Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

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, Wyatt Hayes, Lisa Hayes (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Sick Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Takes Care of Ilya Rozanov, Secret Relationship, Relationship Reveal, Unintentional Outing, good friends wyatt and lisa hayes, set in Ilya's first year at the centaurs, Anxious Shane Hollander, he really goes through the whole gamut of emotions, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, They just really love each other okay?

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-21 Words: 4,358 Chapters: 1/1

got you here, it's alright

Summary

“Shane Hollander?”

Shane blinks dumbly at them. “Yes. Um, hi. Hello.”

Hayes shares a quick bemused glance with his wife. “I’m Wyatt. I play with Roz,” he says, holding his hand out to shake. “And this is my wife, Lisa.” He nods to her, and she smiles sweetly.

“I, uh, I know who you are,” Shane says, accepting the handshake.

“Ah. Sweet.”

 

Or: Shane drives to Ottawa to care for a sick Ilya. He doesn't expect Wyatt Hayes and his wife to come knocking.

Notes

Hi hey there hello! I have been infected with the Hollanov virus. Please don't save me.

I didn't do too much editing, so I apologize for any mistakes! I'll probably come back tomorrow and fix things if needed, I just simply do not have the energy right now. Fuck finals season. And it's crazy that we have to say this now, but there is absolutely no AI used here. Fuck AI. Fuck it to death.

When Shane quietly opens the bedroom door to find Ilya curled up on his side in bed, bundled up in the duvet surrounded by a pile of tissues, the first thing he thinks is I told you so, but, mercifully, he doesn’t say it out loud. He knows Ilya will know he’s thinking it, and that’s enough for now. 

“Hey there,” he says softly, coming over to kneel at the side of the bed. 

“Hi.” Ilya coughs. He looks like he’s barely even awake. “What are you doing here?” he asks, voice horribly congested. 

Shane reaches out and places the back of his hand across Ilya’s forehead. “You said you weren’t feeling well, so I wanted to come check up on you.” He frowns. “You’re burning up.”

Ilya lets out another pained sounding cough. “You drove? From Montreal?”

“Mhm.” Shane pushes his hand into Ilya’s hair. It’s sweaty and kind of gross, but he doesn’t move away, and Ilya leans into his touch. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“A rice cracker.” He pauses to sniffle. “‘m not hungry.”

“I know, but you’ve got to eat something.”

Ilya groans. “Later.” He blinks slowly, eyes a bit hazy as he looks up at Shane. “I do not want…” he pauses to sneeze twice in quick succession. “I do not want you to get sick.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Shane runs his thumb over Ilya’s eyebrow. He hates seeing his boyfriend like this. “I’ll be fine.”

Ilya frowns, but his eyelids are starting to droop, so it loses its usual intensity. 

“Sleep, Ilya,” Shane says quietly, leaning in to press a kiss to his forehead. “Everything is okay.”

Ilya hums, sniffling into his pillow. “Shane?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you please stay with me?”

Shane’s heart clenches. “Of course.”

Shane quickly strips out of his jeans and pulls on a sweatshirt that’s resting atop Ilya’s desk chair. He’s careful as he gets into the bed, slipping under the covers beside Ilya. He sits with his back against the headboard, and Ilya immediately turns, nuzzling his face into Shane’s thigh. 

“Missed you,” he says, voice muffled into the fabric of Shane’s briefs.

“I missed you too.” Shane pulls the blankets up, tucking them beneath Ilya’s chin. “I’ll wake you up in a little bit so you can eat and take some medicine. But just rest, for now.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. His eyes are already closed. “I love you.”

Shane smiles down at him, brushing his thumb up and down the back of Ilya’s neck. “I love you too.”

Ilya is asleep within the minute. 

Shane goes down to the kitchen about an hour later, slowly clambering out of bed in an effort not to shake it too much. It doesn’t matter much either way—Ilya is completely dead to the world. He doesn’t even stir. 

Ilya’s fridge is fairly well stocked, and after a few minutes of searching Shane finds most of what he’ll need to make him some soup. He gathers what he’ll need onto the counter, then orders the rest to be delivered from the nearest grocery store. 

He navigates through his folder of bookmarked recipes on his phone, reading over one for chicken soup he’d saved a few months ago. He wants to make sure he’s got the amounts right—he doesn’t want a repeat of his previous foray into soup making, a night that ended in him and Ilya ordering from the nearest and quickest takeout, Shane’s soup abandoned to the trash. 

There’s a knock on the door a little sooner than expected. He goes to the door and waits for what he hopes is enough time for the delivery driver to have dropped off the groceries and driven away, but then there’s another knock followed by a pair of whispering voices that Shane doesn’t think belong to Larry from DoorDash.

Shane hesitates for a moment, curiosity and anxiousness peaked, then opens the door.

Only to come face to face with who can only be Wyatt Hayes, the Centaurs goalie and Ilya’s teammate. 

Hayes stares at him for a moment, clearly taken aback. Who Shane assumes to be his wife smiles tentatively at him over Hayes’s shoulder. 

“Shane Hollander?”

Shane blinks dumbly at them. “Yes. Um, hi. Hello.”

Hayes shares a quick bemused glance with his wife. “I’m Wyatt. I play with Roz,” he says, holding his hand out to shake. “And this is my wife, Lisa.” He nods to her, and she smiles sweetly.

“I, uh, I know who you are,” Shane says, accepting the handshake.

“Ah. Sweet.”

The three of them stand there for an awkward, silent moment, Shane just inside the doorframe with his hand still on the door knob, Wyatt and Lisa on the porch. Belatedly, Shane realizes he’s still only wearing briefs and one of Ilya’s sweatshirts. He flushes what is sure a deep, deep red. Like a cute little tomato, as Ilya likes to say. 

“We heard Ilya wasn’t feeling well, so we brought chicken soup,” Lisa says, finally, holding up the big container in her hands. “It’s my mom’s recipe, guaranteed to cure whatever ails you. Supposedly.”

“Oh, wow. That’s—that’s really kind of you,” Shane says, genuinely touched. It’s just—he’s so happy that Ilya has such great people here. It means a lot.

He forces his feet to unstick from the floor, moving aside and pulling the door open wider. “Well, um, come on in,” he says, trying to give them a friendly smile that ends up more like a grimace. He has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing here, and he’s pretty sure he’s on the verge of panicking. 

Wyatt and Lisa share another look before following him in. They toe off their shoes, then follow after Shane as he leads them to the kitchen. Shane gestures lamely to the assorted ingredients he has spread out over the counter tops. “I was going to make soup,” he says, at a loss for what he should be doing right now, how he should be acting. 

“Oh.” Lisa rocks back on her heels awkwardly after setting the jar they brought onto the counter, and Shane quickly realizes he’s being an asshole. “Sorry, we just—“

“No—no. This is great. Thank you so much. I’ve made chicken soup only once and it was so salty it was nearly inedible and Ilya—Rozanov hated it, so, yeah, this is great. I didn’t really want to have a repeat of that.”

Lisa chuckles. Wyatt has a strained smile on his face. 

“So…where is Roz?”

Oh. Right. They came for Ilya but found Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Voyagers and famed rival of the man instead. This whole situation is fucked. 

“He’s upstairs. Sleeping. I should probably go check on him,” Shane manages to say, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the staircase. “And—I’m gonna…pants.” He doesn’t wait to hear their response before he’s darting out of the room. 

Shane pokes his head into the bedroom once he’s upstairs and finds Ilya still fast asleep. His mouth is open and drooling, his labored, congested breathing audible from all the way across the room. Shane would really like some backup for the conversation he knows is waiting for him downstairs, but there’s no way he’s going to wake Ilya up. He needs his rest, and Shane isn’t going to take that from him. 

He might be freaking the fuck out, his breathing just shy of hyperventilating, but he’s going to…handle this himself.

He tiptoes across the room, careful to avoid the creaky floorboard next to the foot of the bed, and pulls an old pair of Voyagers branded sweatpants out of his side of the dresser. He takes one more look at Ilya’s sleeping face, smiling softly despite his panic, then makes his way out of the room, leaving the door opened just a crack just in case so he can hear if Ilya wakes up and calls for him.

He stands at the top of the stairs for a moment, forcing himself to take slow, deep breaths. He can do this. He can be normal. Maybe…maybe he’s just a concerned friend; Ilya’s sick, and he’s just checking in. Totally plausible. 

Or not. 

It’s just—they had a plan. And this was not fucking part of the plan. This wasn’t supposed to happen. No one is supposed to know. Not yet. But now that whole idea is going down the drain because it’s got to be pretty goddamn obvious when Wyatt and Lisa are looking at it right in the face.  

He groans, raking a slightly shaky hand through his hair and down his face. He can do this. He will do this. For Ilya. 

And if Wyatt and Lisa find out—find out about them…would it really be the worst thing in the world?

Yes, a not so quiet voice whispers from the back of his brain. Shut up, he tells it. 

He forces his feet to move and finally makes his way down the stairs. He’s probably been away too long. He should have offered them something to drink. 

Wyatt and Lisa’s heads snap up in unison as Shane makes his way into the kitchen, the whispering between them coming to an abrupt end. Shane stares at them, rocking back onto his heels, and curses himself for not preparing what to say.

“He’s still asleep,” is what he lands on, sounding apologetic.

“Oh, no worries,” Lisa says, thankfully not letting Shane’s awkwardness linger. “How is he doing?”

“He’s definitely feeling pretty crappy, but I think it’s just a cold.” He pauses, then grumbles, “That’s what he gets for going on a hike in the snow without a proper jacket.”

Lisa lets out a surprised laugh. Wyatt smiles, albeit his expression is still stuck somewhere between confusion, shock, and…vindication? Shane doesn’t have the time or mental togetherness to figure it out before there’s another knock on the door, followed by a ping from Shane’s phone. He glances down at it, confirming that it is indeed DoorDash this time.

“That’ll be Larry—DoorDash, that is. I’ll be right back.” And then he’s scurrying out of the room once again. 

He can do this. He can do this. 

Lisa and Wyatt’s hushed conversation comes to a halt when Shane comes back in, again.

He doesn’t think he can do this. 

He sets the brown paper bag down onto the counter, taking a couple of deep breaths facing away from the two of them. He bites at his lip, rubs his hands down the front of his shirt, then turns back around. 

“I brought some movies. I figured he would be pretty bored,” Wyatt says. He reaches into the big pocket of his coat, pulling out three movie cases. “Two Marvel movies and The Crow. You…do you, hm. Does he have a dvd player?”

“Yeah, there’s—there’s one in the living room.”

Shane’s skin is itching. 

He knows they want to ask. He knows they suspect something, that they’re curious, that they want to know. But no one was supposed to know. Not yet. 

Ilya has told him that Wyatt Hayes was a good person on multiple occasions since starting at the Centaurs. Ilya is a great judge of character, so Shane has easily believed him. But he still doesn’t know the guy. He doesn’t know what to do here, because he wasn’t fucking prepared for this. 

“Look, Hollander—”

“Shane?”

Ilya’s voice floats down from the top of the stairs, followed by the soft thuds of socked feet coming down the stairs. 

“Where did you go?”

“I’m in the kitchen,” Shane calls out. “With—”

“Oh.” Ilya’s head pokes through the doorway to the kitchen, followed by the rest of his body. “Hello.”

His nose is very clearly stuffy with how congested his voice is, and his curls sit in an unruly mop atop his head. He’s wearing mismatched socks, sweatpants, and a sweatshirt that Shane is pretty sure he got when he was still a teenager. He looks a little unsteady on his feet, holding onto the island counter for support. His eyes, red and puffy, are wide as they flick back and forth between Wyatt and Lisa.

“Jeez, Roz. You look like shit.”

Shane wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but he can admit that Wyatt is right. 

“You are in my house.”

Wyatt chuckles. It sounds almost fond. “We are, indeed.”

Ilya sniffs. Once, twice, three times. His eyes find Shane’s, clearly confused and looking for some sort of help. 

Shane can’t help it, not when Ilya looks so incredibly out of it and so incredibly sick. He shuffles over to stand beside him, close, placing a gentle hand on Ilya’s upper arm despite the two sets of eyes watching his every move. 

“They heard you weren’t feeling well, so they brought some soup over for you,” he tells Ilya, who sways into Shane’s space, bumping their shoulders together. Shane doesn't move away. “Wyatt also brought you some movies.”

“Oh.” Ilya smiles, slow and syrupy. “That is very nice.” He turns to Wyatt and Lisa. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Lisa says with a kind smile, Wyatt nodding alongside her.

“Bood also told me to tell you to eat spicy food. He says it’ll clear your sinuses, or something. I’m not sure how true that is…but he was very insistent that I tell you.” Wyatt gives him a little shrug. “We all missed you at practice today.”

“Of course you did.” Ilya pauses to sneeze into the crook of his elbow. “I am most interesting, handsome, sexy guy you all know. You must have been so bored without me.”

“And humble too, clearly,” Shane says under his breath. Ilya leans farther into his side. 

Wyatt’s eyes flicker between the two of them. Lisa is smiling softly. Knowingly. Shane’s heart rate hitches up into what must be unhealthy territory. Ilya sneezes twice in rapid succession. 

“Bless you,” they all say in unison, then descend back into a silence rife with anticipation.

Wyatt opens his mouth. Closes it. Chews on his lip before finally saying, “So…you guys don’t, like, have to tell us anything if you don’t want to. Obviously,” he rushes to add. “We just—we want you to know that we’re here for you, and that we’re not going to tell anyone anything, or, like, anything like that. We just want to tell you that we support you, if, you know, there’s anything here to…support.” He grimaces at his wording, and Lisa shakes her head at her husband, looking exasperated but also somehow fond. And Shane—Shane has no fucking clue what to say to any of that. Though Ilya, apparently, does. 

“So eloquent, Hazy,” he says, snorting. 

Wyatt rolls his eyes. “Oh fuck off. I’m trying to be supportive.”

“I think you mentioned that.”

Ilya turns his gaze to Shane, a question in his heavy-lidded eyes. His whole face is flushed and there’s sweat beading at his hairline, a bit of snot threatening to drip from his nose. He's the most beautiful thing Shane has ever seen. 

Shane smiles gently, nodding, just a little dip of his chin, to answer the question in Ilya’s gaze. 

He can do this. They can do this.

“We are together,” Ilya says simply. Maybe it can be. Simple. Shane would like that. “Me and Shane.”

“I knew it!”

Shane reels back from the force of Wyatt’s exclamation, his face split into a wide, happy grin. He pumps his fist once. Shane must be living in an alternate reality.

“I totally knew it.”

“Ok, babe. We believe you,” Lisa says, laying a hand on her husband’s arm. She gives Shane a look, something like can you believe this guy? And no, no he can not. “No need to shout.”

“You knew?” Ilya’s brow is furrowed. “How?”

“I’m psychic,” Wyatt fake whispers, still grinning.

“Was—is it really that obvious?” Shane asks, and crap. His voice is all shaky, and he realizes belatedly that his hands are too. 

Ilya seems to notice this, and takes Shane’s hand between his clammy ones. “No. Shane. It is not obvious,” he says firmly, reassuringly.

Both Wyatt and Lisa seem to notice the energy shift, and Wyatt is quick to say, “Oh! Yeah, it’s totally not obvious.”

“Don’t worry, hon,” Lisa soothes. “I’m pretty sure it’s the best kept secret in the MLH.” 

“I only guessed because I’m a genius,” Wyatt says, and Lisa whacks him on the chest with the back of her hand. “And it truly was just a guess. I just had a feeling. And the fact that Shane here opened the door for us.”

“Okay,” Shane breathes, squeezing Ilya’s hand. He lets their assurances calm him. Slightly. “Okay. That’s—okay.”

Ilya sneezes then, a truly huge, booming sound that breaks the tension in the room right in half. Lisa is the first one to start giggling, a hand pressed to her mouth in an attempt to hide, but it still sets Ilya and Wyatt off anyway; and then, eventually, Shane too. 

Everything is okay, Shane reminds himself. Slowly, he lets himself believe it.

“It is a secret,” Ilya says once he's finished blowing his nose into one of the tissues he’s got stashed in the pocket of his hoodie. “We would appreciate if you did not tell anyone.”

“Of course!” Wyatt says. His tone is still enthusiastic, and he’s still smiling. Shane thinks that, maybe, he’d like to get to know this man. “We’d never say anything. To anyone.”

“Thank you,” Shane says quietly. 

“We’re here for you guys. And if you ever want to do a double date, let us know,” Lisa says with a little wink. A startled laugh escapes Shane, and when he glances over at Ilya, he sees a big grin brightening his face. 

“We will let you know,” Ilya says. He coughs, and Shane can feel the shiver that wracks through his body from where Ilya’s hand is clasped in his.

“Let’s get you sitting down.” He guides Ilya over to the kitchen table and pulls out a chair, smoothing a hand over Ilya’s curls when he sits down. He hates seeing Ilya so out of it, clearly struggling. He fills a glass with water from the fridge and hands it over, raising an eyebrow at Ilya till he rolls his eyes and begins to drink. He places the back of his hand against Ilya’s forehead, only lasting a second before Ilya’s swatting it away with a huff. 

“I am fine, Hollander.”

“Oh, yeah, totally. For sure.”

Wyatt laughs, and Shane jolts, somehow forgetting that they had an audience. They’ve never really had that, except for Shane’s parents, and it’s…strange. He finds himself overly aware of how he’s standing, of how he’s touching Ilya, how he’s talking to him, how he’s holding himself. 

The low level panic that’s been thrumming through his veins since the moment he opened the door to come face to face with Wyatt and Lisa pulses. His breath hitches, and barely a second later Ilya reaches out a hand to squeeze at Shane’s hip. 

“I think I would like to try this soup,” Ilya says. He and Wyatt make pointed eye contact, and after a moment Wyatt nods, stuffing his hands into his pockets and taking a step back. “Thank you for making it, Lisa. And bringing it. I appreciate it very much.”

“Of course,” Lisa says. “Let us know if you like it and I can pass on the recipe.”

“Well.” Wyatt claps his hands together. “We’ll get out of your hair, we just wanted to drop this off.”

“Don’t miss me too much, Hazy,” Ilya croaks, waving him off with a lazy flap of his hand.

“Never.”

Shane walks them to the door, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you have guests over. Nevermind that it’s not even his house.

“You take care of him now, Hollander,” Wyatt tells him once they’re out on the porch.

“Of course,” Shane says. It comes out a little more earnest than the situation calls for, but he doesn’t quite mind. He means it.

Wyatt gives him another one of his kind, easy smiles and claps him on the shoulder with a huge hand. 

“Let us know if you guys need anything,” Lisa says. She keeps her hands to herself, which Shane is grateful for. The skin at his shoulder is beginning to itch where Wyatt’s hand had been. 

“Thank you,” he says, voice barely even more put together than Ilya’s sick rasp.

After another round of goodbyes—that Shane hopes he wasn’t being too rude trying to rush—the Hayses are back in their car and pulling out of Ilya’s driveway. Shane shuts the door and promptly drops to sit on the floor. 

He pulls his bent legs towards his chest, wrapping his arms around them while resting his forehead against his knees with his eyes screwed shut. 

You’re okay, he tells himself. Over and over and over again, hoping his nervous system gets the message. 

The world isn’t ending. Ilya is okay. You are okay. 

He just needs a minute. He just needs to calm down all the adrenaline overflowing all over the place. All he needs is a minute, then he’ll be fine. 

“Shane?” Ilya’s voice carries from the kitchen. “Shane? Are you okay?”

Shane has to clear his throat in order to speak. “I’ll be right there!”

Ilya’s still sitting at the table when Shane reenters the kitchen, though it looks like he’s moments away from trying to stand up. He’s looking at Shane with obvious concern, which only makes Shane feel even more like he’s going to shiver right out of his skin

“How about that soup?” Shane asks before Ilya can say anything in an attempt to cut off any questioning before it can even really start.

“You did not answer my question.” No such luck. He should have known. “Are you okay?”

Shane takes a deep breath, closing his eyes as he lets it out slowly through his teeth. “That was just…a lot. Sorry. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“Do not say sorry,” Ilya says immediately. “You have no reason to be sorry.”

“Sor—” he stops with a grimace. “I just—I know everything is fine, it all went fine, Wyatt and Lisa were great and all, I…I just wasn’t prepared, you know?”

“I know.” Ilya reaches a hand out, pulling Shane towards him to stand between his legs. “You were very brave.” Shane scoffs, and Ilya shakes his hand around, resting his other hand on the back of Shane’s thigh. “I mean it.”

Shane puts his hands on Ilya’s shoulders, dipping his head to his chest with a loud sigh. 

“I tell you this all the time, Hollander. You are a very brave boy. You should believe me. I am always right, you know.”

That gets a little smile out of Shane. “Oh, are you now?”

Ilya nods, looking up at him. “Of course. So listen to me.”

“Maybe. I’ll think about it.” Ilya grins up at him, and Shane can’t help but grin back. “And…are you okay? He’s your teammate, and I know we weren’t planning on having people—”

“I am okay,” Ilya says, painfully sincere. “I promise.”

Shane’s eyes flick back and forth over Ilya’s face, searching for any hint of a lie. He doesn’t find any. “Okay.”

Ilya opens his mouth to say something else, but is interrupted halfway through with two sneezes in quick succession. He groans, leaning forward to rest his head against Shane’s belly.

Shane chuckles lightly and runs a hand through Ilya’s hair. “So how about that soup now?”

Later, after Ilya makes his way through a whole bowl of soup, brushes his teeth, and changes out of his sweaty, gross clothes, they clamber into bed side by side. Shane rests with his back against the headboard again, and Ilya tucks himself into his side, half in his lap. 

“You have good friends,” Shane says into the quiet room. 

“I do.”

“Maybe—I don’t know. Maybe one day I can meet them. Properly. I think I’d like, one day, for them to be my friends too.”

Ilya smiles up at him, something soft and hopeful in his eyes. “I would like that too.”

They spend a long moment just looking at each other, before the moment is ruined by Ilya’s head whipping forward in a sneeze that he tries and fails to muffle into his hand. He brings his head back up with a sniffle, looking down at the snot now in his hand with his face scrunched up in disgust.

“Eugh.”

Eugh indeed. 

Shane reaches over to the bedside table to grab Ilya a tissue, handing it over before setting the whole box of tissues onto the bed next to them. 

“I hate being sick,” Ilya grumbles, throwing the used tissue into the waste basket by the dresser. Annoyingly, he makes the shot. 

Shane rubs Ilya’s shoulder. “I know.”

“All this time in Canada has weakened me.”

Shane huffs a laugh. “Uh huh. Sure it has.” He smirks to himself. It’s finally time to pull out the I told you so. “And, you know, just a thought…next time you go outside in the snow, please, please actually wear temperature appropriate clothing.”

“Ugh.” Ilya drops his forehead onto Shane’s thigh with a groan. “I am surprised it took you so long to say anything.”

“I’ve gotta keep you on your toes.”

Ilya pinches Shane’s thigh and mumbles something in discontented Russian. Shane leans down to kiss the top of his head.

They settle in next to each other, Ilya’s breathing growing deeper minute by minute. Shane almost thinks he’s asleep, until he coughs into his fist and readjusts in the sheets.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” Ilya asks, and it’s so quiet and full of hope that Shane’s heart aches for a moment. 

“Yes. I will.”

Ilya hums happily, sniffling into Shane’s thigh. “Good. I love you, Shane.”

“I love you too, Ilya.”