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:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Post-Episode: s01e06 The Cottage (Heated Rivalry), Post-Book 2: Heated Rivalry (Game Changers), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, POV Ilya Rozanov, Canon Compliant, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Speaks Russian, Fluff, Perceptive Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-23 Words: 2,694 Chapters: 1/1

In Any Language

Summary

Ilya returned to the cottage after his final year with Boston content to get to have seemingly endless time to just be with Shane.

He was not planning to bring up Shane learning Russian in secret, no matter how obvious it was to him. He was excited to get to speak Russian with Shane, but that didn't explain why the thought of it felt so life-changing.

Notes

This was, in fact, the second most cliche title I could have gone with lol

Also, I am nothing if not consistent, the fact that I have written exclusively amnesia fics, POV outsider, and soulmate AUs for Hollanov tracks entirely

Ilya’s second visit to the cottage came with as many overwhelming emotions as the first, but they were almost completely different.

His heart was racing while packing because it had been almost two months since they were last able to snag more than a couple consecutive hours together, not because he was still trying to ignore the part of his mind that could only remind him how insane he was for the risk he was taking with his heart. Every second he spent with Shane was a risk, but it was worth it. Shane was worth everything.

He spent the plane ride tallying everything they did last summer against everything he wanted to do this time around, not trying to mentally piece together what the cottage looked like from the documentary he watched more times than he would ever admit to anyone. It had started as a mental list but as soon as the seatbelt sign flicked off he dug a pen out of his carry on and asked the young woman a couple seats over from him writing on a clipboard if she had any paper to spare. Shane was going to appreciate his organization.

Finding Shane in the sea of cars still required directions, but Ilya grabbed his hand and squeezed it once when their doors were both shut instead of the uncertain mess of pleasantries and aborted actions they had been last time. They couldn’t do anymore in a public parking lot and Ilya didn’t trust himself to stop at a quick kiss even if they were two normal people that no media outlet would ever care about.

“I already got a couple weeks worth of groceries and we’re having dinner with my parents on Thursday,” Shane told him when they pulled onto the highway. His silent retreat lie was still used for people outside of them, but it made Ilya giddy that there were people outside of the two of them who knew he was there.

“It is Monday.”

Shane shrugged. “Want you to myself for a couple of days. We’ll see them a few times while you’re here anyway.”

From there, it was easy to slip into their familiar back and forth.

“Oh, shit,” he said in the middle of some story about the Pike kids. Shane was smiling around the exclamation so Ilya waited, an eyebrow raised faux impatiently, for him to complete his thought process out loud. “I forgot to text when I picked you up. Can you do it? I don’t want them to worry, Mom always gets antsy about solo travel.”

Ilya nodded and grabbed Shane’s phone. There it was again, the casual inclusion of Ilya in the Hollanders’ lives and a reminder that they know and care about him.

His body was operating purely in reaction to his instructions. He was half a second from typing a message into a family group chat which included himself before he realized two things. First, he very easily could have done this using his own phone but clearly Shane didn’t mind the option he went with if his barely concealed smile was anything to go off of, and second, the Cyrillic alphabet was staring back at him which would do him no good in texting Shane’s parents.

He toggled the keyboard back to English and didn’t say anything. One sneaky glance at the notification window confirmed that Shane’s phone’s language was also set to Russian.

That was far from the first hint Ilya had picked up on that Shane hadn’t left his comment about learning Russian behind in that one cross Atlantic phone call. It was a little thrilling that Ilya was starting to know Shane so well that he could sense a deviation from his normal without even being able to pinpoint what it was at first.

He had been waiting for Shane to bring it up, preparing himself for the onslaught of emotions that would hit him like a tidal wave when he heard Shane speaking in his mother tongue. It had been months now but they had nothing but time ahead of them and Ilya knew Shane had his reasons for not telling him, because Shane never did anything without a well thought out reason, but Ilya also wanted to be involved. Both because he simply wanted to be a part of every facet of Shane’s life and because if anyone should be lucky enough to hear Shane stumbling over Russian vowels it was him.

“All done,” Ilya said. He returned Shane’s phone to the cupholder.

Ilya went silent for the last twenty minutes of the drive. They passed a large, green exit sign and Shane told him, nearly identically to how he had a year before, that this was their exit to the cottage.

He raced Shane to his side of the car once they parked, pushing him back as soon as Shane shut his door behind him. Everything else could wait, he finally had Shane in his arms again and there was no rush to pull apart.

Ilya hadn’t meant to be nosey. Really, it wasn’t his fault that he had a lifetime of familiarity with the Russian language that apparently primed him to pick out even the slightest hint of it from across a room.

Shane had books in Russian. Dictionaries, grade school level novels and non-fiction books, and a few others that Ilya couldn’t place at a glance and he really, truly, wasn’t actually trying to snoop. His phone had connected to the speakers on the back deck when Ilya was trying to connect his and a series of ill advised button presses later had a Russian audiobook, or maybe a podcast, playing out instead of Ilya’s latest batch of music Shane might find some interest in.

He continued to say nothing. He looked away from the hints of his language interspersed around Shane’s most sacred place and played oblivious when Shane sent him panicked looks because he was going to be a good, thoughtful boyfriend about this and let Shane come to him.

That attempt lasted until the end of their second full day at the cottage. They had a dinner already planned with Shane’s parents the next day and Ilya was slowly becoming convinced that he would explode if he didn’t address this before he had to be around humans other than Shane.

Rationally, he knew that it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was astounding that someone cared enough about him to learn a whole new language and he loved Shane for it even if he wasn’t perfect but that didn’t explain why thinking about Shane speaking Russian with him made his skin vibrate.

The sun was setting over the lake as they laid together on the grass, Shane was talking about whatever came to mind and Ilya was staring at him more than the objectively beautiful view. He had the most beautiful sight right beside him.

“My Sun,” Ilya whispered as Shane trailed off talking about how Ilya might experience the mosquitoes this year since he was staying later into the summer. “Moye Solnyshko,” he reiterated it in equally adoring Russian and Shane’s whole face lit up in recognition before he shut it down with an only partially forced smile.

He was so terrible at hiding things from Ilya. It was adorable.

“The mosquitoes really do get awful,” Shane continued, stumbling over his attempt to revert back to before Ilya’s interruption.

“I am sure they do.” Ilya’s hand found Shane’s cheek and tilted his head back toward him, not letting him hide behind the one-sided conversation Ilya had been nodding along with because it was nice to just be with Shane. “I am also sure that you are learning Russian.”

Shane tensed against him, but Ilya kept his hand on his face so he couldn’t roll away. “Um.”

“I have known this for a while now. I wanted to let you tell me when you planned to, but we will be together all of the time while I am here and I am probably doing a bad job pretending I do not know.” Shane was staring at him with wide eyes. “You do not have to practice with me if you do not want to- even if I would be very good resource, I do know a little Russian if you remember- but it was only fair that I tell you I know.”

“Only a little Russian?”

Ilya smirked. “Russian is very big language, can get very deep-”

“Fuck off,” Shane said as he lost a battle against the laugh he let out. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t have kept this from you.”

“No, no,” Ilya drew out the second iteration of the word until Shane’s serious face cracked. “I am not trying to make you feel bad for not telling. You are Shane, you always have reason for everything. I am just saying that you do not have to hide it so much if you want to keep doing it on your own, you can do that, I will not bother you about it. And if not, I am here.”

“You know me too well.” Shane tilted his head back to the setting sun and Ilya let his hand fall to his chest as he waited. “I want to be able to talk to you in Russian,” he started, “obviously. That isn’t why I didn’t tell you, I just want to be able to communicate with you effectively and it just didn’t feel like enough to say I’m learning when all I have to show for it is the vocabulary of a toddler and horrible pronunciation.”

Ilya snorted. “I should have David tell Pike’s toddler you said that.”

“The worst part is that my dad would do that, even if everyone else involved would be deeply confused.”

Shane was still watching the sky. Ilya took the opportunity to return to watching him because looking at Shane would never get old and the gears in his head were definitely still turning. He hadn’t told Ilya because he wanted to get all the way to fluent on his own for Ilya first.

“You shouldn’t have to… I don’t know, deal with me stumbling through your language.”

“Ugh, Hollander, it is never dealing with when it comes to you. Nothing you do- especially spending half a year learning a language that is very far from the two you are fluent in- is ever something negative for me. I love you and anything you say to me in Russian is perfect already.”

“Even if my pronunciation is terrible?”

“Even if your pronunciation is terrible and you have wrong syntax in every sentence and I spend rest of my life trying to explain rules that all children know.”

Shane’s head tipped back towards him. Ilya got lost in his eyes until he got distracted by the freckles on the bridge of his nose. It was a delightful surprise the previous summer, when he realized how much more prominent Shane’s freckles got when he was spending excessive time in the sun and this year he was going to be there later into the summer and would be getting to see even more freckles than ever before.

“I don’t really know if I’m at the conversations in full sentences stage yet.”

“It has been months and you do not know any sentences?”

Shane rolled his eyes. “Not none,” he disagreed, “I just couldn’t have a whole back and forth of sentences and it would have to be pretty limited in what topics we could talk about since my vocabulary is still fairly small. But I can definitely do like small sentences on their own.”

“Oh really?” Ilya said, because there were very few things hotter than Shane Hollander with something to prove.

“Really.” There was a glint in Shane’s eye and Ilya only had half a moment to prepare himself for whatever wonderfully evil thing Shane had planned for him. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”

His pronunciation was pretty okay.

Ilya was torn between teasing him so he would say it again and just melting into a puddle of goo.

A third option became apparent and necessary before he could choose.

His leg flinched as soon as the sensation started. Shane stared down in concern as the point of contact between them was broken. It was like someone was pouring warm- not quite hot- coffee in a thin line along the outside of his thigh.

He had never had an injury that felt like this. No hit, pulled muscle, or cut quite matched. His hand was on the bottom hem of his shorts before he had one fleeting, insane thought as to what it could be.

Soulmarks were rare. Not impossibly so, but most people did not have one, or at least never found out that they did. They were a thing of love stories, the first words your soulmate speaks to you tattooing themselves onto your skin for only you and that soulmate to be able to see. Their first words in your first language, specifically.

He found Shane’s eyes. Ilya could read the matching realization on his face.

“Is it…”

Ilya pulled his shorts up. In the fading light of the day they had spent just getting to be together and goof around, the new letters on his leg were undeniable. They were in their proper Cyrillic and Ilya had only ever seen Shane’s handwriting in the Latin alphabet, but the slight curve of any tall lines and the way some letters trailed off slightly too long when they were at the ends of words was familiar.

“Holy shit.”

And really, what was a love confession between them if that wasn’t Shane’s first reaction?

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” Ilya said, the words rushing out before he registered them.

“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.” Shane was grinning around the words. “Maybe I don’t have to be quite so secretive about learning. But you aren’t allowed to make fun of me.”

“You’re too adorable to make fun of. Too perfect even if your accent is very Shane.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

He pulled Shane in for a kiss, content to sidetrack them even more from their peaceful evening basking in the view because it truly felt like they had all the time in the world. Ilya kissed him until Shane pulled away in a rush. “Je t’aime,” he insisted, like Ilya developed a spontaneous proficiency for French, “je t’aime.”

“Huh?”

“My parents wanted me to be fluent in English and French, I did French immersion in school until hockey dictated where I went but I still predominantly encountered English in day to day life so they spoke both with me when I was really young, but mostly French. My first language is French by like the smallest of margins.”

Ilya had never spoken to Shane in his first language, just like Shane had never spoken to him in his until a minute ago.

“And that, what you said, is…?”

“I love you,” he confirmed. “Je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime,” Ilya repeated, hesitant but passable.

Shane tackled him into a kiss before Ilya got to see his handwriting become a permanent part of Shane’s body, for their eyes only.

“Wait, wait,” Shane said when Ilya made to escalate things beyond just kissing. “We need to cool off for a second before we get lost in this.”

Ilya pouted, completely unashamed. “But Shane, you are my soulmate, I want to celebrate.”

“And we will, after I text my parents and tell them that we actually won’t be able to have dinner with them for a couple of days.”

“A couple days?” Ilya smirked.

“Better safe than sorry. We did just have a crazy and amazing discovery dropped onto our laps.”

“We should celebrate for a couple of days,” he agreed, grinning as Shane pretended to be put out by the insinuation, “but you need to text your parents right now.”

“My phone is inside.”

Ilya threw his hands up in exasperation. “Then go inside, what is problem?”

“Nothing.” Shane kissed him on the nose as he stood. “Ya tebya lyublyu, Soulmate.”

“Je t’aime, Moya Lyubov.”