Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble, Luca Haas & Shane Hollander

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Luca Haas, Holmberg (Game Changers), Young (Game Changers), LaPointe (Game Changers), Original Characters, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

POV Shane Hollander, Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), Post-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Dumb Hockey Boys, the terrifying realisation you're the most adulty adult nearby, Former AO3 Author Luca Haas, Texting, Ottawa Centaurs Group Chat (Game Changers), shane hollander being the helping hand he never got, Crockpots, Car Accidents, Deer, dumpsters, Taxes, these are all things that feature in the fic, Minor Injuries, Implied/Referenced Sex, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, they try to be mad at each other and FAIL, 5+1 Things

Language:

English

Series:

Part 5 of the loser has to fall

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-27 Words: 16,126 Chapters: 1/1

The Most Adulty Adult Around

Summary

“He’s the most adulty,” Bee hisses.

Shane squints at the group. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Young squeaks which immediately means they have done something. “Uhm, just say hypothetically your washing machine is flooding and you try to open it to drain it, suddenly your entire laundry is flooding.”

“Is the drain hose connected properly?”

“Don’t look at me!” Arty whines. “Do I look like I know how to fix a drain hose? I don’t— stop looking at me!”

or, five times shane is contacted by the rookies for adulting and one time he accidentally gives wildly incorrect advice

Notes

as a young adult who has recently moved out of home, basically all of these are things i have done. i’d like to thank my mother and older sister for dealing with the increasingly unhinged texts they has received from me. thank you again to GEEK who is the supplier of my texting code and also answering some of the questions that the centaurs also ask here

MINOR CONTENT WARNINGS: there's a dead animal describe in some detail, a car crash (everyone is fine!) and an implied fight that happens off screen

Incident One: The Drainage Hose

Shane hasn’t been on a team with a lot of young people for a long time. Montreal didn’t get a lot of good draft picks, so most of their rotating players would either come up out of the minors or they would be traded from another team. Last time Shane remembers thinking a team was young was the Voyageurs, and he was one of the young ones.

The Foals, as Harris keeps referring to them on social media, are a very funny group, considering they make up a good chunk of the team. Still, The Foals are all very lovely and sweet and honestly, Shane is concerned for them all a little bit.

Luca is very bright and quick and Ilya adores how he’s still star struck over everyone. He has pale blond hair and skin and with deep brown eyes that remind Shane a bit of a deer. He seems to be the most sensible of the lot of them, but that’s not very hard.

Artemy Levin, or Arty or Levy (neither name has stuck yet) is The Centaur’s latest rookie, having been dragged up from the minors desperately to get some defense. He’s strong, tall and has firetruck red hair. It’s supposed to be dark red, it used to be dark red, Holmberg apparently fucked up the dye job, Arty’s still mad about it.

Jack van der Bij (or Bee as everyone keeps calling him), the new second goalie. Bee is tall, awkward, still apparently is yet to grow into his limbs, with brown skin and curly black hair. Bee is often talking shit to his hockey stick and also apparently hasn’t eaten a fresh vegetable in three months.

Rhys Holmberg, another one of the forwards. He’s loud and awkward and hilarious, with a black mullet and the loudest laugh Shane has ever heard on a person. He seems to be a bit of the ringleader of most of the bad choices the Foals make.

Wesley Young, another forward because the Centaurs seem incapable of getting more than two good defenders on their team while they have a row of great forwards. Wesley is relatively short, stocky, with dirty straight blond hair, and pale blotchy skin that desperately makes him like he needs to go outside and get out from the lights of the arena.

And Marcel LaPointe, a lanky Quebecois winger with long black hair and a smile that tilted at the side. He actually goes outside and has a slight tan because of it. He also normally wears a bandana around his neck on the ice, and has copped endless ‘Orpheus’ ribbing from Luca about that. He’d made the decision (wisely) to not live with the others.

As far as Shane knows Young, Holmberg, Arty and Bee are all living together, while LaPointe and Luca seem to have gotten their own places. Although from the photos often pinging in the Centaurs groupchat, he’s pretty sure LaPointe and Luca spend more time at The Foals’ Apartment than their own.

The handful of younger players on the team have led to a lot of TikTok references, a lot of Arty doing dumb dances then saying they’re from Fortnite, a lot of ribbing about LaPointe being bad at Fortnite and—

Shane has never felt older than when he watched Bee and Holmberg talk and did not understand a single word than they were actually saying.

Shane trudges back into the locker room after having stayed on the ice a bit longer. Ilya and Bood are talking to Wiebe and Shane would like to go home. He immediately shucks his helmet off, tucking it under his arm as he enters the locker room.

Shane watches Arty, Bee, Holmberg, Jones and Young all bundled in a group. Luca is sitting on the floor sipping at gatorade with a blank look in his eyes. LaPointe has apparently wisely left.

“Who’s the most adulty adult though?” Shane overhears Holmberg saying. “Because it sure isn’t Roz, Hayes maybe?”

“Hayes is too into comic books to be an adult.”

“He has a degree!” Holmberg argues.

Shane for a second is incredibly worried that having a degree is their standard for adulthood, then he remembers he doesn’t have a degree and also scraped by completing high school so… nevermind. He did get a lot of hockey offers though! He just… was busy getting drafted.

“It is not that hard to get a degree,” Arty says, which is bold from someone degreeless. “It’s in like— economics isn’t it, that’s not a real degree.”

“That’s like the realest degree there is,” Holmberg frowns.

“Bood has a child,” Bee says thoughtfully. “That makes him an adult right? He has a child and a mortgage."

“He also skulls coffee like it’s his lifeblood,” Holmberg adds. “I also watched him eat a hotdog he dropped on the ground.”

“We can deal with this ourselves,” Arty hisses. “I’ll call my mum—”

Shane decides now is the objectively funniest time to say something. “You guys alright?” Everyone jumps.

“Fuck!” Holmberg says, holding onto the wall as he regains his breath. “That’s fucked up, Hollzy— you good?”

“Are you guys good?” He looks at the various startled and worried expressions.

“He’s the most adult,” Bee hisses, shoving his elbow into Holmberg’s ribs. Holmberg slaps him away.

Shane squints at the group. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!” Young squeaks which immediately means they have done something. “Uhm, just say hypothetically your washing machine is flooding and you try to open it to drain it, suddenly your entire laundry is flooding.”

“Is the drain hose connected properly?” Shane says, because while Shane has never fixed a drain hose he has paid plenty of people to fix a drain hose correctly. “They sometimes come loose from the back of your washing machine. It’s an easy fix, you either just reconnect it or you get a new drain hose.”

They all look at each other, then all of them look at Arty.

“Don’t look at me!” Arty whines. “Do I look like I know how to fix a drain hose? I don’t— stop looking at me!”

“You’re like… the most manly out of all of us, dude,” Holmberg says. 

“I lived in New York City my entire life! I just call the landlord when things are wrong, or my mum did. Manly? I look manly? How do I change this?”

“Are you saying women can’t fix drain hoses, Holmy?” Young says, because apparently he likes to cause problems for everyone else. “What does him being manly have to do with anything?”

“Oh God,” Holmberg says, quickly losing colour from his face. “I’m being a misogynist! Luca you’re the least manly—”

“What?”

“You have to fix it now.” Holmberg decides. “I’m being progressive.”

Shane looks to the ceiling and prays a light falls out and hits him. “I can fix it.” He says with the confidence of someone who has fixed a drain hose before and not someone who just pays other people to do it. “You guys only live like ten from the rink right, I can go drop in.”

And Shane watches as fear shoots across every single rookie who lives in that house. Arty’s eyes go the widest, he shakes his head and takes a step back like Shane has somehow threatened some sort of grievous bodily harm.

“No…” Young says, also looking similarly stunned. “We can’t do that— I can’t have Shane Hollander in my apartment.”

“Seriously guys,” Shane shrugs. “It’s fine. Let me just text Ilya and I can head to your place.”

“We need to go,” Arty says. “See you there Hollander!”

Luca stands in the locker room with him, there’s a sly smile on his face which reminds Shane a little of Ilya. He lets out a small burst of laughter as the others push over themselves to get out of the door.

“Their apartment is filthy,” Luca says. “It’s gross.”

“Should I give them an hour to clean then?”

Luca nods.

Shane taps his stick against the boards. “Wanna practice faceoffs while I wait?”

Luca brightens up, his grin widens and he nods rapidly. He starts fumbling to grab all his gear to pull it on again.

Shane tries very hard not to laugh.

Two hours later Shane walks into The Frat House, as it’s so dubbed. It’s… still incredibly messy, and Shane does his best not to openly frown at the amount of… stuff everywhere. It’s not dirty at least.

Shane ignores the fact that Holmberg is laying on his stomach with cleaning supplies around him, looking truly exhausted. Bee is sitting on the couch, trying to look natural and failing quite dramatically.

“You can’t come into my room!” Arty yells, through what is probably the door to his room.

“I wasn’t going to? Where’s your washing machine?”

It’s Jones who reveals himself from the kitchen tucked in the back corner of the house. “It’s over by here,” he jerks his head towards the far wall of the kitchen and Shane follows through. 

The kitchen is probably the cleanest part of the house, everything has some sort of order Shane can follow and all the counters are clean. There are some dishes in the sink but that’s… probably fine. He thinks.

He’s not going to look in the dishwasher, because he’s protecting his peace. He’s also ignoring the fact he’s about ninety percent sure they shoved everything into Arty’s room, and honestly he doesn’t want to think about that too hard if he can avoid it.

The laundry is a weirdly ordered mess, there are clothes scattered everywhere and different coloured washing baskets. Shane is going to guess the red one is Arty’s, and the yellow one that has had black duct tape put over it in stripes is Bee’s. Everyone else’s is a mystery and Shane doesn’t really want to know.

The washing machine and dryer are placed next to each other, the dryer is on and emanating a nearly relaxing droning noise through the room. Over the top of both the dryer and washing machine is a wide shelf filled with laundry supplies, and for some reason Arty’s jersey is thrown across it.

It’s a relatively small room to fit five hockey player’s stuff in. There are towels lining the tile floor in front of the washing machine, Shane goes to step onto the towels and they squelch underneath his foot.

Jones gives him a slightly sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

Shane grimaces, and steps onto the squelchy towels. He squares his body before pulling the washing machine forwards enough. There’s a decent gap between them, and Shane now needs to hang his body over the side of it to reach the drain motor.

He thinks.

He should probably Google this before he does it.

“Jones,” Shane says. “If I fall behind this washing machine you’re not allowed to take photos.”

“One.”

Shane thinks about it, how bad of a look it can probably be if a photo of Shane Hollander stuck behind a washing machine could be if it hits the internet. Which it will hit the internet, because the rookies are incapable of not posting things they think are funny, Arty is the worst for it. He’s pretty sure Arty has done more to destroy his image in three months than Ilya has done in about twelve.

He turns over his shoulder to see. Bee, Arty, Young and Holmberg all peaking around the corner looking equally curious. Jones already has his phone out and is grinning widely.

He clambers onto the washing machine, then peers over the edge. Sure enough, the drain hose is loosely hanging on the ground behind the washing machine. Easy enough fix— Shane just has to get behind the washing machine and somehow not severely hurt himself in the process.

Success.

He swings his arms over the edge, letting his head go over the edge as he reaches down. He adjusts his body, bracing one of his hands on the ground and reaching out with his other hand to grab the drain hose.

Successfully he grabs it, and lets more of his weight hang down the back of the washing machine as he reaches down to reattach the drain hose. It’s an easy enough connection

Shane pushes himself upwards. His hand grabs the wall in front of him and he uses a push from there are the final leverage he needs. He flips upright and flicks his head back to get hair out of his face.

The squelchy towels are still underneath his feet

He turns to look at the rookies, all staring at him with various levels of awe.

“That was fucking hot,” Arty says.

Every single person in the room turns to look at Arty. Holmberg raises an eyebrow and Bee mutters something under his breath.

Shane doesn’t quite laugh, but he rolls his eyes. “Thanks Levin. The drain hose is connected to your washing machine again. Next time you try to run it put towels down just in case, but it should be fine.”

Young nods. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem,” Shane says, he brushes his hair off of his face, then looks at the tiny washing machine in front of him. “Why’s your washing machine so small? You need a bigger one if you’re cleaning the clothes of— five hockey guys.”

“It was cheap.”

Shane looks at them. “You are aware that between the five of you you’re making like one and a half million dollars annually?”

They all glance at each other nervously.

“Get a bigger washing machine. Also get a top loader,” Shane grimaces at the washing machine they do have. “Front loaders are shit.”

Holmberg nods knowingly. “Uh— okay?”

“Also… you have enough money to call people if your house breaks,” Shane gestures around them. “You’re not in university.”

“Well—” Arty says.

“I’m going home,” Shane says. “I’m glad your washing machine is fixed, and please clean your oven regularly.”

“You have to clean ovens?” Young says. “How do ovens even get dirty?”

Holmburger

Hey shane does cold and flu have like ibuprofen in it?

Shane

Not Ibuprofen but most have a similar pain medication.

Lucalucaluca

so you shouldn’t have both then?

Shane

No

Lucalucaluca

I FUCKING TOLD YOU MARCEL YOU’VE DOUBLE DOSED

Marcel LaPointe(y)

Am I going to die?

Shane

No

Marcel LaPointe(y)

YIPPEE!!!

Incident Two: Taxes

“Shane, I think I’m going to owe a hundred thousand dollars in tax,” is what Jack van der Bij decided to greet him with one morning instead of… anything else. 

Shane very slowly stops eating his granola bar and blinks at Bee a few times.

“What?”

“Well uh— I was talking to Holmberg about taxes and then he brought up the jock tax and I haven’t paid any jock taxes— so I think I’m going to owe so much money and then they’re going to arrest me and they’re going to deport me and they’re going to kick me out of the country and then I’m going to have to go back to Rotterdam and never experience joy ever again.”

Shane stares at Bee for a few seconds, granola bar still hanging out of his mouth. “You— okay. Are you a Canadian taxed resident?”

“I don’t know!” Bee shrieks. “I don’t— I just work here.”

Shane looks up at the ceiling for a second. “You are going to need an accountant. If you live and work in Canada for more than one hundred and eighty days you’re a Canadian resident for tax purposes. I’m pretty sure you cross that threshold.”

“Uh— okay.”

“You’re really going to need an accountant, how were you doing your taxes when you played for the Pegasus?”

“Uh— I didn’t, apart from what the NHL already takes out for taxes.”

“You didn’t?” Shane says. He takes a very deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So— you weren’t paying jock tax, you— Bee.”

“Yes.”

“Do you also have to pay tax to The Netherlands?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t been.”

“Oh fuck—” Shane rubs his face, looking up at the ceiling as he wonders if the light could hit him again. “Bee you need a financial advisor and probably an accountant, they’re supposed to set you up with one! We have multiple.”

“We?”

“Ilya and I— because endorsements and brand deals and image rights, that doesn’t matter. The Centaurs also employ people specifically to work for the rookies— you seriously have only been paying Ontario taxes?”

“Maybe? I don’t know?”

Shane sighs. “Alright. We’re finding you an accountant, sit down.”

“Practice is about to start,” Bee says.

That makes Shane pause, he doesn’t want to miss practice, they’re running new line configurations today and Shane knows they’re going to try to play him with Bood and Shane’s been looking forward to that for weeks at this point.

He looks at Bee, hunched over himself in the locker room.

“It can wait,” Shane says, surprising himself.

Bee’s eyes go wide, he glances down the tunnel before stumbling to sit down on the bench. He looks a bit like a chastised kid, Shane feels older than he is. He should not feel like a father of seven at thirty years old.

“Okay,” Shane says. 

He thinks about what he’s actually going to say, he’s not really qualified to have this conversation. One thing he can do though is find people who are really good at their jobs, and send them Bee’s way.

Shane pulls out his phone, going to the Google Sheet he has somewhere that ranks a bunch of people to employ. He has a list of private chefs, cleaning services, lawyers, agents, just about any job a hockey player might need, Shane is pretty sure he has ones that have been vetted by either himself, his mother, or he’s heard positive things about from other players in the league.

He doesn’t need to scroll down far to the ‘A’ for accountants, and he hands his phone to Bee.

Bee looks at the spreadsheet, his mouth twisting as his eyes run up and down the names. Each name has a link to their website and any positive thing that has been said about them to Shane or on various reviewing sites.

“I— this is extensive.” Bee says.

“Hayden’s and J.J’s are apparently very good,” Shane says. “They like— have it ongoing throughout the year instead of just doing it during tax season. It means you’ll have a more realistic view of what your take home pay looks like throughout the season rather than just having to rush at the end.”

Bee nods.

Shane knows the look on Bee’s face, it’s the same slightly glazed over look Shane gets when Ilya tries to talk about cars to him. Ilya knows a lot about cars and engines and combustion and Shane just knows when a car goes forwards and what is decent to drive in the snow. Bee’s eyes have a similar glazed over look about him.

The difference is Shane has to listen to Ilya because he loves him and is interested in Ilya’s interests, he just wished he understood how cars worked— maybe he should ask Ilya more questions, he would probably enjoy explaining it actually.

“Uh— so… who exactly are Pike’s and Boiziau’s accountants?”

“Oh uh—” Shane starts scrolling through the list. “Let me find it. Hayden’s is… Mark Gleeson, J.J’s is—

Footsteps echo down the tunnel, and Shane turns to see an Ilya Rozanov shaped figure walking down the hallway. He looks rather unimpressed, his arms crossed and eyes darting between Shane and Bee.

“Oh, sorry—” Bee says. “We were just going to be out in a second—”

Ilya raises his hand, and Bee stops speaking.

“Hollander, practice has started.” Ilya says, eyes boring into Shane. “Bee, we need to shoot pucks at you.”

Neither of them respond.

Ilya’s eyes narrow. “Is everything… alright?”

“Bee doesn’t have an accountant,” Shane says instead of explaining the entire situation. Ilya’s mouth falls open into a little ‘o’ as his eyes turn a little bit worried. “We’re trying to find him an accountant.”

Ilya glances between Bee and Shane, he seems to realise the gravity of a situation that would keep Shane off the ice for even a few seconds. He nods, like he suddenly understands the entire situation in front of them.

“I am going to get Artemy. This is—” he huffs, turning on his heel to head back towards the ice.

Shane goes back to his phone, scrolling through potential options. “Oh, she’s Hayden’s accountant, apparently she’s good. J.J’s is apparently good too, I’m sure my mum has more that we could ask around about.”

Bee still has his head in his hands. “Do I need to pay taxes?”

“You drive on the road, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“You go to the hospital when you get laid out on the ice?”

“Yes.”

“Do you enjoy the idea of people in Canada getting education? Or your garbage picked up from your house?”

“Okay, yes, I get it—” Bee mutters. “Why do I have to pay taxes in—” he runs his hands through his hair. “They’re going to send me back to Rotterdam.”

“They’re not going to send you back to Rotterdam, you haven’t played an NHL season yet… you may need a lawyer.”

Bee groans, sliding down on the bench until he’s half sitting on the floor. “I didn’t learn about taxes in school.”

Shane just gives Bee a short look. “Bee, you are a grown adult. This could get you into serious trouble if you don’t get on top of it.”

Bee groans, flopping onto his side on the locker room floor. Which feels a bit bold because Shane knows how filthy the floor normally is and he has no clue the last time it was cleaned. He lets out a sigh and runs both hands down his face.

“Rotterdam doesn’t have taxes.”

“I know that’s not true. Johanna Gregors is J.J’s accountant, apparently she’s amazing.”

Ilya eventually returns to the room, dragging Arty with him. Arty is saying something in Russian and Ilya is responding back. Shane’s brain isn’t turned on enough to decipher what they’re saying, but Ilya sounds vaguely disappointed.

Arty shakes Ilya’s grip off him, scowling. His eyes land on Bee, laying on the floor with his hands over his face. He turns to Shane, mouth open. “The fuck did you do to him?” He rushes forwards, landing on his knees next to Bee. “Bee, you good?”

“Jock tax,” Bee mutters, sounding like he’s talking about being tortured rather than about a perfectly reasonable taxation system.

Arty’s entire face screws up, and he whirls around to look at Shane and Ilya. “What the fuck is a jock tax?”

“Ah,” Ilya says. “You are the same then.”

“What?”

“It’s a name for a tax you have to pay American states if you earn money there— they normally don’t enforce it too harshly unless you are a professional athlete.” Shane explains, he looks at Ilya who looks like he’s enjoying this too much. “So— do you have an accountant?”

Arty gets a similar look on his face to the one Bee had earlier, pure, unadulterated fear. “No? Do I need an accountant?”

Ilya facepalms. “Artemy.”

“I didn’t need one in New York— that was easy.”

“Yes, in case you didn’t notice you are not in New York anymore,” Ilya says, crossing his arms. “We are in Ottawa, the boring night life, the more questionable public transport, the fact that deer are just around.”

Arty frowns. “Wait, do I still have to pay taxes in America?”

Shane looks up from his phone. “Levin, we’re not actually tax experts, we specifically employ people so we don’t have to think about this.”

“Oh God I have like three dollars in my bank account right now,” Arty groans.

“How?” Ilya shrieks. “You got a big, pretty, beautiful signing bonus. Did you buy a not shit car or something?”

“What? Why would I buy a new car? Sally is fine.”

Of course Arty has named his car.

And of course he hasn’t gotten a new one, Arty is committed to the complete shitbox he drives. It’s a far from maybe the 90s, that has dents and scratches all over it, and Shane honestly doesn’t think it holds up to modern-day safety standards.

Ilya lets out a sigh so deep that Shane feels it in his soul.

He looks at these two rookies currently on the floor in front of them, freaking out about taxes. Shane doesn’t want to tell them about how money made off of media appearances and interviews and their likeness are also taxed. His mouth opens because he’s about to explain imagining rights and then he closes it again.

Shane doesn’t need to explain these things, the Centaurs have a legal team specifically to deal with these things.

“Caitlyn Peters, specialises in sport accounting.” Shane looks at the two of them, and lets out a deep sigh. “Arty— Bee— have you been putting money aside for retirement?”

Bee and Arty have the exact same horrified looks on their faces. 

He turns to look at Ilya, to corroborate how important having a retirement fund is. Instead Ilya has a similarly horrified look on his face. 

“Ilya…”

“I need to call Katya!” Ilya sprints to his stall to grab his phone.

“How did you not— Ilya.”

“It slipped my mind!” Ilya defends. “I’ll put aside— two million? How much should it be? You’ll pay for my retirement, yes?”

“Rozanov.”

“You just… have two million dollars to spare?” Arty asks, slightly breathless. “Can I have some?”

Shane looks at Ilya Rozanov, the love and light of his life. He lets out a long sigh before looking at the rookies. “Please set up a retirement account so in a decade your partners aren’t mad at you.”

“You’re mad at me?”

“I’ve been telling you to set up a retirement fund for literally five years at this point.”

“Forgot?”

Shane sighs, he tries to summon up the ability to be mad at Ilya for more than five seconds. It immediately fails when Ilya is looking at him with those gentle and concerned eyes of his.

Ilya smiles as soon as Shane’s eyes soften.

“Should we… be here?” Bee says.

“Go back to practice,” Ilya says, his eyes not breaking from Shane. “Call Caitlyn Peters after practice.”

Shane has never seen two people move as quickly as Arty and Bee sprinting out of the locker room, muttering under their breath.

He looks away from Ilya as they leave. “I’m not letting you touch me, we made rules—”

“Yes, we are being professional.” Ilya says as his eyes drag over Shane in a way that is not professional at all. He takes a step forward then stops himself.

Shane can’t help but quirk his mouth upwards. “Yes, we’re staying professional, captain.”

Ilya’s eyes darken, he opens his mouth and then frowns. “You— are the worst.”

“See you at practice, Cap.” 

“I am going to fuck you wearing my jersey, Hollander.” Ilya promises, and Shane can’t help the bright grin that comes across his own face.

Shane shrugs one shoulder. “I better see your retirement account set up tonight, Rozanov.”

Ilya exhales. “You are dirty talking me through finances, and still I am turned on. I’ll call Katya right now.”

“I might even wear the Boston one if you’re lucky.”

Ilya fumbles towards his stall to grab his phone. Shane laughs as he returns to practice, unable to stop smiling the entire practice.

according to all known laws of aviation

@Shane where it says full name do I put my full name?

Shane

What?

On what?

according to all known laws of aviation

just like professional/legal forms and stuff

Shane

Unless you want to put Bee as a preferred name.

Jack van der Bij is your name, right?

according to all known laws of aviation

yeah

Shane

Then yes please put that on any legal documents.

Have you not been doing that?

according to all known laws of aviation

uhm

Shane

Call me.

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

uh oh hollander is mad at youuuuuu

Holmburger

dad’s gonna get the belt :///

LaPointe(y)

bro wtf have you been putting on your legal documents if not your name?

Incident Three: The Slower Cooker 

“You really should be eating better,” Shane picks up one of the plates, he’s pretty sure mould is growing on it. He chucks it in the rubbish bag next to him. “Are you guys even following your diet plan?”

“Mostly,” Young says, currently halfway in a cupboard. “I mean sometimes we’ll like… have pizza instead but I’m pretty sure that’s fine.”

“Oh, and I add honey to that god-awful protein porridge recipe,” Bee adds, basically inside of the oven as he tries to clean it.

Shane isn’t… entirely sure why they didn’t decide to hire a cleaner, the same way these guys decide not to hire a private chef. That means Shane is currently spending one of his days off arm deep in filth as he cleans the Foals’ apartment before they go on tour in the West Coast.

He grimaces at bottom of the sink, they need to clean the sink, Shane doesn’t know how to clean a fucking sink. Shane doesn’t know how to be a fucking adult, no adult knows how to be an adult— he just knows not to leave his place a fucking mess.

Why did he agree to this?

Why isn’t Ilya here instead? He’s actually the captain, Shane’s apparently just the rookie wrangler. Only Bee and Arty are actually rookies, the rest are just… slightly useless young adults who decided to live together.

“Those salmon patties are good though,” Holmberg adds. “I do miss salted trail mix though. I also miss having time— these recipes are intense.”

“If you have a crockpot you can just dump stuff in there,” Shane says. 

The silence

“None of you have a crockpot?” Shane says, looking up from the sink. “How— what?”

“If it was crockpot night that meant Mum was making some bullshit,” Holmberg says. 

Jones pops his head out of one of the bathroom doors, his entire face is screwed up. “Slow cooker night was the best, the fuck are you saying? It meant it was cawl night.”

“The fuck is that?” Young says.

“It’s kinda a stew, I guess. I should make some.”

“Mum always made golden syrup dumplings in the slow cooker,” Young says with a nod. “It was a good day when that happened.”

“Why did everyone have a slow cooker growing up?” Arty asks. “We never had one.”

“Yeah ‘cause you could walk outside and get food for three dollars you city kid,” Jones says, flinging one of the dirty rags at Arty. Arty manages to catch it mid-air and pelts it back at Jones who then ducks behind the door. “Nice try you massive cunt—”

“Woah—” Holmberg says. “Don’t use that language.”

Jones just cackles as Arty frowns.

“You can borrow my crockpot,” Shane says. “Ilya and I don’t use it that much, if you really like it you can buy your own one.”

The crockpot is easy enough to drop off, Shane hands it to Young at Bood’s next barbeque and Young looks baffled. Then instead of putting it down, Young carries it the entire night and starts referring to the crockpot as his child.

And… Shane isn’t going to get in the way of whatever is going on there.

The barbeque is nice, Shane can stop being stressed for a little bit. There’s a game in a few days but right now he can just hang out. He spends most of the night with Milo and Cassie, with Ilya checking in on him every now and again.

Then… the crockpot leaves his mind.

Ilya and him don’t use it that much, and they have a private chef who specifically prepares most of their food now. While Shane and Ilya will cook sometimes… they also enjoy paying for someone else to do it.

So the crockpot leaves his mind apart from the odd moment where one of the rookies will send a photo of what they’ve made. Arty has apparently been keeping everyone alive through vegetarian chilli recipes.

About a month and a half later Shane’s crockpot is returned by a Rhys Holmberg who is about to go on a date and vehemently denies it.

“Awesome, thank you,” Shane holds the box against his chest.

Then Shane chucks the box on the counter and goes back up to figure out real estate things, because he’s trying to get a plumber sorted for one of his rental properties— maybe he should just sell the rental, this is a lot of work.

He falls back into his emails, responding to them as quickly as he can.

Shane loses track of time.

“Shane?” Ilya calls out, completely breaking Shane’s concentration.

It’s dark outside now, and the thought of that makes Shane feel a bit dizzy.

Shane looks away from his computer, trudging out into the hallway where he stops at the top of the stairs. Ilya is in the kitchen, his back facing away from Shane as he is hunched over one of their appliances.

“What?”

Ilya whips around. “I think they broke our crockpot?”

“What?” Shane immediately rushes down the stairs, standing next to Ilya.

Ilya points to the bottom of the crockpot, where there are a bunch of cracks going from the centre outwards. The crockpot looks about five seconds away from breaking if any heat is put on it. 

Shane frowns, leaning closer. “How— how do you even break it like that?”

“It is an old pot,” Ilya says. “Maybe they didn’t break it?”

And Shane… doesn’t know what to think, partially because he genuinely is unsure that the rookies would be able to break the slow cooker insert this way. He squints at how the cracks have spread along the bottom of it.

He pulls out his phone.

Shane

Did you break my crockpot?

Holmburger

Your crockpot is broken???

Arty

It wasn’t broken the last time I used it?

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

We can get you another one though

I don’t reckon we broke it though???

We used it very responsibly

Shane

No worries! Just checking.

I also wouldn’t be mad if someone did break it.

Arty

My dad does this trick on me

Spoiler alert guys: they’re always mad

Shane

Seriously, I won’t be mad.

If it was broken it was a mistake. It might’ve been faulty though.

I’m really hoping I didn’t give you a broken crockpot.

Holmburger

Shane can you take me crockpot shopping tomorrow?

I have been elected the representative

Shane

Sure.

“They don’t think they broke it,” Shane says. “I’m also going crockpot shopping with Holmberg tomorrow. I think…”

Ilya looks up from where he is closely examining the crockpot. “Why do you spend more time with the rookies than me,” he whines. “You’re always doing something for them.”

“You’re always doing stuff for them too,” Shane returns. “Everything except letting one of them live with us.”

“We have too much sex for that to be responsible and you know it,” Ilya says. “How am I supposed to fuck you in the living room if a baby Centaur can come in—”

“Alright, alright,” Shane laughs, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s middle. “I get it, I get it.”

Ilya is quiet for a moment, still looking down at the crockpot. “They’re good kids, aren’t they?”

“They are.” Shane leans his forehead against the back of Ilya’s neck. He takes a deep breath and his entire body feels at ease for once. “I wish I had more people around like them when I was their age.”

“I wish Arty stopped getting penalties for threatening people.”

“You mean you shouldn’t be endorsing Arty threatening to have sex with people’s divorced wives?”

Ilya snorts. “It is funny though. He would treat them better, I have it on good account that our rookie—”

“I don’t want to know.”

Ilya laughs again, he spins around, leaning back against the counter. His eyes trail down Shane’s body for a second, before he remembers that eye contact must be important and meets Shane’s eyes. “I think Young and Holmberg will try and sign somewhere else at the end of this season.”

Shane hums. “Maybe? They like the team here though.”

“And I liked Boston,” Ilya shrugs. “They are good players, they are too good to be on a third line.”

“I think— another team might eat them alive,” Shane laughs. “Can you imagine them with the Voyageurs? Or Guardians? Basically everyone but the Admirals would eat them alive.”

“They are very lucky,” Ilya says with a nod. “I used to… I used to have to wait to eat at dinners until the older players did. It was all very odd.”

“Me too,” Shane sways forwards, nearly in Ilya’s space, but not quite. “I love you.”

“Shane—”

“I love you, and I love what you’ve helped this team do.”

“A lot of it is Bood, the culture existed here long before I did.” Ilya says for the billionth time. He says it every time Shane tries to compliment him on what he’s managed to do with the Centaurs. 

One day Shane hopes Ilya can just take the compliment, that one day maybe Ilya can accept how truly impressive it is that he has built two teams from the ground up. One day they’ll name an award after Ilya, and maybe then they’ll start understanding it.

Shane wraps his arms around Ilya, holding him tight. “You did it too. You’re good with the rookies, you’re good with the team— everyone loves you here, Ilya. Even if we never win any cups—” he struggles over the words. “Even then, you’ve done something special here, okay?”

Ilya buries his head against Shane’s shoulder.

“And if these rookies do move, it doesn’t mean anything about you, okay? It just means— we’ll get more and more amazing hockey players and then one day all the captains in all the teams are people you’ve mentored.”

“Reckon we’ll face Haas one day?” Ilya mumbles. “I can’t promise to win a face off against him.”

“That’s okay,” Shane laughs. “I can promise to win a face off against him.”

“You’re an asshole.” Ilya mumbles.

Shane just hugs Ilya tighter, hoping some of the affection in his chest can transfer through Ilya’s skin. Maybe one day Ilya will understand a fraction of the affection that rests in Shane’s chest for him, but Shane will keep holding him tight with the hope some of the devotion will just… seep through and Ilya will get it.

“I love you,” Shane says again.

“Ya tebya lyublyu.” Ilya mumbles.

The next day Holmberg picks him up in his fancy car he’s just bought, and Shane gives the correct amount of compliments about it. He pretends not to notice how Holmberg lightens up when Shane says he likes the car.

Of that, the best part is Shane doesn’t even have to lie. It’s a good, practical car, while also being decently flashy. It’s a pretty good first car purchase for a 21-year-old who is excited about the concept of having NHL-er money, even if it is only an entry contract for now.

“I was telling Jones that having bagged milk is completely reasonable. It’s more cost efficient and environmentally friendly! Then Arty and Young got in on the conversation and just started bullying Canada. LaPointe wasn’t even around to defend me.”

Shane understands he’s supposed to laugh, or not— he’s not quite sure what this situation calls for. Turns out it calls for nothing because Holmberg keeps talking, and Holmberg might be the best conversation partner Shane has ever had, because it means he doesn’t have to talk if he doesn’t know what to say.

“It’s also so crazy to me that we only have two Canadian rookies on the team, like statistically that feels irregular, right? We have— an American, an Australian, a Dutch… person and a guy from fucking Wales.”

“NHL scouts look more for talent overseas now,” Shane says. “They used to kind of only look at the main hockey countries. Canada, America, Russia, Sweden, so on and so forth— and now they’re looking for talent everywhere.”

Holmberg hums. “Y’know, when I was a kid I used to wear a Hollander jersey?”

“Huh?”

“There’s—” Holmberg sighs. “Well I’m from Ottawa, you know that. Then there’s so many photos of me as a kid in a Hollander jersey. I thought you were like the coolest and I’d tell my parents one day I’d play with you.”

“You were right then.”

Holmberg smiles, it widens as the seconds go by. “Yeah. I mean— like holy fuck I’m playing with Shane Hollander— and perhaps more wild, I’m about to go buy slow cookers with Shane Hollander. Everyone always said you were awkward and standoffish but like… I’m not seeing any of that, man.”

“Who said that?”

“I dunno, like the media.”

Shane huffs. “Yes, trust everything the media says about me.”

“I’m just saying,” Holmberg says. “Just uh— thanks, I guess? You’re a good guy, and I’m glad you’re on my team. I dunno what other teams are like, but I don’t think there’s as much… slow cooker shopping.”

Shane can’t help the laugh that spills out of him. The noise is a bitter, grating thing, the sort of thing that Shane spent years training out of himself. “No, there’s not. Pretty sure I would’ve gotten called a—” he cuts himself off.

Holmberg’s shoulders have tightened, his jaw is clenched and… Shane figures maybe he should leave it there.

“There are some fun colours of slow cooker,” Shane says, scrolling through on his phone. “I think I want a red one.”

“Red for the Cens?” Holmberg asks with laughter.

“Obviously.”

“Can we get matching slow cookers?” 

“Sure.”

“Great,” Holmberg says as they pull into the parking lot. “Matching red slow cookers, let’s go. We’ll be in and out.”

Shane spends two hours looking at slow cookers that are mostly the same 

Holmberg has a laser focus as he reads reviews on every slow cooker they pass. Nothing is safe from Rhys fucking Holmberg as he searches through every possible review that they might have. Shane indulges him, because if someone interrupted him while he was trying to get a new hockey stick made he would probably throw things.

He’s pretty sure the slow cookers are Holmberg’s hockey stick.

“Do you want one that can go on the stove?” Shane asks, keeping his voice light as they look at the same two slow cookers again.

Holmberg’s eyes keep travelling over the slow cookers. “Does it matter? They can all go on the stove.”

Shane’s head whips around to look at Holmberg, who is standing there calmly, unaware of the equivalent of a grenade he has thrown into the middle of this conversation.

He thinks about his beautiful, amazing, slow cooker, which can not go on the stove because it is enamel and ceramic, it is not metal.

For a second Shane is about the maddest he’s ever been in years, and then he takes a deep breath to try and control the rage suddenly flowing through his body.

“Holmberg, no they can’t.”

It’s not their fault, they don’t know how slow cookers work— Shane isn’t even going to be that mad about it.

Holmberg turns to look at Shane with wide, afraid eyes. “What? Yes they can—”

“Only metal ones can go on the stove, mine was ceramic.”

“But— Jones said it was fine.”

“Jones probably grew up with a metal one, you broke my slow cooker!”

Holmberg looks, honestly, genuinely horrified. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before frustratedly sighing and running both hands through his hair. “I— I am so sorry. I thought it was metal!”

“It’s enameled ceramic,” Shane says with a deep, deep sigh. “They’re not built to handle high heat on a specific spot. So they will… crack in the middle— so that’s what you did.”

Holmberg still looks mortified. “I will buy you another one— I am so sorry.”

Shane almost feels bad for Holmberg, because he knows if Wayne Gretzky gave Shane his crockpot and Shane proceeded to break it, he would probably pass out about it. So he feels— just a little bad for Holmberg and the rookies who are all going to be horrified in a few minutes when the news leaves his kitchenware aisle.

“It’s fine,” Shane’s eyes scan over the slow cookers. He gives himself a few seconds to mourn his perfect slow cooker. It was one Rose specifically brought over from— a country that wasn’t Canada or America, Shane doesn’t remember specifically.

Holmberg looks like he’s going to melt into the floor. “I am really sorry— I thought it was metal, or I thought they could all go on the stove or— I don’t know.”

Shane bites back his annoyance, because being mad at Holmberg right now is far too easy, and none of these guys deserve it. They made an honest mistake. At least, Shane is going to tell himself that because if he thinks about it for too long he will get very mad.

“I’m glad it didn’t explode with hot liquid inside,” Shane says. “That could’ve been really bad.”

Holmberg’s face drops even more, he looks weirdly pale. “That could’ve happened?” He whispers. “Like when Arty was carrying it from the stove to the— cooker bit, it could’ve just shattered?”

“Yep.”

There is a long moment of silence between the two of them.

Holmberg clears his throat. “Um— so what slow cookers can go on the stove?”

Shane gestures at the ones with metal inserts.

“Right, right, right,” Holmberg takes a deep breath. “I’m going to get one of those.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Sorry…” Holmberg mumbles. “Are there any red metal ones?”

Shane shoots Holmberg a look.

“It’s to feed the baby Cens!” Holmberg defends. “We can’t just have a boring one—” his voice trails off as Shane gives Holmberg the harshest look he can. Holmberg looks down at the ground again.

“Should we just get two from Walmart?” Shane asks. “Then never talk about this again?”

“That sounds like such a good idea,” Holmberg agrees, then turns on his heel and basically runs out of the store.

Shane mourns his slow cooker before following after Holmberg.

Young

so like… how do lesbians have safe sex

WRONG GROUPCHAT. WRONG GROUPCHAT

LaPointe(y)

Why does this matter???

Are you a lesbian or something???

\

Stay out of lesbian’s business

Young

well like i know how straight people have safe sex

i’m assuming it’s similar for gay dudes

but what about lesbians???

like are the lesbians being safe :(((

Shane

Dental dams.

In a pinch you can cut up a condom so it unrolls into a rectangle.

They’re for any oral sex though. Not just for lesbians.

Lots of people don’t do any of those and just get regularly tested.

Please don’t get chlamydia.

Lucalucaluca

weirdly informational

thanks???

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

Should we be miffed that Shane Hollander is teaching more sex-ed than the schools we went to?

Lucalucaluca

no way, school education was perfect. the only way to have sex is heterosexual missionary, just wear a condom and you’ll be totally fine

everyone knows this

Holmburger

”just wear a condom and you’ll be fine” is i think what was said nine months before i was born…

Shane

Please go back to the other groupchat I know you have without me.

For my sake.

Incident Four: The Deer Calamity of 2021

Shane wakes up at three in the morning with his phone ringing. He groans, burying his head back into the pillow as Ilya stirs next to him.

There’s only a few people who can actually get past his do not disturb and most of them wouldn’t call Shane unless something was very seriously wrong.

“Go to sleep,” Ilya mumbles. “It can wait until tomorrow—”

Shane picks up his phone from the nightstand, it’s Luca.

He groans, bringing his phone up to his ear. “You okay Haas?”

Immediately he hears sobbing and blubbering on the other side of the phone, Shane shoots upwards in bed.

Ilya’s eyes also go wide, and he immediately scrambles out of bed, starting to already collect his clothes.

“Hey,” Shane says, very much trying to keep his voice as calm as possible as Luca cries into the phone. “What happened, I’m coming to get you—”

“We hit a deer!” Another voice, Arty, sobs in the background. There’s some rustling as the phone changes hands. “We killed a deer and now it’s just looking at us! Her eyes are still open— oh God.”

And Arty cries a little bit harder.

Ilya stops collecting his clothes, and looks at Shane teary eyed. “Was it a mama deer?” Ilya asks.

Shane holds the phone away from his face, scowling at Ilya. “I’m not asking that.”

He swings out of bed, his feet hitting the ground as he starts scrounging around in their closet for clothes that aren’t his pyjamas. He slides into some jeans that he’s pretty sure needs to be washed and his Centaurs hoodie. 

Ilya is sitting on the edge of the bed, sadly looking down at his feet.

Shane moves around Ilya’s side of the bed, before kissing him on the side of the head. He stays there for a moment, just holding Ilya against his chest. “I’ll deal with it, okay? Go back to bed, I’ll call you if there’s anything to help with.”

Ilya nods. “Come here.” 

Ilya cranes his head up and Shane kisses him, just a chaste kiss because the rookies apparently need him right now. He feels Ilya relax against him, one of his hands coming up to reach around Shane and land on the small of his back.

He pulls Shane towards him.

Shane wraps his arms around Ilya, kissing the top of his head. This seems to make Ilya relent, because he lets go of Shane and snuggles back into bed. He brings the sheets up to his chin and just watches Shane.

“Love you,” Shane says.

“I love you too,” Ilya mumbles. “Call me if there’s any problems.”

Shane nods, tucking his phone against the side of his head as he rushes out of the room.

“Alright,” Shane says. “Is everyone okay?”

“Yeah,” Luca sniffs. “Well the deer isn’t—”

And he bursts into sobs again.

Shane tries not to sigh too hard, he gives himself a moment to accept this is what his life is right now. He gets to babysit a bunch of rookies who don’t know how to be alive or functional, he gets to do this because Ilya is the captain and Ilya should be handling this, but Ilya is a softie who grew up in a city and hates roadkill.

He snatches his keys out of the bowl, puts his phone on speaker and heads out to his car.

“Okay— who’s car?” Please don’t be Arty’s, please don’t be Arty’s, please don’t be Arty’s shitbox of a car which probably doesn’t pass modern regulations.

“Mine,” Arty says sadly. “She’s dented.”

“Alright— where are you guys?”

“Uh—” Arty says. “The road up North from Cantley?”

Shane pauses opening his door just for a second, then he opens his door and slides into the car. “Why are you there?”

“Um. We went to Saint-Pierre-de-Wakefield?”

Shane makes a decision to not care about the reason why they would have gone to Saint-Pierre-de-Wakefield, and he makes another question not to ask about why they went to a secluded lake in the middle of nowhere.

Was that the trip that Holmberg and Young had been teasing the two of them about? They fucked off to a lake—

“Alright—” Shane starts the ignition. “Send me your location. I’ll be about twenty. Are either of you hurt?”

“Um.” Luca says. “Define hurt.”

“Is there blood?”

“Yes.”

“Call an ambulance!” Shane for some reason checks his blind spot as he starts reversing despite the fact that there is no one who could possibly be on the road right now. Why are Arty and Luca returning from a mysterious trip at a semi-secluded lake at three in the morning?

Why does Shane have to deal with these things?

Luca makes a strained noise. “It’s embarrassing! I’m not that hurt. I just have like… a gash on my arm.”

“Okay—” Shane is not ready to start dealing with that and the potential tetanus implications. “Arty do you have insurance on your car?”

“Uh— not for… my car. I have third-party.”

That’s one problem solved at least.

The drive to Arty and Luca is mostly quiet, it’s Shane asking a thousand logistical questions about cars and insurance and when they conclude Arty should probably get a new car anyway, it’s Shane telling Arty better cars to get than the shitbox he normally drives.

Eventually, Arty and Luca have seemingly calmed down a little bit because they’re talking about hockey again and they’re talking about Luca catching up to Shane on regular season points. Which is ridiculous and will never happen, but it’s cute that the two of them can imagine a world that would happen.

The weird thing, Shane finds, being on a team with Luca, Ilya and Troy now is that he is scoring less. He still scores a lot, and the Centaurs currently have three members in the top 20 for point scoring this season. It's just— a little bit odd to not be the primary goal scorer on the team.

Shane arrives at the scene with the car in a ditch, a dead deer still mostly on the road. It looks like one of them really tried to move the deer then got horrified and now they’re both hiding on the other side of the road.

“Hey,” Shane says.

Whatever calmness they have previously had is almost all gone now.

Arty and Luca are standing shoulder-to-shoulder, both of them with quite a shell-shocked look on their faces. Arty is the one who notices Shane first and looks up from the spot he’s been staring at on the road. Luca notices him when Arty moves and looks at Shane.

Both of them look messed up, there’s cuts and scrapes all across their face. Arty has a particularly nasty looking one which has partially scabbed over, both of them have dried tears on their faces and their eyes look wet.

“I didn’t mean to!” Arty says. “It just ran out in front of me.”

“They do that,” Shane responds softly. “I think you two need your injuries checked.”

He finally properly looks at the car. It’s very firmly in a ditch and the front of it is fairly fucked up. He can see where Luca and Arty climbed up— the windshield is cracked and damaged, and the airbags have deployed.

This car is not being saved.

This car is more messed up than the dent that Arty mentioned, and they probably need to call firefighters so the car doesn’t explode and set on fire.

Those two should be more injured.

“Wha’ why?” Luca says.

Shane raises his phone torch to Luca’s face. Luca hisses, but his pupils do adjust. Maybe not concussed then. “I think we need to check for concussions,” Shane says. “That car is… not looking great? I’ll move the deer?”

“Please,” Luca mutters.

Shane leaves both of them on the other side of the road for a second as he approaches the deer.

The deer they hit is really messed up, its torso is completely dented in and shattered. There is blood splattered both all over the car and all over the road. The deer they killed is a bloody, broken mess, Shane is pretty sure it’s rib has popped out the back.

Even Shane, who spent a noninsignificant amount of his childhood helping his dad drag deer off roads grimaces. This is a pretty nasty hit, and Shane is very glad that it’s a relatively small deer and not a moose.

He can’t even blame Luca and Arty for finding this gross, and privately he’s very glad that he made Ilya stay home.

With a huff Shane grabs the deer by two of its legs and drags it off the side of the road. Something makes a noise it’s not supposed to make as Shane basically chucks the deer in the ditch on the side of the road.

It hits the grass with a rustle, then followed by a dull thump

He apologises to the deer briefly.

Luca is leaning against Arty at this point, and at this moment Shane’s brain decides to remember that Luca is iron deficient on a good day, and he looks paler than he should. “Luca are you bleeding?”

“Wha’ no, ‘m fine.” Luca says.

Arty turns his head. “Holy fuck! Luca your head.”

“Wha’?” Luca says.

Shane immediately pulls his phone up, calling 911.

Arty sits Luca down, his eyes wide as he cradles the back of Luca’s head. He pulls his hand away and his hand is covered in blood. Arty’s eyes go even wider and he looks at Shane desperately.

The next bit is a panicked blur of Shane getting the information across to the paramedics, trying to explain where they are, because they’re on a relatively empty road with no noticeable landmarks.

Then there’s flashing lights, and then they’re checking over Arty and deciding that he’s okay. 

Arty agrees to ride in the ambulance and Shane is agreeing— everyone agrees Luca will be fine, it’s just to be sure.

And Arty gets a Paw Patrol bandaid to cover one of the cuts on his cheek, with the way that Arty reacts, Shane is pretty sure winning the Stanley Cup will be nothing in comparison. Arty grins, and then shows Luca, and Luca— who is awake but a bit out of it nods very meaningfully.

“Do you even watch Paw Patrol?” Luca mumbles.

“Yes,” Arty frowns. “I have cousins.”

“Hm.” Luca nods his head like Arty has delivered literally anything of value.

Luca’s eyes land on Shane, he looks at the paramedic next to him. “He’s my primary emergency contact does he— does he have to come instead of Arty?”

Shane, who was very much not aware of the fact he is Luca Haas’s emergency contact just stares at Luca for a few moments. He knows what that means, on a basic level. Shane is supposed to advocate for Luca in most medical situations and he knows more about Luca’s medical history than most other people. Which, Shane understands logically he is one of those people.

He also understands that anyone on the team could be Luca’s primary emergency contact. Luca’s mother for fuck’s sake could be Luca’s emergency contact.

The paramedic looks baffled, looking at Shane with wide, confused eyes. Shane rushes forwards to Luca’s side.

“Hey, I’m good. Arty can go with you.”

Luca nods. “Okay, okay. Okay.”

Then Luca gets carted away, and Shane has to stay while they figure out what to do with the car. They end up scrapping it— because it’s too old and messed up to be worth fixing.

Shane does get a hunk of dark green metal from it as a gift to Arty.

When everything is cleared and the hunk of metal that Arty used to call a car is moved. Shane manages to get back to his own car.

Shane pauses in his own car, putting both hands on the wheel as his hands reach for his phone. 

His hands find Ilya’s contact before he can stop it, the uneasiness in his chest is brewing and brewing and he wants to rip it out of his own body. His hands shake as he rests the phone in his lap, putting it on speaker as it rings.

“Ya?” Ilya says.

“Uh— Luca’s gone to hospital. He’s okay, I just— fuck.” He’s not crying, tears are brimming in his eyes and the road in front of him is beginning to blur. Shane understands he should start driving to the hospital, but he’s stuck to his seat, cradling his phone in his hands. “He cut his head open and was bleeding a bunch, and he has no iron on a good day let alone when he’s bleeding from his head for half an hour— fuck.”

“Hey,” Ilya says, his voice slipping into that gentle thing. “We’re good, you’re good. Luca is okay, Artemy is okay, we’re okay. Do you need me to come get you?”

“No, I’m— I’m fine.” Shane says. “Could you get to the hospital please. You’re better with Arty than I am and I think Arty is about to crash and then blame himself because I’m pretty sure he was driving and fuck—”

“I can do that,” there’s rustling on the other side of the line. “You handled it.”

“They fucking called me before emergency services,” Shane mutters. “I didn’t think their car would be totaled or— I didn’t think they were injured. Why would they call me before an ambulance? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Because they trust you,” Ilya responds quietly. “They do not think about what is wrong, they think that you fix things— they are in a bad situation, Shane can fix things. It is what you always do with them.”

“Should I… not do that?”

“No,” Ilya says immediately. “It is… scary to be in a new country and have to do it all for yourself. They are lucky to have you.”

“I’m Luca’s emergency contact,” Shane says. “I just don’t— I’m not qualified for this. I don’t— what if I have to make a decision one day and his mother finds out and she hates me for it? It should be you or Bood, right?”

“Shane, you are panicking. Take a deep breath.”

Shane does what he’s told.

“Most of the rookies have you as their emergency contact.”

“What?”

“You show up for them,” Ilya says. “They love you, they trust you. You are my emergency contact—”

“We are married, Ilya.”

“And still, you are responsible and a good person to have.” Ilya says. “Luca made this decision, you need to trust him. It can’t be his mama and I think you know that.”

Shane is quiet for a long moment, he runs his hands down his face as he tries to figure out what to say. What is he supposed to do with any of this? He takes a deep breath. “The rookies with Montreal didn’t trust me like this.”

“That is their loss,” Ilya says easily. “Perhaps they would have a better team now if they did. You are Shane Hollander. Who wouldn’t want to say Shane Hollander is their emergency contact?”

Shane snorts. “It’ll be a good story in ten years to tell their rookies.”

“Exactly!” There’s more rustling over the other side of the phone. “I am going to go to the hospital, I will catch the infants. You are very brave.”

“Shut up.”

“You are! Mr Cool Under Pressure—”

“Ilya.”

“Mr Emergency Contact.”

“You’re the worst,” Shane laughs.

Ilya laughs back through the phone. “I will talk soon, yes? See you at the hospital.”

“See you there.”

“I love you, bye!” and because Ilya Rozanov is the biggest asshole alive, he hangs up before Shane can say it back.

Shane puts his phone on the seat next to him, hands shaking as he grips the wheel a little bit tighter than he probably has to. Everyone is okay, Shane handled this with all the adult expertise he’s supposed to.

He should wash his hands.

Oh fuck he dragged a dead deer off the road and hasn’t washed his hands.

Shane looks down at his hands holding the wheel.

“Whatever,” Shane says to himself.

He puts a hockey podcast on and drives back through to Ottawa, he manages to focus on the complete shit that the hockey podcasters are talking about a potential trade deal between two players Shane knows are comfortable on the teams they’re on.

The hockey podcast does its job, because Shane is so annoyed about hockey that he ends up frantically texting Svetlana several messages about how bullshit these guys are at their hockey podcast job. 

By the time Shane has pushed through to the reception, he and Svetlana have plans to start their own hockey podcast.

“Hi,” Shane says to the receptionist who looks bored to be here at four in the morning, which is fair, Shane is also not super impressed to be here right now. “Uh— I’m looking for Luca Haas, I should be on his file, I’m his emergency contact?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Uh— Shane… Hollander?” She looks up from her paper.

Shane Hollander is indeed staring back at her. 

She opens and closes her mouth, before clearing her throat. “Um— okay. Uh— I’m a big fan, I’ve been supporting the Centaurs since I was a kid… that’s uh— okay he’s down the hall to your right and then up the stairs. He’s in room 203.”

“Thanks,” Shane gives her a short smile, before going the way she directed.

Arty and Ilya are sitting outside of Room 203, Ilya has his arm around Arty’s shoulder and is muttering things in Russian underneath his breath. Arty is responding more harshly, his eyebrows narrowed.

Shane hears a truly impressive amount of swear words as he walks up to the both of them. Ilya looks up and gives Shane a smile.

“Hello Mr Emergency Contact,” Ilya somehow purrs. 

Shane pretends that it doesn't immediately bring heat to his face. He struggles to speak for a second as he looks at Arty.

Arty looks at him, slightly murderously.

“You good, Levin?” 

“Fine.” Arty responds. “Luca wants to talk to you.”

Shane gives Ilya a look that he best hopes conveys ‘are you good here?’ And Ilya shoots him the ‘I’m fine, shoo’ look that Shane is increasingly familiar with as time goes on.

The hospital room is so average that Shane doesn’t even find anything worthy of making small talk about.

Luca is sitting up in the bed, looking more bored than anything. He has a needle in his arm, which Shane would guess is giving him iron, or vitamins, or something, he’s not a fucking doctor.

“How’s your iron looking?”

Luca sighs, turning his face to look at Shane. “They said I’m fine, no concussion. I just managed to cut my head— probably while I was getting out of the car.”

“Iron?”

“Was already lower. I needed a transfusion anyway and said they could just do it now.”

Shane nods, pulling the chair up and sitting down next to Luca. He doesn’t really know what to say or do in this situation.

What would Yuna tell him?

“You could’ve gotten really hurt.”

“I know,” Luca mumbles. “I don’t need the lecture, Rozanov already tried. Then Arty cried.”

“Ilya made Arty cry?”

Luca, somehow, smiles ridiculously fondly. “Yep.”

Shane isn’t really prepared to start unpacking the fond look Luca gives. Shane has read Luca’s fanfiction, he already knows too much about him. He’ll leave it that way.

“Do I need to call your mum?”

“In a little bit,” Luca says, his eyes flicker closed. “She’s gonna worry.”

“She’s your mum, that’s her job.”

Luca looks like he’s going to say something else but he just collapses against the bed and lets out a deep sigh. “I shouldn’t have uploaded a fic.” 

Shane bursts out with laughter. “You did?”

“Yeah— on the car drive back,” Luca runs both of his hands through his hair. “I was like— ‘the AO3 curse isn’t real’ and then I proceeded to fucking get in a car crash and kill a deer— I killed a deer.”

Shane snorts. “Do I need to check my emails?”

Luca shrieks. “You’re subscribed to me?”

“Yeah.”

Luca brings his blanket up, covering his face with it. “Hey— let me suffocate here actually. I’m good with dying right now— just let The Lord take me.”

Young

if you wash brown sugar does it become white sugar

Shane

No.

Young

well that’s why the cookies were munted

Holmburger

You also didn’t soften the butter

Young

OH IM SORRY ARE YOU A FUCKINT BAKING EXPERT NOW THATS MY BAD ALL BOW DOWJ TO OUR BAKING LORD RHYS FUCKING HOLMBERG. MY. BAD.

Arty

shane

question

is self raising and plain flour basically the same thing

Shane

No.

Arty

FUCK

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

is it actually your first day alive????

Incident Five: The Dumpster 

When Shane was a rookie he never relied on his captain to bail him out of anything.

He tried once when he went to a party that had gotten rowdy and Shane needed to leave but was slightly too drunk to remember what was the best way to leave.

Shane hadn’t really wanted to get drunk, but someone else on the team was telling him it would be fun and then Shane did two shots and immediately felt like he wasn’t quite in control of himself.

He stupidly decided to call his captain, and his captain had laughed at him and told Shane to ‘let loose a little’. 

Shane had spent all night batting women away from him, and ended up calling a taxi, which is what he should’ve done to start with.

And from there Shane learnt not to rely on his captain from there, then a few years later he got the captaincy himself and then he was supposed to be the one being called. He got a few rookies out of tricky spots, (including one time picking one up from a police station) but otherwise was mostly left alone. 

Most of the rookies went to other people for help and Shane was more than fine with that, he liked his sleep. Sure, it wasn’t a very captainy thing for him to think, but also he wanted to be in most of those party environments as little as possible.

Shane wakes up at three in the morning to his phone ringing.

Once again, only a few people can get past Shane’s phone perpetually being on silent, and every time it’s rung at night so far it’s been bad. Shane fumbles for his phone, not even looking at the caller ID before he brings it up to his mouth.

Ilya groans, buries his head against Shane’s neck.

“Hollzy!” Arty says excitedly into the phone. “Knew you’d pick up, you’re so fuckin’ cool man—”

“Hollzy?” Ilya mouths at him.

“Hey dude,” Shane says, not entirely sure of where to go from here. “Are you okay?”

“‘m so drunk,” Arty says happily. “Canadian drinking laws rule— couldn’t fuckin’ do this in Brooklyn.”

Ilya sits up slowly, his eyes narrowed. “Artemy—”

“ROZ!” Arty yells into the phone. “Woah you two are like— married. Hi Ilyukha. That’s right, right?”

Ilya sighs. “Yes, very good. I thought you went out with the others?”

“Oh,” Arty says, like this is the first time he’s considered this. “LaPointe took a girl home and— I dunno where Burger is. I’m chillin’.”

Shane gives Ilya another look.

Ilya looks just as baffled. “Why are you calling us, Levin? We need our sleep.”

Arty hums thoughtfully. “Uhm. There was a reason, and it was super important— oh! I’m in a dumpster and I can’t get out.”

Ilya blinks. Once. Twice. “English is your first language, yes?”

“Well, I knew Russian before English but I don’t speak that much Russian—”

“Artemy Levin, please fucking explain what you mean!” Ilya yells.

“Oh, I got into a fight with some guys.” Arty says like that elaborates literally anything. “Now I’m in a dumpster. Help.”

“Call the police?” Shane says.

Arty seems to consider that for a few moments. “But then I’d have to tell the police why I got put in a bin, then I think I’d be done for aggravated assault— bro I like… fucked those guys up. If they figure out who I am, I’m— in trouble.”

“What the fuck?” Shane says. “Did you assault someone on the street?”

“I mean— they started it.” Arty groans. “Please get me out of this dumpster.”

Somehow, in years of being on hockey teams, this could be the weirdest situation Shane has found himself in. Ilya is looking off into the middle distance like he’s also running through the various ridiculous situations the two of them have been in as captains.

Ilya blinks. “Okay,” he says. “We are allowed to take photos of you in the dumpster, though.”

Arty hums very thoughtfully. “Okay! I think ‘m gonna nap.”

“Please do not nap in the dumpster,” Shane says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Where do you last remember being?”

“Uh— outside Club 27,” Arty says. “Then I fought those guys and fucked ‘em, they’re gonna be so embarrassed. A guy with dyed hair and pronouns fucking beat their asses, they’re gonna hate that.” 

Arty then giggles.

Shane gives himself a moment to try and imagine the 6’3 enforcer defender and playmaker that Artemy Levin is, giggling. The image does not compute in his brain, and Ilya looks similarly put out by it.

Shane has seen Arty take down two people on the ice without getting hit once. He has watched Arty talk such shit that Arty has had to take penalty minutes from it, a week ago he watched Arty scream from the bench that he was going to have sex with Comeau’s ex-wife and treat her right to the point Comeau cried.

And he’s drunk and giggling and apparently in a dumpster, and somehow the giggling part is the weirdest thing happening there.

Ilya takes the phone off Shane, saying something in Russian which Shane thinks is asking about the fight, but Shane isn’t completely sure. 

“Vy pobedili?” Did you win? 

That is one Shane knows.

“Da,” Arty mumbles back. “Ya pobedil. Ya vso yeshcho znayu russkiy, dazhe kogda p'yan!”

Shane looks at Ilya, raising an eyebrow.

“He’s surprised he still knows Russian while drunk,” Ilya explains. 

Ilya goes back to speaking in Russian, while Shane starts finding clothes that are “get your rookie out of a dumpster” worthy. 

“No,” Ilya says. “Levin, don’t hang up on me—”

Then Arty hangs up.

Shane turns around, halfway through pulling his hoodie over his head.

“He hung up,” Ilya says. “He said he wanted to listen to— he’s listening to music while trying not to fall asleep in a dumpster. I think he’s listening to ‘Rain on Me’.”

Shane nods like he knows that song.

Ilya and Shane pull on clothes that aren’t pajamas incredibly quickly. Shane hands Ilya his jacket and puts his own on as they stumble down the stairs. 

Ilya grabs the keys, and within about two minutes they’re pulling out of the driveway.

They are both quiet for about the first half of the drive.

“I wouldn’t have been able to call my captain like this,” Shane says. His hands are balled into fists as they rest on his thighs, he glances at the buildings that start moving past. “I once called him when I was drunk and he didn’t do anything.”

Ilya’s hands are similarly holding onto the wheel tightly. “I know. I am the same. I think mine would have just laughed at me if I was locked in a dumpster.”

“We are laughing at him.”

“Yes, but we are going to help him. It is not mean laughter. We are going to help him and then we are going to laugh at him once we know he is safe.”

Shane leans against the window, watching the blur of buildings and lights go by. “You need to talk to the rookies about leaving people alone while they’re drunk.”

“Why do I have to do this?”

“They respect you more than me.”

Ilya shakes his head. “They do not. You are Shane Hollander, you can give the alcohol PSA.”

“Who taught you that word?”

“They tried to make me do one about safe sex in Boston.”

That makes Shane frown, and he goes back to staring out the window.

Ilya sighs, but seems to know better than to try and talk about this right now.

They eventually find the club, it’s one the rookies frequent and is one that Shane has had to pick Luca and LaPointe up from once or twice. Ilya stops the car, looking out the window as he frowns. “We need to find a dumpster.”

“Yes.”

“That is playing gay songs,” Ilya adds, and gets out of the car before Shane can ask what the fuck that actually means. 

Ilya immediately heads down one of the side alleys, without locking the car because apparently Ilya likes to make questionable decisions. Shane scrambles out of the car, snatching the keys out of Ilya’s hands and locking the car behind them as they walk.

The first dumpster they come across is a bust, the second one is just a cardboard bin that Shane can open with one hand. Shane is pretty sure that Arty would be able to open this bin no matter how drunk he was.

Scrounging around in dumpsters in the dark at a ridiculous hour in the morning isn’t Shane’s favourite thing in the entire world, especially after the fourth bin they’ve looked in to find no Artemy Levin.

As every second passes something morphing into panic starts to take over, it chokes at Shane’s throat as he realises how bad this could be. If they can’t find Arty do they call the police? Is there a way to find Arty’s phone without having to involve the police.

“At what point do we call the police?” Shane tries to keep his voice from shaking.

Ilya frowns. “I’m not sure.”

“You can survive in a dumpster, right?” Shane says. “Arty isn’t going to die, right?”

“He’ll be okay,” Ilya looks over his shoulder. “Might need new clothes.”

Shane nods.

“Stop chewing on your hoodie strings.”

Shane drops the hoodie string from his mouth.

“We walk around this block, we find Arty.”

Shane nods, ignoring the panic still sliding up his throat. It’s fine, Arty was fine after a car crash. He’s going to be fine after a fight. But how did Arty get put in a dumpster? Did he pass out during his fight and was moved? Did he get manhandled into a dumpster— will they need to take Arty to the hospital?

Ilya turns down a random side alley, and Shane follows after him.

He can lightly hear music coming from what sounds like the dumpster next to one of the restaurants that lead out onto the alley. They are not that close to the initial club at this point.

The dumpster itself isn’t that high off the ground, Ilya and Shane are taller than it. The issue is the amount of stuff that has been stacked on top of the dumpster, Shane is unsure if this is even slightly ethical.

There are boxes and rocks and all manner of items stacked on top of the dumpster, some of them look slightly out of place. Shane can imagine Arty throwing his full weight against the top of the lid and it not moving.

Shane is… kind of glad Arty is very drunk or this would be terrifying for him.

“Well. We found him.” Ilya says, also looking at the sheer amount of stuff on top of the dumpster. 

Shane sighs, looking at the stuff that has been stacked on top of the dumpster. He looks at Ilya, who also looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. 

The two of them get to work, moving things off the dumpster until Shane can use his entire body weight and swing the lid open.

Arty is asleep in the dumpster.

Ilya’s camera is out the quickest a camera has ever been out.

Arty snores peacefully, he’s curled up on a piece of cardboard, and is using a styrofoam… something as his pillow. He looks less stressed— there’s an apple core in his hair but the expression on his face has dropped from something slightly too cheery, slightly too happy into something actually at rest.

He’s not hurt beyond a nasty looking black eye, there’s no cuts anywhere. He looks remarkably okay for someone who is now sleeping in a bin.

Ilya already has his phone out, taking a photo of Arty in the bin.

Shane watches Arty breathe in and out. “He looks… kind of peaceful?”

Ilya nods. “Maybe we can carry him out without him noticing?”

“Then what? Do we take him to The Frat House?”

“Ours is closer,” Ilya says quietly. “Arty could come back to ours.”

“Arty,” Shane whispers. “Arty— wake up.”

Ilya bangs on the side of the dumpster.

Arty immediately jerks up, his eyes open and immediately land on Shane. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, before collapsing backwards against the cardboard and styrofoam situation he’s made for himself. 

“You’re an asshole,” Arty mumbles. “Fuck you.”

“Are you coming back to ours? Or do we need to drop you off at the baby house?”

“Baby house?” Arty mumbles. “What— no, LaPointe took a girl home. I don’t wanna be there when he’s having sex, it happened once and it was—”

“Please stop,” Shane says. “The less I know about your sex lives the better.”

Arty giggles again. “One day we’re gonna get details about you and the captain!”

“No you are not,” Shane says. “Can we close this dumpster or?”

Ilya offers his hand out to Arty, and helps him climb out of the dumpster. Arty is surprisingly steady for someone who is apparently as drunk as he is, and the second he gets out of the dumpster, he tries to fall over.

Shane half catches him, half intercepts Arty with his body.

Arty smiles up at him, a goofy and dazed look on his face. “You’re so fuckin’ cool, I thought you were gonna be an ass and then you were so fuckin’ cool. You’re like the best, you put up with so much shit and you’re still the best.”

“Awww,” Ilya coos. “He’s a sentimental drunk.”

“You’re so hot,” Arty complains. “Like— ‘m not saying you can do better than Rozanov ‘cause he’s also so hot but like it’s unfair for two people this hot to date each other, like that’s sick and twisted and fucked up and—”

Arty careens to the side again. Shane readjusts his grip, putting Arty’s arm around his shoulders.

“That GQ spread you did?” Arty is still talking. “That was so fucking hot.”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya says. “We are very hot.”

Arty nods sagely. “My parents used to be like you should be like Ilya Rozanov, he knows perfect Russian. Like motherfucker he grew up in Russia of course he knows perfect Russian. Then I was supposed to be a centre because Ilya Rozanov was a centre and then I was a defender and—” Arty sighs.

Shane looks around the side of Arty’s head to give Ilya a sharp look.

“Russia is not that good anyway,” Ilya says. “I am Canadian now.”

“Does that mean you’re going to play for Canada?” Arty asks. “Oh my mum is gonna hate that, please tell me you’re going to play for Canada.”

“I think so, I hope so. It has been three years since I represented Russia, so maybe?”

Arty pauses for a second. “Wait, do I have to play for America? I don’t want to play for America. I hate America.”

And Ilya throws his head back and laughs.

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

What does asbestos look like?

according to all known laws of aviation

Shouldn’t you know?

You’re from the UK

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

piss off

Shane

Kind of fluffy

It can look a lot of different ways, you need to get it tested.

Sometimes it will be under the floor, in rooftiles

Generally it looks like fibres, colourful and sort of glassy

Jonesy | CYMRU AM BYTH

Oh no.

Guys. We might have to move out.

Holmburger

WHAT??

LaPointe(y)

Excuse me??

Young

HUHH??

Arty

why is asbestos kinda gay… 🏳️‍🌈🌈

according to all known laws of aviation

Bro.

Shane

https://asbestostest.ca/

https://airqualitycanada.ca/asbestos-testing

https://asbestoslabs.ca/

https://emslcanada.ca/

LaPointe(y)

so, so, so, SO glad i do not live there

Shane

http://asbestos-testing-ottawa.ca/

https://axxonlab.com/ottawa-asbestos-testing/

https://aucoins.ca/services/asbestos-testing-ottawa/

https://www.apogeeenviro.ca/asbestos-testing

Young

I mean. This is probably fine right

We’re probably fine and testing is a lot of work

Holmburger

I reckon

Shane

https://www.2spi.com/catalog/documents/02703A-AB-Asbestos.pdf

Young

NEVERFUCKINGMIND

Incident Six: Ammonia and Bleach Do Not Mix

Shane is having a pretty good day. He woke up, had hot sex with his husband then went on a run with Anya. He got back from his run and showered, then his husband had already made breakfast for the two of them and now they were both on opposite ends of the couch on their phones.

“Would you love me if I was a worm?”

Shane looks up from his phone. “No.”

“What?” Ilya looks heartbroken, looking at Shane with wide eyes.

“You wouldn’t be you if you were a worm. Worms only have three hundred neurons, a worm wouldn’t be able to hold everything that makes you, you.”

“What if it could?”

“Then you wouldn’t be a worm,” Shane looks back down at his phone because he needs to check if his worm facts are correct. “Worms being dumb are a key part of being worms, a worm body wouldn’t be capable of holding the amount of synapses a person needs.”

“You promised in sickness and in health,” Ilya frowns.

“Still loving you if you were a worm was not in my wedding vows.” Shane says. 

“What if I get ‘turn-into-a-worm’ disease? Would you divorce me?”

Shane sighs, looking back up from his phone and at Ilya. “Really?”

Ilya pouts. “I would make you a little worm enclosure and make sure you would live the best life ever.”

“Fuck off.”

“Then I would feed you to a bird and you would become bird shit.”

“Fuck off, Rozanov.”

“Hm,” Ilya puts his phone on the coffee table next to him, before shuffling down the coach towards Shane. 

It’s such an incredibly unsexy move, but it still has Shane smiling and feeling like a giddy teenager again. Ilya crawls between Shane’s legs, grinning down at him

Shane feels it might be best to put his phone down as well. He puts his phone down on the couch next to him, and Ilya picks it up before placing it down on the coffee table next to him. He cradles the side of Shane’s face.

“Would you still like me to fuck off?”

Shane leans into Ilya’s hand. “A worm wouldn’t be able to do this.” He turns his head to the side, kissing the palm of Ilya’s hand, keeping his eye contact with Ilya.

Ilya’s breath hitches in his throat, the way it always does. Then he surges forwards and kisses Shane hard. Shane can feel his entire body losing its tension as Ilya kisses him, Ilya grabs his jaw, turning his head a certain way and kissing further into Shane’s mouth.

Shane moans into Ilya’s mouth as he tries to press their hips together.

Ilya moves away from Shane’s mouth, kissing down his neck. “Are you hard?”

“Fucking guess,” Shane grits out. He reaches around to grab Ilya’s hips to pull him closer and—

His phone rings. The song starts playing so loudly it feels like Shane’s brain has been drilled into, he lets out a frustrated sigh as he turns his head to the side. That song means it’s one of the rookies—

Bee had gotten his phone a few days ago and changed all The Foals contacts to ‘Say So’.

Ilya stops what he’s doing. “Is that Doja Cat? You know Doja Cat? We could’ve been listening to Doja Cat this entire time?”

“It’s one of the rookies,” Shane groans, he shoves Ilya away. “Get off.”

“I’m trying to!”

“Ilya, they never call me— move. The last times they called me—”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya sighs, he clambers off of Shane. Then snatches Shane’s phone off the coffee table and brings it to his ear. “Hello, this is Shane’s husband, what do you want? You are on speakerphone.”

Ilya still sounds disgustingly out of breath, his chest heaving slightly.

“Uhhh… are we interrupting something?” Holmberg says slowly.

“No,” Shane says before Ilya can even think of anything to say, he sounds slightly more put together than Ilya, but not by a lot. “What’s up?” He says, way too cheerily.

“It is ten in the morning,” Young says. “Why the fuck—”

“Whatever that question is, you do not want the answer to it,” Ilya says. “Why are you calling us?”

“Uh… so Bee and Jonesy were cleaning the bathroom, being responsible—” Young starts.

“You actually clean your bathroom?”

“Please stop doing one-liners for five seconds,” Holmberg says. “We checked with Shane if our cleaning supplies were fine to use, cleaned the bathroom and now— their eyes are all irritated and their breathing is weird.”

Ilya, very, very slowly looks at Shane.

Ilya, who is aware Shane isn’t… great at cleaning in a lot of ways. Ilya, who is aware there was a large period of his life that Shane would just pay people to do his cleaning. Ilya knows about the ten year period Shane didn’t really do most of his own laundry, or do most of the deep cleaning of his house.

And Ilya takes a deep breath. “You asked Shane about cleaning supplies?”

“Uh… yeah?” Holmberg says. “We always ask Shane about cleaning stuff.”

Ilya takes a deep breath. “Holmberg, Shane didn’t know you had to clean an oven until he was twenty-nine. I don’t think he even knows how to clean an oven—”

Which is true, but still rude.

“What were you using?” Ilya asks.

“Uh— I think bleach to clean some mold and then ammonia to—”

“Fuck!” Ilya yells. “Take them to the hospital.”

“What? Is that bad?”

“That makes poison gas! Do not use bleach with anything— take them to hospital. And call poison control.”

There is a long silence as everyone on each side of the call accepts what has happened here.

“Uh—” Holmberg says. “I’m gonna go—”

The phone beeping its hangup tone spreads through the room. 

A familiar pit has formed in Shane’s stomach, and he feels ill. He stares at a patch on the wall for a few moments, Shane understands logically this isn’t his fault. It’s not their fault, but it’s not his fault either— they should’ve Googled it, or maybe Shane should’ve Googled it. Something should have happened before they got to this point.

Ilya just stares at him for a few seconds. “Shane… that is poisonous you can not mix ammonia and bleach.”

“Why not?”

“I— I don’t know! It makes poisonous gas. People die from this! You let them make poison gas!”

Shane crosses his arms. “How was I supposed to know it would do that?”

“Because you are an— oh I don’t know, adult?”

“So are they— their asking me was going ‘can I use these cleaning supplies together’ and I went— ‘yeah maybe’ and now it’s my fault? They could’ve Googled it!”

Ilya sighs, running both of his hands down his face. He looks down at Shane’s phone like it is poison. He looks at Shane, a very flat expression on his face. “They trust you too much.”

“I am aware of this!” Shane throws his hands up in the air. “I am well aware they trust me too much, I do not love it. They’ll be fine right?”

“Yes.”

Shane folds his hands, putting them on his lap. “I really didn’t know.”

Any actual anger or annoyance that Ilya may have held melts away in an instant, he sighs and clambers back into Shane’s lap, wrapping his arms around Shane and hugging him against Ilya’s chest. “It is okay, they will be okay. They were dumb kids.”

“I should’ve known—”

“Shhhh,” Ilya says. “They will be fine, it is not their fault they assumed Shane Hollander knows everything about everything. You are very clever.” Then Ilya boops him on the nose, and breaks out into a bright smile at the expression on Shane’s face.

Shane isn’t even sure what his expression is doing, but he’s pretty sure his eye is twitching.

“Another one you shouldn’t mix with bleach is vinegar.”

“Ilya—”

“Lemon, rubbing alcohol, oven cleaner! Basically do not mix bleach with anything, it will kill you and you will die.”

“Well, that’s good advice you should give the rookies,” Shane wraps his own arms around Ilya, half collapsing them against each other, their legs tangled on the couch. “I did the alcohol PSA, you can do the cleaning supplies one.”

“And the sex one.”

“Stop.”

“Well you’re not going to give it. Then I am going to tell them to have sex with their rivals as soon as possible.”

“None of them have rivals.”

“I will tell them to get rivals, it is very hot.”

“You’re telling our rookies to be gay?”

“I think some of them are already doing that.”

“Ilya.” Shane looks at his husband, trying to keep his expression disapproving. “We’ve talked about this, you're not allowed to speculate.”

Ilya huffs, looking pouty before turning his head and leaning against Shane’s chest. “You hate fun. I am going to tell the rookies to use bleach and glass cleaner together.”

Shane thinks about all the times he has done that since moving in with Ilya. Basically every time he has to clean the bathroom that ends up happening, it’s quicker and easier to do and— oh no, that’s not good. Sometimes Shane’s head hurts a little bit after cleaning the bathroom but… that’s fine, right?

“… is that bad?”

Ilya sits up. “Shane—”

“Oh no.” Shane says.

Ilya sighs, laying back against Shane’s chest. “Here lies Shane Hollander, he died while cleaning badly, because he paid cleaners to clean his house for ten years.”

“It was not ten years.”

“It totally was!”

“No… it was more like… eight.”

Ilya manages to keep his face blank for a few moments before he bursts out laughing. Shane finds himself smiling too as he wraps his arms around Ilya and hugs him tightly, even as his shoulders shake with how much he’s laughing.

according to all known laws of aviation

i lived bitch.

lucalucaluca

there was never any risk of you dying???

according to all known laws of aviation

YOU DON’T KNOW THAT

Shane

I’m glad you and Jones are alright, Bee.

For future reference I am not the person to ask about cleaning..

My husband has said I need to tell you I hired a cleaner for about eight years until I moved in with him.

Holmburger

like okay i know you’re rich, rich but what the fuck

you HIRED A CLEANER???

Shane

They’re not that expensive.

You guys can afford one if you wanted it..

according to all known laws of aviation

why the fuck have we not been hiring a cleaner then???

we literally do not live here most of the time

Young

...

Holmburger

................................

Arty

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GUYS WE NEED A CLEANER

according to all known laws of aviation

............... sounds like a good idea.

Shane

hello this is your captain speaking first of all it is very rude you have a groupchat without me that shane is in

second of all you are all dumb idiots who need to read the labels on the back of cleaning supplies, they are there for a reason

third of all please never message shane about sex, he is awkward

lucalucaluca

he’s answered questions when needed

Shane

why have you been talking to my wonderful, beautiful, amazing husband about sex

stop that

new rule you are not allowed to go to my beautiful amazing husband about sex

Hi, sorry I got my phone back. Ilya is being silly ignore him, I am here for any questions you might have about anything.

I am not good at cleaning, so it might be safer in future if we pass those questions onto Ilya, Bood or Hayes.

Arty

Are you good at sex though?

lucalucaluca

LEVIN.

Holmburger

WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW PLEASE DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION

according to all known laws of aviation

NOT BECAUSE YOU’RE GAY THOUGH

WE’RE NOT BEING HOMOPHOBIC

Shane

Please all go back to the groupchat you have without me.

Arty

🫡🫡 🫡 🫡🫡