear silently and methodically. “Jesus fucking Christ, Hollzy,” Carmichael says from the other end of the room as he rubs a towel through his hair, slightly out of breath. “What the fuck did Montreal drop you for?”

The volume of the room immediately falls by forty percent. Shane freezes where he’s folding his clothes, practice jersey draped over his arm, and he sees Ilya still, too, gaze flicking over to him. “Thought it was kind of an open secret,” Shane says after a long moment, swallowing.

“What, that the League’s passing you around like a blunt until everyone gets a shot at the Cup?” Sebbin jokes, and Shane’s lips twitch despite himself. 

“Sure,” he says. “They’re sending me to Ottawa next season. They could use some help.”

“You sure? Not starting you off with San Jose?”

“San Jose’s a lost cause,” Marlow calls from Ilya’s other side, and a good-natured protest starts up from a pair of recent trades. 

Shane cracks a smile despite himself. Clears his throat. “I . . . didn’t mesh with the team culture,” he says, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice, and a round of protests and booing starts around the room. 

“Team culture of being a fucking loser, maybe,” Sebbin says. “You were too good for them.”

“Our team culture is scoring goals,” Marlow says, to the sound of cheering from the team. 

They seem happy to leave it at that, except for Carmichael, who’s still looking over at Shane with a confused look on his face. “No, seriously!” he says, oblivious to the way Zadonsky is elbowing him hard in the ribs—he has to aim up, given that he’s barely eye-level with Carmichael’s shoulder. “You could kill a guy and I’d bury the body myself if it meant you kept scoring like that.”

A few groans can be heard around the room. Zadonsky hisses out, “Dude, drop it.”

And it’s . . . nice, that they’re letting it go. Carmichael isn’t pushing because he wants to watch Shane squirm, he’s pushing because he’s curious, and maybe a little stupid. 

Which is why Shane takes a breath, steadies himself. “The Montreal guys probably would’ve helped me bury a body, too,” he starts, voice clearer than he expected it to be, “but apparently sucking dick in my off time crossed a line.”

A blanket of uncomfortable silence settles briefly over the room before Connors blurts out, “Jesus, so you were scoring like that while, like, limping?”

Shane goes beet-red, and the room erupts. A few are booing Connors, throwing balled-up socks in his direction, and as he dodges he’s protesting, “It was just a question!” 

“You can’t ask shit like that,” Zadonsky complains from across the room, sounding defeated and having clearly given up on Carmichael. “Come on, man.”

“I never said I bottomed,” Shane says weakly, but it’s clearly loud enough to be heard because there’s another burst of laughter as heads turn in his direction again. 

“You did not have to,” Ilya says, fixing him with a wicked grin, and the room falls apart completely as Shane’s flush returns full-force. 

“Yeah, yeah. Go ahead and laugh,” he says, chest tight with something between defiance and nervous enthusiasm. “You guys are missing out on prostate orgasms.”

It’s blunter and bolder than he expected, and he isn’t entirely sure where the words came from, but the room is loving it. Someone leans over and claps him on the shoulder, and he flinches before he can smooth his expression over, but just when he’s starting to overthink what he’s just said Ilya is saying airily, “Bold of you to assume. I will try anything once.”

The room fills with whistling and shouts of “Damn, Roz!”, and just like that, the conversation moves on. Shane braces for another round of questions or playful jabs, but the attention has already shifted away from him, and he’s left blinking at the way Ilya simply . . . redirected it. Like it was easy. Effortless. The focus doesn’t linger on him, scrutinizing, the way it would have in Montreal. They laughed, yes, but for maybe the first time in his professional career it didn’t feel like they were laughing at his expense.

Ilya bumps lightly against Shane’s shoulder, and Shane feels himself ease into the touch almost imperceptibly, like Ilya has his own gravitational pull for Shane alone. “Is okay?” Ilya asks quietly, leaning slightly closer to Shane to make himself heard, and Shane nods, not turning his head to look at him. “Too much?”

Shane shakes his head. “Not too much,” he says. “They’re . . . good.”

Ilya bumps against him again, gentle. “Told you,” Ilya says. “They are not like Montreal.” 

“No,” Shane says quietly. “They’re not.”

They could have been, he thinks, if Ilya wasn’t as good a captain as he is—if he left the room unchecked, let the banter cross over into hostility, pretended not to hear the jokes that hit a little too close to home. If he wasn’t as perceptive as he is. If he cared a little less. 

But Ilya watches, and keeps tabs on his players, and redirects attention without being asked, just because it’s needed. And he knows what people need in a way Shane’s never been able to guess.

Shane knows he isn’t easy to read, either. He’s made himself that way on purpose. If you don’t show emotions they can’t be turned against you. It’s armor, of a sort. 

Only Ilya has ever tried to look through the gaps. Like he’s worth the effort. 

Shane can’t say any of that here. He doesn’t think he can say any of it at all. 

Instead he taps the side of his foot against Ilya’s and pretends he can tell him this way, and with the way Ilya nudges him back Shane thinks maybe he knows. 

∗ ∗ ∗

Shane’s first game with the Bears is against Los Angeles, on home ice in Boston. 

They have him centering the second line with Carmichael and Sebbin, and they’re good wingers—their passes connect, and they set him up well for goals, and Sebbin especially is good at takeaways. They can’t quite match him for speed, and they don’t anticipate his plays perfectly, but that’s alright. No one’s ever been able to. 

(Almost no one, anyway. But Ilya is on the first line.)

And that’s fine, Shane reasons stubbornly. It’s good that LeClaire is spreading out their skill instead of stacking them into one shift, and besides, Shane’s never played wing. They clearly have a system, and Ilya, Marlow, and Hammersmith work well together, even if Shane can’t keep himself from thinking with every missed shot that the pass would have connected if he was there. He didn’t expect to replace Ilya as Boston’s star center, but he can’t say he’s not jealous. 

(Not of Ilya. Never of Ilya. Just . . . everyone else on the ice with him.)

He has to admit, though, that he plays better in Boston than he had in Montreal regardless of whether he’s on Ilya’s line or not, because he isn’t playing alone on the ice anymore. The bruises he collected earlier in the season have faded, and he has a strong suspicion Ilya has set up a rotating shift of bodyguards to keep it that way, because there’s rarely a delay between him getting checked into the boards and the offending player getting hit twice as hard by Varkov or St-Simon. 

“I miss Price,” Ilya says mournfully during one of the brief periods where he and Shane are both on the bench, fixing one of Los Angeles’ forwards with a dirty look as he passes. “Byron would be missing teeth by now if he were here.”

“You don’t need to put hits out for me,” Shane says, not looking away from the ice as he gnaws absently on his mouthguard. He hadn’t even been checked that hard. “I don’t think Byron has any actual teeth left to lose, anyway.”

“We will make him replace the replacements, then. Hey, look at their left D-man.”

“I know,” Shane says, watching his follow-through as he passes, keeping his non-dominant arm held close to his chest. “This is his first game back after that shoulder surgery.”

“They put him back too early, I think.”

“Yeah, but he’s one of their only competent defensemen.”

Ilya snorts. “Oh, Hollander, they will never believe me if I tell them how funny you are.”

“I just state facts."

“I know. That’s what makes it funny.” Ilya looks up and hops the boards as the lines change, and Shane is jostled slightly from the other side as Marlow leaves, too. 

He realizes, suddenly, that he’s looking forward to his next shift instead of dreading it. 

He doesn’t remember the last time he felt like that. 

His first goal with the Bears happens in the second period. He wins a faceoff in their defensive zone and scoops the puck towards Sebbin as he pushes off, setting himself up for a long pass, because Sebbin is startlingly good at spotting openings and exploiting them. That’s exactly what he does, in fact, and Shane accepts the puck just past the center line and turns toward the offensive zone in a tight arc, veering around Los Angeles’ built-like-a-horse left-winger. The winger doesn’t even touch him as Shane slips past him and into the offensive zone, puck nestled in the cradle of his blade like something precious. 

There’s a give-and-go between him and Carmichael, and Carmichael has a decent opening but passes it back to Shane anyway, and Shane dips around a defenseman and zeroes in on the goal and snaps the puck through the gap between blocker and goalpost, the one he knows Los Angeles’ goalie almost always leaves open but almost no one risks a shot through. There’s a held breath, and then the goal buzzer vibrates in his chest, and Carmichael collides with him, whooping as they bump helmets. Shane is grinning as Sebbin joins them, piling on from behind, and then Zadonsky and St-Simon. When he risks a glance at the bench he finds Ilya on his feet, yelling almost indistinguishable from the wall of sound coming from the crowd. Shane is almost dizzy with it. 

He doesn’t score again that night. He doesn’t mind. Ilya cements their lead during the third period, and the score ends 4–2 for Boston.

∗ ∗ ∗

The bar is clearly one the Bears go often after games, because the bartender grins and greets Marlow by name. “Evening,” she says, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of a dozen hockey players. “Congrats on the win. How many poor fools did you drag out tonight, Marly?”

“Uh—” Marlow cranes his neck to see over the crowd, counting heads. “Eleven? But I don’t think everyone’s drinking, so, like—eight tequila shots? Anything—”

“That doesn’t taste like shit, yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes as she reaches for a tray. 

“Seven and a ginger ale,” Ilya says over the noise, leaning over the bar. “Hollander does not drink during the season; he is too boring.”

“I am not boring,” Shane defends, and Ilya raises his eyebrows skeptically. 

“Oh, sorry, you want tequila?” he asks, and has the gall to look smug as Shane rolls his eyes and says nothing. Ilya turns back to the bartender and adds, “Also a Blue Moon and a Guinness, please—” His eyes light up. “Wait, shit, you have Baltika now?”

“You’re welcome,” the bartender chortles as she finishes pouring the tray of shots. “Connors said—”

“Connors was right! Fuck Guinness, you have Number Seven?”

Shane leans against the bar, listening idly as Ilya waxes poetic about Russian beer and the bartender half-listens, grinning the entire time. Marlow has disappeared with the tray, presumably to distribute shots. The bar is—well, not quiet, but certainly not as loud as some of the bars the Voyageurs frequented, and no one is pointing a phone in their direction. He suspects a lot of this has to do with the fact that this is America, where hockey is not in fact a national pastime, and the number of people who are likely to recognize him on the street at all is greatly reduced. It’s also a Wednesday night, which means most of the patrons have probably been drunk since six o’clock and have bigger things to worry about than a hockey team. 

The younger players have claimed a corner booth, far enough out of sight of the bar that Shane expects no one will really care if a tray of shots happens to appear there, and the veterans have claimed a table. Ilya picks neither of these, instead choosing a booth which looks mostly not-sticky to set down two beers and a can of Canada Dry. “Marlow is doing my captain obligations,” Ilya says as Shane slides into the booth. “I , ah—delegated all rookie responsibilities to him tonight, so I will not be getting call at two in the morning about Johansson throwing up in a gutter.”

Ilya flops down into the seat next to him, and Shane shoots him a flat look with no real irritation behind it as he scoots over in the booth to make room. Ilya seems to take that as an invitation to sprawl across the entire length of the seat, slumped against Shane’s side, head thrown dramatically against his shoulder. Shane can feign annoyance, but Ilya is warm against his side, and he has to restrain himself from lifting a hand to card through the blond curls on his shoulder. Instead he lifts his ginger ale to his lips and drinks to keep himself from doing something else stupid with his mouth. 

“There’s, like, a whole booth, Roz,” Marlow says as he sits down and reaches for a beer, having apparently interacted with the rookies enough to make sure they won’t kill themselves while he’s gone.

“Yes, but I like irritating him,” Ilya says airily. “I have lots of practice.”

“Yeah, because you literally piss me off for a living,” Shane says flatly, but there’s a note of fondness to his voice that he hopes no one else can hear. 

“Ah-ah! Not anymore! Those days are behind me! Now you are a Bear, and you have scored your first goal, so you are no longer a complete embarrassment—”

“I’m literally beating you in goals this season—”

“Ah, but I have more points—”

“Yeah, because your team likes you,” Shane says, a little sharper and a lot more honest than he meant to, and the table goes quiet for a minute.

“Our team now,” Ilya says after a beat. “You have been adopted. Boston will never lose a Cup again, and you will go down in history as Shane fucking Hollander, second-best hockey player.”

“And you can give us insider tips on which old injuries to target in Montreal,” Marlow adds. “For tactical reasons. No ulterior motives, obviously.”

Shane snorts. “I’m not encouraging anything,” he says. Then he tilts his head and continues reluctantly, “But Comeau’s left knee got fucked up during playoffs last year, and he never let it heal properly. And his backcheck sucks anyway; he takes a full second to process that we don't have possession anymore. I mean, he’s a heavy hitter, don’t get me wrong, but I swear it’s a fucking obstacle course with him sometimes, he just stands there—” Shane cuts himself off and clears his throat, flushing slightly. He takes another drink of ginger ale and avoids making eye contact with either of them. 

Marlow looks at him for a moment. “Hollzy,” he says, tilting his head slightly, “in the best possible way, you’re actually kind of a bitch.”

“Oh, Hollander is very bitchy,” Ilya says with great satisfaction. “You do not know this, because he never talks, but if you ask him about a player, he will spend ten minutes on a catty little tangent—”

“I will not—”

“Oh, so you have nothing to say about any of Philadelphia’s goalies?”

Shane goes silent. “Just objectively,” he starts, and Ilya throws his head back and cackles. Shane jabs a foot in his general direction and makes contact with his calf, and Ilya kicks back (much harder, Shane thinks, which was really unnecessary), and Shane stomps his foot down on top of Ilya’s shoe, trapping it to the floor. 

“Are you fuckers playing footsie under the table right now?” Marlow asks in disbelief, and Ilya immediately points his thumb in Shane’s direction.

“He started it,” he says, and Shane shoots him a glare. 

“I started kicking you when you put your whole body in my space,” he says flatly.

Ilya scoffs. “In your space. You can fit eight people at these tables if you are determined. Plenty of room.”

“If you sit in each other’s laps, maybe.”

“Oh, Hollander, if you wanted to sit in my lap, all you had to do was ask,” Ilya says, batting his (long, stupid, pretty) eyelashes at him flirtatiously, and Shane, in an effort to distract from the flush creeping up his neck, shoves Ilya hard enough that he falls partway out of the booth, cackling. 

“You’re literally eleven years old,” Marlow says, shaking his head as he lifts his beer to his mouth, and Ilya grins widely as he settles back into his seat.

“This eleven-year-old still has three times as many points as you this season, so you should maybe work on catching up, yes?”

“Nah,” Marlow says, grinning, leaning back in the booth. “No point. You could probably win a game with just the two of you. I’m never catching up, and I’m not going to try.”

“You are giving up?” Ilya asks. “That is, ah—admitting defeat?”

“Fatalistic?” Shane offers quietly. Ilya points.

“That. I knew you were getting old, but you are really giving up on yourself—”

“You’re fuckin’ older than me, Roz—”

“Not in spirit,” Ilya says, waving a hand. “I am forever young. Younger than Hollander.”

“By a month,” Shane says flatly.

“Jesus Christ,” Marlow says, eyebrows raised. “You guys will be competitive about anything.”

Neither of them dispute it. “You know,” Shane says suddenly, “If we both stay in Boston for the rest of our careers, I’ll always have one more Cup than you.”

Ilya goes silent. “Hollander,” he says. “You have given me motive to put you on LTIR, so you cannot get credit. And I want you to know—”

“Jesus Christ.”

“—that it is not personal, is just about my image, you understand—”

Shane shoves a hand over his mouth to shut him up, and Ilya licks his palm, and Shane yanks his hand away and wipes the spit on Ilya’s shirt. “Gross,” he complains half-heartedly.

“You like it.”

Marlow is looking at them with his head slightly tilted, expression neutral, a little curious, and Ilya shifts away from Shane as if he can feel Marlow’s eyes on them. It’s casual, nonchalant, unobtrusive. Considerate. Perceptive. Everything Ilya does has a purpose, and it makes Shane’s throat tighten. Marlow picks up the conversation again, not mentioning anything, and Shane isn’t delusional enough to actually believe that means he doesn’t suspect anything, but he’s hopeful enough to convince himself it’s true for the moment. 

Ilya’s foot taps against Shane’s under the table, and he jerks slightly at the contact before pressing back, harder, more insistent. A silent thank you.  

He lets himself think that maybe—maybe—Ilya wants this as much as he does.

Chapter End Notes

guys san jose’s getting there i promise. it’s not just centers this year. we drafted THREE defensemen AND like a decently mediocre goalie. 2027 is our year guys. the future is so teal you have to believe me

sorry for the update delay but in my defense i never promised anything. i’m busy doing an 80-acre land survey in bumfuck middle of nowhere michigan atm so the next chapter might be a bit. or maybe not! who knows. lots of time to think while my crew tries to find the witness trees at a section corner that got illegally logged last month. they’re probably 2x4s by now. some guy’s about to find a survey marker in his walls

chapter title from “bad things” by cailin russo

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

woke up last week after posting some straight up unbeta’d bullshit to find 51 notifications in my inbox and 300 new subscriptions. is this good for you guys

Shane has barely been on the team for two weeks when they next face Montreal.

He hasn’t been in the Bell Center since his last home game with the Voyageurs. It had been against Toronto, and they’d won, and the air in the dressing room had held the same quiet tension as every other winning game, with the subdued unease that said You’re safe for now, at least. No snide comments or sideways glances, just muted, conditional acceptance. 

But he’s back, and the parking garage is exactly the same, and his chest tightens with something that feels unsettlingly close to grief. 

“You doing alright?” Hammersmith asks from across the aisle as the team begins to file off the bus, and Shane blinks, looking over from the window. 

“Fine,” he says. “Why?”

Hammersmith shrugs. “I remember what it was like to play against my old team for the first time. Wouldn't be shocked if you were in the same boat.”

Shane is quiet for a long moment, because Hammersmith is being . . . nice. Not prying, not mocking. Just offering. 

It’s an abrupt change from Montreal.

It’s not unpleasant. 

“I’m okay,” he says, because it’s mostly true, and Hammersmith nods and lets it go. 

He still knows the layout of the Bell Center like the back of his hand, but he’s never been in the visitors’ dressing room before. It’s just different enough from the home team’s to throw him off, make him feel like he’s stepped into a parallel universe where everything is wrong. He fidgets with his shoulder pads, trying to get them to sit in a way that doesn't dig into his neck, but either they’re being exceptionally stubborn, or Shane is being extremely sensitive. 

It’s probably the latter, he thinks, because now that he’s noticed the shoulder pads he realizes that everything else is wrong, too: the overhead lights buzzing, the seam of his undershirt digging into his skin, the remnants of adhesive sticking to his fingertips from peeling tape. Everything is exactly the same as it was three weeks ago, which is to say it’s ever so slightly different from Boston, and now being back here makes his skin crawl, just a little. 

“Okay?” Ilya asks quietly as Shane fusses with his gear, and Shane shoots him a look that says What do you think? Ilya gives a “fair enough” sort of shrug, then adds, “We could take care of the, ah. Problematic ones. If you want.”

Shane huffs out a laugh that doesn't really contain any humor at all and says, “I don't think that’ll really fix it. But thanks anyway.”

“Maybe. But they deserve it, yes? Is just, ah—karma.”

“I need you on the ice, not in the bin,” Shane says, a little sharper than he means to, and Ilya raises his eyebrows, raising his hands in submission. Shane rubs his forehead. “Sorry,” he says, barely audible. “I didn't mean—I don't know. Sorry.”

His eyes are stinging, mortifyingly, and he blinks fast, looking up at the ceiling to keep the tears from falling. “Hey,” Ilya says softly, stepping slightly closer to shield Shane from view. “Is okay, yes? Is just another game. You are going to win this one just like you won every other fucking game last week, and Montreal is going to regret everything they ever did to you. Yes?”

Shane nods, slightly wobbly, and Ilya reaches to adjust his shoulder pads until they settle in a way that won't leave marks on his neck. Some of the tension seeps out of him as Ilya digs his thumbs into the muscle there, squeezing gently. “You are Shane fucking Hollander,” he says, shaking him slightly, focused and intense. “Shane—fucking—Hollander.”

Shane nods again, swallowing. “Okay,” he says hoarsely. He clears his throat. “Okay. I’m good.”

“Good?” Ilya clarifies, eyebrows slightly raised, and when Shane nods again he thumps his shoulder twice and turns back to his stall. 

Not a single person in the room blinks twice at it. 

Shane laces his skates tightly and lets the pressure around his ankles ground him, exhaling, shoulders relaxing minutely. He sees Ilya cast one last glance at him, then straighten, blowing out a breath. “Okay!” he shouts, and the room quiets, attention turning to him like someone has adjusted the focus on a telescope. “Hollzy wants us to play clean hockey, so we play clean hockey. Well, clean-ish,” he modifies at the booing from his team. “Let them throw first punch, then knock their teeth out, yes? I would like to see blood on the ice. Put Zamboni to work tonight.” Whooping. Sticks tapping. “Hollander, anyone off-limits? We cannot promise anything, but we will at least check them a normal amount,” Ilya says, turning to him, and Shane blinks. 

“Pike and Boiziau,” he says after a moment. “And your guys, I guess.”

“You heard the man,” Ilya says. “But if you wanted to target Comeau, even though I know Hollzy would never ask—” 

“Jesus, Rozanov,” Shane mumbles, rubbing his forehead, and he sees LeClaire sigh before he leaves the room, presumably for some semblance of plausible deniability. 

“—then please feel free to knock teeth out. But wait for them to chirp first, yes? Wait for, ah—” He struggles for a word for a long moment. 

Shane sighs. “Provocation?” he offers from the bench behind him, and Ilya snaps his fingers, grinning. 

“Yes, yes! It must be provoked first. Aggravated assault.”

“Please don’t call it aggravated assault,” Shane says flatly. “You’re toeing the line of premeditation right now, and I’m not bailing you out of jail when you get arrested.”

“Is hockey,” Ilya protests, but he’s still grinning. “Is contact sport. Not my fault.”

“Shut up, Rozanov,” Shane says tiredly. “Listen—” The room has grown steadily louder during their back-and-forth, but now it quiets again, attention turning to Shane. “It will be infinitely more satisfying to flatten them through the ice by being good at hockey than by beating them bloody,” he says. “Or—okay, that might be fun, too. But I’d like to break their spirit, not just their bones, so maybe make sure we’re up a couple points before you start racking up penalties.”

“Can we kill Comeau?” Johansson pipes up, a surprising amount of bloodlust in his tone. 

“I didn’t hear anything,” Shane says, expression souring slightly. “But I want every single Voyageur here to regret ever stepping foot on the ice tonight.”

It doesn't feel like a good speech, at least not compared to some of the ones he gave before he came out to the Voyageurs, when they still respected him as a captain. But clearly it’s good enough, because the locker room is shouting and tapping their sticks with none of the scattered detachment that Shane had gotten used to in Montreal. It’s focused, now. Driven. “Roll out!” Ilya shouts.

There’s a clatter of activity as players reach for their helmets and gear and begin to file out the dressing room door. “Was good speech,” Ilya says lowly, bumping against Shane’s shoulder as he pulls on his gloves. “Trying to replace me as captain, maybe?”

“I don’t want the C,” Shane mumbles. “And Marlow can keep the A.”

And he doesn’t, not really. His captaincy had given him immunity from a certain amount of chirping. It was safe. It was necessary. It was the standard he had to meet. 

But he never liked it, not really. He liked what it represented, sure—the respect and status, the proof he was doing well—but it had never clicked with him. He wasn’t aggressive enough, social enough. Being Canada’s Golden Boy was a kind of armor, sure, but it also kept people at a distance. 

Ilya is good at it, though. Good with people, good with words, good at walking the line between aggression and encouragement in a way Shane could never quite figure out. 

But hockey comes naturally. Like muscle memory. Like instinct. Like breathing. 

When he steps onto the ice he does not stumble. He pushes off clean, skates biting crisply into the ice. There is noise from the crowd, a wall of sound that hits him as he steps out of the tunnel, but they seem unsure whether they should be cheering or not, split between heckling the traitor and applauding the prodigal son. He doesn’t acknowledge it, setting his jaw, fixing his eyes straight ahead as he forces his muscles to relax. 

It’s just hockey. He’s done this a thousand times. 

A few Bears bump shoulders with Kovalev and Aud during warmups, the forward and defenseman Boston had traded for Shane. Most of them, however, are eyeing the Voyageurs warily, glancing at Shane sidelong as Hayden crosses the ice to them and yanks him into a brief side hug. Shane lets it happen. “Good to see you, Hayd,” he says, smiling slightly, and some of the tension on the ice seems to visibly dissipate. 

“You're still alive, hey? They're not holding you hostage?” Hayden asks, a kind of half-smile on his face, but Shane can read the concern written under it, the real questions underneath the jokes: Are you okay? Are they treating you well?

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, they're . . . they're really good, actually.” Hayden raises his eyebrows so far they nearly disappear beneath his helmet, and Shane huffs out a laugh. “No, seriously. They, uh. They take care of their own.” He cranes his neck to look around the rink, searching for Kovalev or Aud. “Hey, uh, how are the new guys settling in?” 

Hayden hesitates, then shrugs. “They’re quiet,” he says. “Stick with each other. They’re not, uh—” He sighs. “They’re not exactly being welcomed. I mean, they were playing for Boston last month, obviously, and most of the guys aren’t . . . thrilled.”

“Better or worse than how it was when I left?” 

Hayden hesitates again, this time for much longer. “They’re not as bad with them as they were with you,” he settles on eventually, and Shane sighs. “But I think . . . I think the, like, vibes are worse.”

“Evening, Capitaine,” J.J. says cheerfully, oblivious to the conversation as he skates up behind Hayden, and Shane winces. 

“I’m not the one with the C anymore.”

“Don’t remind me,” Hayden says, face falling slightly, something between dread and disappointment writing itself across his expression. “They’ve moved him up to first line. I’m winging him, Holly.”

Shane cringes slightly in solidarity, and opens his mouth to say something vaguely sympathetic in response, but then the announcer’s voice echoes across the ice and the players begin to drift toward the benches, and J.J. slaps Shane on the shoulder as he pushes off. 

The opening faceoff is between the two captains, Ilya facing Comeau at center ice. Shane can’t hear anything from the bench, but he sees Ilya’s lips moving, sees the vicious grin there, sees the glower Comeau gives him in response. 

Then Ilya wins the faceoff, and the puck shoots across the ice into Hammersmith’s cradle, and Shane forces his focus to narrow until all that’s there is puck-goal-obstacle. 

∗ ∗ ∗

Shane scores the first goal of the night six minutes into the first period. 

It isn’t flashy. It’s an understated, efficient wrist shot with an assist from Sebbin, and the arena erupts with it. It’s clean and uncomplicated, the kind of playing that they've grown to expect from him, and for a moment he’s surprised by the wave of noise that erupts from the stands. There’s still a disconnect somewhere in the part of his mind that hasn't forgotten he was a Voyageur, once, and it feels uncomfortably like an own-goal. 

Carmichael collides with him, shouting incoherently with a wild grin across his face, and Shane is almost startled by the smile that splits across his own face, a little hesitant, but present nonetheless. 

It's a good feeling, he thinks, or close to it. Getting there. 

They play it safe and predictable, keeping lines tight, shifts a minute long. The puck remains stubbornly, consistently in the neutral zone for nearly the entire period, because as much as Shane hates to admit it now, he can admit that he was a good captain, and that the team did, objectively, unfortunately, get much better when he was there, and they’re almost—almost—a match for Boston. 

Not for him or Ilya. But for Boston, maybe, without them. 

At minute seventeen, one of Montreal’s rookies makes a clean snap shot through Andropov’s five-hole, and Ilya groans from where he’s sitting next to Shane on the bench. “I wanted a shutout,” he pouts, slouching in his seat, and Shane rolls his eyes, even though he’s quietly a little irritated himself. 

“It was a nice shot,” he admits. “Cooly’s a good kid.” 

“He’s a Voyageur,” Ilya says, sounding disgusted that Shane would even consider defending him. 

“He’s nineteen,” Shane replies flatly. “Probably not the rookie season he was expecting.” He casts a polite nod in Couillard’s direction as he passes, and there’s the faintest dip of a head in response. The rookies had been good about him, for the most part. Just afraid. 

Shane never pictured this when he thought about his future, before. He’d expected his jersey to hang in the rafters of the Bell Center when he retired, and if—if—he ever changed teams, it would be on good terms with the Voyageurs, for personal reasons unrelated to his playing.

It still doesn't feel real, playing for Boston. 

He still feels a little bit like a traitor to his old team, even though he wasn't the one who abandoned them. 

By the second period, though, Montreal has stopped playing it safe, and the shame begins to morph into something closer to anger. They can pretend they play a cleaner game all they want, talk about penalty minutes and box time, but the only real difference between them and Boston is that the Voyageurs are more subtle about it. Clipping behind the referee’s back. A hook around the ankle played off as accidental. Chirps that land just barely on the side of overtly violent. He hears Wilson spit faggot as they pass each other, and his stride must stutter despite how hard he tries to keep it even, because Zadonsky gives him a strange look as he approaches. “You good?” he asks. 

“Fine,” Shane says, lips tight, bending over at the faceoff circle, because it’s as fine as it’s going to get. It’s not new. It’s not important. It’s just an obstacle. 

The lines change. Ilya attempts a shot that Drapeau pins beneath his knee pad. Shane can hear the mix of groaning and cheering as Ilya loops back around to the nearest faceoff circle, shaking out his shoulders as Drapeau tosses a linesman the puck. Comeau bends over the circle slowly, deliberately, locking eyes with Ilya as he speaks. 

Everything after that happens very quickly.

The faceoff is close enough to the bench that Shane can make out the words “faggot traitor,” and close enough that Shane gets first-row seats to the way Ilya’s gloves hit the ice, and close enough to see the way his fingers close in the front of Comeau’s jersey as he nails his cheekbone with a right hook. 

The crowd erupts with cheering immediately. The tension has been thick enough to cut with a knife since Shane’s goal in the first period, and they’re itching for a proper fight. It's messy and violent and a release valve for all of the rage against Montreal that's been simmering since Shane was traded, maybe before. 

Marlow backs Ilya up immediately, dragging one of Montreal's defensemen out of range to give Ilya room to work. Hammersmith doesn’t participate, but he’s certainly not trying to stop it, remaining just far enough away from the skirmish to avoid the attention of the referees. Hayden is pulling at the arm of one of the Voyageurs, trying to keep him from joining the fray, and Aud is looking on with his eyebrows raised, visibly unimpressed with the team he’s been traded to. 

It’s several seconds until the referees manage to haul Ilya away, and Shane can see even from the bench that Comeau is in much worse shape than him. He manages to get to his feet by himself, but there’s blood pouring down his chin and seeping into the collar of his jersey, and he visibly wobbles as he starts toward the bench, trainers meeting him halfway. 

Ilya hasn’t really stopped fighting at all, just changed targets. “Did you hear what he said?” he’s shouting at the referee, visibly enraged. “Is unsportsmanlike, is fucking disgusting—”

Shane grits his teeth and swings his feet over the boards, crossing the ice to Ilya and grabbing his shoulder. “Knock it off,” he says, deliberately calm despite the vibrating under his skin. “You’re lucky it’s only five. Get in the box.”

“It should be fucking zero!” Ilya shouts. “Is contact sport!”

“Do not start shit with the refs tonight,” Shane warns. “This is not a home game. They are not on our side.”

“Refs are fucking bullshit! Comeau deserved—”

“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, and we can’t afford penalties tonight.”

“Yes, we fucking can! You were only good player in Montreal, we can outscore them!”

“Not in a four-on-three!”

“We have good PK line!”

“We don’t fucking score with the PK line, Roz!”

“Rozanov, get in the box,” the referee repeats harshly, and Ilya grits his teeth and huffs and finally pushes off toward the penalty box, shooting one last glare at Comeau on the Voyageurs’ bench, where the trainers are pressing bloody gauze to his face. 

Shane returns to the bench, eyes on center ice as the referee skates to the line and begins announcing penalties. Five each to Marlow and Rozanov for fighting. Five and a by-the-book ten-minute misconduct penalty to Comeau that, in all likelihood, wouldn’t have been assessed if it had happened further from the Boston bench, where there were fewer witnesses. There’s booing from both sides of the arena. No one is happy with any of it. 

Neither is the team, obviously, but there’s a low, impressed whistle from further down the bench, and Shane cranes his neck to see Zadonsky, eyebrows raised. “I’ve never seen him snap like that,” he says. 

“He drops gloves all the time,” Shane says, brow furrowing, but Zadonsky shakes his head slowly. 

“Not like that,” he says. “That was personal.”

“Yeah, well, he called me a slur,” Shane says shortly, turning back to face the ice. “Rozanov doesn’t tolerate that shit.”

“Clearly you don’t tolerate Roz’s shit, either.” 

“I told him he needed to be out of the box if he actually wanted to score any goals tonight,” Shane says, scowling. “Not that he ever fucking listens to me.”

They put the penalty kill unit out on the ice. 

It goes exactly as it’s supposed to. Neither team scores. 

It does not fix the uneasy feeling squeezing in Shane’s chest. 

Ilya plays a short shift directly out of the box, and Shane replaces him on the ice a minute later, but the next time both of them are on the bench Ilya squeezes himself into the narrow gap next to him, knocking the side of his skate against Shane’s. 

“You don’t need to defend me,” Shane says, looking straight ahead as he speaks. 

He sees Ilya blink out of the corner of his eye, taken aback, but then he leans forward, trying to catch Shane’s gaze. “No,” he says, sounding almost gentle. “But you do not always need to defend yourself, either.”

Shane doesn’t let his face show how much that sentence guts him, and then LeClaire is shouting, “Hollander!” and he’s hopping the boards, skates biting into the ice as he pushes off. 

∗ ∗ ∗

Hammersmith goes down with a shoulder injury in the last four minutes of the second period, and Feller takes his place. The adjusted line is . . . solid enough, Shane supposes, but the chemistry is off in the way that chemistry is always off when someone is trying to fill a gap imperfectly. Feller lags a half-step behind, hesitates on his passes, and as a whole remains undeniably competent but also entirely wrong. 

Ilya leans back on the bench to talk to LeClaire as the timer runs down, and Shane sees the coach nod slowly, brow slightly furrowed. “Hollander,” LeClaire says during the second intermission, and Shane looks up from the bench, hands pausing on his roll of tape. “I’m moving you up to first line. Rozanov will take left wing.”

Shane blinks, straightens. Ilya nudges his shoulder, and Shane looks over to find him grinning, looking almost feral. “They will not know what fucking hit them,” he says. “Montreal has made the biggest fucking mistake of their lives.”

“You think you’ll be able to keep yourself out of the bin long enough to play a full shift?” Shane asks dryly, and Ilya snorts. 

“For you?” he asks, fluttering his eyelashes. “Of course, dorogoy. Anything.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane says, hoping the flush creeping up the back of his neck isn’t visible. He’s still processing it, he thinks. The idea of playing on the same line as Ilya during a regular season game still hasn't settled in his head. He feels almost dizzy with it. 

Ilya positions himself to Shane’s left as they skate out for the faceoff. The crowd is screaming at the lineup. It’s something both unprecedented and entirely predictable, because no one in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to put Hollander and Rozanov on a line together, and Shane can't keep a grin from spreading across his face as Comeau bends down in front of him. 

Comeau’s expression is inscrutable except for a vague, ambiguous kind of rage. “Nervous?” Shane asks, and Comeau’s expression darkens as he opens his mouth to answer, and then the puck drops and Shane slaps it into Ilya’s waiting cradle. 

It’s clear from the beginning of the period that Montreal is getting desperate. They’ve gotten reckless, sloppy. They recover from their slip-ups quickly, granted, but the slip-ups shouldn’t be happening at all. 

It’s equally clear from the beginning of the period that Shane and Ilya, together, are a nuclear bomb that should have never been placed on the same line.

He almost feels bad for Marlow. It’s easy, automatic. Shane doesn’t have to look to know where Ilya is. He passes blindly because he already knows Ilya will be where Shane needs him to be. He reads the plays two steps ahead and screens Ilya’s shots from Drapeau’s line of sight without needing to be told. Ilya moves as easily and fluidly as if he’s always been a winger. 

The first goal of the third period is a tip-in. 

A long pass from Rozanov, a fakeout and a minor course correction by Hollander, screened beautifully by Montreal’s Gagnon. Smooth. Elegant. It’s All-Stars but better. Ilya collides with Shane with undisguised glee, laughter bright and loud over the noise of the arena. The crowd, to their credit, is doing their very best to deafen them with cheering. Shane would call putting the two of them on the same line fanservice if it didn't work so fucking well. 

And then, forty-five seconds later, Ilya sends an unassisted chip shot over Drapeau’s shoulder, so smooth it almost looks careless. Ilya salutes dramatically to the crowd as he passes, blowing a kiss to a cluster of Montreal fans in the front row, and Shane can't keep himself from grinning as Ilya bumps playfully against his shoulder, even as he shakes his head in disapproval. It’s fast-paced and electric and fun. 

Shane almost regrets leaving the ice when the lines change, despite the increasing hostility from the Voyageurs. Over the course of the period, there are half a dozen hard checks against him that should probably be penalties, a tripping call too obvious to ignore which rightfully puts Laine in the box for a two-minute minor, and many, many slurs which go unchecked by the referees but checked very hard by Boston’s heavy hitters. By the fifteen-minute mark, four different Bears have served their time in the bin for two-minute minors. Marlow receives a double for breaking Wilson’s nose with “just the follow-through, come on, it wasn't intentional.” 

Ilya tries to throw himself at a Montreal forward who jeers, “They passing you around in the locker room, Hollzy?” at him during a stoppage of play, but Shane grabs the back of Ilya’s jersey and yanks him backward before he can drop gloves. 

“They will eject you, Rozanov,” he bites out. “He’s not worth it.”

“You are,” Ilya throws back, and Shane says nothing for several stunned moments, lips slightly parted.

“I don't need a bodyguard,” he comes up with eventually, and Ilya shakes his head, frustration clear on his face. 

“This is not us thinking you are weak. This is us caring about you, Hollander.”

Shane is again left speechless, standing unmoving until Ilya frees himself from his grip and pushes Shane off of him to go position himself for the faceoff. 

With two minutes left on the clock, Montreal pulls their goalie. 

Thirty seconds later, Ilya makes a blind pass across the ice, and Shane slaps a one-timer into the empty net. 

∗ ∗ ∗

The final score is 5–1. 

The celebration in the dressing room is much more enthusiastic than Shane would have expected from a regular season game. A chant of “Hollzy hattie!” is quickly taken up by everyone in the locker room, and Shane ducks his head sheepishly as he passes. Gloved hands reach out to thump his helmet and his back. 

The noise redoubles again as Ilya enters the room behind him, arms spread dramatically. “New powerplay unit, yes?” he shouts, and grabs Shane’s shoulders to pull him forward and plant a sloppy, overdramatic kiss to the front of Shane’s visor in a mirror of All-Stars. Shane can't help the red-faced grin that appears on his face. The adrenaline high hasn't faded yet. He's still riding the wave of sheer relief.

“Hollzy, what bars are good here?” Carmichael calls over the noise, but St-Simon smacks his shoulder. 

“We are not celebrating at the same bar as the Voyageurs!” he shouts. “They can lick their wounds in their shitty Montreal-fan bars, and we will find a different one!”

And so they find a nearly-empty sports bar that doesn’t have a Voyageurs pennant in the window, and Shane agrees to stay for a while with much less reluctance than he usually has. He gives in to a round of tequila shots and spends the better part of an hour nursing a can of ginger ale, senses pleasantly blunted by alcohol. He exists on the outskirts of the group, not in a lonely kind of way, just a quiet one, absorbing the noise around him and soaking in the conversation like a contented, relaxed sponge. He doesn't contribute much to the group, but he isn't banished to its fringes, either. He’s just there, and it’s . . . nice.

The adrenaline and endorphins of the game wear off around the same time as the alcohol does, leaving Shane drained and slightly shaky where he’s curled into a corner booth. It’s a little before midnight when he tells St-Simon he’s going back to the hotel to wash the smell of the bar off him, and a little after he steps out of the shower when his phone lights up on the nightstand. 

Lily

1118

Shane

Aren’t you rooming with Marlow?

Lily

He is out still

And besides he has learned to knock

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Shane mumbles, staring at his phone. His own hotel room is silent except for the sound of movement against the crisp bedspread as he swings his legs out of bed. Connors is still out drinking. 

It’s a bad idea. A risky one.

That fact has never stopped him before. 

He jams his feet into his sneakers, grabs his key card from the top of the dresser, and walks two doors down to Ilya’s room. 

Ilya opens the door only a few seconds after Shane knocks, as if he’d been waiting, and it occurs to Shane for the first time that maybe he was, that maybe Ilya looks forward to seeing him the same way he does. This part is familiar, following Ilya further into a hotel room and closing the door behind them both. It’s sex. Easy. Routine.

What isn’t familiar is the way Ilya opens the hotel fridge and hands him a can of ginger ale, casual as anything. Shane takes it and cracks it open after a moment of hesitation, eyes tracing over Ilya’s face, trying to read his expression, but it’s as carefully unreadable as it always is. 

“Does it hurt?” Shane asks eventually, nodding to the bruise blooming across his cheekbone.

“Looks worse than it is,” Ilya says, shrugging, even as he probes it gingerly with his fingertips. Shane nods, taking a sip of his ginger ale for lack of anything else to say. 

“Was it worth it?” he asks after a moment, and he isn't sure what answer he's looking for, really. 

“Yes,” Ilya says. Simple. Short. Like the answer is obvious. He doesn’t need to repeat any of the things he said earlier, because Shane hasn’t stopped replaying the words in his head since he said them: You do not always need to defend yourself. This is not us thinking you are weak, this is us caring about you. 

“I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier,” he says after a moment. “About the—the bodyguard thing.”

Ilya shrugs, leaning against the windowsill. “You were angry,” he says. 

“Yeah, Ilya, that’s the problem.”

“Oh, being angry with me is problem? This is news to me,” Ilya says, raising his eyebrows. “You have never had trouble before—”

“Shut up. You know what I mean. It’s not—” He sighs. “I’m not mad at you. And I shouldn't be taking it out on you, because it's not your fault.”

Ilya makes a noncommittal noise that isn’t necessarily agreement. “How are you?” he asks after a long moment. “Really.”

Shane goes quiet. “I’m doing better than I expected,” he says finally, which is the truth, and Ilya scoffs. 

“You expect the worst, always,” he says. “This does not tell me much.”

Shane’s lips twitch at the corners despite himself. “I prepare for the worst,” he corrects, though there’s not any real fight in it. 

“Yes, is what I said. So how are you?” Ilya repeats, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

Shane exhales, trying to organize his thoughts into something coherent. “It wasn’t—good, in Montreal,” he settles on eventually. “For the last couple months. You saw us on the ice. I mean, I called you about it a couple times. It’s—better, here. In Boston.”

“You miss it anyway,” Ilya says, tilting his head, and Shane almost nods automatically, but realizes it isn't really true before he can agree.

“I think I miss what it used to be,” he says instead. “I miss—” He pauses, closing his eyes briefly. “I was their captain,” he says. “I went to their weddings. I babysitted their kids. I led us to two Cups, and it wasn’t—” His throat tightens, and he swallows hard. “It wasn’t enough,” he finishes. “In the end. They—I gave them everything, and it wasn’t enough, and they left me anyway. So I guess I—I needed to leave, it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t want to.”

And Ilya understands, Shane thinks. He must. He’s said the same thing about Russia before.

It’s the most honest he’s been with anyone in years. It feels risky, like this—in a t-shirt and sweatpants, hair shower-damp. Too close to something normal, something unguarded. “I’m glad you’re here,” Ilya says quietly. Clears his throat. “The, ah. Press asked what it was like to play on a line with you.”

Shane fidgets with the can of ginger ale in his hands. Wipes off a bead of condensation with his thumb. Sets it down on the dresser. “What’d you say?” he asks after a moment, shoving his hands in his pockets. He’s almost scared to hear the answer. 

Ilya just shrugs. “Told them it was nice to play with someone who can keep up,” he says. There’s silence for a moment. Then he adds, “I could not say the truth.”

And oh, it’s dangerous, the direction this conversation is going. Too vulnerable. Too honest. 

“What’s the truth?” Shane asks, almost inaudible. The silence sounds like a held breath. 

“I liked it,” Ilya says after a long moment. “Felt . . . natural. Sometimes I forgot there was anyone else on the ice.” Silence. Then, “Felt like it was possible, for us to be something.”

Shane swallows. “It’s dangerous for us to be something,” he says after a beat.

“More dangerous than just sex?”

Shane doesn’t say anything, because—well, no, it wouldn’t be. Not in any tangible way. The world—fans, the League, Russia—would respond the same way no matter what kind of relationship it was. 

He doesn't speak—doesn’t think he can—but Ilya knows him well enough to notice when something’s off. He knows how to read Shane’s tells, the words nestled into the silence between sentences, the twitches and flinches and blinks. How to hear what he doesn’t say out loud. Like he’s worth the effort. “Come on, Hollander,” Ilya says softly. “Tell me. You are thinking very loudly.”

What Shane is thinking is how much more it would hurt if it fell apart. 

What Shane is also thinking is how much it already hurts, pretending that this is enough.  

It is a terrible cost-benefit analysis.

“I can’t keep pretending I don’t like you,” Shane says finally, an echo of All-Stars.

There’s a beat of silence. “No,” Ilya says after a moment. “Me either.” He hesitates, and then he says, “I maybe like you too much.”

It doesn't feel like the kind of confession that usually comes with a dramatic proclamation of love, but the kind of confession given vulnerable and kneeling and very, very small. It’s borrowed words, but Ilya doesn’t need to say anything else, because this, at least, they both understand perfectly. The tension. The wanting. The waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Ilya,” Shane says, voice cracking, and then Ilya is kissing him. 

It’s clumsy and wet with saliva or tears or both, desperate and fumbling in a way it hasn't been since their first hookups when they were nineteen, and Shane melts into it like water, pressing himself into it like he can't get close enough. He’s shaking, and he thinks Ilya might be too, and maybe the only thing keeping his hands steady is the fact that they’re cupping Shane’s face. 

Ilya backs him slowly across the room until his knees hit the back of the bed, and he falls back against it, gasping openly into Ilya’s mouth as he tugs at his shirt. “Off,” he manages breathlessly, and Ilya grins against his lips, pulling away just long enough to strip his shirt over his head and reach to do the same for Shane. Shane’s hands are tugging at Ilya’s hips, and Ilya allows him this, pressing himself down in one slow grind just to coax a gasp and a moan out of Shane’s mouth. It takes him twice as long as usual to pull Shane’s sweatpants and boxers down over his hips, interrupted by frantic kissing and fumbling hands, but finally Shane is able to kick his pants off his ankles and reach for Ilya’s to do the same, slipping a hand beneath the waistband to squeeze at the rapidly-growing bulge there. 

Ilya groans quietly and bites down on his lip and then gets impatient enough to push Shane’s hands away. “Over,” he says, tapping Shane’s thigh, and Shane complies, propping himself up on elbows and knees that already feel shaky and weak with adrenaline and arousal. Ilya’s mouth is on him immediately, hands spreading him open, and Shane moans as he tongues at his rim, arching back against his mouth. It’s messy and eager and wanting, filthy and wet and still one of the hottest things Ilya has ever done. Shane feels his rim flutter and begin to relax, and the moment he can manage it Ilya is thrusting his tongue inside him, tearing an obscene moan from Shane’s throat. 

He could come like this, he’s done it before, but as tempting as the thought is it isn’t what he really wants. “Fingers,” he gasps out. “Fuck, want you in me, c’mon—”

Ilya reaches for a bottle of lube, and in a few seconds one slick finger is pressing inside him, crooking downward to massage against his prostate. All of Shane’s breath rushes out of him at once, and it takes several seconds for him to inhale again, sucking in air so quickly and deeply that it makes him dizzy and his chest hurt. All of it rushes out of him again when Ilya teases a second finger at his rim, and he lets out a wordless whine, pressing his hips back against the pressure. 

It isn’t slow, but it’s thorough—not the kind of teasing that Ilya pulls out whenever he really wants to reduce Shane to a begging mess, but the kind of methodical opening-up he uses whenever he plans to fully wreck him. His tongue probes around Shane’s rim and slips in alongside his fingers as he curls them toward his prostate until Shane is squirming and pressing himself back against Ilya’s hand, precome dripping onto the sheets. “Gospodi, look at you,” Ilya moans, pulling away for a moment to catch his breath while three fingers pump in and out of Shane’s hole. “Fuck, so pretty, opening up so well for me.”

Shane’s breath catches, and his elbows nearly give out beneath him. “‘M ready,” he manages, reaching for Ilya’s wrist with one shaking hand. “Fuck, please, I’m ready, I’m good, please fuck me—”

“Fuck,” Ilya groans, long and drawn-out, withdrawing his fingers as he fumbles for a condom, and Shane almost whimpers at the loss until he feels the head of Ilya’s cock pressing against his rim. Slowly, almost teasingly, Ilya sinks inside him, and Shane practically sobs into the pillow, thighs trembling. “Fuck, you’re tight,” Ilya breathes out, and Shane nods slightly against the pillow, cock twitching and dripping onto the sheets beneath them. He has been emptied out and filled back up with Ilya, and it is so, so good, and Ilya is praising him and saying his name and splitting him in half. 

Ilya’s breath is hot against his skin as he presses a damp kiss to the nape of his neck, grinding minutely as his hips meet Shane’s ass. “Okay?” he asks breathlessly, and Shane nods again, hips canting back to try and coax Ilya into motion. He doesn’t need much coaxing. The first few thrusts are slow, testing, and then Ilya seems to calculate exactly how much Shane can take and decides to give it to him without mercy. 

His first real thrust pounds hard against Shane’s prostate, and the sound he makes is something close to a wail. He bites down on the pillow to muffle it, but Ilya buries his fingers in his hair and pulls him up just enough to make him release it, spit trailing from his mouth as he lets out another breathless moan. “Let me hear it,” Ilya breathes. “Come on, give me those pretty sounds, Hollander, come on.”

He thrusts against Shane’s prostate again, and this time his sobbing moan echoes in the room as he trembles. “Fuck, Ilya,” he whines out, “shit, do that again—fuck, yes—”

Ilya huffs out a laugh as he sets a pace, skin slapping against skin. “Good?” he asks breathlessly, and Shane nods dumbly.

“So good,” he moans out, eyelids fluttering as he rolls his hips clumsily backward, trying to match Ilya’s thrusts. It takes barely any time at all to reduce him to soft, breathy “ah, ah, ah”s, desperate noises punched out of him with every thrust, and suddenly he’s close, teetering on an edge he’s only seeing now that he’s almost fallen off it. “Wait,” he gasps out, and Ilya’s hips stutter to a halt. “Wait. Want to see you. Can—can I—” He swallows, reaching one hand blindly behind him, and Ilya takes it and rubs his thumb over his knuckles, soothing. “Can I ride you?” Shane manages finally, and Ilya makes a strangled sound.

“Fuck, you’re unbelievable,” he breathes out, and Shane lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a whimper and a gasp as Ilya pulls out and flips them over so Shane can straddle him properly. 

His hand is shaking as he grabs Ilya’s cock to line it up against his hole, pressing back on it and letting gravity pull his hips down until they’re flush to Ilya’s. A shaky moan escapes him, open-mouthed. He feels impossibly fuller this way, Ilya buried so deep Shane swears he can feel him in his diaphragm, and he sits there for a long moment, trembling as he adjusts, hole fluttering around Ilya’s cock. “Ilya,” he says, and he can hear how wrecked his own voice is. Ilya groans beneath him. 

“Fuck. Shane,” he says, and it sounds like a promise, fingers digging into Shane’s hips as his hips jerk upward involuntarily. 

“Ilya,” Shane gasps out again, just to hear it, then again—“Fuck, shit, Ilya,” as he lifts himself up and rocks back onto him. 

“Shane,” Ilya repeats brokenly, and Shane lets out a sound that can only be called a whine, planting one hand on Ilya’s chest to keep himself upright as he works his hips into a rhythm. “God, fuck, look at you.”

It doesn’t take long at all for Shane to begin riding him in earnest, Ilya’s fingers bruising his hips as he thrusts upward to meet him, and it doesn’t take much longer than that to bring him to the edge again—he can feel the orgasm building in his fucking spine, breath coming in short, gasping pants. “Ilya,” he manages, and Ilya’s gaze sharpens at the tone: desperate, warning.

“Do it,” he says, voice strained. “Let me see it.”

Shane bites down hard on his lower lip, a strangled noise escaping him as Ilya drives up into him again, and then he’s coming, his entire body seizing as come stripes across Ilya’s chest as far as his collarbone. His hips still grind down in unsteady, rhythmless motions as he rides out his orgasm, each press against his prostate forcing more spend from his cock, until he’s gasping and trembling and oversensitive, flushed and bright-eyed. 

Ilya tries to slow his thrusts, but Shane grits his teeth and shoves himself back on Ilya’s cock, ignoring his own oversensitivity in favor of dragging another breathless moan from Ilya’s throat. “Want it,” Shane insists, eyes glassy, even as his body twitches with the aftershocks of his orgasm. “Want to feel you come, come on, fuck me—”

Ilya makes a helpless, desperate sound and thrusts up into him, rhythm stuttering, before he stills and groans and spills into the condom, hips still rutting forward in little aborted motions as he rides it out. Shane can still feel himself fluttering irregularly around Ilya’s cock, and one final shiver runs down his spine as he curls forward and buries his face in Ilya’s neck, breathing hard. 

“Fuck,” Ilya says, voice wrecked and muffled against the crown of Shane’s head. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”

Shane’s breath hitches in something that falls short of a gasp, and Ilya goes very, very still. Shane can feel his heart pounding against his breastbone. 

He doesn't speak Russian, not really. Not enough to follow a conversation. But at some point he’d found himself staring at Google Translate on his laptop with I love you plugged into the English half, and had closed the tab and slammed his laptop shut the moment he realized what he was doing.

He has tried—tried—to forget the words. Has tried to forget the way the sterile, mechanical voice said them out loud into the silence of the room, like they were something perfectly ordinary and not a phrase that cracked something open in Shane’s chest when he heard them. 

He has not forgotten the sound of it, even now. 

He swallows hard. “Je t’aime,” he says after a moment, voice hoarse and eyes wet, lips damp against the skin of Ilya’s shoulder, and a tremor goes through Ilya’s body. 

It’s plausible deniability, of a sort. Neither of them acknowledge what the other said, because in theory neither of them know.

The words hover between them, though, and both of them do know, and Ilya’s heartbeat is rapid beneath Shane’s palm, and his breath is warm against the top of Shane’s head, and the sound of his breathing is hitched and wet in the silence of the room, and it syncs with Shane’s until neither of them can tell where one starts and the other ends. 

Chapter End Notes

montreal v. boston with shane and ilya on the same line is literally coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb

i promise i know hockey but at a certain point i run out of verbs to describe hitting a puck. i have yet to run out of ways to describe gay sex though. you guys can have that instead is that okay

chapter title from “mangetout” by wet leg

you can find me on twitter now @shanebackarch )))