Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Minor or Background Relationship(s)

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Background & Cameo Characters

Additional Tags:

Minor Rose Landry/Svetlana Vetrova, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ilya Rozanov Was Never a Professional Hockey Player, Alternate Universe - Wedding Planner, Misunderstandings, but the fun romcom kind, Runaway Bride, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Crack Treated Seriously, Legal Inaccuracies, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, romcom vibes, Canon-Typical Lack of Actual Hockey, Hockey Player Shane Hollander, Getting Together, Mixed Media, Two Shot

Language:

English

Series:

Part 4 of my moon my man

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-25 Words: 7,197 Chapters: 1/2

Stop the Wedding!

Summary

“Oh,” Hollander says. Landry is still just kind of staring at the photos, face unreadable, but he must see something in her expression, because he reaches across the table to take her left hand into his—squeezes, covers it with his other hand as well. “I don’t think—well, her parents got married in front of this little pond area so—"

Hollander turns to look at her. Landry is still staring at the flower arches: the baby breath, the forget-me-nots, the heaps and heaps of roses sharing her name. Sveta throws a questioning glance Ilya’s way, her perfectly sculptured eyebrows making a valid effort to fly off her face. Ilya shrugs.

And then Rose Landry bursts into heaving sobs.

-
or: Ilya gets hired to plan Hollandrys wedding. And that would be--great! If only he didn't have to biggest crush on the groom-to-be. Only, maybe he's got some things backwards?

Chapter 1: Ilya Rozanov is NOT a homewrecker

Chapter Notes

Rated M for a couple of suggestive scenes. title from stop the wedding by ashe! :-)

disclaimer: i own nothing + make no money writing and publishing this. english is my second language + any and all mistakes are my own + i STILL hate html so please give me a shout if any of the coding breaks! no beta, we die like men. fuck ai!

please keep Creators Style enabled! :) all texts are scrollable + if u click/hover on/over the (google translate, sorry for any mistakes!!) russian you'll get the english translation!

this was meant to be a oneshot but it once again got away from me.

The first thing Ilya thinks when he meets her, is that paparazzi shots do not do Rose Landry justice. Not even the high-definition, professional pictures that get circulated throughout the media during the award-season come close. She’s objectively one of the most stunning women Ilya’s ever seen—and Ilya’s seen a lot of stunning women.

The second thing Ilya thinks when he meets her is that he wasn’t aware she was still dating Shane Hollander.

He’s not actively following celebrity gossip—most of what he does know, he knows because of Sveta and Cliff—but he’d just assumed the two of them broke up, considering he hasn’t seen photos or even heard about them since the initial story broke—what, three years ago? Four years ago?

It makes sense though, he thinks. Hollander seems like a very private person. He’s one of the few people Ilya actively follows on social media beyond his actual, real social circle and his entire feed is just sponsored content or promotional work for the Montreal Metros. Ilya’s had a bit of a phase where he watched every single presser, read every interview that just so much as mentioned Hollanders name, and yet he doesn’t actually know anything about the man beyond his opinion on Boston’s current strategy on the ice.

He’s also—maybe—a little bit starstruck.

It’s not like this is their first celebrity wedding—it’s not even their first MHL wedding, because, again Cliff—but the first one that’s this high-profile. When Sveta had told him—still on the phone, silently freaking out and gesturing wildly until Ilya had come up to her and looked at the name she’d just put down in their shared google calendar—well—Ilya had thought someone was playing a prank on them. Because—Rose fucking Landry? Picking them—out of all the wedding planner in the country—all the wedding planner in LA? The hundreds upon hundreds just in the Hollywood area, salivating over the prospect of planning the celebrity wedding of the year? Decade, maybe?

But, apparently, Landrys parents had gotten married in the New England Botanical Garden in Worcester, something that she, Landry, was eager to repeat, and also because, apparently their reputation for getting shit done last minute had grown beyond just the Greater Boston Area.

“It’s a bit of a mess,” Rose Landry says. Next to her, Hollander positively beams. “It was a very….spontaneous discussion.”

Privately, Ilya notes shotgun wedding in the back of his mind, but doesn’t react outwardly. He’d always thought Hollander was…different from the other (professional) hockey players Ilya’s gotten to know since he’s come to America. But also what does he know?

“Are you looking for legal counsel as well?” Sveta asks, ever the professional. “My partner, Mr. Rozanov, has a background in law and while he won’t be able to set anything up for you specifically, he does have connections if you need help with prenuptial agreements or the like—“

Leave it to Sveta to bring up divorce while planning a wedding, Ilya thinks. Especially to Rose fucking Landry and Shane fucking Hollander who probably have an army of lawyers at their beck and call. Hollander probably had a prenup drafted before he even went out and got the ring. They probably signed, before Landry even officially said yes. Weirdly enough, Ilya’s sort of morbidly curious how the prenup is set up. He’d love to read it.

Instead of voicing any of this, though, he does his best to smile charmingly. Landry seems happy to move along and cheerfully, if a bit forcefully, declines Sveta’s offer, while Hollander turns his gaze onto Ilya, almost curiously. It makes him want to squirm in his stupidly expensive suit, makes him feel trapped and studied like he’s a particularly interesting bug.

His knee jerk reaction is to deflect, to start flirting. But this is a business meeting, and Ilya is here to plan this mans fucking wedding so—

“I’ve looked into some things myself,” Landry says and pulls out a small cardboard box full of loose sheets of paper—newspaper clippings and, Ilya notes, pictures of her parents wedding day. Listings of vendors in the area.  A printed screenshot from an awful html website (blue background and large yellow font) for a local bakery.

Next to him, Sveta twitches.

“Do you have a theme, you would like to follow?” Ilya asks, trying to get back on track. “Because this seems a bit…”

“Random?” Landry offers. She seems—almost hysterical, frantic now that she’s gotten the opportunity to really talk business. Considering she wants to be married next month, he supposes that’s fair, actually. “Yes, well, I thought I could handle it on my own but Shaney here pointed out that maybe I don’t, actually…”

 “Florals.” Hollander offers gently. “Because of the garden, yes?”

“…Yes!” She says. “Theme. Florals. Exactly.”

Ilya leans back in his seat, pen spinning in this hand. Florals for a botanical garden is not, like revolutionary but they’ve done stuff like it before—not at that specific venue or anything, but at a multitude of other gardens and greenhouses. He has a list of florists somewhere, anyways. He puts it down in his notebook, right below the date they’ve set for the wedding.

“We’re also concerned about privacy.” Hollander says. “A wedding in an open, semi-public space will be easy to….observe. From the outside as well as with drones. We’d like to make sure the entire event goes off with as little interference and as unnoticed as possible.”

“I’m sure you already have your own personal security, but we also have a list of very efficient and trustworthy private security that can and will keep any unwanted attendees away.” Sveta says.

“There’s not much we can do about drones. Shooting or attacking drones, is illegal per federal law.” Ilya adds. “Massachusetts is a two-party-consent state though, so audio recording without explicit consent are illegal, and special permits are needed to fly around municipal parks and the like.”

“But with paparazzi—well.” He shrugs. “I’ve found they don’t quite care for privacy laws. Our best bet would be closing off as much space as possible and to keep any information as tightly wrapped up as possible—how do you feel about flower arches? Or, well—flower-hallways? Tent of flowers? How you say?”

As always, Sveta reads his mind before he can embarrass himself any further and pulls out photos of some of the hanging flower arrangements they’ve organized over the years including, but not limited to:

• an entire ceiling worth of wisteria in an awful little wedding hall with poor air circulation just outside Boston—beautiful, sure but the smell good god
• a rose chandelier Ilya had arranged himself after their florist got hit—or well, kicked—by one of the horses they’d organized to pull the wedding carriage and landed themselves in the hospital with a bad concussion and a broken collarbone
• a rectangle flower arch over an outdoor dinner table filled with the ugliest flowers Ilya had ever seen and that had been built just a little too low—he’d listened to complaints about pollen and petals in soup bowls and wine glasses all night

“We could adapt any of this, to function in a garden. Either with fabric—which, depending on the weather could also help keep everything dry—or if you’d like something more minimalistic, with something as simple as a couple of wooden rods and rope.” Sveta says. “Depending on the style, it would probably be enough to keep prying eyes away, at least from above. Are you planning on having the reception at the garden as well, or only the ceremony?”

“Also, what part of the garden are you looking at?” Ilya asks. “200 acers of land is a lot, and if you’re going for the more woodsy parts of the garden then—”

“Oh,” Hollander says. Landry is still just kind of staring at the photos, face unreadable, but he must see something in her expression, because he reaches across the table to take her left hand into his—squeezes, covers it with his other hand as well. “I don’t think—well, her parents got married in front of this little pond area so—"

Hollander turns to look at her. Landry is still staring at the flower arches: the baby breath, the forget-me-nots, the heaps and heaps of roses sharing her name. Sveta throws a questioning glance Ilya’s way, her perfectly sculptured eyebrows making a valid effort to fly off her face. Ilya shrugs.

And then Rose Landry bursts into heaving sobs.

One of the things Ilya didn’t expect about this whole wedding planning business, is the waiting of it all.

A lot of things can be handled over the phone, sure—but when it comes down to it, Ilya spends a shit ton of time in his car and running around the city. And, by extension, a shit ton of time simply waiting—on calls and decisions and deliveries.

It’s probably because of that—the running around, the perpetual stress, the standing around waiting—that he’s never quite managed to kick his smoking habit. It’s not for a lack of trying either: he has his dumb nicotine gums and a can of salted peanuts in his bag and he’ll manage to stop for months at a time, only to slip back whenever his cortisol levels reach a certain point—or when boredom strikes.

Keeping a pack of his favourite cigarettes—Marlboro Red, obviously, though back in Moscow he smoked Java and he sometimes misses the taste—in his bag for emergencies probably also doesn’t help.

But they do come in handy in a pinch—like now, when a multimillionaire actress is sobbing her eyes out in their office and Sveta tells him to get lost while she tries to get her to calm down.

The smoke burns in his lungs and it’s like he can feel the anxiety leave his body with every exhale.

If the view was any better, it’d almost feel like a reward. Like this, he’s mostly staring at dumpsters and wet concrete—but it’s better than awkwardly standing around, offering tissues while Rose Landry is having a mental breakdown.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke here.”

Ilya doesn’t flinch, but it’s a near thing.

For a man of his size, Shane Hollander is surprisingly quiet on his feet. He’s got his nice wool coat on, and the fucking Rebooks he wears seemingly everywhere if all the paparazzi shots of him are to be believed, and he’s smiling despite the little furrow between his brows whenever his eyes flicker to the cigarette in Ilya’s hand.

Ilya, in turn, puts the cigarette into his other hand and extends his arm as far as he can reach, so the smoke doesn’t reach the literal professional athlete (with potentially insured lungs and or legs?) next to him, and tries to smile his most charming smile.

“Ah, because of sign?” he points at the giant crossed out cigarette on the wall behind him. “Is just suggestion, I promise.”

“Aha.” Hollander says, but he’s smiling so it doesn’t seem like he’s too mad. “I suppose as a lawyer you would know your stuff.”

Ilya takes one last big inhale, before putting the cigarette out against his heel and shoving the butt into his coat pocket—he’s not 15 anymore, stealing them from his older brother or bumming them from passersby, but he’ll never manage to waste perfectly good tobacco by throwing half a cigarette away. He turns away as he exhales, then leans back against the wall to properly watch Hollander.

“Not a lawyer,” he clarifies. Sveta had managed to swing the visa just before his formal graduation but without any of the additional training or the state exams…well, it’d be useless here, anyways. “Shouldn’t you be with—”

Hollander blushes. Ilya watches, enraptured, as his freckled (freckled!) cheeks slowly turn red, and he can’t help but wonder just how far down that blush reaches. “Rosie said she needed a bit of a breather, uh, without me so…” He shrugs. “I thought I would go and find you.”

“You did?” Ilya asks, and feels the smirk creeping up his face. And he doesn’t mean to flirt, especially not with a straight (?) man about to marry the love of his life (??), but also—he’s face to face with his celebrity crush and he flirts like he breathes anyways. “Do I make you curious, Mister Hollander?”

And maybe he expects Hollander to scowl, or shift uncomfortably or—considering he has this perfect golden-boy persona—to laugh it off good-naturedly. He seems close to Hunter, so Ilya doubts he’s homophobic but—anyways, even men that aren’t homophobic sometimes get uncomfortable when they’re being flirted with and also he is about to get married—

Whatever Ilya expected to happen, it isn’t Hollander checking him out. It certainly isn’t Hollander casually leaning against the wall and looking him up and down slowly, like he’s picturing what Ilya might look like under his coat, under his suit.

“Maybe.” He says and looks up at Ilya through his lashes which—

What the fuck.

Ilya knows that move. Ilya has perfected that move. Ilya’s gotten a shit-ton of free drinks and inappropriate dingy-bar-bathroom make out sessions with that move alone.

“Actually, I meant to ask you—” Shane Hollander says, and shoves his hands into his coat pockets. He’s interrupted, though, by the backdoor swinging open—the spell breaks—and whatever sultry look Ilya’s imagined on his face, vanishes immediately.

“Ilyusha?” Sveta calls, her head ducking around the door. She startles a bit, seeing Hollander, but quickly schools her expression. “Ilyusha—oh, Mister Hollander. We uh—we’re ready to continue, if you are.“

“Ah, yes.” Ilya says, and straightens up. “You were saying, Mister Hollander?”

“Nothing,” Hollander says, and smiles politely. “Nothing at all.”

Shane Hollander might not be the first MHL player Ilya has saved in his phone, but probably the only one that is both private enough and famous enough to potentially kick his ass, should his number leak. It’s something Ilya has had pretty vivid nightmares about, since Hollander texted him for the first time.

So, Ilya does the smart, sensible thing and saves Hollanders number under a fake name, the same way he used to do back when Sasha was still someone he occasionally met up with and not someone he’s all but banished from his life.

Hence: Jane.

Just in case he leaves his phone somewhere on the T again. Or in a bar. Or in a bar bathroom. Or in the park, after the bar.

Having the number at all, feels like sitting on a bomb waiting to go off.

Because—Ilya knows how he gets around pretty men (or pretty women, for that matter), knows he flirts just for the sake of it—just to see someone crack a smile, just because it’s something he can do. He used to ask older women for their ID’s at his old bar job all the time, just to see them blush—turns on the charm with brides and their grooms, does his best to entertain family members and guests.

It’s simply a part of him—and he’s already fucking blown it with Hollander who, upon closer inspection probably hadn’t actually flirted with him.

Because he’s seen how Hollander is with his fiancée, has seen how clearly he adores her and supports her through, what seems to be a very difficult time—something about a sick family member according to Sveta who’d been suspiciously tight-lipped about the details which lame, she’s his go-to gossip after all—and like. Obviously he hadn’t flirted. Or if he had, it had only been jokingly—an instinctive, witty response to Ilya putting his fucking foot in his mouth, once again.

Something that’s only hopelessly endeared Ilya more to him. Nobody ever tells you what to do when you meet your fucking celebrity crush in real life and they give you their fucking number after a Moment™ in a dogy back alley that wasn’t a fucking Moment™ at all.

Sveta isn’t helpful either—though she seems unusually invested in this wedding too. Like, beyond the insane pay check they’re going to get if they manage to pull this off.  She almost seems mad about the entire thing, which is…strange, sort of, considering she seems to adore both Hollander (likely thing, Sveta’s nuts about hockey) and Landry (even more likely, considering Landry is drop-dead gorgeous as mentioned and Sveta is just as useless around pretty people as Ilya is) and treats them both like royalty.

So instead, Ilya tries to put his head down and do his job. Officially, Sveta hired him to handle the books and any of the nasty legal matters, but unofficially Ilya handles pretty much everything while Sveta focuses on Grad School—and so he makes all the arrangements, calls all of their usual bakeries and gets them to send over a shit-ton of treats in small, bite-sized arrangements so the happy couple can eat their way through everything without dying of hyperglycaemic shock.

During their first meeting—after Landry had calmed down enough to answer some of their questions regarding theme and venue—Ilya had learned that, despite the multi-millions attached to his clients, they were going to go for a fairly simplistic wedding. Nothing too high-strung, no edible flowers on a ten-layer-cake (“I think we’ve really got enough flowers at this event,” Landry had joked, when Ilya had brought it up), no oysters or caviar or escargots.

In fact, if it weren’t for the decorations and the guest list and the NDA’s and the extra security Ilya’s going to have to arrange and the, essentially, unlimited budget, he’d almost think he’d be organising any old wedding.  

Still, he’s…not nervous, necessarily, but a little on edge as the whole cake-tasting-meeting creeps closer and closer. On edge enough that he’s rearranged the cake boxes about a dozen times—vacuumed and mopped the floors—and brought out the nice table cloth Sveta’s mom gifted him when he first moved to Boston.

Sveta, ever put together and with her feet kicked up on their loveseat, watches him in thinly veiled amusement.

“They aren’t going to check our bookshelves for dust, Ilyusha.” She says. “You know they are coming to eat cake, not to judge you on your homemaking skills?”

He glares, mostly playfully, at her. “You weren’t the one that had to heave this table into this office.”  

Then,

“I just want this to be…”

“I know,” Sveta coos. “You get so cute about weddings. Always wanting everything to go perfectly. “Мой маленький романтикMy little romantic.

Then, she grows serious. More so, than Ilya has seen her be lately.

“Хотя, может, эта свадьба и не состоится.“ Maybe this wedding won't happen though.

Ilya almost drops the cake box he’d been fiddling with. “что?” What?

Before she can elaborate though, the doorbell rings. Sveta throws him a meaningful look—a look he’s not quite getting actually, which is strange because he knows Sveta better than he knows himself at this point and he’s always picking up what she’s putting down—and gracefully unfolds herself from the couch, patting down her pantsuit and making her way over to their door.

He spends the last couple of minutes before the happy couple walk through the door, smoothing out the table cloth again and throwing one last glance around the office: the curtains are drawn to keep prying eyes out, and the harsh-overhead lights are off. Instead they’ve lit every one of their smaller lamps, putting the entire room in soft warm orange. Sveta brought her mothers good china and Ilya’s set up the expensive espresso machine Marley got him for his birthday last year in the corner because neither Hollander nor Landry seem like tea people.

The space seems inviting, but does Ilya only think that because its, for all intends and purposes, his space?

“It’s so good to see you again,” Sveta says from the hallway, and Ilya pulls himself together and takes a step back from the table lest he starts brushing non-existent dust away again, and plasters on his best smile.

And then Rose Landry steps through the door, followed closely by Shane Hollander—holding her bag and coat and what looks like a huge gift bag. Ilya’s stomach twists.

“Hello,” he greets and makes sure to look at Landry while he says it—forces Hollander to the very back of his mind, even though the urge to look at him is kind of all-encompassing. “Is nice to see you again.”

Landry beams at him. “Hi! Yeah, I mean—god, I was a mess last time, I already apologized to Svetlana over the phone yesterday, but like—I’m so sorry, for the uh scene I caused. It’s—I mean it’s been so stressful, but thank god for Shaney and—for you two, obviously! Svetlana’s sent me a bunch of information over already and it’s been so, just, like, helpful! Like it’s taken a load off my shoulders! I really cannot thank you two enough for all you’ve already done and—I mean wow look at this, isn’t this nice, Shane? Gosh, what a selection! I cannot imagine what a pain it must’ve been to organize all of this just—wow.”

“Let me get that for you,” Sveta says sweetly and appears next to Hollander—who gratefully hands over Landrys bag and coat but keeps holding onto the giftbag.

“It’s amazing,” Hollander agrees softly and leans in closer to Landry. He points at the one life-sized cake Ilya got, placed right in the middle of the table. “Is that pistachio cake? Isn’t that your favourite?”

Landry turns her attention back on Ilya, visibly delighted. “It is! How did you know?”

“Ah, a magician never reveals his tricks,” Ilya says and winks. Mostly because saying I obsessively went through multiple of your fan-blogs and now I know that you enjoy pistachio cake and that your childhood dog was called Ser Houndalot and that one of your brothers works as a physio for the Detroit hockey team and is married to a very mediocre man probably wouldn’t go over very well and also, just to be annoying. “It’s not something most of our vendors offer, but I’ve tried to get every one of them to at least include one attempt just in case. But there’s a bunch of other flavours too, obviously.”

From everything he found online, Hollander isn’t the sweet type. He apparently follows a pretty gnarly diet if his teammate and friend Hayden Pike is to be believed. Ilya is pretty sure there’s no.such thing as a macrobiotic cake, but he still feels a bit shitty that there’s, essentially, nothing in this room Hollander can eat without fucking up his macros for the day. Week. Month, probably. And sure, the Metros are out of the cup after a string of very unfortunate injuries, but still.

If he’s bothered though, he doesn’t show it. He’s also still holding the fucking gift bag.

“Seriously,” he says, and laughs a little. “Marlow wasn’t kidding, when he said you guys were the best of the best.”

“Oh?” Sveta asks. “Cliff Marlow? And he’s said something nice about us? Are you sure?”

“Oh totally,” Hollander says and smiles with all his pretty white teeth. “We’re not super close, what with the whole Montreal-Boston rivalry, but there’s no actual bad blood between us, and he was kind of gushing about you guys at All-Stars a couple of years ago and recommended you to anyone who would listen.”

“Ah, see this is excellent news,” Ilya says and turns to Sveta. “We will bring this up, the next time he tries to pretend he does not like us.”

“You guys are close?” Landry asks. “That’s so sweet.”

They are close enough that Marley has cried about Ilya being at his wedding multiple times while drunk—Marie always talks about fate and man the universe knew you had to be there brother even if you were working. They’re close enough that Cliff Marlow—embarrassingly enough—is probably Ilya’s best friend. Besides Sveta, though she’s something completely out of the realm of friendship at this point. Another part of his very being, probably.

“Ah, maybe we’ll be close after this too, right Shaney?” Rose says and nudges him playfully with her elbow, when Ilya simply nods. “Speaking of, we got you a little something as thank you for being so accommodating and all of your hard-work.”

Hollander finally hands over the giftbag. It’s filled with expensive looking creams and scented candles and a nice bottle of whiskey. He blushes, and Ilya finds himself mesmerized once again by the sight.

“We weren’t sure what’d be appropriate as a thank you gift.” He says. “And a fruit basket seemed very impersonal so, uh…”

“Oh that’s very kind,” Sveta says. “But wholly unnecessary. We’re just doing our job, you know?”

They both smile kind of awkwardly, but refuse to take the bag back. And Sveta, who’s intimately aware of a battle long lost from years of wrangling Ilya into doing anything, moves along gracefully.

Ilya makes coffee, and Hollander pulls out Landrys seat for her before sitting down himself and together they start making their way through the treats. Hollander grimaces a little going into it—stares at the first mini cake he picks out of the lineup like it’s personally offended him—but pushes through any reservation he has when Landry turns to look at him with a big, bright smile.

About five minutes into the whole thing, Ilya regrets being around for this. There’s a lot of moaning involved for a Tuesday afternoon and he really didn’t need to know what Shane Hollander looks like with his eyes squeezed shut in pleasure. When Hollander meets his eye, right after, Ilya resolves to stare somewhere over his left shoulder instead.

“Веди себя прилично — у тебя слюни текут.“ Behave yourself, you’re drooling. Sveta whispers to him and he can feel the blood rushing into his cheeks. “Боже, ну и влип же ты.” Geez, you’ve got it bad.

“It’s very rude to speak in a language not everyone in the room understands, Svetlana Sergeevna.” He whispers back.

She only rolls her eyes.

“Он очень красивый.” He is very pretty. She admits, quietly. Sighs. “Они были очень красивой парой.” They made a very pretty couple.

He’s about to quip something back—like don’t you mean make or maybe just to stick out his tongue at her—when he’s interrupted by Landry.

“Come on, you two!” she says, in between bites of something very pink and powdery. “We cannot possibly finish all of this, help us out please.”

Let the record show, that Ilya does his very best to keep everything professional. Classy.

He’s kind of dry over texts. He makes sure not to stare at the groom-to-be too much. He tunes out Sveta every time he brings them up in private, despite usually enjoying gossiping with her.

He can be so chill about his rapidly growing crush, and if being cold and abrasive is what he needs to do to keep himself from flirting and making sure this wedding is going off without a hitch, so be it.

Because, devastatingly, Rose Landry is actually very, very sweet. And the two of them are really good together. It’s clear they love one another, and while Ilya is in the business of torturing himself on occasion, he also has enough self-preservation to know that if he lets his crush get anymore severe, he’ll regret it.

The problem, though, is that Hollander seemingly hasn’t gotten the memo. At first he only texts about the wedding: arranges everything he can so Landry doesn’t have to. Meetings with the florist, follows up to any of their in person meetings. He’s honestly more involved with the wedding than she is, though every decision he makes is about what she likes best, like he’s just another wedding planner and his own preference is unimportant.

Landry already has a gown – “Believe me, that was the easy part,” she tells them, which is fair, probably, considering she’s an actress getting dressed in couture for every red carpet for free – but Hollander still needs a new suit. And since he’s not in Montreal, doesn’t know anyone in the city and is nervous about leaving his wife-to-be alone, he texts Ilya for help.

“I’m kind of shit at picking clothes,” he admits bashfully. “I’m like the least fashionable person ever.”

But just because he’s bad at picking out clothes that suit him, doesn’t mean he isn’t absolutely gorgeous. Watching him putting on suit after suit—finally landing on a sharp, light green suit complete with a Champaigne-colored tie and a matching waistcoat—is a special kind of torture. Like—almost painful.

Because every pair of trousers the store attendant puts him in hug his absolutely massive thighs like a second skin, and every shirt he puts on looks like it’s hanging on by a thread and well. Ilya is a simple, simple man and keeps his arms crossed in front of his chest so he can subtly pinch his biceps hard enough to keep himself focused on the task at hand. Mainly not drooling over a celebrity in public.

“What do you think?” Hollander asks and gives him a little twirl, shy smile on his face.

“Very good,” Ilya replies instantly. “Very handsome.”

“You think so?” He asks and—there’s that stare again. Big, brown Bambi-eyes staring into Ilya’s very soul right through his dark eyelashes. He’s also blushing, just a bit—which makes his freckles stand out even more. He fiddles with the tie a little. “I uh—I don’t typically go for something so—”

He gestures to the suit jacket.

“Loud?” Ilya offers. It’s really not—just a light muted green that, actually, matches the pistachio cake pretty well now that he’s thinking about it which—does that imply he’s Landry’s favourite cake or?—but also Ilya has a high threshold for actual loud clothing, considering he’s unironically worn leopard-print silk shirts before. Only, Hollander seems to live in shades of white and grey and black, so this must be a huge jump for him and Ilya prides himself on being a bit of an empath or whatever.

Hollander nods.

“Yeah, I figured.” Ilya tells him. “From what the media shows it looks like you live in athleisure. Also very handsome, but mostly neutrals. But it suits you, I promise.”

“The media?” Hollander asks, and suddenly there’s a little smirk on his face. “Have you been paying attention to me, Mister Rozanov?”   

And Ilya scoffs a little, raises one eyebrow. “No of course not, Mister 67 goals his rookie season. You are practically unheard of—who were you again?”

The blush intensifies, but the smirk stays and—well, Hollander is suddenly really leaning into Ilya’s space. “Careful, or I’ll assume you’re a fan.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Oh but I’m sure Cliff Marlow would be so disappointed to hear this.” He grins, all smug the little bastard. Ilya finds him so endearing. “I thought as a Boston citizen you’d be burning effigies of me before every game.”

“You seem more humble in interview.” Ilya tells him and leans right back into Hollanders space before he can stop himself. “But maybe I am Hollander fan first, Boston fan second hm?”

Hollander bites his lip and smiles—a real smile, not the awkward half-smile thing he does during interviews to be polite, but a genuine one: nose scrunched up like a little cat, the barely even there crowfeet next to his eyes on full display. Stupidly, Ilya thinks he’s never been prettier than then.  

After that, it’s like all bets are off and suddenly Jane is texting him all the time. Firstly just during hockey games, stuff like—Are you seeing this? Why the fuck is Kent still allowed on the ice after a play like that?—and Ilya delights in getting to witness the player with the highest hockey-IQ take apart players and games like he’s Ilya’s own private commentator. He’s equally delighted to find that Shane Hollander is kind of a bitch actually, and that he joins in any of the chirps Ilya sends him about any of the players.

It’s kind of insane, because it took him ages to watch hockey again, much less openly speak to anyone about it. Sveta had always talked hockey at him, kept him up-to-date with all the MHL games, but for the first year Ilya spent in Boston hockey was too much of a sore spot for him to enjoy.

Then, eventually, he’d found the love he used to have for the sport again even if he could only watch from the sidelines—befriending Marley and then, eventually, the rest of the cool Boston roster had helped. But mostly, he’d started watching hockey again when he’d seen footage of—by then captain Shane Hollander—on the ice by complete chance.

Talking to Shane Hollander—hearing his opinions—having him agree with his own—

Well.

And then, it evolves.  

Suddenly, they’re texting all the damn time. Little anecdotes throughout the day—Hollander tells him about his godchildren, Hayden Pikes’ kids, who he’s only seeing over facetime at the moment because of all the wedding prep, and the antics they get up to (mainly, about the eldest who’d apparently gotten her hands on some small arts-and-crafts scissors and decided to give her younger brother a new hair cut) and his continued quest to find appropriate souvenirs for his parents that don’t scream Boston while still being touristy enough to qualify—and Ilya texts him about the loud arguments his next-door neighbours keep having over the dishwasher and the old lady that catcalls him every morning on his run in the park and sends him pictures of all the dogs he sees on a day-to-day-basis.

It’d be nice, if Ilya wasn’t also running at real risk of turning his stupid hero-worship-celebrity-crush (annoying but ultimately something he can be so cool and calm and chill about) into an actual-I-kind-of-want-to-have-your-babies-crush (ultimately something he cannot be cool and calm and chill about).

All the while, the wedding hangs over Ilya’s head like a giant red countdown.

So, he tries to take a step back. Texts Landry about the florist instead of Hollander. Leaves Hollanders cute little Good Morning! ☀️☀️ texts on read. Schedules meetings on days he knows Hollander is busy and pretends to forget about it when he asks.

All the while, Hollander is just so accommodating and friendly, that Ilya genuinely feels like a horrible person for doing it.

But then he looks at Landry—Rose—and the guilt comes back in full swing. Because it’s decidedly not like it was back with Cliff and Marie—partially because Ilya was in contact with both of them for well over a year and their friendship gradually developed over time and also because Ilya’s never actually been attracted to either of them. And maybe he’s not actually done anything wrong, but he knows he will eventually.

Instead of wallowing, he goes out whenever he finds the time between work and keeping his apartment somewhat in order. It’s not great—Sveta is busy with Landry, seemingly at all times of the day and downright refuses to go out with him lest she misses a call—and shockingly enough Ilya doesn’t actually have a lot of friends besides her and Marlow who’s currently trying to drag the Raiders through the playoffs. Marie is pregnant—like, about to give birth pregnant and doesn’t tolerate his antics on a good day much less now that she’s lobbing around an 8 pound baby in her stomach and cannot see her feet while standing—and so Ilya’s sad and lonely in some dark, dingy gay club listening to 2010’s nostalgia. He’s definitely one of the oldest people here, actually. Probably how Hunter feels on the ice.

He’s downing yet another vodka shot, when his phone buzzes in his pocket.

It’s Hollander—of course it’s Hollander.

Briefly, he wonders what Shane would do if Ilya sent him his location. Or maybe a slutty selfie—though he’s not feeling very sexy at the moment: mostly sweaty and tired from he alcohol. Still—if he’d angle his phone just right, get in the flush of his cheeks, maybe a hint of his collarbones, the chain of his mothers cross heavy between his pecs….

Maybe he’d freak out. Finally stop paying Ilya any attention, focus on his pretty fiancée and only go to Sveta for any of the wedding planning stuff.

Hollander doesn’t reply after that, and really its about time he hightails it out of this club anyways, so he sighs and pockets his phone again. The bartender is on the other side of the bar, talking to patrons so Ilya resolves to waiting for him to notice him so he can close his tab and leave.

Some sort of remix is playing in the background—some electro pop beat he almost recognizes with some pretty sad sounding woman layered on top. A couple of people on the dance floor sing along, and Ilya nods along while trying to tune the lyrics out: he’s not trying to be sad tonight, that’s the whole reason why he even came out anyways.

The bartender finally notices him and nods his way, so Ilya pulls out his phone again to order an uber—Christa is 25 minutes away—when another text comes in.

And god its such a bad idea.

He’s already a bit tipsy. He’s in a gay club for fucks sake—sure the entire club is badly lit, but surely someone would notice hockey star Shane fucking Hollander sat at the bar. And even if nobody did—going drinking with the guy he’s been avoiding for the sake of not doing something stupid that might get him blacklisted from the wedding planner industry is like, objectively, the dumbest shit he’s ever considered.

Still, he drops his location. Hollander sees the message immediately, but doesn’t react and so—

And then Hollander sends his location instead and Ilya gets the dumb feeling that he’s in way over his head.

Chapter End Notes

I wanna give a big big thank you to miscellaneous_misty (for the texting skin),d33rmilk (for their twitter skin) and >mackerel_cheese (for their translation skin).
I essentially smashed all three together and despite doing all the coding beforehand, still had to go back in manually to fix a big chunk because i'm #stupid.
i don't typically write romance OR comedy so if this is awful..........please still be nice? 🥺
also the song playing in the club is the strangers x dancing on my own remix haunting my every waking step. in case u were wondering!