Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Cliff Marlow, Rose Landry

Additional Tags:

coming out to your girlfriend, Post-Scene: The Club in Episode: s01e04 Rose (Heated Rivalry), Getting Together

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Jane From Montreal

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-13 Words: 1,918 Chapters: 1/1

lets say the things we never said

Summary

Shane is confronted with the fact that his fleeing from tuna melts genuinely hurt Ilya.

Notes

Everyone was so nice in the comments of my last fic, I couldn’t help but dive right into this one.

The beginning probably makes more sense if you read Part 1 first, but in summary: Ilya was in a god-awful mood post-tuna melts. Cliff, a caring and meddling friend, thinks Jane From Montreal is the problem and sets out to find her. After seeing the dancefloor staring incident in Montreal, he puts two and two together and confronts Shane.

Excuse my google translate Russian.

Title is from the movie Almost Famous.

Thank you all and I hope you enjoy!

After Cliff leaves, Shane sits on the toilet for a very long time. The toilet is pretty gross and he probably shouldn’t have sat here, but too late to change that. Too late for a lot of things, it feels.

Cliff’s words keep echoing in his head:

Since your last game, Roz has been fucked up.

Angry, sad, distracted. I think it’s your fault.

This is fucked up Roz and I think you’re the only one who can fix him.

Rozanov had scared Shane, the last time they were together. Overwhelmed him. Too many things changing all at once:

Staying afterwards. Napping, wrapped in his arms. Rozanov cooking for him, hovering to make sure he liked everything. That bewildering conversation about girls. And saying his name. Whispering Shane with a kind of reverence Shane didn’t understand.

Shane had run. His brain was glitching like a scratched record and he had run.

He felt guilty. Of course he did. But he had also kind of… avoided?… feeling guilty by focusing on Rose and acting like he’d never had a tuna melt in his life.

Even that vague guilt and sense of wrongness, looming over everything he’d done in the last few weeks, Shane hadn’t allowed himself to connect it to Ilya himself. To the situation, yes, but not to the man.

Shane had thought, maybe, despite the evidence to the contrary, that their… thing didn’t mean anything to Ilya. Less than it was starting to mean to Shane, even. He had thought he was replaceable.

What Cliff had described, though? That didn’t sound like losing something replaceable.

Shane imagines rejoining Rose on the dance floor, going home with her, sleeping with her and pretending he isn’t thinking about anyone else.

Not anyone else. Someone else.

Shane stands up suddenly, brushes off his pants, and slowly washes his hands to center himself. He finds Rose in the very middle of the crowded club and shouts, “Can we leave?”

She has trouble hearing him over the loud, thumping music. “You’re leaving?”

Shane gestures between them, then points toward the door.. “You come too? We need to talk.”

Rose looks confused, but nods, says something to Miles, then follows him to their table. A quick text and five minutes later there’s a black SUV waiting for them at the curb.

Once they’re inside, Rose asks, “Is everything okay?”

Shane glances at the driver, dutifully looking at the road, and says, “When we’re alone.”

Rose presses a button and a partition slowly rises, closing them off. “It’s soundproof,” she says. “Miles and I tested it once. He can’t hear a thing.” She places a soft hand on Shane’s knee. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m--” he starts, but the words are cement in his mouth. “We’re--” he tries again. “This isn’t working.”

Rose tips her head to the side and pulls her hand back to her own lap. “Is this because I pressured you to come out?”

“No, no,” Shane quickly reassures. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Breaking up with someone usually has something to do with them,” she says. Her tone is light but Shane still squeezes his eyes shut.

“Shane, hun, what’s going on?” Her hand is back, on his shoulder this time, but Shane shrugs it off.

“I think... I might be.. I am...” Say the word. The word is true, so say it. “I’m gay.”

It’s silent. She is so quiet right now. Shane opens his eyes, but keeps them trained on the seat in front of him. In his peripheral, he can see her hand move toward him again, but she stops herself.

“Thank you for telling me that.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Shane, baby, can you look at me?”

He tries, but can’t make his eyes move her way. He shakes his head.

“Of course I am not mad. I have nothing to be mad about.”

“You kind of do.”

“Like 70% of my boyfriends have been gay. 80%, including you. Theatre school prepared me well for this.” She’s laughing. He can tell she’s smiling. “Shane?”

He turns his head and looks somewhere in the vicinity of her left shoulder.

“Have you ever said that before?” she asks.

He shakes his head. Just once.

“I’m proud of you.” Her smile is so sweet and so kind. “Is there someone?”

Shane starts to shake his head again, but halfway through, he switches it to a nod.

Ilya kissing him too-tenderly in the stairwell. Smiling at him from the other side of a hotel room. Pressing him into his couch and--

“There is.”

“Are you with him?”

“No!” He looks her in the eyes. It’s important she knows this part. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I wouldn’t blame you.”

“I would blame me. We haven’t... Not since before...”

“Okay. Okay, Shane.” Her hand is on the seat between them. “Do you want to be?”

Ilya smoking on the Vegas rooftop. Ilya padding barefoot through his apartment and Shane following like a puppydog. Ilya sucking his dick and winking up at him.

Shane hoping it’s a text from “Lily” every time his phone buzzes.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

No, of course not. Another shake of his head.

“Maybe start there?”

Shane’s eyes are filling with tears, but he furiously blinks them back. He’s not crying over this.

“I want you to be happy, Shane. I like you. You’re a good person.”

Shane presses the heel of his hand into his eyes. If he wipes the tears away before they fall, it doesn’t count as crying.

~~~~~~

Shane has never agonized over a text like he does this one. None of the words are right. Not even close to right. He presses call instead. Ilya answers on the fifth ring. “What?”

“Come over,” Shane says.

“You have a girlfriend.”

“No I don’t. Come over.”

“Hollander...”

“Ilya. Come over or I’ll go to your hotel.”

Ilya doesn’t say anything for far too long. Shane can picture the way he closes his eyes and tips back his head when he’s searching for words just out of reach.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. Okay.” And then he hangs up.

Shane texts Ilya the front door code. If he’s doing this, he’s going to do this.

The next 20 minutes are the longest 20 minutes of Shane’s life.

Eventually, a soft knock on the door. He opens it and there he is. Ilya. His eyes are a little puffy. He keeps his distance, even after coming into the condo. Practically pressing himself into the entryway wall to avoid touching the air that’s touching Shane.

“What do you want?” he asks and Shane can’t read his tone at all.

“I wanted to talk.”

Ilya gestures between them. “Is that what we do? We talk?”

“I’d like to. Today, at least. Will you come sit down?”

He steps deeper into the apartment, still keeping a wide berth between them. He seems to be considering his seat options.

The kitchen stools--Shane bent over, face on the cold marble--

The table--Shane on his back, Ilya between his thighs--

The couch--Ilya’s full weight on Shane, lips on his neck, buried deep--

There’s no place in this apartment safe from memories of them together. Ilya ends up on the couch. Shane sits on the far end and has no idea how to start this vitally important conversation.

Ilya starts for him. “What do you want?”

Deep breath. “I broke up with Rose.”

“You did not look broken up two hours ago.”

“I broke up with her because we’re not compatible.”

“Compatible?”

“Not in that way.”

“What are you saying, Hollander?”

“I’m saying...” Shane presses his fingers against his eyes until he sees color and then looks directly at Ilya. His expression is still indistinguishable. “I’m saying that I’m gay.”

A loud, barking, humorless laugh. “Yes, Hollander, I thought you might be a little bit gay.”

“All the way gay!” Shane says angrily, then thinks that might be the dumbest sentence anyone has ever said.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m telling you this because... because...” This is so hard. This is why Shane doesn’t have conversations about important things!

“Because?”

He finally blurts it out. Lord, he just blurts it out: “Because Cliff said how sad you were and that it was my fault and I don’t want you to be sad because of me and then Rose asked if I was with someone and I said no but I wanted to say yes and I wanted to say you. I want to say you and I want you to be happy.”

It’s a lot of words for Ilya to process at once, but soon his every muscle visibly relaxes. “You did?”

“Yeah, I did. Ilya.”

“Shane...”

“Ilya.”

Ilya opens his arms a little bit, maybe subconsciously, but Shane crawls down the couch and presses himself into the empty space. Ilya buries his face in Shane’s hair and Shane presses his nose to the soft spot below Ilya’s jaw.

“I don’t know what to say.” Ilya’s throat vibrates with every word and it soothes Shane like a purring cat.

“I want you, Ilya.”

“We can’t--”

“I don’t care. I want, and that’s what matters right now.”

Ilya says something in Russian, then something that’s lost in Shane’s hair, then: “I want too.”

The two halves of Shane’s heart grind against each other and it hurts. But it’s not pain like a leg breaking; it’s like the surgeon wrenching the broken pieces back into place.

He kisses Ilya’s neck, open-mouthed and sloppy. Kisses Ilya’s cheek, wet and salty. Kisses his mouth, frantic and desperate, pouring in every ounce of emotion he has ever experienced into the act.

Ilya’s hands are scrambling on his back. Pushing up his shirt, down his waistband. Fingernails leaving marks that everyone will be able to see tomorrow. Shane’s clothes are gone as quickly as they can be without losing a single contact point with Ilya. Ilya’s clothes are gone too and he’s lying on top of Shane, weight comforting and familiar.

“Shane,” he’s saying, over and over again. “Shane, Shane, Shane.” Sometimes interspersed with words he can’t understand. “Lyubov.” “Milyy.” “Dorogoy.”

“Ilya,” he says. “Ilya, Ilya.” Shane says it like a prayer and a promise. They kiss and they touch and they feel and they share. They experience each other with first names and half-uttered declarations wrapped around them like a swaddling cloth.

Ilya’s hand is rough when he reaches between them, but his mouth is gentle. His every move somehow both deliberate and desperate. “Ilya,” Shane says, threading his fingers through his hair. Now that he can say it, he can’t get enough of it. “Ilya.”

Ilya’s rhythm is one that ensures Shane doesn’t last long, but he doesn’t mind. They have time. They have all night.

Shane tastes himself on Ilya’s lips and licks in deeper.

He takes Ilya into his mouth and groans at the welcome feeling. He loves this. He loves it, he loves... this.

Him.

Ilya.

He loves Ilya.

When Ilya is finished and they’re curled together, forehead to forehead, holding each other tight, Shane thinks Ilya might love him too.

~~~~~~

For the first time, they spend the night together.

They wake up together.

They fuck, slow and sleepy and wonderful.

Shane makes eggs and Ilya makes toast.

They don’t say anything more. Anything beyond “Shane” and “Ilya” and “I want,” which already says everything.

Ilya is ten minutes late for his flight back to Boston.