Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Cliff Marlow, Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

POV Outsider, Good Friend Cliff Marlow, Post-Scene: Ilya Rozanov Makes Tuna Melts in Episode: s01e04 Rose, Meddling

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Jane From Montreal

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-12 Words: 2,188 Chapters: 1/1

stop yelling at me, I saved the day

Summary

Cliff wouldn’t call himself the most observant person in the world, but it doesn’t take a genius to know something is wrong with Roz. He’s swinging from quiet and completely checked out to snapping at every little thing and back again.

It started after the last Montreal game, Cliff is pretty sure.

Jane From Montreal. This has something to do with her.

Notes

Yes this is supposed to be set in 2017 and yes the social media team is straight out of 2026.

This is my first time using a skin, so hopefully the formatting isn't too much of a mess.

title from Brooklyn 99

Cliff wouldn’t call himself the most observant person in the world, but it doesn’t take a genius to know something is wrong with Roz. He’s swinging from quiet and completely checked out to snapping at every little thing and back again.

It started after the last Montreal game, Cliff is pretty sure.

Jane From Montreal. This has something to do with her.

Roz would get excited about Montreal games in Boston just as much as he did about trips to Montreal, which makes Cliff think his girl must travel with the team. Either a superfan or a member of the staff. The latter seems more likely since there’s no way in hell a diehard Montreal fan would fuck a Boston player.

Not many women work for NHL teams, and even fewer are in positions where they travel to every game. Jane From Montreal can’t be that hard to find.

Cliff tries google first—“Montreal Voyageurs Jane”—but that doesn’t work. Autocorrect is convinced he’s trying to search “Shane” and showing him nothing but Hollander. Not helpful at all.

He makes a few discreet inquiries around the locker room next. “You know anything about Roz’s girl?” he asks Hammersmith one day after morning skate.

“The Russian chick?”

Roz had introduced Cliff to Svetlana once, when Cliff had been considering buying a sports car. He was 99.9% sure she was neither Jane From Montreal nor the problem here.

“Nah, the one in Montreal.”

Hammersmith shrugs. “All I know is he wants to kick Montreal’s ass more than any other team out there.”

Cliff laughs. “Don’t we all.”

~~~~~~

Roz’s bad energy is starting to spread to the rest of the room, so Cliff keeps trying.

His next plan of attack is via the social media girls. Women. Ladies. Whatever. (They’re a decade younger than him and mention Tik Tok on an hourly basis; they’re girls.)

They come on the occasional roadtrip and are often friendly with the socials teams in other cities. If she works for the team, they’ll probably know of her.

Cliff normally tries to dodge the walk-in questions before practice, but the next morning—after he’d seen Roz stare blankly into space for 20 minutes then scream because he forgot a clean pair of socks at home—he specifically sought them out.

Claire and Dana are exactly where he expects to find them, standing in the hallway between the elevators and the ice.

“What’s the biggest animal you could beat in a fight?” Claire says without preamble.

“Sheep,” he says without thinking. Bad answer, but too late to change it. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Cliff gestures Dana away from the mic and camera. “Do you know the Montreal social team? Or, like, any of their staff?”

Dana, rightfully so, looks bewildered at the question. “A few of them. Why?”

“I’m trying to find this girl, Jane, and I think she travels with them for games.”

Dana scoffs at him. “I’m not helping you find a girl you hooked up with and forgot.”

She starts to walk away, but Cliff gently touches her wrist. “It’s not that. I promise.”

“What is it then?”

He debates for a second whether he’s violating Roz’s privacy, but decides helping the guy out is worth it. “Jane is the name of Roz’s girl in Montreal and I’m pretty sure they had a fight or something.”

“You’re sure she works for the team?”

“She’s from Montreal but is here on all their game days, so I think so. Maybe not, I guess.”

Dana pauses—perhaps deciding whether to help him—then says, “I think there’s a Jane in San Jose, but I don’t know one in Montreal. I can access their staff directory, though, and can check while you’re on the ice.”

“Thanks, Dana. You’re a lifesaver.”

“I haven’t saved any lives yet. Does this mean you’re gonna stop hiding on Tiny Mic days?”

“Depends on what you find for me,” Cliff says with a laugh, before making his way onto the ice for practice.

~~~~~~

Dana flags him down on his way from locker room to car. “No Janes in the whole org.”

Damn.

“Their massage therapist is named Jeanie, could that be her?”

“She’s definitely in his phone as Jane.”

“Jeanie’s like 50, so that’s probably good.”

~~~~~~

Cliff isn’t sure where to turn next. He knows for a fact no one on the team has met Jane, and asking the WAGs about it would be opening Roz up to a firing squad he’s not prepared for.

Their next trip to Montreal comes up fast and Roz’s mood is just getting worse and worse. Even showing him hilarious pictures of Hollander somehow dating a fucking movie star isn’t enough to make him smile.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In the middle of practice, Cliff says he needs a bathroom break and sneaks off to the locker rooms. He’s not a nosy person (maybe a little nosy), but he’s been seated next to Roz on enough plane rides he knows the guy’s phone password via osmosis.

He types in 1410 and it unlocks. Easy peasy.

Very consciously not being nosy, Cliff goes into Roz’s contacts rather than his text messages. There are a lot of girl’s numbers here, wow. But only one listing for a Jane.

Not very ladylike, this Jane from Montreal.

She did perhaps have a point in saying Cliff should have talked to Roz first, before involving several other people and stealing his phone. Whoops.

~~~~~~

They’re on the plane to Montreal and Roz is grinding his teeth so hard Cliff worries one of his implants is going to pop.

“What’s going on, Roz?”

“Nothing.” His jaw tightens even more, if that’s possible.

It’s very tempting to let the obvious lie end the conversation. A deep breath, and Cliff keeps going. “I know there’s something going on with Jane.”

Roz’s are wide and maybe even a little scared. “What do you know about Jane?”

“Dude, you’ve been seeing a girl in Montreal for years. That’s not a secret.”

“Is secret,” Roz mumbles under his breath.

“You’ve been acting weird and it started after the last Montreal game. It doesn’t take a genius.”

“Fuck off.”

“Want me to make it about hockey? You’ve played like shit, Roz. You’ve barely noticed that some of the rookies are playing like shit too. You didn’t say a word when St-Simon’s wife had their baby last week and signed the card ‘get well soon’.”

“I will be better captain. And apologize to the St-Simons.” Roz looks determinedly at his seatback screen (it’s black) and crosses his arms. A clear sign this conversation is over whether Cliff wants it to be or not.

“Give Jane a call while we’re in town, Roz,” Cliff says over his shoulder as he walks back up the plane aisle.

He thinks he hears Roz mumble, “Doesn’t want me to,” but he isn’t sure.

~~~~~~

After the game, when Cliff gets a text from Carmichael that Roz wants to go to a club, he knows it’s going to be a shit night. Roz doesn’t go to clubs in Montreal. He goes to Jane’s house and he’s in a happy floaty mood the next morning, even if they lost.

Once they’re in the club, it’s only a few minutes before Cliff catches a glimpse of Rose Landry. Rose fucking Landry! They’re in a club with a movie star!

Rose Landry who’s dating Shane Hollander, a guy Cliff doesn’t know well but has always seemed like a bit of a stick in the mud.

Cliff shoulders his way through the crowd to get a better look and, sure enough, there’s Hollander. He’s dancing kinda half-heartedly with his girlfriend--certainly not how Cliff would be dancing with Rose Landry--and then he’s not dancing with her at all. He’s just kinda standing there, staring blank-faced at something on the other side of the dance floor.

Weird.

Cliff shoves through the crowd a bit more to try and follow Hollander’s sightline. He’s staring at... Rozanov?

Roz is dancing with some hot girl--not an unusual sight--but, while his mouth is on her neck, his eyes are on... Hollander?

It hits Cliff with all the force of a tidal wave. Shane. Jane. Google autocorrect wasn’t so far off target afterall.

There is an awful lot to process there--Jane is a man? Ilya likes men? Ilya likes Hollander?--but before he can process any of it, Roz is shoving past him.

“I’m leaving,” Roz says tersely.

Cliff grabs his wrist. “Wait, Roz--”

Roz stops and turns on him. He has an expression that Cliff has only seen once before, when Duncan Harvey had targeted a rookie’s head a couple seasons back. “Let go of me.”

“C’mon, Roz, listen--”

“I will hit you.”

Cliff doesn’t doubt that for a second, but he doesn’t stop. Maybe his sister was right all those times she called him an idiot. “I know about Jane.”

Something indistinguishable flickers across Roz’s face, but then his eyes narrow. “You know nothing.”

“I know it’s...” Cliff jerks his head over his shoulder in the general direction of Hollander.

Roz looks over Cliff’s shoulders too and now it’s not anger in his eyes. It’s hurt.

Holy shit he was right.

“I can help--” he starts to say, even though he doesn’t actually know if he can help.

“He has girlfriend,” Roz says simply, and pulls his wrist out of Cliff’s now lax grip. He’s gone from the club before Cliff can say another word.

Cliff stands there for a moment, caught in a swirl of dancing bodies, then decides: in for a penny, in for a pound. He’s meddled too much to stop now. Fighting the crowd, he makes his way over to where Hollander had been dancing. He’s long gone. It’s just Rose and one of her co-stars dancing together.

“Where’d Hollander go?” he shout-asks the two of them.

They don’t seem to recognize him, but don’t seem too concerned at a random guy asking after Hollander either. “Our table!” Rose shout-answers, pointing at a cordoned-off area in the corner.

Sure enough, there’s Hollander, staring at a beer bottle like it contains all the troubles in the universe.

“Hey,” Cliff says, once he’s reached the table.

Hollander glances up at him, but otherwise doesn’t respond.

“We need to talk,” Cliff tries.

“We have nothing to talk about.”

“I think we do.” Deep breath. Be brave. Be stupid. “Jane.”

Hollander looks up at him so quickly he probably got whiplash. It doesn’t take much more prodding to get him to follow Cliff to a single-stall bathroom that miraculously doesn’t have a line.

“How do you know that name?” Hollander says as soon as the door clicks behind him.

“I saw you on the dance floor. You are not very subtle. Also, like. Jane. Shane. Google told me it was you like two weeks ago and I didn’t believe it.”

Hollander sits down hard on the toilet seat, which looked a little gross and honestly like it should not be sat on. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Hollander says, hands over his face.

“What’s going on between you two?” Cliff asks, then realizes he doesn’t actually want to know the specifics. “Not between you. But, like, after the last game. Roz has been fucked up.”

“He has?” Hollander says in a tone that’s halfway between monotone and an emotion Cliff can’t even comprehend.

“Yeah. I said that in my text,” Cliff says. “Angry, sad, distracted. He is not fun to be around and I think it’s your fault.”

“It’s not my fault!” Hollander says reflexively. Then amends, “Might be my fault.”

“Is it something you can just, yunno, bang out?” Cliff wants to wash this conversation out of his memory with bleach and never use the phrase ‘bang out’ again.

“No,” Hollander says, not even reacting to that low-hanging fruit. “It’s not.”

“Just talk to him.”

“I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“You don’t need to take him back, or whatever. But if you dumped him, maybe dump him again, but, like, better? In a way that makes him less of an asshole?”

“He’s always an asshole.”

“Sure, but that’s Roz. This isn’t. This is fucked up Roz and I think you’re the only one who can fix him.”

~~~~~~

Cliff has no clue what happened after he left the bathroom that night. All he knows is that Roz is literally whistling when he saunters onto the plane 10 minutes late the next morning.