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, Rose Landry, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Cliff Marlow, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Language:

English

Collections:

Anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-15 Updated: 2026-07-17 Words: 28,735 Chapters: 9/?

the canadian girlfriend

Summary

The closest Shane came to telling the truth these days was when he was lying.

Or: Shane panics and tells his mom he's seeing someone.

Notes

For the purposes of this work, TV show canon>book canon. (If the details contradict, I'll go with TV canon, but anything from the books that just didn't make it onscreen can be assumed to be canon here. So, Alexei over Andrei, but you can assume Troy Barrett is out there having a terrible time right now, not that he's showing up.)

The title is supposed to be a joke about how you make up a girlfriend and say she's from Canada, except that's for Americans. Where are Canadians supposed to get their fake girlfriends from?

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Ottawa, 2014

Well-intended matchmaking was nothing new. Hayden and Jackie seemed to have met a nice, hot girl who would be perfect girlfriend material every week. J.J.'s own string of dates sometimes came with their own hot, single friends looking for a new fling. His mother really wasn't even so bad in comparison. Maybe it was a fit of temporary insanity (and maybe the months-long silence from "Lily" made certain topics burn worse than they usually did) because, in the middle of being told of another perfectly benign, probably lovely girl, Shane blurted out the only phrase that would without fail make his mother stop:

"Mom, I already have a girlfriend."

He'd thought better of it the second it left his mouth, but there was no way to take it back. Yuna's face had already lit up, and her voice was full of genuine delight when she said, "Shane, honey, that's wonderful. Tell me about her."

"There's not a lot to tell," he said, because there really wasn't a lot to tell about someone who didn't exist. But he had to say something, and once again his mouth moved without permission: "Her name's—" no, not that, but his mind was blank and he had to say something, "—um, Lily."

Fuck.

🏒

His mother, naturally, immediately wanted to meet “Lily,” and probably would have wanted her entire life story as well, but that was delayed by claiming that their relationship was too new for that sort of thing. His mom still wanted details about Lily-the-fake-girlfriend, though, and there was only so much demurring Shane could get away with without it being weird. Shane was a shit liar, but he was pretty sure he had heard that the best lies were supposed to be based on the truth in some way, so it turned out that Lily:

Liked hockey. (Obviously.) They’d met at a game (true.) She was pretty (maybe not the right word), and confident (understatement) and funny. Oh, and she was shy about the idea of media attention, so he wasn't telling most people about her yet, okay, mom?

It was probably obvious to Yuna that her son was dying inside having to talk about this, because after a few more minutes of interrogation, she let the topic drop. Probably her baby boy finally seeing someone was exciting enough for her that she was generously letting him off easy, even when she obviously still wanted to hear more. She was practically shining with happiness, and even though they had moved onto talking about his dad's latest gardening failure, her grin was wide and cheerful.

Shane felt like shit.

🏒

Living a couple hours away bought him more space from his new web of lies, but of course Yuna asked each week how things were going with Lily. Inevitably girlfriend-Lily grew into a tower of half-truths. She couldn't make it to the games even as often as his Ottawa-based parents, because she traveled often for work, even to America. Shane didn't really understand anything of what she did (total lie) but it was something tech-related, office-y. Outside of work? Well, she liked fashion (knew how to dress well, anyway) and cars (god they were awful) and had very strong opinions about drinks—

"She doesn't sound much like someone you would get along with," his mother had said. She was right. Something had shriveled up in his chest anyway.

"She— most people don't really get her," he had said, quietly. "But she's actually... really nice."

"I didn't mean anything bad by it, honey. I was just surprised."

Week by week, Yuna pulled more pieces of trivia about Lily out of Shane. Lily smoked, Shane disapproved. Lily's dietary habits were abominable. Lily wasn’t a native English speaker, though she was getting pretty good at it. Shane sometimes thought she acted kind of like a bitch because it was easier to brush people off than admit she couldn’t understand, and people kept judging her even when she did try. And she still managed to be funnier than Shane while speaking English anyway. He was worried about her. She didn’t like to talk about her family, and Shane hadn’t met them, but he knew there was something wrong back home. It was killing him that he couldn’t do anything about it, but the last time he tried pushing her about it, it had backfired terribly.

(It was natural, his mom said, that there were some things that were difficult to share even with your boyfriend. It wasn’t that Shane was doing anything wrong. Sometimes all you could do was let them know you would be there when they were ready to talk. And that was important, too.)

She was gorgeous. She was away for work, so often. He could see her over video (on TV) and he missed her way too fucking much. He’d seen her a couple times (games) but it wasn’t the same.

But that was just fake-girlfriend-Lily. Not someone real.

It was going on almost 6 months since Sochi.

🥅

Las Vegas, 2014

The offseason was here, and Shane had a problem. Fake-girlfriend-Lily traveled a lot, of course, but now that Shane had his summer free, surely they would be able to figure out a time when they were all home to meet Yuna and David. Who had so patiently been waiting to meet his girlfriend of, oh, several months? Wasn’t it meet-the-parents serious, by now?

Soon, Shane had said. He was probably going to have to break up with fake-girlfriend-Lily, but he hadn’t figured out what he was going to say. Or, well, he sort of had. Fake-girlfriend-Lily just traveled too much, and so did Shane. It was rough on both of them, and there weren’t any hard feelings but it just hadn’t been working out. He’d rewritten the script in his head so many times he could probably recite it in his sleep. But he hated the idea of disappointing his parents. And he was going to have to act, somehow, like he had just actually broken up with his totally real, serious girlfriend.

He’d already put it off too long, though. Shane promised himself he was going to actually do it once he got back home. No more delaying.

🏒

The awards ceremony sucked. Ilya Rozanov was such a fucking asshole. And Shane was being pathetic and thinking about how he hadn’t kissed his no-strings, casual hookup. It was stupid and he knew it.

He called his mom and got about halfway through his breakup script before he just started crying.

So that was one problem solved, at least.

🥅

Montreal, 2016

It was Shane's fault for not picking a different fake name, two years ago. He had thought he's gotten away with it, but after the game his parents had wanted to get dinner with not only him but Hayden and Jackie as well. He was glad they liked the Pikes, really. Normally he would have said he was grateful the people he loved got along.

But then his mom had said, "You should give it a shot, Shane. I mean, you haven't seriously dated someone since Lily."

Hayden visibly perked up like a hound catching the scent. "Lily? Your mom knows about Lily?"

Shane, oh so eloquently, said, “Um.” And then tried to remember about a thousand lies he had told two years ago and thought he would never need to use again, in the space of about two seconds.

"Why wouldn't I know about Shane's girlfriend?" his mom said, bemused.

"Girlfriend!" Hayden practically crowed. "You said it was nothing serious! Come on, man, why wouldn't you tell me?"

"It really isn't," Shane said, weakly.

But it was Jackie who noticed the flaw: "Mrs. Hollander, what do you mean since Lily? I didn’t realize they’d broken up."

"I told you, Jackie, Yuna is fine," said Yuna, who probably wanted a Jackie-clone as a daughter-in-law and would settle for best-friend-in-law-in-law for now. Really, Jackie was great, Shane couldn’t blame her.

"It's really not like that," Shane said.

"No, you literally saw her two weeks ago! In Boston!" said Hayden.

"I thought you broke up two years ago? And what do you mean, in Boston?"

That was when, thankfully, an idea finally struck. "Yeah, um, we did. Break up, I mean," said Shane. "She traveled a lot for work, and then she got relocated. To Boston. So, um, we met up while I was there, but she doesn't want to do long-distance. So it was just, um, casual."

"Aw, man, that sucks," said Hayden, almost exactly as his mom said, "oh, honey." Jackie was frowning, and belatedly Shane realized they were probably all about to start an intervention on either failing to get over his ex or convincing her to commit.

He looked pleadingly at his dad, who was peaceably eating his lasagna. David Hollander looked around the table, obviously contemplating abandoning him to the vultures, before taking pity and using a conversational grenade: asking for baby pictures. Yuna raised an eyebrow at the blatant distraction, but Hayden was already pulling out his phone. Mentally, Shane awarded his dad Father of the Year. And started drafting a new fake timeline of events for fake-girlfriend-Lily, because this was only a temporary reprieve. And if he was going to fool both his parents and Hayden and Jackie, the fake-girlfriend-Lily story was going to have to be bulletproof.

🏒

His mother was more careful around the subject, this time, but the Lily inquisition began again. It was mostly just a fake-casual and how’s Lily? added to all their usual catching up. Shane could have said they weren't really talking, except that they were absolutely texting still, and Hayden knew it. He could have come up with a new pack of total lies, but he knew well enough he wouldn’t be able to keep up with that. So his mom asked how things were going with Lily and Shane... told her.

He liked Lily. A lot. More than he should, since they weren't really seriously dating now. She was still beautiful and confident and funny. He didn't think she was really seriously seeing anyone, but she also definitely... seeing people. He knew the obvious answer was to just stop, to just find someone else, to do anything but keep texting her... but he couldn't seem to help it.

His mom listened, and hugged him, and didn't tell him he was being stupid even though he obviously was. It was nice.

🏒

Hayden and Jackie, meanwhile, seemed to alternate between gently bringing up more of their single, in Montreal, willing to actually commit to a relationship friends, and poking at the Lily-situation. But they backed off when Shane said he wasn’t interested in meeting someone right now pretty easily. Jackie offered to share her WAG-patented advice on how to make long-distance work, which Shane politely declined. He appreciated that they wanted to help, but he wasn’t looking for anything and he would just have to deal with The Lily Thing himself.

It was closer to the truth than anything he’d ever said about relationships to them was in years.

🥅

Montreal, November 2016

Rose Landry was amazing. Not because she was beautiful, not because she was a literal movie star who was somehow also a hockey fan, not because she was charming and funny and real. She was amazing because she was the first girl Shane had ever thought maybe this is how it’s supposed to feel.

It was the first he had felt maybe normal in a long, long time.

Shane wasn’t stupid. He knew dating girls didn’t make it like he had never slept with a man. He could marry a girl— Rose, not Rose, whoever it ended up being— have kids, the whole nine yards, and he would never be fully straight. But it wasn’t like there was a way to know whether he was 100% gay, either, without trying. There were a million kinds of people; maybe most people were 100% straight, and some people were 100% gay, but there were plenty of in-betweens. Sure, probably most bisexual people were totally 50/50 for men and women, but that wasn’t everyone. Weren’t there those people who went decades thinking they were 100% straight, only to meet someone who was their one exception? There had to be people who were like that in reverse, or who were more 80/20 than 50/50. When he was in middle school one of his second cousins who had only dated men for years started seriously dating a woman and had said she was still straight, somehow. He didn’t know what she’d call herself these days, having been literally married to a woman for over a decade, but the point was the same.

It had never worked out with his high school girlfriends, sure, but to be honest he was a wreck socially in other ways too and had sort of agreed to date a couple girls just because it seemed like the thing to do. How many people worked out with their own high school girlfriends, anyway? It had been years, and he could barely remember how it had felt, but had it really been that bad?

So, Rose. He liked her. He couldn’t compare how he felt about her to how other people felt about their girlfriends, but he felt so fucking happy around her. He thought she was beautiful. He liked kissing her, he liked going on dates with her. Maybe it was actually going to work.

🥅

Montreal, December 2016

Then they had spectacularly bad sex.

🥅

Montreal, January 2017

So it wasn’t really working.

He’d thought about it. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. It wasn’t like regular people couldn’t just have bad sex. But he was only so good at lying to himself. Maybe, if the only experiences he had to work off of were his high school girlfriends and the couple girls between then and Rose, he could fool himself better. He hadn’t wanted to think about those days much, but now that he really tried to remember…

It had sucked. Not in a funny innuendo way. The first time he’d tried to go all the way with a girl he’d had a fucking panic attack, how had he forgotten that? She’d been far too nice about it, probably thought he was just a nervous virgin and not gay, but it had happened and he’d just forgotten. He’d gotten by well enough the next time, but he’d mostly been relieved that it had worked. Who was relieved they lost their virginity? How was he this fucking stupid?

It hadn’t been all that bad. He’d even say he’d sort of enjoyed himself, a couple of times. He had also been a little drunk, those times. Which had even been a little bit of a good excuse why some things had been, well, a little difficult. God, who was he kidding?

All that, and he could still, almost convince himself it wasn’t like that. Except that he had counter-examples. Here he was, trying to find the good parts of his experiences with women, when if you asked him the same thing about men he would have to stop to figure out which parts were just good and which ones were fucking amazing. Thinking about it too long he would start to feel it spreading through him, need to stop before it got out of control. He had never felt like that with a woman, and he was starting to think— starting to let himself believe— that maybe he never would.

He knew what that meant. He knew it made him a dick, to string Rose along like that if he actually, finally understood this about himself. Except each time he saw her, he remembered all the reasons he liked her, and he thought no, maybe, and then he fooled himself just long enough to go home and remember what an asshole he actually was.

🥅

Ottawa, January 2017

It was only in the evening, after the dinner dishes were all put away and the TV was buzzing with a program no one was actually watching, that his mom brought it up.

"Honey," she said, "is everything really going okay?"

"Of course, mom, why wouldn't it be?"

"It's just," Yuna let out a sigh before grasping his hand, "I don't want to pry. And if you're happy, I'm happy. You seemed so excited when you first met Rose, and she seems like a lovely girl. But you haven't talked about her at all tonight except when I first asked, and, well... you never seemed like you were really over Lily. So I wondered."

He couldn't help flinching. "No, mom, I... Rose is really great. I really like her."

"I never said you didn't. And if I'm wrong then ignore me. But it's okay to feel how you feel. It wasn't wrong to try dating someone new, but it's only natural things don't work out sometimes. And it isn't fair to you or Rose if you just try to ignore how you're really feeling. I know you like her, but... after the first couple of weeks, the way you talk about her-- it's not how you sound when you talk about Lily. And you just haven't seemed happy lately."

"I... mom, it's really been fine."

"Shane, baby, I want things to be better than fine. I want you to be happy. Really happy. And it just seems like you aren't."

"I know, mom, but I'm not going to get back together with Lily."

"I didn't say you should. But baby, you have to know, when you used to talk about her... you just sounded so in love. And I want that for you, whoever it ends up being with."

Shane could feel his face cracking, the smile too heavy to support. Was that really what it seemed like? It wasn't like he could ever see from the outside, what he was like with "Lily." It wasn't love. It couldn't be love.

"Mom, it really isn't like that with Lily," he said. "Because—"

His mom, instead of looking sympathetic like she had been so far, started to look truly alarmed. Shane could feel the tears welling up, and panic right on their heels. His voice was already cracking. Fuck, this was embarrassing.

"Because...?" his mom tried to prompt him, and instead Shane just burst into tears. "Because," he said, gasping, and then he couldn't breathe—

"Hey, hey," his mom said, "it's okay, honey, just breathe, okay?"

He tried to, shuddering with sobs, and it was only sort of working. His mom was hugging him, and running her hand down his back, and he felt like a giant idiot.

"Shane, whatever it is, I love you no matter what, okay? We'll figure it out."

God, he was an idiot, and pathetic, and he wanted to crawl into the floor and die, but he also thought if he didn't say something now he might never and that would be so much worse, so with the last scraps of feeble bravery he had he said, "she'snotagirl."

Yuna Hollander blinked once, twice, deciphering what her son had just said before it finally clicked.

"Okay. Okay, baby, that's fine. I love you, I mean it. It's okay."

For an embarrassingly long time, Shane let himself sob into his mom's arms, rocking him like a baby and not a grown adult having a stupid breakdown in his childhood home. Eventually, he calmed down enough to just be a gross, snotty mess, but one that was breathing evenly at least. "Sorry," he said, automatically.

"Don't be sorry," said his mom. "Shane, look at me."

He didn't particularly want to—even if his face hadn't been gross and blotchy and snotty and teary, he couldn't really stand to do it— but his mom was guiding his face to look at her anyway.

"None of that— nothing like that could ever matter to me. I love you, and I am so, so proud of you. If the person that you love is a man, all I care about is that you love him. And I love you and that's never going to change, understand me?"

"Even if he's a man?" Shane couldn't help but repeat, voice small.

"Even if he's a man."

"Even if..." a small amount of humor returned to him, "he's a Raiders fan?"

Yuna's face stayed deadly serious as she said, "Even if he's a Raiders fan." And somehow, with that, Shane could feel that she really meant it. And a smile was spreading across his face, and it was cliche but there really was a weight lifting off his shoulders.

"But he's not actually a Raiders fan, though, right?" his mom said, jokingly.

Shane's face must have twitched the wrong way, though, because, well...

"Shane!"

He collapsed into semi-hysterical giggles at his mom’s outraged face, and a beat later his mom started laughing as well, the kind of laughter that was more than half relief.

He had said his most terrible secret, and the world wasn’t ending. It almost felt like it might be starting, instead.

🥅

The Next Day

Probably, if it were revealed that "Lily" was a Raiders fan (sort of) after any other conversation, his mom would have jokingly pretended to disown him. As it was, she very grumpily said that it was fine. She supposed. If that was how it was going to be. His mom had asked him if he wanted to tell his dad, or for her to tell him, or to wait, but as it turned out the man had been awkwardly hovering after leaving the bathroom trying not to interrupt and failing not to eavesdrop.

David Hollander also did not care if his son was in love with a man, and he actually genuinely did not care if said man was a Raiders fan, because he was the sane one of the family.

Somewhat embarrassingly, his parents had apparently wondered before if he was gay. More ironically, the reason they hadn’t wondered lately was “Lily.” There was, however, the awkward attempt to bridge the “Lily” they knew with the real life man. “Lily” was not, in fact, a Quebecois-speaking, Montreal-based office worker in tech who had been relocated to Boston. Not that Shane intended to tell them that, because he had no explanation for why he had made up that lie without saying he was actually a Russian hockey player who played for Boston (no guesses needed for who that might be). He could admit that he and “Lily” had never been anything official, and “Lily” had actually never lived in Montreal.

Most of it really was actually true: Lily liked hockey. They had met at a game. Lily liked cars. Lily liked fashion: “I don’t know, mom, he wears actual outfits and not just athleisure all the time, does that count?” Some of it, Shane didn’t even have to explain. Lily was “shy” about media attention for very obvious reasons; Lily’s family situation was worrying because they were, probably, homophobic assholes.

It was all the things he hadn’t even come close to implying that were being dragged out into the sunlight now. Shane had never even tried for a serious relationship with another man, because it just wouldn’t work. (No, his mom had said, no that’s sad. Thanks, mom, he hadn’t realized.) That “Lily” had tried to make it… more than it had been, and he had freaked out, and just left. And they hadn’t talked since.

Lily could make it work with someone else. Lily was bisexual, Lily could meet a nice girl and have a family and not have be alone or pretend in order to be happy.

“But,” his mom said, “you said he was the one who wanted to make it a serious relationship.”

“I don’t know what he actually wants,” Shane said. “There’s a big difference between just, um… That. And a serious relationship.”

“Well, then, maybe you should ask him,” said his dad.

It didn’t make sense. Why would he choose staying in the dark with Shane, when he could have any girl he wanted?

“Love doesn’t have to make sense,” was his mother’s opinion, which was irrelevant, because Ilya Rozanov was not in love with him. But Shane at least owed him an apology for how he had left things last time. So maybe he would hear him out.

🥅

Montreal, January

Shane had no fucking clue how to break up with someone. Almost all his former girlfriends had broken up with him, after he just hadn’t made enough of an effort, or he’d broken up with them for an obvious reason like moving. How did he tell her he just didn’t like her that way, without telling her he was gay so really that was totally his fault?

“You’re really great,” he had said, lamely, “and I really like you a lot.” Rose had smiled and said, “But?”

“But, um. I was trying to get over someone else, and it didn’t work. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

“No, I get it,” she said, “It’s really okay.”

Really, it was going about as well as Shane could have hoped for. He was worried there would be more hysterics. Or was that sexist? He figured getting dumped was a perfectly good reason to have some hysterics, though. Rose, however, was eerily prepared for this conversation.

More than Shane realized, even.

“Can I ask you something… personal?” she said.

“Sure,” he said, because that was probably the least he owed her. Even if he also was thinking do not ask me who I am trying to get over.

“The person you’re trying to get over…” she started before trailing off. Fuck, shit, no, Shane thought. “Are they…” she started again, before clearing her throat, and Shane suddenly noticed the words she was using: not her. Or girl.

She seemed to notice the deer-in-the-headlights look he was making, because she backtracked. “You really don’t have to tell me! I just thought, maybe… it might not have been, you know… a girl.”

Shane didn’t think he could bring himself to say it out loud, again. But Rose was Rose, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t tell anyone. And he wanted to be able to tell her. So he nodded. It was tiny, but it was a nod.

🏒

A few minutes later, he had a thought. Rose had clearly already thought he might be gay. And sure, the sex had been bad, but… “Was it really that bad?”

Rose giggled. “It kind of was. Sorry.”

At least her theater school gay ex boyfriend stories made him feel like a little bit less of an asshole.

🥅

January, Montreal

Jane: Can we talk after the game?

🏒

Rozanov— Ilya— could probably tell this was going to be different. For one, Shane had sent the address to his apartment. He hadn’t said anything remotely flirty beforehand. Ilya, a little to his surprise, hadn’t tried to start anything either.

Shane felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin as he let Ilya into the apartment as fast as possible. Then he had no idea where to sit, or stand, even though it was his own damn apartment. Normally he would be dragging them towards the bedroom as soon as possible.

Ilya seemed to have settled on leaning against his kitchen island. He looked good. It was incredibly odd to see him inside Shane’s home, in a way that was doing something he probably shouldn’t name to his heart.

“I owe you an apology,” Shane said. “For the way I left last time.”

“Is okay,” said Ilya, although his face didn’t seem to agree.

“It’s not,” said Shane. “I freaked out, but I should have at least said something. At least after I calmed down, and I didn’t. So I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” said Ilya. Compared to his usual self, he looked lost. “Apology accepted.”

For a minute they just stared at each other. Ilya, Shane was finally noticing, looked rough. Like he hadn’t been sleeping. Maybe he was making assumptions, but there was a distinctly guilty feeling rising in him that it might be his fault.

“Rose and I broke up,” Shane finally blurted out. “Because, I’m, um.”

It was pretty bad he was having trouble saying I’m gay to the man he had been sleeping with for, what, seven years? Had it really been that long? It was sort of startling how quickly Ilya’s posture slumped after Shane had said he and Rose broke up, but now Ilya was raising an eyebrow at him and Shane had the distinct feeling he was being laughed at.

“Because I’m gay. Shut up, it’s not funny.” It’s a little bit funny said Ilya’s face. “I mean, like, 100%, completely gay. Not like you.”

“Okay. So you are gay,” said Ilya. “So what?”

“I’m just trying to explain,” said Shane. “Last time was different. And I freaked out about it, because I didn’t want to admit that, but it was.”

“Sure. It was different. But what do you want, Hollander?”

God, Shane didn’t know. He wanted the world to be less shitty so they could go outside holding hands and have it not be a big deal. He wanted that to also be something Ilya wanted. He had no fucking idea what Ilya really wanted, though, and he was still afraid to ask. “Shane. I want you to at least call me Shane, in private, I think we’ve known each other long enough for that.”

“Fine. Shane. So you broke up with Rose. What do you want from me?”

“I want…” I want literally everything. Anything you’re willing to give me. “I want this to mean something. More than just sex.”

“That is a terrible idea.” It was, and that also was not an I do not want that.

“I know it is,” said Shane. “But it’s what I want. I’m not saying we should be shouting it from the rooftops. I just can’t pretend I don’t like you anymore.”

“We can’t,” said Ilya.

“Tell me it’s not what you want and I’ll shut up about it,” said Shane. Please don’t tell me that.

“It is not about want. We can’t. Please, Shane, stop asking.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “Okay, I get it. Look, I’m not asking for anything crazy. I don’t want other people knowing anything, either! I just don’t get it. Last time, it seemed like you wanted… something, I don’t know. Why are you so against it meaning anything now?”

Ilya was quiet, fiddling with his necklace, before he said: “I could not go home. If anyone found out, I would not be able to go home.”

In the space of about five minutes, Shane learned more about Ilya’s family than he had in the entire decade before. A family of cops. Too-young now-dead mothers and stepmothers. Alzheimer’s. God. Shane could tell there was something wrong, before, just a little, but he hadn’t really thought of it beyond Russia. It was not just Russia. It was stupid, because they were the same age, but hearing this kind of thing made Shane feel young. Naive, maybe. Like he was some kid who thought of families like little stick-figure-crayon drawings in front of identical square houses, and was just finding out not everyone had a mom and dad who loved them the way they were supposed to.

He didn’t know what to do with the awful feelings welling up in him, a sadness that, what, he hadn’t been magically able to fix Ilya’s family when they were just boys on different continents who had never even met each other? He felt entirely helpless in the face of problems he knew there was nothing he could do to fix, even as they were hurting one of the people he cared about most.

He settled for holding Ilya as tightly as he could, like that could possibly make up for all the things Shane had been missing the whole time they had known each other. Ilya clung back onto him even harder, and Shane realized that there was at least one thing he could do, because it seemed no one else had been holding him the way he needed, either.

It wasn’t enough, but at the same time, it had to be.

🏒

The sex was at least still really fucking awesome.

(He kind of liked being able to hold Ilya afterwards even better, though.)

🥅

Chapter End Notes

I have plans to continue (we haven't even gotten to the actual Lily reveal!) but I am very bad at actually doing that, so it's marked complete for now. You can, of course, encourage this by leaving nice comments. Also, pointing out errors is not only allowed but very helpful.

Also, inspired by my own stupid choices in life, such as being a queer 27 year old with loving parents who would totally understand if I came out to them, except I am not doing that, for pretty much no good reason. Will Heated Rivalry get me to actually tell my parents? Maybe, but I am never admitting that to anyone in real life, that's so embarrassing. Also, shoutout to the first lesbian couple close-ish to my age I ever met, one of which did in fact claim she was straight while dating the woman she is currently married to with kids for, yes, over a decade.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

In which Ilya has a lot of feelings and is extremely good at expressing them.

Chapter Notes

So I am from a place that is Cold where a typical winter activity is going to the local ice rink, but I currently live in Texas. Anyway, one of my former coworkers was very friendly but his main interest is sports and while the main sports I know anything about are hockey and figure skating, he's mostly a football guy. I had to explain to him that it is in fact possible to stand still wearing skates, because apparently he thought you had to either be moving constantly or holding onto something for stability because the blades are so small.

I could put a disclaimer on this chapter that I do not actually know that much about hockey but after some contemplation have decided to consider myself basically an expert.

Anyway, here's chapter 2.

Montreal, January 2017

Jane: Can we talk after the game?

🐻

Ilya, for the first time in his career, was dreading a Montreal vs Boston game. Oh, not for the game itself. But Shane Hollander apparently wanted to talk, and had sent a new address. A brief bit of internet stalking had convinced Ilya this was in fact Shane's actual home. He wasn't sure if dating Rose Landry had given Shane the confidence to finally invite him there, or if it was perfectly acceptable to have Ilya in his home as long as it wasn't to fuck him.

Rose Landry was probably a perfectly lovely person, given that Shane Hollander was dating her. Ilya should probably even feel bad for her, considering she was dating a deeply closeted, completely in denial gay man. Unfortunately, Ilya was not in the business of lying to himself, so he hated her with a burning passion.

(Ilya did not, technically, know for certain that Shane was not attracted to his girlfriend. He did, however, think it was fair to consider himself an expert at identifying what it looked like when people were attracted to someone, and he had been in various social situations around both Shane Hollander and many women over many years. Shane had not once looked at a woman's chest instead of her face, and maybe that could be chalked up to self-control... except that he had also caught Shane checking out other men, in public, despite how incredibly paranoid he was about people discovering his sexuality. Ilya would be willing to bet his annual salary that Shane was about as gay as a man could get. Unfortunately, if he ever wanted to collect on that, he was going to have to wait on Shane admitting to it, and it was currently looking like he would literally die before that happened.)

Ilya had done some more internet stalking of the couple, but there didn't seem to be anything new from the last few days. Then he attempted to forget about the entire existence of Rose Landry, because he had a game to play. It did not work very well, because said game was against Shane Hollander. (And also either five or twenty other men, depending on how you were counting, but still, Shane Hollander.) And also because Rose Fucking Landry was apparently in the crowd today, wearing her boyfriend's jersey.

Ilya still played very well, and scored two goals, so he hadn't completely embarrassed himself. They lost anyway, which Ilya would never feel great about but had a particular sting being observed by Famous Movie Star And Girlfriend Rose Landry. He was going to have to get over it, though, because he had a boring, not-illicit meeting with Shane Hollander to make.

🐻

Shane had not managed a personality change overnight, it seemed, because he was ushered inside the apartment with typical urgency. Like someone might notice Ilya walking in the front door at the scandalous hour of 9 PM.

Ilya tried to absorb the details of Shane Hollander's actual apartment without taking his eyes off Shane. It was... boring.

No, really, it was actually boring. There were photographs of what were definitely Canadian landscapes on the walls. The furniture could have been IKEA, but was probably something fancier but just as boring. He had a bookshelf that was 90% books (which, if Ilya could read the titles, were probably 90% books about hockey) and 10% weird little wooden knickknacks. There were a couple photographs of what must have been the Hollanders (pretty older Asian woman, boring white man, and a Shane that Ilya could immediately identify as 20 years old by a combination of haircut and clothing. Fuck, what was wrong with him.) Most of what could have been actually interesting must have been put away out of sight, because Shane was the perverse kind of single, mid-20s professional athlete who actually cleaned. Truly life was terrible.

Unsure of exactly where this was going, and not wanting to sit while Shane was still hovering around anxiously, Ilya propped himself up against the kitchen island and waited for Shane to finally get to the point.

"I owe you an apology. For the way I left last time."

"Is okay," said Ilya. It wasn't, but it was hardly unsurprising once Ilya had taken a second to process what had happened. Shane was incredibly good at working himself up over nothing, and Ilya could admit that the changes he had tried to casually make to their usual arrangement were not nothing. He wasn't really hurt that Shane had vanished so quickly.

It was more the complete silence afterwards followed by Rose Fucking Landry that was the problem.

“It’s not,” said Shane. “I freaked out, but I should have at least said something. At least after I calmed down, and I didn’t. So I’m sorry.”

Well, it was nice that Shane had also figured that one out, he supposed. “Okay,” said Ilya. “Apology accepted.”

Then Shane just stared at him, which was weird and uncomfortable, but Shane was the one who apparently had something to talk about, so Ilya just stared back. Unless all he meant was the apology? That would be stupid. He could have just texted that.

Shane was still staring, and Ilya considered saying something to break the awkward silence. But he wasn't feeling particularly charitable, so he just stared back waiting for Shane to get on with it.

"Rose and I broke up," Shane finally blurted out, and Ilya almost missed the next part trying to keep his brain online. "Because, I'm, um."

That was not in any of the stupid tabloids. Hell, Rose Landry had just been at the game, wearing a Hollander jersey. What the fuck did he mean, they broke up? He almost wanted to call Shane a liar, but that was stupid, because there was literally no reason for him to lie about that. (Well, maybe if he were a terrible person who wanted Ilya to sleep him but didn't think he would go for it if it was cheating, but this was Shane Hollander, that was an even stupider idea.)

Anyway, Ilya was pretty sure he knew how that sentence was supposed to end, but he was still not feeling very charitable (even though there was a very sudden happy chorus of thoughts about that latest revelation) so he only raised an eyebrow and waited for Shane to get on with it.

“Because I’m gay. Shut up, it’s not funny.” It was a little bit funny. Sorry, Hollander, I think maybe I noticed you were gay already. When you were sucking my dick.

“I mean, like, 100%, completely gay. Not like you.”

Okay, fair enough, Ilya was not gay, he liked women, that was not news for anyone. He still had no idea where this was supposed to be going. “Okay. So you are gay,” said Ilya. “So what?”

“I’m just trying to explain,” said Shane. “Last time was different. And I freaked out about it, because I didn’t want to admit that, but it was.”

“Sure. It was different. But what do you want, Hollander?”

If it was just to fuck they could have been doing that already by now.

“Shane. I want you to at least call me Shane, in private, I think we’ve known each other long enough for that.”

Ilya pretended that absolutely no part of him felt mushy in any way about that. “Fine. Shane. So you broke up with Rose. But what do you want from me?”

“I want… I want this to mean something. More than just sex.”

I want that so badly you have no idea, Ilya thought. But also, "That is a terrible idea."

“I know it is,” said Shane. “But it’s what I want. I’m not saying we should be shouting it from the rooftops. I just can’t pretend I don’t like you anymore.”

Yes you can, thought Ilya, go back to Rose Landry you were doing just fine at it. Except that was a line too far for him even in the privacy of his own brain. “We can’t,” said Ilya. If you take it back now I might actually die.

“Tell me it’s not what you want and I’ll shut up about it,” said Shane.

Ilya was a big believer in lying. Not in general for no reason, that would be stupid. But he didn't think there was anything wrong with a lie inherently. That dress does not make your ass look fat, and also I have never once had sex with a man. Ilya had absolutely no shame in lying if it that was what it took to protect himself, which is why the next thing he should have said was, nope, I do not want that, only no-strings-attached casual sex forever, thank you.

For some reason, what came out of his mouth instead was: “It is not about want. We can’t. Please, Shane, stop asking.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “Okay, I get it. Look, I’m not asking for anything crazy. I don’t want other people knowing anything, either! I just don’t get it. Last time, it seemed like you wanted… something, I don’t know. Why are you so against it meaning anything now?”

The last gasp of the well-honed instinct to protect himself told him not to answer, to say anything but the truth. Deflect. Make a stupid joke, seduce him right now until he forgets, do literally anything else.

But he was tired.

“I could not go home. If anyone found out, I would not be able to go home."

🐻

Ilya felt sort of like he had shot someone's dog in front of Shane, trying to explain what his family was like. Even when he was using the least-bad words he could think of (his father was strict, that was certainly a word for it) and skipping over the things that he didn't think he could say without breaking down himself (his mother), Shane kept looking more and more like it was him that was having something horrible happen. Sorry, nevermind, he wanted to say. Actually it is all rainbows and everything is fine.

But it was too much of a relief to tell someone.

Oh, it wasn't like no one knew. Sveta knew everything. But she had always known all of it. Ilya never once had to actually explain. She was very lovely and comforting but, somehow, she was also too close.

Here, he could parcel out the things he wanted someone to see, someone to acknowledge and say, oh that's terrible. Because it was. But only the things he wanted to have someone look at. Not everything. Not right now, anyway.

Not the things he still needed to pretend to himself about.

Maybe it was cathartic, actually. He didn't want Shane to be sad. Of course not. But seeing that just this much was, actually, really that bad made him feel... not crazy.

He was a motherfucking hockey star, he was rich, people loved him. Most people would kill to be him.

But his family still also was terrible.

Eventually he ran out of horrible things to tell Shane, and Shane had gradually managed to look less like he had just learned that the poor shot dog did not actually go to live on a farm somewhere else.

He didn't know why he wasn't expecting it. It was probably the most obvious thing you were supposed to do when someone told you about their pathetic problems. But it was really very nice to be hugged.

⛸️

Tampa, January 2017

Ilya loved the All Stars.

This was not an opinion shared by most players who had been to the event as many times as he had. At this point they would be dreaming of taking a vacation like everyone else and only participating in a game that meant literally nothing to avoid being fined. To Ilya, All Stars was close enough to a real vacation. He liked meeting the other players’ kids, he didn’t have anywhere else he particularly wanted to be, and he loved playing hockey and could actually just enjoy the game without stakes. This time there was even the Florida beach.

Also, notably, Shane Hollander would be there.

He had been apprehensive about All Stars before their talk after the last Montreal game. But since they had cleared the air between him, there had been a little background noise in his head. It mostly went: SAME TEAM SAME TEAM EAST VS WEST MEANS SAME TEAM. For one whole game, which meant literally nothing, but also: literally it would be the first time he ever got to play hockey on the SAME TEAM as Hollander.

It was a little embarrassing how excited he was for the All-Star Game.

🐻

Not as embarrassing as Shane apparently hiring a stylist. Oh, it was actually a great idea, Ilya was all for it, just embarrassing. Ilya should send them a fruit basket or something. Shane claimed it wasn’t Rose Landry and her well-dressed friends’ fault, but Ilya was still a bit skeptical of the timing. Not that he was going to send Rose Landry any fruit baskets, so it didn’t matter.

Was it too much to give him outfit ideas? There was still not nearly enough skin showing for a Florida beach.

🐻

He and Shane had spent a tragically short amount of time “catching up” in Shane’s hotel room. But apparently it would be weird if Captain and Notable Buzzkill Shane Hollander was nowhere to be seen the entire time before the competition, at the same time Ilya was missing. Well, Ilya could probably just pretend to have been with a beautiful Florida woman, but he wasn’t wrong.

So, after testing the soundproofing of the hotel, they were both at the pool. Shane was doing a tragic job of relaxing, somehow still looking tense while reclining in a pool deck chair. Clearly Ilya had not done a good enough job earlier.

Ilya, like he usually ended up doing during the downtime of these things, was messing around with a horde of children. Unlike their parents, they actually appreciated that they were at a beautiful Tampa resort, and were actually fun. He could also tell that Shane was totally watching him behind his sunglasses, which was a nice bonus. Shane was definitely the kind of person who thought being good with kids was attractive.

Maybe Ilya could fling some water at him. You know, to cool down. And also definitely not to make his shirt stick to him.

🐻

The game was one of the best things that had happened to Ilya in years. Playing with Shane was fucking magical. It was pretty often he didn’t have words for something in English, but he didn’t think he could describe it in Russian, either. Normally he thought comparing skating to flying was stupid-- his feet were very firmly on the ground, thank you, and surely there was a better metaphor-- but he honestly could not think of anything else.

He wasn’t the only one who seemed to think so. The crowd loved it. The commentators loved it, the internet loved it, probably all the old people who weren’t on the internet and only watching from their TVs at home loved it.

Not as much as Ilya did. The only person who might have him beat on that front was Shane. Shane always looked beautiful, but there was something special about him on ice, and it was a thousand times better when he was as free as he seemed to be, today.

🐻

Sitting on a beach at sunset with a beautiful boy he was in love with, with their hands almost touching, was too much. He felt like he was going to die, and he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, because tomorrow he was going to go home, and nothing was going to change. There wasn’t even going to be a picture of this.

Tomorrow it would be easier not to remember. But he folded the memory up carefully anyway. Maybe eventually he would be able to look at it, and have it not hurt.

⛸️

Boston, March 2017

If Polina had been anyone else’s stepmother, he probably would have felt bad for her. She had gone from dealing with his father in his right mind, which was difficult, to dealing with him with dementia, which was… what it was. He couldn’t really say she was taking care of him, with how often she seemed to be missing when his father called made nonsensical conversation, but even then he understood. And she didn’t even get his father’s money out of it, because there was none, not with Alexei around.

She was, however, his stepmother, and she only asked for money when he barely even knew her. It was probably terrible of him to think go marry some other horrible rich man, then but if he didn’t let himself think the horrible things in his own mind he thought he might accidentally say them instead.

Alexei, meanwhile, had done everything to himself. But unlike Polina, he had actually been Ilya’s older brother his whole life. Did that make it better or worse?

Ilya desperately wanted to just ignore them all. He wanted to stop caring. But he knew it was all coming soon-- his father was worse every day. The calls got more desperate for a reason. Even if they didn’t deserve anything he did for them, even if every time he talked to them he wanted to scream, he just had to hold on. Because they were still family. Because he couldn’t imagine telling his mother that he had left his dying father alone and confused and only his brother had taken care of him, while Ilya was in America playing hockey and being absolutely useless, and not even done the one thing he could even manage.

Even if they really didn’t deserve it.

🐻

He didn’t tell Shane.

Oh, he fucked up their usual arrangement, took every excuse to have Shane hold him a minute longer when he was in Boston for the game. Shane could definitely tell there was something, but he was too polite to pry.

Shane would be sympathetic. Shane would do his best to try to understand, but it was just too far removed from Shane’s picture perfect idea of what a family was. His trying would probably end up turning well-meaning assumptions into something that Ilya would hate him for, just a little, and that was the last thing he wanted.

Sveta was better, but… even Sveta only watched from the outside. The Vetrovs were, actually, lovely people. Her father was a sort of typical gruff, stern man, but the kind that did actually have a secret soft center. He and Sveta’s mother-- a singer who was frankly astonishingly beautiful even though she was retired and well out of the public eye these days-- were disgustingly in love. A long time ago Sveta used to complain about things like sappy serenades (Sergei Vetrov had, apparently, taken actual vocal lessons when he was trying to woo the future Mrs Vetrova) before she had noticed the way Ilya got quiet when she did.

The Rozanovs were not like that. Ilya had never met his grandfather, who died before he was born, but he could imagine him. His father had not sprung from nothing. He could not actually know, but he could imagine it, a line of stern men each carving pieces out of each other, a violent sort of love that left hollow, prideful men behind.

There was someone who would understand, Ilya knew. Sasha. His coach had been a very familiar sort of man, and when he was younger, it had felt like a terrible mirror looking at Sasha. It was probably why he had been brave enough back then, the very first time he’d kissed another man (boy, then.) They had already shared one terrible secret.

It was part of why it was so hard to look at Sasha, these days. Sasha was doing… well enough, he thought. Sveta was always telling him about clubs and boys and girls (mostly boys, for Sasha) and it all should have been charming. But they were still twisted mirrors of each other, and Ilya had the horrible feeling every time they really spoke that they were both secretly hollow inside.

He didn’t talk to Sasha much, these days.

⛸️

Moscow, 2017

He could have texted Shane, when he got the call. He wouldn’t even have to talk, because he was about to get on a plane to Moscow and wouldn’t be reachable regardless.

He knew there would inevitably be a report that he was scratched from the next game. His team knew why, of course. He’d gotten condolences from all his teammates, the WAGs, his coach.

He landed in Moscow. He said hello to Polina, to Alexei, to his sister-in-law and niece. He went to sleep, even though it would not help him adjust to the timezone. He had several missed calls on his phone.

He didn’t text Shane.

⛸️

Chapter End Notes

I did have some fun jokes to put in the end notes but I also wasn't originally planning to stop here, so maybe I'll save that for next time. Sorry for making your life terrible, Sasha, in canon you were just a regular party boy. Also, please pretend the skate emoji is a hockey skate and not a women's figure skating skate. (Why are figure skate colors gendered?) For show only folks, in the books Ilya's team is the Boston Bears, but he already had a bear tattoo for Russia anyway. I mostly just think the bear emoji is cute.

In some more depressing commentary, I got curious because I haven't really checked in on what was going on in the NHL for a while; I disowned my hometown team years ago for being terrible. Anyway, one fun search later, I am pretty sure I am not going to be able to root for them anytime this century, and actually Rachel Reid did not make the Toronto team evil enough. Women's hockey is where it's at, though. Also I totally did not recognize Harrison Browne's cameo but I am very happy about it now that it's been pointed out to me. Good for him.

Asking for nice comments apparently does actually work, though, thanks everyone, you're all very sweet and I appreciate it.

Chapter 3: Interlude

Chapter Summary

A short interlude with Yuna Hollander.

Chapter Notes

Not a real chapter! We'll be back to the boys soon.

"Hey Mom, is Dad there too?"

That was unusual. Yuna talked more frequently with Shane than David did, of course, for business and practical reasons as well as personal. She knew he and David texted various photos back and forth— wildlife, David's garden, signs with bad kerning— but it was nothing very conversational. It was probably natural, given how both of them were quiet people, and they drove down to Montreal regularly enough Shane hardly had the chance to miss them.

"Oh, he's in the office, I think. I can go fetch him."

"Don't bother him if he's working, Mom, it's not anything important—"

Yuna's mind was already in overdrive wondering what this call was about. Most of the ideas she came up with were immediately discarded: Shane was too good a boy for most kinds of scandals, he had a no-trade clause, and there was now absolutely zero chance he was going to accidentally knock up a girl. Hockey news had been pretty slow, just rumors that the Vegas goalie's injury was serious and Rozanov's mystery healthy scratch. Of course, if something had happened with the Metros, Shane would obviously know first. Maybe Hayden was being traded, or one of the other guys Shane was closer to? No, that was stupid, the trade deadline—

Deep breaths, Yuna. "Honey, Shane's on the phone," she called, knocking on the office door. The office chair made its tell tale squeak, so she said, "I'm putting you on speakerphone."

"Hey, kid," said David, emerging with his eyes scrunched up. He'd been wearing the old reading glasses again. "What's up?"

"It's really nothing," said Shane, and that was an embarrassed tone, not anxious, so probably nothing was on fire. Shane could get embarrassed over the tiniest things, too. "I just wanted to say, um. Thank you. For being good parents. And being supportive. And, um, I love you."

Oh god, was someone dying?

"We love you too," she said, automatically. Shane was obviously not panicking, so she shouldn't be either. He mostly seemed mortified about talking about feelings, which, again: was someone actually dying? Or was it Mother's Day? No, that wasn't for months.

"We both love you," David also chimed in, "But is something wrong? This seems sudden."

"Nothing's wrong," Shane said. "I just realized that I took a lot of things for granted. And I'm really lucky to have you as my parents."

"We're the ones who are lucky to have you," Yuna said. Even if her baby hadn't turned out to be so unbelievably talented and successful, they were so lucky. Shane was just such a good boy, who wouldn't be proud of him? She would have loved her son no matter what, of course, but she could admit it was a lot easier when your son was as wonderful as hers was.

"Thanks, mom," said Shane, in a voice that was now Parents Are So Embarrassing tone, like he wasn't the one who started it.

"Shane, I don't mean to pry," said David, "but is everything okay with, uh, Lily?"

Yuna glanced at her husband, more than a little surprised. They'd discussed it at length back in January when Shane had admitted "Lily" was a man. They would have liked to know more about Lily (at least a real first name!), but it was understandable he wanted to be private. Hopefully, they'd established that they were worth trusting, but of course Lily didn't know them personally. It wasn't worth rushing them or trying to get Shane to share details by breaking the trust of his partner. (Even if it apparently "wasn't serious." Yuna wasn't sure how much she believed that.) But David apparently thought it was worth it now.

"Yes. Sort of. No," said Shane. "I mean, nothing is wrong between me and her—" Her. Was he somewhere he could be overheard, or was it just too deeply ingrained to have to hide? Yuna's heart hurt in a way that was getting too familiar. "But things are difficult for her with her family."

"That must be rough," said Yuna, thinking how bad it must be for Shane to choose to call up his parents just to say I love you.

"Is he safe?" asked David.

"Huh?" said Shane. "Oh. No, it's not like that. I mean, I don't know that much, but it's not actually about— um. It's more arguing than anything, I think. Not physical danger."

Shane had first mentioned being worried about "Lily's" family all the way back in 2014. He'd been upset she wouldn't talk about it. Two months ago it had only come up briefly that his family was unlikely to approve. She knew, of course, there was a wide range of what that could mean. But she'd been too focused on Shane's feelings for her to remember there were other dangers.

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Yuna said.

"What? I don't know how you could help with h— with her family being assholes."

"Well, we don't know a lot about him," Yuna said. "I guess I was just assuming that he's close to you in age. But if he's still reliant on his family, or lives with them, I wouldn't want him to be stuck. I don't know how much we could do, with him living in America, but if there's anything..."

For some reason, Shane laughed. "It's kind of the opposite problem, actually," he said. "Sorry. You're right, she is my age. I don't know how much else she would want me to tell you. And there's not really anything you could do, I think. But thanks."

The opposite? That would be something to puzzle over later, definitely. "Let us know if that changes, okay?"

"Okay, mom. I didn't mean to worry you. It isn't like whatever you were imagining. I just... I never appreciated enough that I got to have you as parents."

Parenting could be rough. Some mistakes, Yuna understood. But hurting your child over who they loved? She felt fully justified in judging people she had never met over that.

"I'm sorry that your... that his parents would be like that. But you don't need to thank us for doing the bare minimum of what a parent should."

"I think you do a little more than the bare minimum, Mom," said Shane.

"Just a little," said David, wryly. And now they were ganging up on her!

"Oh, hush," she said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Shane, I know it must be complicated. But whenever you’re both ready, we’d really love to meet him.”

There were a lot of terrible mother-in-law stereotypes out there. Especially, she thought with a grimace, Asian mother-in-law stereotypes. It was a good thing she was committed to breaking out of stereotypical roles. Yuna Hollander did nothing by halves. She was going to be the best mother-in-law on the planet.

📒

Chapter End Notes

Real life hockey folks will know that the Vegas NHL team was founded in 2017, so technically we are one season early. But also, this decision was not made with real life hockey in mind. ♠️

I'm very conflicted about what the inside of Yuna Hollander's head must look like. I think the tendency to micromanage is often an expression of anxiety, and it would certainly track with how many personality traits she shares with Shane ("she cares way too much about hockey" yeah Shane we *all* see where you get it from.) Of course she doesn't come across as anywhere near as anxious as Shane, but she's also a middle-aged woman who has much more practice handling her emotions.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

Funerals and injuries and cottages, oh my!

Chapter Notes

Here is the actual chapter! If you missed it, chapter 3 is a short Yuna POV.

Detroit, March 2017

His message (Are you ok?) went unanswered.

It couldn't be a typical hockey injury, that didn't make sense with the odd silence online. Maybe it was illness? He hadn't seemed sick, and again, no online rumors. Maybe something without obvious symptoms. Like cancer.

No, bad thought, do not start thinking about cancer.

Maybe some kind of sick, though. Or something personal, and if it was something personal that would cause an unexpected absence, something bad.

I can't even ask, he realized. He couldn't always see Ilya, and when they saw each other they usually had to act, but he almost never had to wonder where Ilya was or how he might be doing. Because usually, the news told him. And now it was silent.

He suddenly remembered an article he had read years ago, one about LGBT rights, where an activist talked about gay marriage being important because otherwise people couldn't visit their dying partners in the hospital. He'd thought, that's awful, in the sort of distant for those poor people kind of way. Because, even if he theoretically were gay, gay marriage was already legal in Canada.

It was a stupid analogy. Ilya wasn't even his boyfriend, much less anything legally binding. But here he was, unable to even ask what had happened to his— to Ilya, because he couldn't claim to be even his friend. They were nothing to each other in the eyes of the world.

He was just going to have to wait to hear from Ilya.

🏒

Pick up, pick up, pick up.

Nothing.

🏒

Was it too much, to leave a voicemail? Just something bland, something Good Sportsman Shane Hollander could say. Heard you weren’t heading Nashville, hope everything’s alright. It would appear under Jane but surely Ilya wasn’t just handing out his phone for anyone to listen to his messages on.

The click after the dial tone came on and Shane hung up immediately.

🏒

One message, a couple of calls. Shane needed to go to sleep and he’d already checked his phone two minutes ago, but he looked once more.

No response.

🥅

Days later, 4am, Buffalo, March 2017

It was several rings in before he understood that the phone call was not part of his dream. Lily flashed on the screen. He scrambled to pick it up before it went to voicemail.

"Hello?" he croaked out.

There was silence on the other end. Shane took the phone away from his ear to check he hadn't imagined it. It still read "Lily."

"Ilya?" he tried again.

"I woke you up," said Ilya, sounding strange. His accent was thicker than usual. "Nevermind. I will call later."

"No, it's fine— where are you?" If Ilya hadn't realized he was calling at 4am... Shane was still muddle-headed with sleep, but he was pretty sure he could guess what that meant.

"Home. Moscow."

"Are you okay? Your family?"

"Not really," Ilya said. Paused. "My father is dead."

"I'm sorry," said Shane. He didn't know what else to say. The silence stretched between them. It was broken by a badly stifled sniff.

"Ilya," he said, helplessly.

Ilya said something back in Russian. Shane was pretty sure there were several swears involved. "I should go," he said, in English.

"No, wait! You know you can talk to me, right? I'm not the best at... this kind of thing. But I can at least listen."

"I know," said Ilya. "But it is late, for you. You should sleep."

"I'm already awake anyway," said Shane. "And I'm glad you called. I was worried."

"Yes, I saw." There were more muffled sniffs. Shane wanted to hold him, and then he wanted to ask if there was anyone over there who could do it instead. But if there was, would he be calling Shane?

"Do... do you want to talk about him?"

"No."

"Okay."

...

"Your game," Ilya said.

"What?"

"With Detroit. Your game. How was it?"

Detroit had actually been a couple days ago already. They’d just played Buffalo. But Shane wasn’t going to correct him. He told him in scrupulous detail: the game itself, the single fight, the boring chirps and the good ones. Like a fucked up bedtime story for grieving hockey players. He could hear Ilya's breathing on the other end the whole time, interspersed with the sniffling they were both studiously ignoring.

Eventually Ilya cut him off. "I need to go."

"Okay."

"Thank you."

🥅

The Next Day

Ilya's voice when he was speaking Russian was beautiful. Shane liked it when he spoke English as well, of course. Even years ago when he was barely fluent. But even though Ilya had no trouble carrying a conversation in English these days, he never sounded like this. It was a ceaseless stream—not steady, going from a small trickle to a sudden torrent of sound—but always moving, no pauses necessary to properly articulate a phrase. It was odd, because he knew the words themselves were likely miserable. It was paradoxical that hearing whatever Ilya was confessing would make Shane happy.

He was pretty sure he'd caught the words for father and brother, but that was no surprise. Svetlana's name he definitely heard. Shane didn't know any more Russian to guess at what Ilya could be saying, which was good, because it was supposed to be private.

Except he was pretty sure he'd caught the word "love" in there multiple times.

That was normal, of course. Maybe he was talking about how he loved— or didn't love— his family, or how they loved him. He should absolutely not be wondering about it.

And he was definitely not thinking about why that word was in his very limited Russian vocabulary.

🏒

Shane was unfamiliar with death.

He was unfamiliar with so many parts of Ilya's life. He had both his parents, who came to far too many of his home games considering the drive. He had doting grandparents, too. He'd never had to live in an unfamiliar country, and anywhere he traveled to usually accommodated English speakers just fine. The family he was in touch with would probably be too proud to ask for money unless they were about to be starving in the street.

There were things Ilya probably would never understand the same way, too. What it was like to be visibly different in almost every room he entered. People who thought he was too Asian to be Canadian. People who thought he was too Canadian to be Japanese. What it was like to have to think ten steps ahead, all the time, and always be half convinced something was wrong no matter how good things seemed.

The terror of becoming a disappointment, instead of constantly being told you already were one.

But he also knew, no matter what he did, however much he ended up letting them down, his parents would never let him down the way Ilya's family had.

Maybe he should call them.

🥅

Montreal, April 2017

“Hi,” said Shane. It was the first time he’d seen Ilya since they’d Skyped, just after his father’s funeral. Considering everything, Ilya looked good. Not that it meant much. Ilya had always appeared cheerful and irritating on the ice, even in the months before while his father had been dying. Shane would have no idea what it was like in his head until after, if Ilya let him see.

“Hollander,” said Ilya.

“We still on for tonight? After?”

“Your place, or…?” Ilya replied.

“Yeah,” said Shane. What would the point be, going back to the impersonal condo? That barrier was already broken. Oh, it had been a massive mistake. Everything between them was. But he couldn’t take it back just by hooking up in a different place. Shane just wished he was better at reading Ilya. “Are you alright?” he said, quietly as he could.

Ilya just glanced at him, not responding. He didn’t know what he expected, on the ice like this. “We’ll talk later.”

“Yes. Later.” And Ilya skated away. Shane watched for a moment, before Hayden skated up to him.

“What did Rozanov want?”

“Nothing,” said Shane. He had a prepared excuse. “I was just offering my condolences. You know.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s nice of you,” said Hayden. “I should have thought to do that. It’s just… Rozanov, you know?”

“He’s not a bad guy,” Shane said, which was like singing his praises compared to his usual stance. “It’s mostly an act.”

“Pretty convincing one.”

“Yeah, well…” Shane said. It’s all an act. I think he barely ever lets himself be real. “Let’s just make sure we win this one, all right?”

“Fucking right.”

🏒

Hayden wasn't moving.

It was a clean hit. Just bad luck. There was already a fight brewing behind him, JJ was yelling at Marleau, and Shane was the captain of this team. He should be doing something.

They were putting him on the spinal board. Hayden's mouth was moving but Shane couldn't hear anything.

He should be helping. Hayden was his best friend. He should be reassuring him. He should do something.

"Hollander."

They were lifting him now and Shane was just standing there.

"Hollander. Shane. You need to fucking breathe." Ilya was holding his arm, now, like doubling up to hold each other back when there was a fight. No, there was a fight, right now, he could hear it. The refs. Yelling.

"He is going to be fine," said Ilya. "He was awake, you could see. Talking. The doctors will take good care of him. Shane. Can you say something, please?"

"Sorry," he gasped, finally tearing his eyes away from the scene to look at Ilya. Ilya was worried. Shane desperately wanted to hold onto him, even just in a normal-hockey-way, but if he tried he was going to latch on like a drowning man and this was on TV.

"So Canadian," said Ilya. "First thing you say is sorry."

"Fuck," said Shane, finally realizing he was having a televised panic attack and his best friend was being hospitalized and his secret-something had just very obviously talked him down. "What the fuck, Rozanov."

"What, you think I am too much an asshole for good sportsmanship?" Translation: calm down, this is fine, normal hockey player behavior. No, it was too weird, especially for him and Rozanov. If they were on the same team, if they were players known to be friendly, if it didn’t look so obvious that Shane was having a breakdown and Ilya was trying to help him. None of this was how Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov were supposed to behave. If the camera angles were wrong there were probably fans who could read lips already telling everyone what they’d said.

But it was probably not bad enough for people to think they were having a secret affair.

"Okay, I get it," he said. "Thanks. I need to..." He looked back to where Hayden had been, but they'd already taken him off the ice. Ilya seemed to have determined Shane was well enough to leave alone, and was already skating away. He probably didn't want them to start looking even weirder. That was good.

Shane just felt cold.

🏒

Jackie looked awful.

"A concussion and a broken collarbone, but he's going to be okay," she said. It was about as good an outcome as it could have been, but Jackie didn't look particularly relieved. Probably because her husband, fresh out of surgery, had a concussion and a broken collarbone. And he wasn't awake yet, though only because it was too soon after.

"I heard, my mom's been texting me. If there's anything else I can do..."

"Not that I can think of. Tell your parents thank you again for watching the kids."

"I think you might be doing them the favor. It's me who has to watch out before they start asking for grandkids," said Shane.

Jackie half-smiled. Shane wasn't as good at this as some people, but that was better than nothing.

"I don't know how you do it," she said. "Keep playing after something like that. Hell, I don't know how I'm going to be able to watch Hayden play again."

"I don't know either," said Shane, but he was thinking of Ilya, now. Who he definitely would have spiraled into a full-blown episode without. Who he was now imagining being the one to take a hit badly. He'd just watched his own best friend go down. It wasn't any different. But the image was stuck in his head now. God, what kind of friend was he? His best friend was hurt and he was thinking about his perfectly healthy… something or other. Jackie was one of his best friends, too, and she was having what must be one of the worst moments of her life. Shane couldn’t even come up with something reassuring to say that wasn’t just “hey, he could have been hurt even worse” which even he knew was not a good idea. Jackie was handling this better than Shane had, and she was Hayden’s wife. The only thing Shane had contributed was having helpful parents in town.

They sat together, miserable and quiet, until a nurse came by to tell them that visiting hours had ended. (Really, they had ended a while ago, Shane had looked it up. Famous hockey player privileges, it seemed.) Maybe it had been a shift change, because this nurse looked different. Either way, visiting hours were over. Family only.

🏒

Jane: If you're still up

Jane: I could use some company.

🏒

They were on his couch, fully dressed, Ilya's hand stroking through his hair. It would be nice to stay in the moment. They hadn't ever quite done something like this before. So of course Shane was going to ruin it.

"I can't do this," said Shane. Ilya's hand froze.

"Do what?"

Shane clung harder onto him, being kind of an asshole giving mixed signals. "All of it. I don't know. The last thing I said to Hayden today was that you were an asshole. He's my best friend and I just lie to him all the time."

Ilya started petting his hair again. "I am an asshole," he said evenly.

"You know what I mean."

"You want to tell him?" Shane couldn't read Ilya's tone at all.

"Yes. No. I don't know, I don't want to tell him but I don't want to lie, I know that doesn't make sense. It's not just that. We were too obvious today. It wasn't anything crazy but if it keeps happening people are going to notice."

"You say that like there will be many games like this."

"I keep thinking about if it was you."

"It wasn't."

"But it could have been," said Shane, frustrated. "And then what would happen? I couldn't keep it together when it was Hayden. And that was with you trying to help. I would have freaked out over you so much everyone would know."

"It could happen," said Ilya. "But the chances? We play 4 times a year? Bad injuries, they happen how often? Is not worth worrying about."

"I was scared last month too," Shane said.

Ilya twisted around to look at him, then sat so they were facing each other. Shane didn’t know how he was going to look him in the eye for this.

“It was— you were— people were talking about how you didn’t fly with your team, but no one knew why. Your team was keeping it quiet, there was nothing in the news. They didn’t put you on IR, so you weren’t hurt, but… I knew it had to be something bad, and I couldn’t ask anyone about it. The only person I could ask was you, and you didn’t answer for days. I was so scared.”

“I should have texted,” said Ilya, acknowledging completely the wrong thing.

“That’s not what I mean,” Shane said, frustrated. “You were going through something, you don’t have to tell me everything. But I was a mess and it was something I just couldn’t explain to anyone.”

“So you do want to tell people.”

“Maybe,” Shane said quietly. “I… told my parents that I’m gay. In January.”

“And they were good?” Ilya said, but it was obvious he knew the answer already.

“Yeah. They were good.”

He hadn’t been able to tell what Ilya was thinking for this whole conversation, but it was plain as day now: Ilya was hurt. Jealous. He was trying to hide it, because it was unfair. They both deserved to have parents who supported them.

Ilya’s were both dead. It had only been a month.

Fuck, Shane didn’t know what he was doing. “Sorry. I’m… it’s too much, probably. But. They’ve been asking to meet you.”

“You tell them about me?” said Ilya.

“No! Not that it’s you, anyway. They just know there’s someone called ‘Lily.’ I told them you’re not my boyfriend but they don’t believe me.”

“So you want to introduce man who is not your boyfriend to your parents,” said Ilya.

“It is too much. Sorry. Forget I asked.”

Ilya grabbed his arm before he could curl away like he wanted to. “That is not what I mean.” He kept holding onto Shane. “You make no sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“First you say you do not want to tell, but you do not want to lie. Okay. Then you say we are too obvious. You are afraid of being caught. Makes sense. Then you do want to tell. I should not talk to you on the ice, but I should go meet your parents? Who you tell I am not your boyfriend.”

That was… yeah, that was pretty much what he said. And Ilya was right, it didn’t make sense. He knew why. He was fucking terrified. But he also knew what he wanted, and that was Ilya. As his actual boyfriend. And yes, meeting his parents. He didn’t want the whole world to know, but he wanted to share it with the people who were important.

Fuck it.

“Come to the cottage,” he said. “You don’t have to meet my parents. It would be easy if you wanted to, but that doesn’t matter. I just want to be able to see you for longer than a day. A couple weeks this summer, maybe. And yeah, it would be nice if it was as my boyfriend.”

Ilya had closed his eyes. “We shouldn’t.”

“I know,” said Shane. “Just think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” said Ilya, but it meant no. “...You had a long day. We should rest.”

Don’t do this, thought Shane. “Yeah,” he said out loud. It was late. They did need to sleep. Shane wondered if Ilya was going to leave, then, but for whatever reason, he stayed. So Shane got to sleep— literally sleep— with the man he was pretty sure he was in love with, but didn’t seem to feel the same way about him.

He was pretty sure neither of them actually slept much at all.

🥅

Chapter End Notes

So probably most controversial decision of the fic so far here, but if you're writing an AU already, why would every plot beat be the same? It does deprive us of high Shane, so sorry, but also sorry not sorry there are a million high Shane fics out there already. It won't be addressed in fic, because the characters obviously do not know they are living in an AU, but while Hayden getting injured is not nearly the loss of star power that would impact their playoffs as Shane's injury was, offscreen Comeau happened to get taken out by a magic homophobe seeking puck. The Metros are going to lose as usual. After all, it's Scott Hunter's year! Hockey witch Yuna says so.

Some other notes: in the book Ilya says he has did not cry at the funeral and had not cried in a decade, which makes sense for his character, but he *does* make an obvious sniff during one of his phone calls with Shane. Okay you didn't cry you just almost cried, got it.

I keep ending on downer notes but we are about to have some actual fun next time!

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

In which everyone has a bad time, except for Hayden, because Hayden is on drugs.

Chapter Notes

This chapter took a million years (a little over a week) because it hates me (I have planned ahead 0 times in this fic) and here it is even though it sucks (it is approximately as good as anything I write.)

Montreal, April 2017

When Ilya woke up, Shane's side of the bed was already cold. Ilya was a later riser than Shane (according to the boring cottage documentary) so it only made sense. What was he expecting, anyway? Morning cuddles? This was what he got for watching too many sappy movies with Marleau.

There was a neatly folded pile of clothes on the nightstand, which was bizarre. They were obviously Shane's, but Shane was clearly already dressed, because his pajamas were in a neatly folded square where Shane had previously been sleeping.

There was also a single new toothbrush in the bathroom. Ilya snuck a peek in the cabinet under the sink and found five pack of toothbrushes. Three were missing. There was also, inexplicably, anti-aging cream, two half-used shampoo and conditioner bottles, women's deodorant... ah. These were not the beauty products chosen by glamorous movie stars. They were, however, suitable for a middle aged woman: Yuna Hollander. Satisfied with the results of his snooping, Ilya took the toothbrush and— organic toothpaste? Really?— brushed his teeth. It did significantly improve his mood not to feel like something had died in his mouth.

The kitchen was empty, but there was a note on the counter. It was written on stationary with little cartoon hockey sticks across the top. Shane had gone on his run and Ilya was welcome to whatever was in his kitchen. That would be more helpful if Shane's food was not universally terrible. He did, however, have eggs. Even Shane could not find a way to make eggs from a carton taste bad.

He had almost finished his eggs with terrible healthy toast when the door clicked open. There was the sound of Shane taking off his shoes and placing them properly. Ilya glanced at his plate and tragically realized there was no sexy way to eat an egg. He was, however, still only wearing underwear.

Shane finally appeared, breathing heavily and dripping sweat. Not from Ilya's preferred physical activity, but that was fixable.

"Hi," said Shane, before realizing that he was looking at an almost-naked Ilya Rozanov in his kitchen. His eyes went dark. "I need to, uh, shower," he said, successfully distracted.

Ilya leered. "Want company?"

🐻

One incredibly wasteful water bill later (which had been brought up multiple times, not that Shane had done anything to stop it), Ilya was shrugging on the tee and sweats Shane had apparently picked out for being slightly too large on him. Shane was putting on what must have been a stylist-influenced outfit. It was very plain and boring still, but at least it wasn't gym clothes. But really, beige.

"Ilya," said Shane. "Last night..."

Ilya tried to suppress the sudden tension in his body, but there was no way Shane had missed it.

"I get it," said Shane. "I know it's a risk, meeting up any more than we already do. And it would be worse for you than me. If you don't want to do more than," he gestured vaguely around, "this, that's fine. And the stuff about my parents was a lot. And the boyfriend thing. Sorry. I misread the situation."

Was this what Shane had been tossing and turning over last night? It was obviously rehearsed. The stilted delivery didn't lessen the upset on his face, though.

"You think I do not want 2 week sex vacation with you?" Ilya said, cutting off whatever Shane had planned to say next. "Boring Canadian lakeside is not as sexy as tropical beach, but yes, obviously, I would like to go."

That was only semi-successful at getting Shane to smile. "But?"

"But this," he copied Shane's gesture, "was always a bad idea. After Tampa, I was going to tell you we should stop." He heard Shane's intake of breath but steamrolled over whatever he was going to say in response. "I tried to ignore you. It didn’t work. When my father died, I did not mean to... I have friends, you know. Old friends from Russia, not just Svetlana. Friends in Boston, teammates, girls... lots of people. But none of them know me. I wanted you."

What was he doing? He was going to say something too much. He already had.

"What are you trying to say?" Shane's eyes were glistening and he was holding himself stiffly.

"It sounds nice," Ilya said. "Your cottage. Your parents. But every time we see each other, is more risk. Yes, for me, but also for you. I go to your cottage, then what? We cannot go anywhere together. How can we be boyfriends when cannot even stand next to each other in public? We are already risking too much. I can't do more than this."

"Okay," said Shane. "If you're sure." The tears were less clear tracks and more smeared puddles, Shane having already tried to scrub them away. His contrary heart melted and, despite himself, he was bringing a hand up to Shane's face. Wiping at his damp cheek with his thumb. Kissing him, in the kind of soft, lingering, not even remotely about sex way he should have realized was a sign a long time ago. But being dumb about feelings was the right of any teenager, really. Or 20-year-old. And probably, he figured, 26 wasn't exactly old and wise.

What wasn’t wise was staying any longer. He only had so much willpower to keep saying no.

"I should go," he said abruptly. Shane let go of him like he was burned.

"Right," he said. "Sure. You probably have a flight to get to."

He didn't. Ilya took the out anyway.

🐻

Hayden Pike was apparently well enough to receive visitors. Ilya rarely felt awkward, but he definitely felt out of place now. Pike was lying in a hospital bed with a spectacularly bruised face, and Jackie Pike was sitting next to him, holding his hand. She was also enormously pregnant. Ilya was already regretting his decision to try to make nice with Shane's closest, second most irritating friend.

"Jacks, are the drugs hallucinogens? I think I'm hallucinating."

"You're not hallucinating, babe." Jackie Pike turned to face Ilya. "Rozanov. Hello."

Considering his team had just put her husband in the hospital, and Hayden Pike's glaring dislike of him on a good day, that was incredibly neutral.

"Mrs. Pike," he said with a nod, before addressing Hayden Pike. "I am here to apologize for Marleau. He feels very bad, he did not mean to hurt you."

"This is soooo weird," said Pike. He was not wrong. Trying to be nice to Pike was going to give him hives. The chance to see him ridiculously high was doing a lot to make up for it, though.

"We appreciate it," said the sober half of the couple. "We both know these things happen."

"Still, he feels very bad. Especially because you are expecting a baby so soon. Is this one going to be a gemstone also?"

Jackie Pike looked openly startled. "I didn't realize you knew anything about our kids."

Yes, your best friend occasionally mentions them when we are not fucking, he did not say. Also I scrolled through your entire Instagram profile once in a fit of madness. "Marly spends too much time online. How do you say... went down a rabbit hole. Like I said, he feels very bad."

"I see. Well, yes, we haven't decided on a name yet, but we are probably sticking with the gem theme."

"Noooooo gems. If Jade and Ruby fused. They'd be too powerful. The world might explode."

What the fuck?

Jackie Pike stifled a laugh, probably to spare her husband, as if he would even notice in his current state. "He's talking about a kid's cartoon."

"Space alien gems who sing about feeeelings," said Pike.

Okay, that was his cue to leave. "Yes. Well. Again, very sorry, feel better soon, Pike, goodbye—"

"Hey!" yelled Pike, jabbing his finger at him with his free hand. "That is not! How apologies work!"

"Hayden, oh my god," said Jackie Pike.

"You can’t just say sorry and leave! The other person has to accept the apology!"

High Hayden Pike apparently could not distinguish between a six foot hockey player and his 4 year old children. Ilya, be patient with the injured idiot, you are trying to play nice. "Okay, Pike, please accept my apologies."

Hayden Pike stared at him for a long moment and Ilya wondered if he was so high he couldn't comprehend that before saying: "No."

"Hayden!" scolded Jackie Pike.

Pike burst into giggles. “Your face!” he said. “It’s fine, I know it wasn’t on purpose, whatever.”

Ilya was, unfortunately, above murdering an invalid. He said goodbye to Jackie Pike only, and left to the sound of Hayden Pike’s ridiculous laughter. And something incomprehensible about lions.

He really wanted McDonald’s.

🐻

Jane: Did you go visit Hayden???

Lily: Was his brain always this broken

🐻

Ilya: at mcds u want anything

Marly: again???

Marly: marias gonna kill u

Ilya: ok nothing for u got it

Marly: WAIT

🐻

“Man, you know you can tell me whatever it is, right?” Marly was basically inhaling his burger.

“There is no whatever, Marly, fuck off,” said Ilya. Ilya went to steal his fries and Marly let him, which was ominous. “Also, you look like shit.”

“Yeah, I look like shit because JJ Dagenais tried to wreck my face, why do you look like shit?”

“None of your business.” Marly slapped away his second fry-stealing attempt. So at least he didn’t actually think Ilya was dying, or something.

“Is this why you have me watching chick flicks? Did Jane dump you?”

“No.” The movie marathon was an excuse to see how Marly reacted to Brokeback Mountain. If it was bad, Ilya would know. If it went okay, well, Ilya still wasn’t going to tell anyone. He hadn’t really been expecting anything positive, anyway. Marly hadn’t given a shit about the gay cowboys but unfortunately had taken it as a sign there was something up with Ilya’s love life. And now he’d noticed Ilya had come back acting strangely, in Montreal. Marly wasn’t going to let it go.

“She wants me to meet her parents,” he said.

The way Marly’s jaw dropped, revealing grossly half-chewed burger, was at least gratifying.

“Okay, then what the fuck is the problem? You obviously like this chick, you’ve been seeing her for years.”

“I said no.”

Marly put the remainder of his burger down and stared at Ilya like he was some kind of particularly strange bug. “You said no.”

“Are you deaf now?”

“Are you stupid? Don’t tell me you don’t like her that much, I have eyes. Why the fuck did you say no?”

“Still none of your business,” he said. He shouldn’t have said anything in the first place.

“Seriously, Roz, aren’t you just sabotaging yourself? The faster you change your mind the quicker she’ll forgive you.”

“I’m not changing my mind.”

“Roz.”

“Just forget about it, Marly.”

Marly let him have about five minutes of peace before springing him with: “You know, I thought for sure Jane was married or something. But obviously she’s not, if she wants you to meet her parents.”

“Jesus Christ, Marly, will you drop it?”

“Is Jane a guy?” he said. Ilya’s heart just about stopped.

“What the fuck. Is this because of Brokeback Mountain?”

“What? No, it’s because you hooked up with that one dancer, or something. Kind of a pretty boy? I just figured you made exceptions sometimes. Wait, did we watch Brokeback Mountain because of Jane?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ilya. It was actually true. He didn’t remember any dancers. And it would have to have been years ago. Marly had been sitting on this for years?

“He was giving you a blowjob in the bathroom, man, you don’t have to lie about it.” Had Ilya actually been that stupid? ...Yeah, he probably had been. Well, gaslighting Marly into thinking he was straight was out, then.

“No, I actually don’t know what you’re talking about, when the fuck was this? I haven’t hooked up with any men in years.” Since 2012. Not that anyone was counting.

“I don’t remember, it was ages ago. Figures you wouldn’t remember. Wait, are you saying Jane isn’t a man, or that she doesn’t count as a hook up?”

Ilya was going to be admitted to the ER for cardiac arrest and they were going to try to figure out why a professional athlete in his 20s was having heart problems and he would have to say it was exposure to the world’s worst, most idiotic teammate/friend. He might even be willing to trade with Shane for Hayden Pike at this point.

“You knew this whole time and you didn’t say anything?”

Marly’s fast food wrapper projectile missed the waste basket by a mile. Great, now there was ketchup on the floor, probably. “Was I supposed to?”

Ilya considered telling him that he had a mental list of who said what in the locker room, and noticed when one teammate had an estranged gay cousin and another had a gay uncle who was at family Thanksgiving with his partner in Instagram photos, and that Marly himself had a mixed bag of reactions to Drag Race (why do women like that gay shit?), Pride Nights (made a face and then put the tape on “for PR or whatever”), legalized gay marriage (it’s already been legal in Boston for a literal decade, why would I give a shit), various gay celebrities (ugh, “I can kind of see the appeal” ????, never woulda guessed he was a ***, etc) and that he had been waiting, for years now, for Marly to finally say something more than just casually problematic so he would finally know. The movie marathon had just been one more attempt to stop wondering. And he’d wanted to watch it, anyway.

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” he said instead.

“So, Jane?” said Marly. “Come on, man, at least give me something.”

He should probably be grateful, that Marly apparently didn’t care if Ilya liked men. If he’d said anything back in… 2011(?), Ilya would have been fucked. Oh, it would be a shitshow if people discovered now, but nothing like it would have been back then. Marly even seemed to be fine with the idea Ilya had maybe been seeing a man seriously for years. For someone Ilya had been trying to pin down on a scale from “might be reluctantly okay about it” to “dangerous”, he should be happy.

Instead he found he was blazingly, uncontrollably furious.

Marly had been a good friend. Ilya wouldn’t have put up with half his shit otherwise. Marly understood his moods; Marly played interference with the rest of the team when he could tell it was a bad one. He’d told Marly about his mother. And all this time, every time Ilya looked at him and wondered, every time Marly said something kind of shitty, every single time Ilya had wondered if their friendship was on a hidden countdown to destruction, every day for years, Marly had already known. And he just thought it didn’t matter.

“Fuck off,” he said, strangling the urge to yell. “And pick up your damn trash,” he said, fists clenched, every line of his body tense, as he went to go find something inanimate to punch.

“Wha—“

Slamming the door behind him was barely satisfying.

⛸️

Boston, April 2017

“Marly. Why are you here.”

“Because if we play like that in a game instead of practice, Coach will actually kill us both. Also, I don’t actually know which dumb thing I said to make you mad, but I definitely said several dumb things. Are you gonna let me in or not?”

Ilya rolled his eyes before letting Marly into his apartment. He’d already had a warning from their coach, not that either of them actually needed one. “Whatever stupid thing Marleau did, figure it out,” was how he’d put it. He would say it was nice that Marleau was the one being blamed, but that was probably because Marly had been trailing him around like a dejected puppy. It was not a good look for a grown man.

Marly had brought a proper apology gift: several bags of takeout from the deceptively named Sunshine Cafe, which had perpetually terrible lighting and the best Russian food Ilya had yet to find in the area. It was also far enough they didn’t deliver to his address, although he had considered how much he’d need to bribe the owners to make them change that.

“Which things did you think were dumb?” said Ilya, inspecting the takeout containers.

Marly looked like a kid who had been asked to solve a math problem in front of the class. “Uhh… you told me not to ask about Jane like five times in a row and I didn’t listen.”

“Yes, you are very annoying,” said Ilya.

“Also I said I thought Jane was married, which is pretty insulting to her if she isn’t. Or he, I guess.”

“I guess so? I don’t really care.” said Ilya. Honestly, what else would most people think?

“Okay please just tell me the actual reason you’re mad already.”

Hmmm. He should probably pick one of the dishes that wouldn’t save as well, but he felt more like having the pelmeni now anyway.

“Roz, cmon.”

“Who on the team do you think is the most homophobic?” he asked.

“Uhhh… Varkov? I dunno, why are you asking?”

“Yeah, probably,” said Ilya. “Who else?”

“Fuck, I don’t know.”

“Okay, then who’s the least homophobic?”

“How would I know?”

“Probably Connors,” said Ilya. “He shares cute family photos with his gay uncle in them. And he retweets You Can Play and uses the rainbow tape and all those things. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him call anyone a cocksucker.”

“Huh. Okay,” said Marly. “That’s nice? I still don’t get it.”

“Dubek calls people cocksucker all the time. He also uses the rainbow tape.”

“So he’s a hypocrite?”

“Marly. If you were trying to figure out who on the team would hate you if they figured out you were gay, or bisexual, queer, whatever, how do you think you sound?”

“Of course I don’t—“

“Dubek just talks like that because everybody does. It’s not like he thinks about whether any of the people he calls that actually suck cock. Or anyone else who happens to be listening.”

“Oh,” said Marly. “Fuck.”

Ilya hadn’t really been mad for a while. Or he had been, but mostly he’d just been resigned, and depressed.

“Fuck, man, I am so sorry.” Marly went in for one of his, annoyingly very good, hugs. “I owe you so much more takeout.”

“Maria will actually kill both of us if you do that.”

“Fuck Maria.”

“I also accept vodka.”

“Shut up and let me hug you.”

🐻

“Okay but for real are you going to tell me about Jane?”

⛸️

Chapter End Notes

I have never seen Steven Universe, but unfortunately I was on tumblr the entire time it was airing. I gotta say, guys, I don't *think* the groundbreakingly queer children's cartoon with the singing anthropomorphized gems promotes fascism, but I guess I can't say for sure since I never watched it!

Maria is just a random name I picked for some nutritionist. Sorry Maria you're just trying to do your job.

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

Get in, losers, we're going to Scott Hunter Night.

Chapter Notes

Help, guys, the plot bunnies are eating my brains. I finally got them under control enough to go back to writing this fic.

Ottawa, May 2017

It was frustrating to have been knocked out in the first round of the playoffs, but it had been inevitable once Drapeau got sick. They had already been struggling with losing players to injuries. No one was particularly happy with the result, but it wasn’t a particularly demoralizing loss either. The silver lining, supposedly, should have been more time to finally relax with the season being over. Unfortunately for Shane, that also meant he had all the time in the world to think. And he couldn’t stop thinking.

Shane needed to talk to someone about Ilya, but no one who knew him was the right option. His parents would understand the basic problem, but he was absolutely not going to say to them, “hey, so the guy I told you about and I have just been having casual sex for years, and now we disagree about whether we should keep having casual sex! Do I just keep hooking up with him? It will probably emotionally destroy me but the sex is really good.” Hayden would be the best choice if it was just sex and relationship advice, but he couldn’t think of any roundabout way to explain “Lily” needing secrecy that wasn’t incredibly suspicious. JJ would have the same problem as Hayden, except Shane didn’t even trust him to give good relationship advice. Rose knew he was gay and he could explain the situation to her, but she was also going to be incredibly invested and was too smart. He wasn’t sure how much he could tell her before she figured out exactly who he was talking about.

He briefly considered posting anonymously online, before he imagined the entire world having access to information about his sex life that he had freely given them.

So he called Rose.

🏒

“Shane, it kind of sounds like you already know you’re going to keep sleeping with him even though it’s a bad idea.”

Shane sighed. Rose was supposed to tell him he was being stupid, but he should have expected she wouldn’t tell him to just break up, if that phrase even applied. Not that he would have listened. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“It’s not really that bad, though, is it? Your mystery man is in love with you, you’re in love with him. It’s just logistics.”

“He already said he only wanted to keep doing what we have been.”

“Well, sure, but did he really mean ‘only 4 hookups a year and texting’ or more like ‘no sexcation’? There’s middle ground, you know. He’s the one who gave you a sexuality crisis via sandwich!”

“Ew, Rose, it was lunch, not some freaky food kink.”

“Prude. Anyway, it’s shitty, but long distance couples do things like Skype and phone calls, and that’s not any riskier than what you’ve already been doing. There’s probably other things I don’t know about too. If you’re not going to do the ‘smart’ thing and break up then at least figure out what you can do, you know?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Shane said. “It just sucks.”

“It really does,” said Rose. “I can’t even imagine. Actually, I’m still not over the part where you’ve been hooking up with this guy for seven years. Seven years!”

“Is it that weird?” asked Shane. It wasn’t like he had any idea what other closeted guys were doing.

“Wait, Shane, does this make me the other woman?” Rose said, faux-scandalized.

“It wasn’t while we were dating, I promise!”

Rose laughed. “I know, I know. I’m just saying, if I were him, I would have one of those dart boards with an absolutely destroyed picture of me on it, you know?”

“...No comment.”

Rose only laughed harder.

“I think he would like you if he actually knew you,” Shane said. Maybe he was biased, because he liked them both and wanted them to like each other. But Rose was also objectively really great.

“You know, you can give him my number, if you want,” Rose said.

“Huh?”

“Well, what if he wants to bitch about the weird way you fold your socks with someone? I don’t know what his friends know, but everyone needs to complain about their boyfriend being dumb sometimes.”

“The way I fold my socks is not weird,” said Shane.

“You fold them way too many times.”

“And he’s not my boyfriend, that was the entire point of this conversation.”

“Your boytoy, your fuckbuddy, your beau, whatever! I’d say we could share sex tips too, but I don’t know anything about being the peg.”

“Maybe you should learn for your next gay boyfriend.”

That set Rose off again, but she went weirdly silent afterwards. “Rose?”

“Sorry, I know this whole thing really sucks for you. But I’m also happy for you, you know? That you have someone. Even if it’s complicated.”

“Yeah. I’m… I’m pretty happy about it, too.”

🏒

[Shared Contact: Rose]

Lily: Wtf is this

Jane: She said I could give your her number

Lily: Why would I want your ex gf’s number?

Jane: She’s still my friend! She’s just trying to be nice.

Lily: No.

🏒

Lily: Is she a lesbian?

Jane: What the fuck.

Lily: She says I should not be jealous because you “barely did anything”

Lily: And that she dates gay men all the time

Jane: Well a lot of guys in theater are gay!

Lily: not THAT many

Lily: I thought if she was just a beard you would say but did you not because you are also her beard

Jane: no!

Lily: Ok so is secret whatever I am not telling anyone

Jane: Seriously she’s not!

Lily: “I know being in the closet is super lonely so I just wanted you to know I’m here for you both”?

Jane: You aren’t going to believe me if I say she’s actually straight, are you.

Lily: Jane is still hotter lesbian

Jane: Not Lily?

Lily: Lily is bisexual. Obviously.

Jane: Oh yeah? And what is Lily the bisexual wearing right now

[Calling...]

🏒

“How’s Rose doing?” his mom asked, because apparently his texting-Rose face was specific enough she didn’t need to ask.

“She’s great,” Shane said. She was actually trying to get him to rank how hot every player on the ice was, which was incredibly unfortunate, because it was Boston vs New York. He’d given Scott Hunter a 10 immediately and then hesitated too long about Ilya before realizing that he was objectively an attractive man and Rose had definitely noticed. She seemed to think it was Shane being competitive about their “rivalry”, at least. Probably. Maybe she suspected but wasn’t saying anything?

She seemed to think Ilya being convinced she was a lesbian was funny, at least. He was much more willing to be friendly with Rose if she was a lesbian and she “would take it as a compliment.” Whatever that meant.

“I’m glad things worked out between you two. She seems like a nice girl.”

“Yeah,” Shane said, absent-minded. The game was wrapping up and Rose had moved on to sending him her own coworkers to rate, then telling him which ones were assholes in person the way he had told her about the Raiders and Admirals. The Admirals were weirdly friendly, to be honest. It was hard to hate them even when they were currently knocking Ilya out of the playoffs.

“And how’s Lily?” his mom asked, trying and failing to be nonchalant about it.

“Um, probably pissed,” Shane said, gesturing at the TV.

“Right. Raiders fan,” Yuna said, judgmentally. “I meant personally, not his hockey team.”

His hockey team is very personal, Shane thought. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly. His mom knew they had been calling, but that was… pretty much just phone sex. They hadn’t said anything remotely personal since the last game they had together. Since the conversation. He kept wanting to text I love you and it was awful.

“Shane…” his mom said.

Well, mom, he basically said he would have broken up with me, except his dad died, and now he he says he can’t cut me out of his life, but also he won’t do anything with me even in private without the excuse of games in the same city because he’s actually Ilya Fucking Rozanov, and probably I should be the one who says we should stop if we aren’t going to commit, but I am equally as bad at cutting him out of my life, and Rose says we should try actually being boyfriends even if it’s just in an extremely closeted way, but every time I think about having the Relationship Conversation I get scared he will actually say we should just stop, and I think you’ve noticed that I’ve been stressed about it but you can’t figure out why, but I can’t tell you because it’s not just my secret.

“He thinks Rose is a lesbian,” Shane blurted out.

His mom laughed in the sort startled way people did when they didn’t know how to actually react to something. “He thinks… does he also know Rose? Is that actually how you met her?”

“No, I told Rose about him and she wanted to talk, I guess. And now he thinks she’s a lesbian.”

“I think you skipped the whole middle of the story there. But you can tell me about Rose’s big lesbian secret over dinner now that the game’s done.”

🥅

Ottawa, June 2017

It was, in fact, Scott Hunter’s year. Shane had learned a long time ago not to bet against his mother.

“Ugh,” said Ilya. It was a little odd, having his half of the conversation mostly through text and Ilya’s stupid commentary coming through a single earbud, but it was… nice. They still weren’t talking except about hockey or sex, and Shane was too nervous to take Rose’s advice in case it really did end things between them. He was still going to take anything he could get, though, even this absurd long distance watch-along of the Cup final. It was kind of rude, probably, but his parents mostly seemed happy to half-include his “boyfriend” (correcting them was a lost cause now) and it was especially funny when his mother and Ilya accidentally criticized something in stereo. His mom mostly made actual critical comments about gameplay while Ilya was an endless stream of bullshit and bad jokes, but they were both horrifically offended by the several mistakes San Francisco had made. Not that anyone wanted San Francisco to win either, however many dinosaur jokes certain people might be making.

Jane: My mom was right.

Maybe you weren’t supposed to “I told you so” about your mom’s predictions, but so what?

“This is so irritating,” said Ilya, who would rather light himself on fire than admit he had any positive feelings about Scott Hunter.

Jane: Come on, he’s a nice guy.

“Well, he is hot.” Other than that one, that is. If being objectively attractive counted as a feeling.

Shane was debating whether to segue that into something flirty when Ilya let out a sigh. “I should go pack,” he said.

Right. For Russia.

“When are you leaving?” Shane asked, and his mom glanced over before focusing back on the celebrating Admirals onscreen.

“Not immediately. Awards ceremony first, not that I’m winning anything this year.” It was uncharacteristically humble, but Ilya was almost certainly right. They each had a single nomination for awards that were definitely going to go to other players.

“I’ll see you there, I guess,” said Shane, forgetting his parents were listening. His mom’s eyes were practically drilling through the screen pretending she absolutely totally was not curious about when Shane might be seeing “Lily.” His dad just glanced at him like a normal person.

There was a very long, very awkward silence. Neither of them hung up. The Admirals were passing the Cup now, Vaughn to Bennett. Shane was going to worry himself to sleep the next two weeks if they ended the conversation like this.

Jane: Might as well end the season with a bang, right?

Ilya snorted. The knot in Shane’s chest loosened just a little bit. “Not with a bang, but a bang and a whimper?”

Jane: Since when do you know English poetry?

“Some people read things other than hockey books,” said Ilya.

“What, like T. S. Eliot? Seriously?” Shane hadn’t actually known that without a very quick Google search, but that was between him and his internet search history.

“No, Hollander, is just a famous quote, who the fuck is that?”

“I don’t know either!” he said out loud, while texting:

Jane: Matti Jalo, scale of one to ten?

“He stole your spot as Hottest Man in the MLH and you still need to ask that?”

Jane: #2 is still higher than you, Mr #4.

“Fucking Scott Hunter,” said Ilya, incredibly disgruntled at hockey’s officially third most handsome player. Shane couldn’t help laughing. “He’s… Shane, what is he doing?”

“Huh?” Hunter was facing the stands. “...I don’t know.”

He was waving at someone in the stands. A man. Not someone Shane had ever seen before. Not someone the commentators seemed to know, either. Young. Kind of cute. Definitely not what Shane was thinking, right?

Right?

Ilya said something very softly, in Russian, that Shane didn’t think he even realized was out loud. He wasn’t sure either of them was breathing, not the whole way down the steps to the rink, not as the man jumped the boards.

“Holy shit,” Shane said as Scott Hunter led his— his boyfriend?— his something— a man, to center ice. And kissed him, in front of God and the jumbotron and the whole fucking world.

“You don’t see that everyday,” said the commentator as the entire world turned upside down. Imploded. Ended, restarted, not with a bang or a whimper or anything that should have been dramatic, just one fucking kiss.

“Il—”

“I’m coming to the cottage.”

🥅

Las Vegas, July 2017

After several years of an enormously successful career, Shane’s parents didn’t come to every single thing anymore, especially not an awards ceremony where Shane was not expected to win anything. Unfortunately, they were very determined LGBT allies now, and therefore were going to show up and be visibly nice to definitely-MVP openly gay Scott Hunter. Shane would appreciate this gesture more if it did not cut into his limited time being in the same city as Ilya Rozanov.

Much less limited, now, with two whole weeks this summer. But still limited.

So Shane was sitting in the crowd with his parents watching player after player accept their awards, crawling out of his skin as every minute passed. He was happy for Scott Hunter. He was not so happy to be in a room full of MLH suits and other players who were all, inevitably, going to be talking about him. Or, more accurately, talking around him, almost nobody outright saying anything they thought. Maybe a couple of the Admirals would be straightforwardly positive. Probably some players were going to go have nice civil conversation with Hunter that said look I’m fine with this, and others would be snubbing him with just enough plausible deniability. All the people who didn’t approve would know better than to say so while giving every indication of what they really thought. When it finally came to the MVP, Shane involuntarily glanced to where Ilya was sitting. Alone.

Ilya was always alone, at these events. It had never bothered Shane before. Maybe it was that now he knew the people who should have been here, at least once, were both dead. He was pretty sure it was something deeper than that. It wasn’t that Shane wanted to be next to him himself— though he did—but the thought that surely there should be someone.

Scott Hunter accepted his award with an admittedly well-written speech. His mother was wiping her eyes and Shane desperately wanted to tell her not to worry, that it wasn’t so bad. When you have a secret you work as hard as I did to protect, it’s exhausting. It’s a nonstop effort. And it’s also really, really lonely. He wanted to say that it wasn’t like that. But he would be lying, and she was too smart to fall for it. Shane should probably be nodding and smiling to this moving speech and showing that he was supportive. He was wearing his blankest face instead.

When the show was over, Shane went straight for the bar.

🏒

Lily: So. Scott Hunter night?

Jane: I guess I’m going to my first gay club tonight.

Lily: You’re going to hate it.

Lily: Is ok, I will make up for it later.

🏒

Ilya was correct: Shane did not like gay clubs any better than straight ones. The music was too loud. The dark lighting was annoying. Shane didn’t like dancing, regardless of gender. They didn’t even have ginger ale. He’d spent an embarrassing amount of time in the bathroom thinking about the fact he was in a gay nightclub even though he had a perfectly acceptable reason to be here. It was at least a little better in the VIP section; the music wasn’t pounding as loudly and he could pretend he was at a very strange hockey social function. Scott Hunter was here, obviously, along with Kip Grady and several Admirals: Carter Vaughn, Eric Bennett, Matti Jalo, and Greg Huff. Gloria Grey had also turned up with Vaughn. He should ask Rose sometime if she knew the fellow actress. At least they seemed to be a better match than he was with Rose— not that it would take much.

“Hollander,” Hunter said, seeming unsurprised, even though Shane was currently the only hockey player outside the Admirals who was here. “Good to see you.”

“Hunter,” he said, nodding. Fuck, why hadn’t he figured out what he was going to say beforehand? He’d already said the usual bland congratulations at the ceremony, and there was absolutely no protocol for “what to do when you turn up at the gay club in support of the first openly gay MLH player.” Nice night in this gay nightclub? Lovely normal weather outside today?

“This is Kip,” Hunter said, saving him gracefully. Introductions, Shane knew how to do introductions. “Kip, Shane Hollander.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Shane. “You’re an art historian, right?” Shane was well aware Kip Grady was an art historian, or at least that he had just finished a master’s degree in art history, and also his favorite color and the breed of his childhood dog all the other trivia that had been in the interviews he and Hunter had given.

“Yes,” said Kip Grady the Art Historian. “Well, I’ve only just gotten my master’s and things have been crazy so who knows when I’ll actually be putting it to use, but yes, I study art history.”

“So that’s how you got a boyfriend so much hotter than you, Hunter, he likes looking at old pretty things,” said a voice right behind him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ilya!” Shane blurted out. A 6’3” man should not be able to be sneaky. This was what happened when you went to nightclubs where everything was dark and loud.

“Rozanov,” said Hunter flatly. It was obviously not good to see him, in Hunter’s opinion.Kip Grady was making a face involving a lot of raised eyebrow.

“Hi,” said Kip. “I’m not sure about old, but you’re right, surely all this belongs in a museum somewhere.”

“I’m— going to get a drink,” Shane said. He did not have a good enough poker face to watch Ilya flirt with Scott Hunter’s boyfriend in order to annoy him. He still wasn’t sure exactly how much Hunter knew and he was not interested in finding out today.

He did order a drink, if only because he’d said he would, and then he nursed it while half-listening to the other Admirals talk about— something. Maybe not actually half-listening. Suddenly, they were all getting up. Oh god. They were going to go dance. Shane stood automatically and then stayed there like a frozen deer.

“Hollander, not being boring for five minutes will not kill you,” said Ilya. Jesus, how did he keep getting startled by someone dressed as distractingly as that? Dancing for five minutes is not going to out you, was what he meant.

“Fuck off,” Shane said, which basically meant yeah okay.

So they went and danced.

(It was about two minutes before Ilya told him to be the one to head back first, because otherwise they were going to do something inadvisable.)

🥅

Chapter End Notes

I know at the beginning I said that this was TV show canon>book canon, but there keep being little things I want to keep. In any case, we all know Kip not being at the awards was a budget thing and this fanfic does not have a budget. And not letting Shane get injured leads to him having to suffer the indignities of going to a gay club, which is just way too much fun. Please someone else write a better fic for this concept. Non-book people, Matti Jalo barely appears but whenever he does people immediately remark on how hot he is. Shane being ranked #1 hottest player by Cosmopolitan is brought up as banter in 2016, so actually the same season as this, but come on you cannot talk about Matti Jalo the way people do in the book and have him NOT be #1. (Ilya is #5 and no other rankings are mentioned.)

Chapter 7: Interlude 2

Chapter Summary

Scott Hunter deals with the dire consequences of coming out: being cornered into conversation by people with last names Hollander and Rozanov.

Chapter Notes

Hello friends, I wish I could give you a fun author's note about how I was in a car crash or something, but actually I have just been very distracted. Also, I came out to my parents, who were like yeah, we know? Genuinely I think they were more confused that I wanted to have a conversation about it. Actually, if there was something I had to come out as, it was that I was bi and not lesbian. So that was horrifically embarrassing and I am never admitting to it anywhere with my name attached.

Oh, and yeah, here's another not-real chapter. You thought we were going to the cottage? Nope! Here's Scott Hunter.

Las Vegas, July 2017

Scott’s life had been a fever dream for a month and counting, and the MLH awards were just one more step in the bizarre existence that was his life now. He’d given a million interviews between the Cup final and now, sat through horrific meetings with management and League officials, been shuffled by his agent from one sponsorship to the next all quickly pivoting on his new public image, and gone out on a real date with his boyfriend. He had not, however, had to spend any significant length of time with the rest of the hockey world socially.

The League had obviously decided it was in their best interests to play nice. It would be extremely difficult for them to shun their relatively beloved, most clean cut player having an extremely romantic victory kiss without coming off as the assholes. Admirals management, meanwhile, had practically undergone a coup. The large majority of the higher ups had seen the business sense in playing into Scott’s accidentally perfect feel-good story. The drama, the romance, the profit margins! Scott only had glimpses of what had happened, but he did notice when several former front office fixtures suddenly left for greener, more homophobic pastures. From there, the coaching staff and team could clearly see which way the wind was blowing, regardless of what all of them thought. He was pretty sure a few of his teammates had asked for trades. It was hurtful, of course it was, but he wasn’t going to complain about the trash taking itself out. It was honestly even better than what Scott had considered to be the best-case scenario. The fan reaction had been incredibly predictable; really it was only the ratio of heartfelt letters to burnt jerseys he hadn’t known in advance.

The most surprising part, Scott had found, was all the quiet little emails and texts from MLH players. Almost all of them were from plausibly deniable “allies” who sounded just a little too invested. He’d known they had to be out there, of course. He just hadn’t expected to hear from anyone, even if none of them were outright admitting it. (Except for Ryan Price, apparently, who had sent all of three sentences, two of which were “Congratulations, I hope you and your boyfriend are doing well. It’s not a secret that I’m gay, but I don’t advertise it for a reason, and it means a lot.” People had called Scott brave a million times that month, but the idea of just casually not advertising it almost gave him secondhand nightmares.)

Of course, that was only a dozen or so players. The rest of the MLH was a very different story.

⚓

Scott could recite his speech in his sleep by now, but looking at the index card was soothing. It was in Kip’s handwriting, and although the bare bones were Scott’s he’d helped him edit it practically a million times. So had his newly-acquired PR person. His agent Todd had been a mix of: totally betrayed by he’d been blindsided, elated at the potential earnings he could leverage, and absolutely drowning in what was apparently the biggest crisis he’d ever had to manage an athlete through. Todd had cheerfully informed him that if Scott didn’t hire a firm he was going to have a meltdown and move to Bali, pointed him towards one saying “this one’s even led by a lesbian!” like the well-meaning straight man he was and Scott had just signed off on it because what did he know about this shit? Anna the lesbian PR lady had looked at Kip’s version of the speech and said “this is an amazing tearjerker, but are you trying to piss off the league?” and made him edit down the bits about locker room culture into a palatable, roundabout version that still mostly said the same thing.

One of Anna’s minions—they literally called themselves that, Scott wasn’t being an ass—had also very helpfully shown him a very tasteful collage of his fellow players’ reactions, especially the high profile ones. Scott was going to go up on stage and give this speech about the most terrifying part of his life in front of several men who had written oh-so-coincidentally about things like family values and separating the game from politics, most of whom he had never particularly cared for but a couple he’d previously respected. There were also players who had made bland supportive statements who might secretly think it was disgusting or who might actually think there wasn’t anything wrong with being gay and he’d never be able to tell which was which. And, he reminded himself, there were two of those players who had sent their quiet little messages. And it was going to be broadcast to lots of queer little kids, and their parents and coaches and teammates, and maybe some of them would hear something they needed to hear. That was always why Scott gave these speeches.

⚓

It was not terribly long after the post-ceremony mingling started that Scott noticed a very particular woman incoming like a missile. On one hand, he was entirely certain this conversation would be one of the genuinely supportive ones, if she was deliberately seeking him out. On the other hand, she was an incredibly intimidating lady. Scott had no idea where Shane Hollander’s personality had come from, aside from the fervent love of hockey, but it must have been his father. Scott felt like he should probably be warning Kip of an incoming tornado, but there was no polite way to do that before she had already reached them.

“Congratulations. You were incredible this season, you’ve more than earned it,” said Yuna Hollander.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hollander,” said Scott.

“And you must be Kip,” she said.

“Nice to meet you,” said Kip. “Mrs. Hollander. As in Shane Hollander?”

“Yes, he’s my son,” she said. Scott wondered how often she ever had to clarify that. She was infamous.

“You must be very proud,” Kip said, again, having no idea.

“Yes,” she said, simply. “He’s always been good at hockey, of course. But lately I’ve realized just how much pressure he’s been under, representing a minority in this sport, even while he’s off the ice. It’s unfair, the way people always see his background first before they see him. But someone always has to be the first, and Shane didn’t have another choice.”

“I can’t imagine,” said Scott, feeling very white.

“Can’t you?” said Yuna Hollander. “Because I have seen the media circuit you’ve been on. It’s very familiar. You played extraordinarily well this year—frankly, better than you were in Sochi, which I still haven’t forgive you for— and not a bit of it is about that. It will calm down, I’m sure. But not completely.”

“No, probably not,” Scott agreed, unsettled. He had been expecting—he didn’t know, actually, but not this.

“You’ve made a big impact, though. You said you’d heard from fans, but… the people who this really changes things for, I don’t know if they can say. It isn’t really my place, but I hope you know you’ve given a lot of people hope.”

Other queer players, she meant. Was she still talking about her son? “...Thank you,” he said, not sure how to navigate the implications.

“Anyway,” she said briskly, “I wanted to tell you that if there’s anything I—or Shane— can do to show support, let me know.” Scott fumbled to accept her business card. “I don’t mean to be cynical. I read Shane’s fan letters too, sometimes. I know having to be a role model is exhausting, but it means so much. Kids especially need to be able to see people like them succeeding. And everything else aside, you’re a damn good hockey player.”

“I— thank you,” he said. “It’s always been important to me, the kids who look up to me. If just being who I am helps them, I’m glad.”

“Good,” she said. “I mean it, by the way. I’d like to be able to show our support, any way we can.” Scott agreed he would use her number if he thought of anything.

And off she went to terrorize the rest of the crowd.

⚓

The end of the night at Scott Hunter Night was even stranger.

Scott had previously convinced himself he was imagining things. He knew he was paranoid. It was never likely that one little comment or look was going to clue someone into his sexuality. It was just that the consequences of being wrong were so catastrophic, it was better to be constantly tuned in than to slip up just once at the wrong time and bring everything crashing down. So if he also noticed some odd things about his fellow players, well, he was just being paranoid. Sure, he’d thought he’d heard two surprisingly familiar voices next door at All Stars 2011. He could have been wrong, or the only rookies in the place had gravitated towards each other even if they famously did not get along. It wasn’t like the walls had been thin enough to know what they’d been up to in there. Rozanov’s tendency towards weirdly flirtatious chirps was just a personality quirk. Hollander’s odd reactions to mentions of Rozanov were just part rivalry part naturally awkward disposition. Rozanov was currently hitting on his boyfriend because he was an asshole and his willingness to do so just meant he was confident in his sexuality, which was… well…

Probably actually not heterosexual. Jesus Christ, did he just bat his fucking eyelashes? Scott was going to end up on one of his true crime podcasts.

“...at a place called the Kingfisher,” Kip was saying.

“Kingfisher. This is… sea related?”

“Oh! No, it’s a kind of bird. No idea why they’re called that, actually. Or why the bar’s called that, either.”

“Ah. So they are relatives of yours,” Rozanov said, looking straight at Scott, who suddenly had a deep need for more alcohol.

“I don’t even want to know,” said Scott.

“Have you not heard? Birds are actually dinosaurs,” said Rozanov. “But younger and cuter, so I guess not very much like you at all.”

“Great. Science fun facts for children. Are you even old enough to be in here?”

“Eh, about a decade too late to keep me out of gay clubs,” said Rozanov.

Scott froze. “Are we actually talking about this? Here?” Kip was glancing around, clearly checking who had heard that, but Scott was pretty sure Rozanov was already well aware of exactly who was in earshot.

“You used to be very bad at speeches,” he said, because he was apparently physically incapable of not insulting Scott. “This one was much better. Maybe you had smarter ghostwriter?” He was looking at Kip, how the fuck did he know that? Rozanov paused, but neither of them answered, because he was clearly working his way up to something. “It is not supposed to be manly to admit to being afraid, but apparently neither is sucking dick, so. Last month I was trying to convince myself to stop seeing the man I had been sleeping with for 7 years, because I was afraid. This month, I am maybe going to be meeting my boyfriend’s parents. Probably I am never going to make out with him on live TV, but…” Rozanov looked more anxious than Scott had ever seen him. “Thank you. For what you did. I don’t know if I ever would have been willing to try otherwise.”

“Oh,” said Kip, while Scott mostly just stared. What was he supposed to say to something like that. “You’re...welcome?”

“Great. Now I am going to go drown myself in vodka.” Scott considered stopping him, because he knew he wanted to say something, just not what words or in which order. But he decided to let it go, because Rozanov looked like he was having an allergic reaction to his own emotions.

“Rozanov meeting his boyfriend’s parents. I don’t know if I want to be a fly on the wall or make sure I’m outside a safe perimeter for that.”

“Seven years?“ said Kip, who was understandably more shocked because he had not been paying witness to idiotic rookie mating dances in 2011.

“I’ll tell you later,” Scott said. “But right now, I’d really like to go dance with my boyfriend.”

⚓

Chapter End Notes

Comments are extra appreciated, they soothe the embarrassment of having had emotional conversations in my real life. Also, Scott wishes he could just call PR firm Anna's minions by their names, but they are always deliberately twinning and he keeps confusing them. I have taken the advice about killing your darlings and removed so many important details, guys. Next chapter should be quicker but no promises, I might also be drowning myself in vodka.

Chapter 8

Chapter Summary

Ilya and Shane go to the cottage, have a lovely time, and are not walked in on by any parents, because this time the parents understand their gay son is on a sexcation.

Chapter Notes

All I can say is that since I started writing this my life increasingly feels like the passage of time is happening with time cards that say "and now it's a month later!" and you go huh? But at least I am not having a 7 year situationship that way. (Though I totally would, if my theoretical situationship were that hot. Alas.)

Lanaudiere, July 2017

Physically, Ilya was tired. Sure, he’d been sat in a plane and then a car for most of the day, but he and Shane had worn themselves out plenty with sex. Add in the terrible sleep he’d gotten beforehand due to nerves, and he should have passed out ages ago. Ilya’s initial fear that one or both of them would realize this was a massive mistake as soon as they set foot at the cottage had proved itself false… but that meant he had a new worry to contend with. Shane was clearly not going to ask again, so it was on Ilya to bring it up. Even if the prospect of it filled him with dread. He hadn’t meant to bring it up yet, but clearly, sleep would evade him otherwise.

“I told Scott Hunter I was going to meet my boyfriend’s parents,” said Ilya.

Shane shot up, eyes wide. “What?” He wheezed, choking on his on spit.

“Is very awkward to say, my fuckbuddy of 7 years who I have feelings for is hotter than your boyfriend. So I said boyfriend instead. I didn’t say who,” he clarified before Shane started spiraling.

“Who you have feelings for?” said Shane.

“I have lots of feelings,” said Ilya. “Annoyance when you score against me. Confusion when you make eight fucking burgers—”

“Shut up—”

“—despair when stupid advertisers airbrush out your cute freckles—”

“Despair? Seriously?”

“—and maybe a little bit of fondness. Sometimes.”

“Just a little bit, huh?”

“A very tiny bit. Microscopic.”

“Have you been reading a thesaurus?”

“What is thesaurus? Sounds like a dinosaur.”

“Uh, a book of synonyms. Similar words. And wait, you told Scott Hunter you were meeting my parents? Before you asked me?”

“He already won the Cup and MVP this year, I cannot let him beat me at being gay.”

“Do you really think meeting my parents is more impressive than kissing on live TV?”

Let’s be honest with each other, Shane had said.

“You are very close with your parents, yes? They come to your games, your mama is your manager. You care about what they think. And they have good reasons not to like me.”

“Okay, it might be a shock at first, but once they get over it they’ll like you, I promise,” said Shane.

Ilya looked at him flatly. He knew full well he was not the kind of guy you wanted to bring home to meet the parents. He wouldn’t even be able to impress them with being rich, famous, or successful, since their son was Shane Hollander. It was fine. Ilya did not need Shane’s parents to love him. He only needed them to not disapprove so much they tried to get in the way.

“I’m serious! Sure, they might not like the version of you they see on TV, but it’s not like they don’t understand what a public persona is. They’ll like the real you.”

Shane looked so earnest. He wasn’t exaggerating or being optimistic; he really thought the Hollanders would like Ilya. Suddenly, the waves of emotion he had been feeling ever since he stepped into Shane’s stupid practical-boring car threatened to overwhelm him.

“Okay,” Ilya said. Shane probably wouldn’t like any of the other things he was thinking, mostly not if they have any sense, they won’t.

“You’re actually nervous about this,” said Shane.

“Shane. I am famously a manwhore. I do not know how many times I have been on TMZ for getting drunk and doing stupid shit. I smoke, I like danger, I drive too fast in flashy cars. I am literally professionally known for being an asshole. I am arrogant and rude. And I have been trash talking you specifically for almost a decade. I am probably any parent’s worst nightmare.”

Shane was suddenly rolling on top of him, holding his face. Probably because by now he had figured out Ilya would try to wriggle away from whatever he was about to say.

“I want my parents to meet my boyfriend, who is secretly very sweet and probably the most considerate person I know. He’s confident because he knows he’s good, but he also works hard. He’s funny and charming and absolutely ridiculous sometimes. He’s an asshole but he never actually crosses a line, and yeah, I don’t particularly like thinking about him sleeping with anyone else, much less what seemed like a million women, but I do appreciate that he’s very good in bed.”

Ilya, who had been blinking very rapidly for no particular reason and in no way particularly affected by that onslaught of compliments, burst out laughing. “Oh, do you?”

“Yes,” Shane said, completely serious. There was no point in trying to deflect against the solid wall of Shane on a mission, even if he was still very enticingly, solidly on top of him. “But seriously, Ilya, none of those things are a problem for me, and if my parents have an issue, they’ll just have to get over it.”

“And if they don’t get over it?”

“Then I will make it clear you’re non-negotiable.”

“I don’t want you to ruin your relationship with your parents for me.”

“Ruin is so dramatic. At worst it will be awkward. And you’re overthinking this. They already know you make me happy. The rest is just details.”

“Our very public rivalry of seven years is just details.”

“Annoying details,” Shane amended. “We really should do something about it. But yeah. Just details.”

“Okay,” said Ilya. There was no point in arguing further. And Shane was still lying right on top of him, which was really just asking for Ilya to grasp the back of his head and pull him down for another kiss. So he did.

🐻

“You’re really thinking of leaving Boston?” asked Shane. He seemed shocked, but really, Ilya wasn’t like Shane at all when it came to this part of hockey. He got along with his teammates. He appreciated that the organization had treated him relatively well. But ultimately, professional hockey was a business, and to Ilya hockey was a very well-paying, enjoyable job. But only a job. Sometimes it seemed like hockey was practically Shane’s religion.

“Yes,” he said. “I like Boston, the city and the team. I would not mind staying until I retired. But… there are things that are more important.”

“Like citizenship?” Shane asked.

“Partly,” he said. “American citizenship would be okay, I think. Things with Russia and America are… uncomfortable. But not actually dangerous. Canadian would be better. Either is better than Russian.”

“Right,” said Shane. Ilya wondered how much attention he paid to things like that. To some extent, American politics demanded relevance everywhere, but there was a major difference between seeing passing headlines and deliberately following the news. It was odd. In some ways, Ilya was certain he knew Shane better than anyone alive. And in a lot of others, he had absolutely no clue.

“But only partly?” Shane continued.

Ilya could probably come up with other reasons, if he tried. Cup chances, salary, a change of scenery. But Shane had asked for them to be honest with each other. “I… would be like to be closer,” he said. “But there is no good option. Playing on the same team—is nice daydream, but impossible. Next closest is Ottawa. Shitty team, bad option. If I went there everyone would think I was crazy, there must be scandal. Dangerous to have that kind of attention. Toronto… you know what Toronto is like. I could put up with it, maybe. But they can’t afford me anyway. The rest are all too far for it to matter.”

“There is literally no amount of money or distance that would make Toronto worth it, Ilya,” said Shane.

“Maybe if I kill Dallas Kent,” said Ilya.

“If you kill Dallas Kent I’m not visiting you in prison,” said Shane.

“No jury would convict,” Ilya said, solemnly. Shane snorted.

“You’d end up in the Western Conference, then,” said Shane. “We’d only play each other two times a year.”

“Would make rivalry less interesting,” said Ilya. “But… yes, it would be harder. Probably it is not a good plan, anyway. Canadian citizenship is not so easy to get without a sponsor.”

“We’ll workshop it,” said Shane.

🐻

“What was your mother’s name?” asked Shane.

It was like there was dried up glue in his throat, when it came to talking about her. It was an old, poorly worked patch that had kept him from bleeding out when he was 12 and had never been removed even when the wounds cauterized. “Irina,” he said, eventually. “Why?”

“I was thinking about our rivalry problem. It’s not that easy to undo a narrative that’s been around this long, but I think we had a good start with All-Stars. Say we were finally forced to spend some time together being on the same team and realized we actually got along together, something like that. There’s still the months between then and now where we acted like usual, but I don’t think there was anything that hostile. But we would have to start deliberately being publicly friendly soon for it to still seem natural.”

“People don’t even think we’re in the same country right now. Why would we be spending offseason together? Friendly at All-Stars explains getting a drink after a game, maybe. I am not even sure about that.”

“Yeah, we probably can’t do anything until next season. But I did have another idea, for a reason we could be spending time together. We could start a charity together. Say we found out we had a shared cause, or something. People might find it a little strange, but at worst they’ll probably think it’s a PR stunt. It would take a while and starting up an actual charity is a lot of work, but… I think it could work.”

The suggestion was so out of left field Ilya had to take a moment to process it. “It sounds… possible. But wouldn’t something like that take years?”

“We took seven years to get to this point, I can wait another seven years if I have to.”

“You are thinking very far ahead,” said Ilya. Another seven years, said so casually. Like they hadn’t been toying with splitting apart and then gravitating back together in increasingly messy ways over the last seven.

“Is it too much?”

“Is not a bad thing. Just strange, for me.”

Shane looks puzzled. “Strange? Why?”

“I always thought, if I retired, I go back to Russia. And I didn’t like thinking about that, so… I didn’t.”

“Oh. But now things are different?” Shane already knew Ilya wanted to stay. He probably was trying to ask is it okay I am planning for the both of us?

“Yes, Shane, now things are different,” said Ilya. “But you still haven’t said what this has to do with my mother.”

“I was thinking it could be a charity focused on mental health. Suicide prevention. And we could name it after her.”

Entirely against his will, his breath caught in his throat and tears started beading in his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Yes. Good idea.” That was entirely inadequate. The closest he could think to say what that meant was I think I love you, except the words were stuck. He could only think it in his head, over and over. I love you. I love you. I love you.

🐻

Shane, for some terrible reason, had decided to spring Ilya with new details about meeting his parents just before they were meant to be heading to their house for dinner. Shane had apparently confessed to ‘fudging’ the details he’d been telling his mother about “Lily.” So he was not only introducing himself as Ilya Rozanov, Hockey Menace, he was also introducing himself as Mystery Boyfriend Lily. And, while they had been told to disregard what they thought they knew, Shane had already told them plenty about “Lily.” He smoked, he had a shitty family, he had a mean streak. And, most insultingly of all:

“You made Lily an office worker.”

“It’s not like I could say you were in hockey!”

“These are the only two jobs in the world? I could be F1 driver. Or food critic. Zookeeper. Stripper—”

“Fuck off, you do not want my parents thinking you’re a stripper. And your favorite food is literally McDonald’s.”

“Is why our love is forbidden, Shane! And I am a man of the people. Obviously.”

“You know they want to like you, right?” said Shane, unwilling to continue the banter that was distracting Ilya from the fact they were about to head to his actual, literal doom. “My mom kept pointing out the faces I was making when I texted you, it was embarrassing. She would be thrilled even if you weren’t planning on bribing her.”

“Host gift is not a bribe. I am being polite.”

“You know, government workers aren’t supposed to accept gifts adding up to $200 from one source to prevent bribery. Want to tell me how much just the wine is worth?”

“Seriously?”

“It doesn’t actually apply to real gifts from friends and family, but yeah. Not that anyone’s trying to bribe my dad, his job isn’t like that.”

Ilya was most certainly not David Hollander’s friend. He supposed this was all, in a way, an audition for a place as the second option. And he was not bribing the man, thank you very much. If he was, there would have been at least another zero on the price tag.

The actual drive over was uncharacteristically quiet. Shane seemed oddly zen. Ilya would have expected him to be reciting various contingencies like dinner could be approached with a battle plan, or reminding him which topics held unexpected minefields. Ilya would normally be cracking jokes or teasing Shane, but he felt a bit like if he opened his mouth he might vomit. Probably metaphorically in emotional word salad, but he couldn’t rule out literally.

Then they pulled up to the driveway, at which point Shane laid his head against the wheel, and started breathing like he’d just run a marathon. The main surprise was that he hadn’t done so earlier. Ilya leaned over the console to hold him.

“Sorry,” said Shane, operating on Canadian autopilot. “I don’t know why I’m freaking out. It’s not like they don’t already know I’m bringing my boyfriend. I think I didn’t realize it was actually happening until now.”

“Is normal to be scared, I think. Big things are always scary. But we have a plan, yes?”

“Yes,” echoes Shane, breathing finally slowing down. “Ugh. I’m sorry. I know this is a big deal for you. You’re always the one helping me and I thought I could keep it together for this one thing that you were nervous about.”

“You are helping,” said Ilya.

“By having a panic attack?” Shane said.

Ilya tilted his head, considering. “Yes,” he said, truthfully.

Shane squinted at him. “You feel better because I panicked.”

“Because I was going to tell you, Shane, why are you scared of nice middle-aged Canadians who want to feed you dinner. And then I realized I was being scared of nice middle-aged Canadians who want to feed me dinner.”

“Huh,” said Shane. “Okay. Let’s go eat dinner, then.”

🐻

“Mom, Dad, this is Ilya,” Shane said, all of them awkwardly standing in the entryway. Shane visibly considered adding on Rozanov before deciding clarification was unnecessary. “My, uh, boyfriend.”

“Hello,” said Ilya, and attempted a smile. He wasn’t sure it was working. He could do a media smile or a Russian-polite-function face in his sleep, but neither of those would be appropriate. Yuna and David Hollander were both openly staring, apparently shocked enough to forget how to be polite.

“Rozanov?” said Yuna, in the kind of tone one might also say, you lost to Ottawa? Technically it was possible, but one couldn’t help but doubt it even with evidence in front of their eyes. And also such an occurrence probably only happened to people who were terribly cursed.

“Yes,” said Ilya, because while that was definitely a rhetorical question, the atmosphere was making him itch. Shane looked vaguely ill. Yuna’s similar expression would have made an interesting mirror to him in any other situation. David Hollander seemed to rally the fastest.

“There’s still a few minutes left before the chicken’s done, but why don’t you all go sit down,” he said. “I’ll get us started on drinks.”

At that, Ilya produced his (very reasonably priced!) bottle of wine. Having been given a familiar social cue, Yuna Hollander seemed to finally shake off the initial shock. “Thank you, that’s very thoughtful of you,” she said. She squinted at the label and then at Ilya. “Very thoughtful.”

Thankfully, once they were all seated at the table (and supplied with alcohol) all the Hollanders seemed more settled.

“Well,” said Yuna. “I think we had some guesses about who your boyfriend might be, but… Ilya Rozanov was definitely not one of them.”

“Your mother did think it was another hockey player, though,” said David.

“What? Why would you think that?” Shane asked, like his life was not 99% hockey.

“Honey, you are not a very good liar,” said Yuna. “And if you felt like you had to hide what line of work your boyfriend was in, it would make sense.”

If she thought he was dating a hockey player, and she knew where he lived, then— “Which Raider did you think he was dating?” Ilya was not going to murder one of his teammates. He might just think about it very strongly.

“I didn’t think it was a Raider at all, actually,” said Yuna.

“But I told you he lived in Boston?” asked Shane, who now seemed officially too bemused to be nervous.

“You didn’t, actually,” said David. “Well, the first time you mentioned, ah, ‘Lily’, you never said where he was from. It was Hayden who said there was a Lily in Boston. You agreed with him, but you were so awkward about it, we thought maybe you just didn’t want to say where he was actually from.”

“And it turned out he had several other important details wrong,” said Yuna. “He’s a very nice boy, Shane, but not particularly observant.”

Ilya couldn’t help but snort at that. Shane swatted at him under the table.

“But really, Shane, Boston?” said Yuna.

“Mom,” said Shane. “I know I told you he was a Raiders fan.”

“Yes, well, your mother was being optimistic,” said David. “When you told us that I thought it might be someone who worked for the Raiders, but not necessarily a player.”

“It could have been misdirection!” said Yuna. “You also told us he works in tech and volunteers at dog shelters!”

“That is true, actually,” said Ilya. “Sometimes they have more dogs than they can take care of and taking pictures with them on social media helps them get adopted faster.”

“Well!” said David. “That’s lovely, isn’t it, dear?”

“Yes, of course,” said Yuna. “Shane, I promise I am only a little mad your boyfriend is a Boston Raider.”

“Yuna,” said David.

“What? I’m not going to lie to him! Just give me a minute to get used to the idea. And maybe more wine.”

“Thanks, mom,” said Shane, weakly.

“I will say,” said David, “I am surprised about you, Ilya. You’ve got quite the reputation as, you know, a ladies’ man.”

Ah, here it is, thought Ilya. Reputation problem #1. Though clearly, he had already miscalculated the strength of Yuna Hollander’s hockey loyalties.

“Is not untrue,” he said.

“None of that was while we were exclusive,” Shane cut in. “And it’s not like I wasn’t seeing other people, too.”

Technically, yes. “You know that is not the same,” said Ilya. “I have been with… many people. But I am very serious about this.”

Ilya was fairly sure they didn’t quite believe him, but what else could he say? I am pathetically in love with your son, it is actually very embarrassing? He hadn’t even been able to say it to Shane yet. Even though he was sitting here meeting the man’s parents, he was half convinced Shane was going to wake up and realize that even if he was gay he could go date— gay Rose Landry. Some objectively beautiful, nice, movie star or singer or something who hadn’t spent the better part of a decade jerking him around.

“Me too,” said Shane. “I know how complicated this is, but I want to make this work.”

“Speaking of complicated… Shane, this has been going on since what, 2014? But… non-exclusive? Were there other girls like Rose Landry?”

“2014?” said Ilya. “Why 2014? Was the summer before rookie season.”

Wow. Both Yuna and David were staring at him like he’d said he was actually an alien visiting from Mars.

“Rookie season?” said Yuna.

“Yes?” said Ilya, unsure how this was more shocking than the fact he was Ilya Rozanov. Shane, meanwhile, was groaning with his face in his hands.

“ItoldthemIhadagirlfriendnamedLilyin2014,” said Shane.

“Sorry, I don’t think I heard you,” said Ilya, who was pretty sure he had heard him right. An irrepressible grin was spreading across his face. Shane Hollander was pretending I was his girlfriend in 2014.

“I told them,” said Shane, sounding very defeated, “that I had a girlfriend in 2014. Because people kept trying to set me up with girls and it was annoying.”

“A girlfriend named Lily,” said Ilya, so delighted he forgot he was trying to make a good impression.

“Fuck off,” said Shane, who probably also had forgotten his parents were watching the whole exchange.

“Aww, is okay, Jane,” said Ilya. “Svetlana’s been giving me shit about you that long too, you know.”

“Svetlana knows?”

“What? She is my best friend, I told you this.”

“Who you sleep with,” said Shane, always so skeptical of the concept.

“Not anymore!”

A very loud cough interrupted. Yuna’s eyebrows were practically in the stratosphere and David looked somewhat flustered. Shane started turning tomato red.

Shit, there goes my not-that-good-maybe-okay impression, thought Ilya.

“Well!” said Yuna. “What’s the plan?”

What?

🐻

Ilya was still mildly shell-shocked that the answer to impressing your boyfriend’s parents was apparently, in this particular case, to get so enamored by your boyfriend being adorable you forget they are in the same room and then proceed to have him accidentally reveal even more of your kind of slutty habits. He was still pretty sure he had missed something. Shane and his mother were still going back and forth on the particulars of Shane’s charity plans, while Ilya demolished the chicken parm and David switched between quiet observation, silently sliding over seconds and thirds and refilling glasses, and chiming with astute comments at random intervals. At some point, Shane and Yuna would finish plotting the destruction of homophobia and/or creation of a non-profit and then the awkward questions about his and Shane’s relationship would resume, but he had the strange feeling there was not actually a way for him to fail the test this time.

It was shaping up to be an excellent day.

⛸️

Chapter End Notes

Thanks again for all the comments, which I also take a million years to reply to--I find it motivating to have them sitting in my inbox, but sorry if that means it looks like I am ignoring you! Actually, if you have an opinion on it, let me know, I don't mind replying sooner either if it bothers people. Other notes: in canon, Ilya goes from being completely a secret to accidentally meeting the parents and having it go well without any time to think about it, which is sort of accidentally ideal. In this version, he gets to stew about it for actual months before it happens! At least since it's planned he gets chicken parm instead of impromptu spaghetti?

Chapter 9

Chapter Summary

Shane contemplates completely normal levels of planning which do not in any way break the MLH rules regarding collusion.

Chapter Notes

The Long Game is a terrible book full of lies, like that you can be a super hot rich guy with an amazing boyfriend while having depression, as opposed to being months late updating your fanfic while being tragically normal levels of hot. Since it's been a bit since the last update, here's a refresher: Shane has finally introduced "Lily" to his parents, they have made the Irina Foundation plan but not the Ottawa one, nobody has said I love you, and Yuna should call me if she ever stops being both married and fictional. Sorry who said that?

Lanaudiere, July 2017

His mom didn’t think the charity plan was crazy, which gave Shane much more confidence it could actually work. She had also, thankfully, not pried into why they had chosen mental health as the cause or why they intended to name it after Ilya’s mother. She was definitely curious, but she probably realized that asking why someone was interested in mental health was a bit much on top of meeting the parents. They had steered clear of asking about Ilya’s family without any prompting, as well. Probably because they knew about his father’s recent death, and the vague concerns Shane had always had about ‘Lily.’

But with the charity plan as sketched out as it could be over one dinner, his parents were back to having questions.

“So, that’s the plan for making the rivalry friendly,” Yuna said, “but do you have any plans for actually coming out?”

“No,” said Shane. “No, mom, you know why that’s a bad idea.”

“Well, things are changing!” Yuna said. Which wasn’t exactly wrong, Scott Hunter was why they were here in the first place. But it wasn’t enough, either. “I’m not saying right this second, but surely at some point in the future?”

“Maybe when we retire,” said Shane.

“Probably, yes,” said Ilya.

“But that’s so long,” said Yuna.

Shane did not want to get into this with his mother right now. Thankfully, Ilya seemed to have his preternatural ability to read Shane’s mind. (This made it even more confusing when he apparently had no idea what Shane was thinking at all. Thankfully, it hadn’t failed yet over the most stressful dinner of Shane’s life.)

“Is not safe for me, without permanent residency or citizenship,” said Ilya. “So not for years at least, with how long these things take.”

“Oh,” said Yuna. She almost visibly deflated. Shane knew she’d probably been working on contingencies and potential plans for Shane and his relationship when she’d first found out, but she had only just found out she needed to factor Ilya into it. And Russia. She was probably going to be researching immigration lawyers the second he and Ilya left. “I’m sorry. Of course safety is the most important.”

“Are you applying for American citizenship?” David asked.

“Maybe,” said Ilya, eyes darting to meet Shane’s. Asking him if they should open this can of worms.

“We were thinking maybe Canadian,” said Shane.

For some reason, his mom’s eyes went huge and she nearly dropped her forkful of pasta in her lap. His dad had frozen, the way Shane himself sometimes did.

“What? It’s not that crazy, is it?” asked Shane. He was pretty ignorant about the tensions for Russians in the US that Ilya had mentioned, but it had made sense. And sure, he was biased, but why shouldn’t Ilya prefer Canadian over American citizenship?

“We just didn’t realize things were this serious,” said David.

How casual could they think it was, if he was introducing Ilya as his boyfriend? They were the ones who had been convinced for months that he and “Lily” were already in a committed relationship.

“Of course it’s serious,” said Shane, frowning.

“Shane,” said Ilya, in a tone that meant he was missing something. “I think they are wondering how exactly I would qualify for Canadian citizenship. Without living here or having any other legal relationship.”

“Well, you would move, obviously,” said Shane.

“Right,” said Yuna, faintly.

“I was discussing with Shane if I might sign to a Canadian team as a free agent,” Ilya explained. “But we haven’t made any decisions yet.”

“You would leave Boston?” Yuna asked, predictably aghast.

“Mom!” Shane interrupted. Of course Ilya didn’t know exactly how harshly Yuna would judge team disloyalty. He should have warned him.

“Well, I suppose…” she trailed off. That was frankly alarming. Shane had been bracing for a much more vigorous argument.

If it was anyone else, Shane would have let whatever it was go, but this was his parents. “Why are you being so weird about this?” Shane asked.

“Solnyshko, I don’t know much about Canadian immigration process,” Ilya said. “But if it is like most places, the easiest way to get citizenship is probably getting married.”

“I— you think we’re—what, no!”

“Wow,” said Ilya, “I see how it is. Maybe I will ask Svetlana for green card marriage instead?”

“Fuck off,” Shane said, automatic. Holy shit. The idea of actually being able to marry him hadn’t even crossed his mind. Not that he was going to. That would be crazy. They had only been officially dating for, what, a few days? Of course, it would make it easier to become a citizen. At some point. Theoretically. But not any time soon! Because that would be crazy!

“Oh,” Yuna said again. “Nevermind. Okay. You’re thinking of signing here and then applying as a Canadian resident,” she finally clarified.

“Maybe,” Ilya said again. “I have to speak to a lawyer, first. Might not even work, I don’t know.”

“Shane, why don’t you help me clear some of this away,” David said, picking up the empty dish of what had been broccoli. Shane obliged, gathering some of the other empty dishes, even though usually they would wait until the whole meal was done to clean up. When his dad started actually washing the dishes, instead of leaving them and returning to the table where there was a guest, Shane finally realized he’d been herded into the kitchen to freak out.

Which was ridiculous. He was fine.

“I don’t think I tell you enough how proud of you I am,” his dad said.

“What? You and mom definitely say that all the time,” said Shane.

“Maybe,” he said, in a way that meant agree to disagree. “Your mother and I… we’ve been doing a lot of thinking, since January. Not just about what you told us,” said his dad. “Though your mom does have a reading list from PFLAG. She worries that she made it hard for you to trust us. She told me you two talked about the whole role model thing. And you know her, she speaks her mind about everything, and even the smartest woman in the world isn’t right 100% of the time.”

“Dad, that’s not— I didn’t think you and mom would be, homophobes, or anything.”

“No, I didn’t think we’d messed up that badly. But… you know, your mom was going over all the conversations she remembered having with you, and beating herself up about this or that, and I realized… I couldn’t remember the last time we really talked about anything important.”

“We talk all the time,” said Shane, though he wasn’t sure when he’d really last talked to just his dad.

“We’re both quiet people, it’s probably not a surprise. But that’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t be hearing everything in your life from your mom.”

Shane wasn’t sure what to make of any of that. It was true, he talked to his mom all the time. She was his manager, too. And he liked spending time with his dad, sure, but most of the ways they’d used to spend time together were more like… parallel activities. Going out on a hike together, or helping his dad out with his garden, but not talking, just doing the same thing together at the same time. They just didn’t live in the same city anymore. Of course they didn’t talk much.

...Maybe that was what his dad meant.

“We can talk more,” said Shane, wondering what they would even talk about.

“Well don’t sound too excited about it,” said his dad. “It’s not an order, you know. I just wanted to tell you, in case you start wondering why your poor old father’s become such a nuisance, calling you every day.”

“Every day?”

“Kidding, bud. Come on, we should get back out there before your mother grills your poor boyfriend to death.”

🏒

“I like them,” said Ilya.

Shane had been so preoccupied with making sure that Shane’s parents liked Ilya that he hadn’t even really thought about the reverse. Or maybe he’d just assumed his parents were universally likable, which couldn’t actually be true. And they certainly had a few… biases.

“Sorry my mom is, you know. Hung up on the whole Boston thing,” he said.

“No, no, is good,” said Ilya.

“Good?” said Shane.

“Means that when I win her over I know she actually likes me,” said Ilya.

“...You just like the challenge.”

🏒

“What’s Svetlana like?” Shane asked, while they were lying on the couch together.

Ilya didn’t answer immediately, staring at Shane. He was probably trying to judge if this was out of jealousy spurred on by the green card joke. Which, Shane could admit, was not an unfounded assumption. As it was, Shane knew he hadn’t been serious, even if Svetlana was gorgeous and perfect and also, notably, a woman he’d had sex with even before Shane.

“Very clever. Fun. Likes hockey as much as you and your mama,” he said, slowly. “Why?”

“Just… curious,” said Shane, lying. Which Ilya definitely could tell. “She likes hockey?”

“Yes, her father is Sergei Vetrov, famous goalie. She used to play, also goalie, but she had… I do not know the name in English. Her joints move too much? And she bruises easily, is genetic. She was always getting bad injuries. Now she just watches, but like she is GM or something, she knows everything. Probably would be better at it than half the real GMs, too.”

Shane's considerable jealousy of beautiful, clever, fun Svetlana wavered. He spent far longer than he would ever admit loathing that someone else got to touch, kiss, be with Ilya in public. He loved hockey more than anything, and hated that it was the reason he could never have what she did. He never would have guessed that some ironic reversal was true. Maybe hockey hadn’t been her life the way it was Shane’s, but it sort of sounded like it was. To be relegated to watching on the sidelines, while her…while Ilya got to be on the ice, not just playing but winning, excelling, collecting awards like it was nothing… Shane didn’t know what he would have done, if something took hockey from him. He just knew it would be ugly.

“Does she want to be a GM? Or work in hockey?”

“Yes and no. She wants to, but she has no official experience, even though she has spent her whole life around hockey. She says, no one would take her seriously, it would be difficult even if she was a white man. If she used her connections— me, or her dad— she could make people pay attention long enough to prove herself, but she doesn’t want to just be Sergei Vetrov’s daughter, or Ilya Rozanov’s girlfriend.”

“She’s not your girlfriend,” Shane responded automatically, then blushed.

“No, but people would think she was even if we never fucked, you know. People think I sleep with every pretty woman I’ve stood next to once.”

“Right,” said Shane, thinking, didn’t you? Which was silly. Ilya got around, but that didn’t mean he’d actually slept with literally every woman he ended up in pictures with. 

Having embarrassed himself enough, he was relieved that Ilya let him change the subject without comment. 

🏒

It was far too easy for Shane to end up on a spiral of internet searches. After their game in January, he’d spent far too long reading about LGBTQ rights in Russia, even though he was pretty sure most of it had no bearing on Ilya’s specific problems. It did make him realize, belatedly, that he'd just thought of Russia as anti-gay in a static way, after hearing about it leading up to Sochi. Most countries were historically some level of homophobic, after all. He hadn't realized Russia was actually getting worse.

After Ilya’s father passed he’d looked up advice for helping a loved one with grief, though he hadn't ended up using any of it. (For some reason, there was no section that addressed 'so hey, is it weird if we had Skype sex?' But then again, it did say to take cues from your partner, so, if said cue was initiating Skype sex, then...) He’d again ended up turning to the internet on how to talk about— mental health. He doubted Ilya would go near the subject again anytime soon, but the last thing he wanted to do was put his foot in it about his dead mom. And, of course, he’d ended up reading about Canadian immigration law.

It was all more complicated than he’d realized. Ilya could, theoretically, end up applying through different pathways: through work, through a spouse (theoretically), through asylum. If they were regular people, spousal sponsorship would be the most straightforward, almost guaranteed option. If they got married after whatever the normal amount of time being in a committed relationship was (a year? The Pikes had been about that, anyway?)—and if for whatever reason they didn’t make it that long the point was moot anyway, because Ilya wouldn’t need the same protection of citizenship if he wasn’t in a relationship with a man—then they still would have a whole process to go through to prove it was genuine. (And that Shane would be able to support his husband. As if Ilya wasn’t also a multimillionaire.) How were they supposed to convince some government worker while they still had to make several step plans to even appear in public together?

He wasn’t an immigration lawyer. Maybe there was some specific process that would work perfectly for them.

Why was this what he was doing, anyway? Shane knew perfectly well that some things you delegated to professionals with the right skills. He should be working with what he knew.

🏒

Shane was too focused to realize what was happening at first, letting out a startled squeak as Ilya draped himself all over him. Ilya’s regular grin widened and as he opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly horribly embarrassing, Shane shoved his hand at his face. Ilya sputtered, apparently less fond of fingers ending up in his mouth in this context.

“I didn’t even say anything yet!”

“You were going to,” said Shane.

“Maybe I should call pest control, sounds like there is cute little mouse—”

“Shut up!” Shane said, feeling his face heat. He pushed at Ilya, meaning to playfully tussle, but he’d forgotten the tablet in his hand, which fell to the floor with a thunk.

“Shit,” he said, hoping he hadn’t cracked the screen, but Ilya was still laying on top of him, so he couldn’t check himself.

“Shane,” said Ilya, as he picked up the tablet. “What is this?”

🏒

Distance: Montreal > Ottawa > Toronto > Boston > Buffalo > NYC area

People: Boston: Too many to list. Ottawa: Mom and dad. Maybe cross-team friendships, ask Ilya? (Ryan Price?? Buffalo?)

Team culture: NYC (Admirals). NOT Toronto, NOT Vancouver. (Ask mom re: Ottawa)

Team standings: Boston, NYC (Admirals), NOT Ottawa, NOT Buffalo.

City: Ilya likes NYC? (Florida?? LA??? Way too far.)

Cap space problems (Ilya):

Cap space problems (Shane):

🏒

“Oh,” said Shane, embarrassed despite himself. Ilya was the one who brought up his free agency; it was perfectly natural that Shane was weighing the possibilities. “Just… you know. Things to consider. About what team you might end up signing with.”

“Yes, but…” Ilya said, squinting at the small font. “Why does the last category say your name?”

“It’s probably not realistic,” said Shane. “But, um, that’s for estimating which teams have the best chance of signing both of us. Well, you would already be signed. But when my contract’s up in a few years. Which is too far out to be very accurate, but you can at least tell which teams are aging out or already have long contracts locked in—”

“You would leave Montreal?” said Ilya, somewhat breathless.

“I don’t really want to,” Shane admitted, a little guilty. Ilya had thrown out the idea of signing elsewhere so easily, but Shane was pretty sure it was at least partially a front. He had priorities, sure, but if there was one thing Shane could tell, it was that Ilya loved playing with the Raiders. But since he’d made up his mind to leave, he was pretending he didn’t have anything to miss in the first place.

“Montreal’s been really good to me,” he said. “I still want to retire there. But… not as much as I want you.”

Ilya stared at him, wide-eyed.

“I mean—” Shane stumbled. “Playing on the same team might not be feasible, you know, I don’t even know how we’d figure that out without breaking collusion rules, and probably we shouldn’t really be having this conversation anyway, but if that doesn’t work, there are also teams that are closer, like LA and Anaheim or New York, except those are both American—Vancouver and Seattle aren’t far, if the expansion team goes through—”

“Shane,” Ilya said, holding his face with both hands. Shane shut up.

“You are so… so—” He said something in Russian, first just the one word, then mumbled some phrase over and over.

“Ilya?” Shane said, more than a little confused.

“I love you,” he blurted out.

Shane stared. “Holy shit.”

Ilya froze, and Shane noticed almost in slow motion him cringing, his mind only catching up to his less than stellar response as Ilya began to say something else.

“I love you too,” he said in a rush. The way they were laying, Shane could feel Ilya’s full body melt. “Sorry, I just didn’t think, I mean, of course I love you too.”

“More than your stupid hockey team,” said Ilya, his voice wobbly.

“It’s a good hockey team,” Shane insisted. We have one more cup than yours does, he was about to say, except then Ilya was kissing him.

He would have to shelve that argument for later.

🥅

Chapter End Notes

Being the wise person I am, I never include an estimated chapter count, so you have no way of knowing whether this was totally supposed to wrap things up or that I have failed to get through several things I wanted to establish before ending the story. I definitely didn't have any plans I scrapped because they felt wrong and this chapter was rewritten a completely average amount of times, and I am not publishing this with less editing than usual because I am getting annoyed with it. Also, there will not be a Svetlana POV next. ;)

Thanks in advance for continuing to this point and for your lovely comments.