Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander & Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Svetlana Vetrova, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Post-Trip fallout, Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Alternate Ending, Svetlana used to be a hockey player, Sexism, Racism

Language:

English

Collections:

Anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-30 Words: 1,754 Chapters: 1/1

Edges

Summary

"Don't go to Ottawa," in a woman's voice was the first indicator that the person calling him from Ilya's number was not Ilya himself. The second indicator was the clarifying follow up of: "This isn't Ilya. It's Svetlana. Hi, Jane."

Shane turned his TV to mute with a trembling hand, the ESPN panel discussing his integrity silenced but still loudly gesticulating on his screen. "Hi, Svetlana," he said.

"I told Ilya not to go to Ottawa, too, but he thinks he's more romantic than he is. He wants nothing more than to suffer for love. Idiot."

Svetlana has a different plan for the NHL and Shane Hollander and for herself.

"Don't go to Ottawa," in a woman's voice was the first indicator that the person calling him from Ilya's number was not Ilya himself. The second indicator was the clarifying follow up of: "This isn't Ilya. It's Svetlana. Hi, Jane."

Shane turned his TV to mute with a trembling hand, the ESPN panel discussing his integrity silenced but still loudly gesticulating on his screen. "Hi, Svetlana," he said.

"I told Ilya not to go to Ottawa, too, but he thinks he's more romantic than he is. He wants nothing more than to suffer for love. Idiot."

Shane swallowed. "I didn't think it'd be so bad."

"Yes, well, he didn't either, clearly." She paused. "Look, it wasn't stupid. I was right but the information we all had could've gone either way. They did just need a star center to finish our their re-build. If the chemistry had worked out better and if management had been more aggressive with the roster depth and trades, which they absolutely could've done even before Barrett, they would've been in the playoffs by last year. But also I was right because Ilya catastrophizes and that affects his playing and he acts like it doesn't matter what people think but he might have crashed out of the league altogether in 2014 after the disaster at the Olympics if I hadn't dragged his head out of the sand and mentioned some lucky injuries in the league. He thinks a collapse is imminent always. Which you can't blame him for. Don't blame him for it. Or at least don't blame him too much. But that's the truth. One bad thing goes wrong in Ottawa--that's all his brain needs. Okay?"

"Okay," said Shane, blankly. "I know. I should've known."

"No, that's not what I'm saying," she snapped. "I'm not here to talk about your relationship. I don't care. And I'm not in it. He's depressed, he's getting help, I'm not concerned. I'm telling you now what I told him: don't go to Ottawa."

"They're a cup-contending team again," said Shane. "There's no reason not to."

"What's their offer, Hollander?"

Shane didn't answer.

"Don't go to Ottawa," and now Svetlana sounded like she was holding back tears, her voice thick. Shane sat up from his slump on the couch, frowning.

"Svetlana?"

"They'll smear you the rest of your career," she said, tightly.

"It doesn't matter--I know the truth."

"If you let them do this, there goes the Hall of Fame, there goes your reputation."

"Svetlana"--

"There goes everyone's reputation. Every possible person who ever wanted to play but couldn't! Every person. Your reputation is theirs, Hollander. Don't you get that?"

"Of course, I get that!" Shane shot up to his feet, chest trembling, a surge of the same fury that he'd been chewing with his back molars since he was a kid, biting back. "You think I don't know? You think that hasn't been driven into my head my whole life? I'd rather not care, I'd rather not have to care! If I can choose to not feel this, then I won't!"

"I was better than him when we were kids, you know?" and that same flavor of fury was there, in Svetlana's voice, in the way it rose from the heat of Shane's phone. "My stick-handling, my edges, unreal at my age, when I was still allowed to play. But you can only play so long before it doesn't matter how good you are technically--they wouldn't let me lift weights, get stronger, eat. Or they didn't tell me to so I was fucked over and suddenly he's stronger than me and there's nothing I can do because I get knocked down once and it's over. I'm pulled. My father doesn't want me losing any of my teeth, breaking my nose. And my mother is straightening my hair and telling me I have to be sweet. Sweeter than all the other girls or they won't respect me at all. They'll always think I'm too loud or too much. But I'm not loud enough or much enough to do the thing I want to do anyway. Working so hard to be treated as a white woman but being a woman is a fucked position to be in, regardless. This fucking line that's impossible to walk."

Shane, as she talked, moved to his window, and leaned his forehead on the cool-as-spring glass. It was a rainy day in Montreal, making for a gray world on the city, making it quiet enough to hear the snow-melt river rushing down to the lakes--or maybe Shane was just fooling himself and the only rush he could hear was his own blood, trying so hard to pull him away in its closed circuit of flow. He chewed on the rage sitting on his molars.

"You think you're being humbled and humiliated," said Svetlana, crackling. "But being laughed at for doing the thing you love is par for the fucking course for some of us."

"I know," said Shane, even though he didn't. But he had always known part of this, the fragility of being a man. He knew even more of it now, while the ESPN panel talked and talked. "I know."

"Don't let them write this story, Hollander. I'm so sick of this shit. Stay in Montreal. Make them trade off the worst of them. Dig the fuck in."

Shane pressed his hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes. He listened to the rush.

"And get me a job there," said Svetlana. "Bring me in. I've been coaching a beer league for years. I volunteered under the men's head coach in college. I've published op-eds under a pen-name, I'll send them to you. Tell the GM it's good PR. Hiring a black woman. Tell them my name, who my father is. Tell them Montreal can spearhead the changing culture of the NHL as a franchise, as one of the original six. Please."

Shane chewed on his rage.

"Please," she said. "Do this for me."

Shane opened his eyes, but the world was still a blur. He thought of the offers in his inbox, the shouting on reddit threads, the posters all over the city with his face on them, his jersey, his number, Rose sitting across from him, asking if it was fun, like she doesn't know herself what it was she was asking and how complicated the answer is. Shane and Ilya had once spent an afternoon on a squeezed-in break at the cottage, during the season, showing each other the figure-skating they had each learned in their youth and then had raced each other doing power-pulls along the shore of the lake. Three weeks ago, J.J. had anticipated a threaded pass from Shane so insane that not even Shane understood what happened until it had happened and the buzzer was ringing and he could look back on the play and realize his body just knew and J.J. knew him, in that moment.

"Okay," he said. "Okay." He exhaled. "I can do that."

H heard Svetlana breathe out, too.

Then she continued:

"Don't let them low ball you. They know the truth, too. Tell them your terms--I'm one of your terms. They know what other teams are offering for you. They're not stupid."

Shane felt a few muscles in his neck begin to relax.

"Send me a portfolio and some tape for teams you've assisted with," said Shane. "Any material you think will help. And a letter from your father."

"I have it all drafted in an email already. I'll send it now."

They were both quiet. Shane watched the mist on the glass.

"Did you talk to him about this?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, then laughed. "Talked, is a word. I was less... eloquent with him. He thought I stopped playing because I didn't want to keep playing. Which isn't entirely his fault because, well, that's what I told him."

"I'm guessing you quit right around the time of Irina's death, too."

"Yes."

"Still."

"Still."

"You love hockey."

"It's fast, Shane," she breathed out. "It's fluid. It's unending. I have the cheesy poetry for it. I could skate for days and never want to leave the ice."

"Me too. I've had this recurring dream since I was a kid where I'm skating down a river and it just keeps going and going--just this long frozen river forever."

"Rivers can actually be like that in Russia."

"Canada, too."

"I blamed you for taking Ilya."

"I resented you for having him for so long. Guess we're both idiots."

"I'm not an idiot."

"Well, I didn't take him anywhere."

She sighed. "No, I know. He's always writing his romance stories. Can't separate his mother's beauty and her pain."

"I think he's trying to now."

"Yes. He's trying to now." She sighed again. "I told him not to talk to you until you thought about it. I told him you two can just buy a house in the middle. I told him a lot of very normal people living normal lives have a one hour commute to work."

Shane smiled, picturing it. "Build one on the river." It'd have a stone fireplace and enormous spruces in the yard and some maples from which they could hang a swing or something.

"You don't have to get me in," said Svetlana, quieter. "I was only"--

"Svetlana," said Shane. "I'll review everything you send me. But I know there are at least three men on the current coaching staff I'd happily see replaced. And I know, what with all the stuff I already know about you, you'd be better than all of them. You aren't the only one leveraging a famous dad." He worked his jaw. "If you have any recommendations for a head coach, too, I'll pass those along."

"I always have recommendations," said Svetlana, breezily. "Players, coaches, personal assistants."

"Nerd."

"Fuck off."

They were quiet again, listening.

"You'll have to play with me, sometime," said Shane, casually, like asking someone if they wanted to hang out after school.

"Sure, Hollander," laughed Svetlana. "Sign my stick first."

"Now you're just trying to flatter me."

"No," she said. "I want to sell it."

Something else, something that had been sitting in Shane's throat for years, something that had settled in place the first time his mom pulled him along with her on the frozen pond in the local park on a pearly gray day, something older than the anger his molars chewed: Shane laughed.