Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, The Ghost of Irina Rozanov Haunting the Narrative, Svetlana Vetrova, Original Characters

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Depressed Ilya Rozanov, Brave Shane Hollander, Established Relationship, Fix-It, POV Ilya Rozanov, don't trust ilya's internal monologue he's Really Sad and therefore is an extremely, Unreliable Narrator, a moderate amount of miscommunication because they're both idiots, ilya's depression is on an accelerated timeline, ilya gets taken care of, this is basically an exercise in undoing the long game, this is also a love letter to Northeastern Canadian natural landscapes, all of the locations in this fic are real but ive taken some creative liberties, Moscow haunts the narrative

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Hockey Husbands Anonymous Collection

Collections:

Anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-24 Words: 4,353 Chapters: 1/5

The Desire for Unsafe Driving

Summary

The summer of the year before Shane reaches free agency, he proposes a road trip. Shane is doing this to soften the blow — he's going to break up with Ilya, Ilya can just tell.

Notes

quick note re: timeline: this fic takes place in July 2019, about a year after the cottage and a year before The Long Game. According to book canon, Ilya signs with Ottawa sometime in July 2018, so by July 2019 he's completed his first full season with the Centaurs. For the sake of my AU, at this point in the story, they haven't yet inaugurated the Game Changers camp.

quick note re: life things. the outline for this fic has been sitting in my ellipsus drafts folder for over a month and now i finally have the time to work on it. lots happened between finishing Ilya; My Ilyusha and starting this one, and by lots i mean i've moved to a new continent. very big and scary life change, not speaking the language, struggling with finding a new routine, etcetera, so i haven't gotten around to logging onto ao3 and replying to comments. i'm working on it now — i really really want to reply to every single one.

Chapter 1: The Glebe > Ontario-Quebec Border

For the first time in the history of Shane and Ilya's relationship, Ilya is the one who can't stop squirming and fidgeting. While Shane loads their luggage into the back of his boring — it's sensible, Ilya, seriously — Land Rover, Ilya is locked in battle with the passenger seat belt. If he crosses it over his sling, the pressure makes his bones itch. If he tucks it under, it's much more comfortable, but also illegal.

He switches to adjusting the seat's angle. With his feet propped against the dashboard, he pretzel-twists his upper body, reaches the lever with his uninjured left arm, and shoves himself backward. Ilya is positive that the strap's pressure point will shift away from his shoulder if he sits at a one hundred degree recline.

It does, but one look at the mirror on the sun visor reveals that he looks fucking stupid. Like he's in a dental examination room, legs extended and belly-up, exposed and vulnerable. He absolutely cannot sit like that for their whole drive. He yanks at the adjuster to return the seat to its original position and regrets it almost immediately: it springs back faster than he expected, jostling his shoulder.

Ilya's vision whites out. He doubles over. Grits his teeth until his jaws ache.

Ilya has no one to blame for his injury but himself. Bad footwork, and a misaligned check. It was a mistake not even a rookie would have made, and it cost Ottawa their final hopes for the playoffs.

When the pain recedes, he's overcome with anger, the urge to lash out at something other than himself. A few moments later, Shane slides into the driver's seat to the sight of Ilya kicking the dashboard and gnawing on his seat belt like a petulant toddler.

"Are you, like, teething?" Shane isn't really smiling — it's too early in the morning for that — but there's lightness to his voice, and the corners of his eyes are crinkled.

Over the last year or so, Shane has been accumulating more smile lines. Ilya thinks he can claim responsibility for that. Then again, he can say the same for the deepening frown line between Shane's eyebrows.

Ilya glowers, belt in mouth. He considers which option would grate on Shane more: spitting the belt out now or committing to the bit. He's not nearly awake enough to put on his brash facade. There's an art to being a little shit without getting on Shane Hollander's last nerves, and Ilya's mastery over it has been waning.

Something really is wrong with Ilya, because the more rational part of his brain wins out. He releases the belt, and the tacky, saliva-soaked fabric snaps back onto his sling with a wet smack. Ilya winces.

"Was doing seat belt inspection," he says, lamely.

"Right," Shane says, with a trace of humor. He closes the driver side door and turns over. "By the way, there's still a lot of space in the trunk. I was thinking we can stop by an outdoor store in Montreal and grab an extra—"

Shane stops talking mid-sentence as the glow of early dawn filters in through the car's side window, illuminating the skin on Ilya's face and neck. Shane's eyes travel downward along the path of the light. He lingers on Ilya's torso.

Not-really-smiling-Shane turns into Frowning-Shane. Fuck. Shane's clocked the way he's cradling his right arm with his left.

Pathetic, whispers the voice in Ilya's head. What kind of hockey player fucks up recovering from an AC joint sprain? You big, stupid, idiotic fucking baby.

Ilya wants to fold in half and disappear. Shane reaches over, and before Ilya's brain can catch up with his body, he's batted Shane's hand away. He looks out the window, not wanting to see the expression on Shane's face. He hears Shane let out a long breath.

"I'm just gonna grab something from the glove box, okay?" Shane says, enunciating every syllable slowly and clearly. The image of a benevolent rescuer approaching an injured dog on the side of the road comes to Ilya's mind. Hands open, voice low. Everything will be alright, you're safe, stop biting your own leg.

"Okay," Ilya says, his eyes fixed on the hedge framing his driveway. It's grown unruly and out of shape in the past few months. Ilya really needs to give his landscaper a call. And his pool cleaner. And his housekeeper. He pointedly doesn't think about the fact that he hasn't picked up any of Svetlana's calls lately. Or Yuna's. Or David's. Surprisingly, David is the most persistent caller of the roster.

From the corner of his eye, Ilya watches Shane pop the glove box open and rifle through its contents. It's filled with a physics-defying number of things: car registration and insurance papers, five years' worth of repair documentation, loose contact cards, three headlamps, two first aid kits, two sunglasses. Half a box of granola and two boxes of breath mints. A pair of driving gloves. Hand sanitizers, napkins, tissues, wet wipes. And of course, sex stuff.

It's not just the glove box that's like that, it's every single one of Shane's storage compartments. The first night Ilya stayed over at Shane's apartment as his boyfriend instead of his fuck buddy, he found lube and a strip of condoms in the laundry room's cabinet, laying demurely on top of a bright neon-orange first-aid bag and miscellaneous laundry supplies.

I mean, you never know when, uhm. You know. It's good to be prepared, right? Shane said, hands fidgeting with the bottom hem of his sweater. Ilya bent him over the washing machine right then and there.

Can't really do that now, Ilya thinks. Can't do much of anything lately.

After a full minute of digging, Shane pulls out a long, fluffy leopard-print tube in the same way a magician would a white rabbit by the ear. Ilya turns his head to look at it properly.

"I got you this while prepping for our trip," Shane says, cheeks starting to stain red, eyes resolutely not meeting Ilya's. Used receipts and napkins unstick from The Thing and drift down onto Ilya's lap like confetti.

Ilya stares. He's not really processing the absurdity of Shane choosing to buy something with leopard prints.

"You are into feline-themed cock socks now, Hollander?"

"Oh my god." Shane laughs, bright and loud. "You can't seriously think your dick is big enough to fit that."

"Yeowch." Ilya drawls. "Insulting size of my dick is a low blow. You know I do not judge, yes? I won't, ah, what is phrase? Yuck your yum?"

Shane smacks Ilya's knees with The Thing. It's… firmer than he thought. "Shut the fuck up. It's a padded seatbelt wrap, asshole. Also, you're the one who's obsessed with tiger and leopard… stuff. This matches like half of your wardrobe."

Ilya gives a noncommittal wobble of the head. Half is a conservative estimation. He may or may not have been accumulating outfits garish enough to make his own eyes water. He hasn't even been clubbing lately — he just wears them casually to fuck with his boyfriend.

"What can I say? Cats are sexy."

Shane snorts, scrunches his nose. "I'm just gonna, uhm." He reaches for Ilya again, slowly, eyes searching his face for permission. Ilya does a one-shoulder shrug.

Shane leans over and picks up a wad of tissues on Ilya's lap. Wipes the part of Ilya's seatbelt that's still soggy with spit. Unsticks the Velcro on the underside of the wrap and rests it on the center console. Lifts the seat belt from where it's digging into Ilya's collarbone.

"Can I?" Shane asks again. He holds the wrap up and waves it at Ilya's general chest area with his free hand.

"Be my guest."

Ilya is nonchalant. He's being so nonchalant as Shane wraps The Thing around Ilya's seat belt's now-dry trouble area, his brows furrowed in focus.

"Alright." Shane smooths out the wrap and gently rests it back onto Ilya's body. "How's that?"

There's a lump in Ilya's throat. The padded wrap's faux-fur fabric is soft and cool on the exposed skin near his collarbone, and the pressure on his shoulder and sling has been eased significantly. He looks away from Shane's sweet, earnest face, and doesn't dwell on the way Shane's worrying his lower lip with his teeth. Focuses on the scenery behind his boyfriend, the overgrown hedge, the brightening sky.

He wants to say, Please, stop being so kind to me. I don't know if I could ever recover from having had you as my lover. Instead, he says,

"Is nice. Feels like being cuddled by fluffy kitten."

Shane smiles. Beyond the driver-side window, the canopy of leaves on the sugar maple tree in Ilya's garden sways in the morning breeze.

Shane pulls his hand away from where it was lightly rested on Ilya's chest, and Ilya immediately misses the warmth of his palm. Then, he buckles his own belt and starts the car, eyes forward, back straight.

"There are also painkillers in the glove box, in case your shoulder flares up again. I made sure to bring extra."

"Okey," Ilya says. He leans back onto his seat while Shane cranks the engine and shifts into reverse. The Land Rover's steady rumble soothes the ache in his chest, numbs him in the way being in a moving vehicle always does. He can't stop himself from petting and stroking the belt wrap for the majority of the first leg of their drive.

***

They head north along Bank Street, in the direction of Chamberlain Avenue. Once they've pulled out of the driveway, Ilya lowers the passenger side window and pokes his head out to feel the wind on his skin. He watches his new house fade into the horizon as they drive further and further away.

It's funny, the way his life has changed. The summer Ilya moved to Ottawa, he made the sensible decision to buy a property in The Glebe, the kind of leafy neighborhood with red brick houses and manicured lawns that Ilya's teenaged self would have sneered at.

"You good?" Shane glances over. "Did you forget something?"

"Yes and no. I am just admiring my beautiful abode."

"It's a nice house, for sure," Shane says. "I can't believe you managed to renovate it in less than half a year."

The house is certainly nice in the sense that it's different from every home Ilya has ever owned. During his viewing, he paid close attention to the size of its windows and the amount of natural lighting it would get during the day. He considered the size of the lawn, entertained the possibility of raising a garden. After he bought it, he picked wooden flooring and furniture that resembled those he'd seen at Shane's cottage. Installed an absurd number of ambient lighting fixtures. Made sure that the entire house was free of chrome finishing.

It's hard to say whether he made those decisions consciously. Within the first few months of their relationship, Ilya thought about very few things aside from Shane's true, unabashed laugh, the way the rigidity of Shane's body melted away with love. He supposes doing something as desperate as making a home ten years too early is the inevitable consequence of bagging someone like Shane Hollander.

Ilya hums in lieu of a response. The cool morning air is helping Ilya feel more awake and less inclined to beg Shane to cancel this whole strange, roundabout road trip.

He closes the window once they've passed the residential area's gateway installation, a ridiculously cheerful set of 3D letters spelling out G-L-E-B-E in blue, green, orange, pink, and red. Ilya's always thought that's one variation of a warm tone too many.

Shane pipes up again, once the window fully closes with a soft thud. He sounds too chipper for someone who woke up at quarter-to-five in the morning.

"There's a skating rink not far from here. Landsowne Park. Have you been?"

Ilya has been to the park, but not the rink. Has spent many evenings at the park bench with a beer in his hand, staring up at the darkening sky.

"No," he says. He doesn't elaborate.

"Well, you should check it out." Shane continues, unfazed by Ilya's terseness. "Dad used to take me there a lot, back when I was in elementary school. I loved the park, too. Lots of dogs."

Ilya imagines how adorable Shane must have looked on his tiny skates. Shane, toddling around, petting dogs. "Did you keep going? After elementary school?"

"Not as often as I would've liked, after joining the U13. It's a bit out of the way, you know? I still skated for fun, but I mainly did it at the training rink."

Ilya huffs, a subdued approximation of a laugh. "Of course you did, Hollander. Training all week isn't enough for you, yes?"

"Oh shush. Don't tell me you didn't. No one goes into hockey without liking skating."

Shane's partially right. Back then, Ilya loved the idea of skating for fun and always envied those who could do tricks with their skates. It was just that—

"Grigori was, ah, quite strict. Twirling around without hockey stick was not very masculine."

Or, in Grigori's exact words: It's what fags do. Now that he's thinking about it, Ilya wishes he had the balls to tell Grigori that caressing a stick for hours a day was arguably gayer.

Lately, Ilya has been referring to his father, both in his head and in speech, by his first name. Small rebellions, against a dead man.

Shane's hands are on the steering wheel at a proper ten-and-two, but instead of firmly clasping it, he's drumming his fingers. He stays silent as he accelerates to merge onto Nicholas Street's 417 East on-ramp. It elevates at an incline, lifting them off the city grid and onto the multi-lane asphalt highway. Now, the scenery in front of them has changed from tree-lined streets, low-rise store fronts, and patios to concrete retaining walls, overhead highway signage, and speeding vehicles.

Ilya can hear the gears in Shane's head turning. Talking about Ilya's family has been a bit like navigating a field of landmines, lately. While Shane chooses his words, Ilya counts the number of red freight trucks on the road — at least ten have passed them within the span of fifteen minutes. Keep on trucking, one bumper sticker implores. Real Trucks Rattle, proclaims another.

"What did you do for fun back in Moscow?"

Shane's attempt at reviving the conversation lands wetly. He's sidestepped one landmine right onto another.

"You'd be upset. If I was honest," Ilya says, meaning he doesn't want to upset himself. It's hard to think about Moscow without thinking about what Moscow did to him. He doesn't want to fuck with the vibes, as the youths says.

Ilya isn't looking at his boyfriend, but he can hear the frown in his voice when he replies.

"Don't decide for me like that. I'm not, like. I don't know, delicate or whatever. I can handle hearing about your shitty childhood."

Ilya sighs. "I am not saying you are. And I think you know a little already, yes?"

He did his first line of coke ten years too young. Sasha and Svetlana weren't the best influences, although he shouldn't blame them. They were all equally fucked up in slightly different ways. They enabled each other.

Shane's tone softens. "Okay, but what about before you discovered teenaged sex and drugs? Before, you know. Uhm."

Ilya simultaneously wants to wring his hands and tell Shane to pull over so that Ilya could suck his dick, them being in the middle of a highway be damned. He's developed something like a Pavlov response to Shane's pushing and prodding. It takes a special kind of talent to be able to barrel ahead with his foot in his mouth the way Shane does.

"I don't know, Hollander. Having fun wasn't in my family vocabulary. I guess I used go to out on walks with my mother. And…"

Ilya trails off. They're driving in the direction of the rising sun, and the unobstructed view of the vibrant pink-and-orange horizon takes his breath away. He can't remember the last time he had the energy to wake up before dawn to watch the sunrise.

No, wait, he can. Last summer, on the dock. Shane's cottage. It's only been a year.

"Ilya, what's up?"

Ilya collects himself. He takes the two pairs of sunglasses out of the glove box, then passes one to Shane. The highway is bustling with summer-vacationer traffic and the sun is only going to get brighter, which means they'll be flash-banged by intense windshield glare pretty soon.

Shane puts the glasses on one-handed. "Thanks," he says. "Anyway, and…?"

And for a little while, she would take me on these long drives along the Moskva River, Ilya thinks. The week before she killed herself, she let me ditch school and we drove seven hours to her hometown, even though she had no one left there.

Ilya clears his throat. "And Legos, sometimes. Used to build Star Wars ships with Alexei when we were not fighting. Although what I really wanted was the Paradisa set."

"Oh shit, seriously? Mom loves that set as well. I think we still have it at home. She stores it in the basement somewhere, I think. I saw it once when we were doing some spring cleaning."

Ilya takes note of the way Shane doesn't offer to come to his parents' place and look for it together. Out of all of the homes Ilya has visited, the Hollanders' is his favorite, always so warm and inviting. He hopes that he'll get to keep hanging out with them.

Ilya imagines himself showing up on their doorstep in a month or so with a tray of casserole. He would say, Hello Yuna and David, I am sorry for ghosting for two months. I will keep haunting your house now. Don't mind the fact that your son told me he "couldn't do this anymore." David would say, Hello, son, why yes of course, let us get back to our thousand-piece puzzle, and Yuna would say, Oh honey, don't worry about Shane, he'll come around—

Okay, enough. "That is nice," Ilya says. He wishes he could cross his arms instead of resting his left hand limply on his lap. "I do not want to talk about this anymore."

After a beat, Shane says, "Alright. I'm sorry, Ilya."

"It is fine, Shane. Focus on being Mr. Driver."

Silence settles around them. Ilya isn't sure if it's a comfortable one. He leans forward to fiddle with the car radio and is warmed by the fact that the tugging of his seat belt doesn't hurt at all, now that it's cushioned by the belt wrap. He doesn't bother with asking if Shane's okay with it because he never seems to mind when Ilya hijacks his sound system.

Ilya switches channels until he hears the opening jingle of CHIN Radio's Russian language program and leans back. He lets the tenor of the host's voice wash over him. Certain aspects of her accent — crisp intonation, open vowels — reminds Ilya of that of Novikov, Pittsburgh's prized rookie center.

Ilya closes his eyes and forces his body to relax. He's too preoccupied with suppressing the memory of his last interaction with the kid to notice that Shane is mouthing along to the first song on the program's music segment.

***

The day Ilya injured himself was the 16th anniversary of his mother's death.

If he was honest, he hadn't really been thinking about it while he and Novikov lined up at center ice. Had not at all expected it when right before the puck dropped, Novikov said with complete earnestness, his glacier blue eyes boring into Ilya's:

"My condolences about your mother, Rozanov."

His head spun and his muscles seized. For the first time, he couldn't come up with a responding chirp. He simply stood there frozen, and lost the face-off.

He had assumed that his mother's death was a well-guarded fact. The only people in his life who knew that day was the day were Shane and Svetlana, and neither of them would ever leak it. Ilya had not opened up about it to anyone else, even back when he was still with Boston. He completely forgot about the fact that anyone who spoke Russian and had enough connections could find out, just like that.

He couldn't afford to fuck it up in game 82, especially after a brutal April losing streak. It was close, but it wasn't hopeless, and he wanted so desperately to prove to himself that he could drag Ottawa into the postseason. And yet.

It was the worst Ilya had played in years. His muscles were tense for the entire game, and that fucked with his center of gravity. He over-skated and overshot pucks. He recklessly charged Novikov into the neutral zone, blinded by rage. By the time Ilya crashes shoulder-first into the boards, the game was already a presumed loss.

Ilya couldn't look Bood and Haas in the eyes when they helped him off the ice. He couldn't take their disappointment. Couldn't face the fact that he left them to fend for themselves on the ice.

***

The CHIN's regional signal peters out as they approach the Ontario-Quebec border, dying midway through an interview with a minor celebrity.

"Bah!" Ilya throws up his hand. "Now I will never find out how she stole the dog back from her shitty ex-boyfriend."

"You're so dramatic," Shane says. He reaches for the dial and turns the radio off, probably because he's overstimulated by the static. "You know you can find past episodes on their website, right?"

He doesn't. He's never really bothered to check. "Oh? And how do you know this? I did not know you are radio nerd."

"It's just, uhm, common sense. Other stations in Ottawa do it too." Shane awkwardly clears his throat. Then, he taps Ilya on the shoulder and points to their right. "Anyway, look! Sheep!"

Ilya turns his head and yup, sheep indeed. They've left Ottawa's urban core behind and are now surrounded by the agricultural plains of Eastern Ontario, where dense tree lines cede to flat green landscapes and an open horizon. Grazing land, with flocks and flocks of sheared sheep ambling about in the summer sun.

It's quite a sight. Ilya's never really paid attention to how lean these animals are under their coats. He rolls the window down, pulls his phone out, and proceeds to take about a hundred pictures, the fake shutter sound effect of his camera app clicking obnoxiously. Ilya wants to send the photos to Svetlana immediately, but to do that, he'll need to reply to her texts first. He received one new text yesterday night. Fucking call me back, Ilyusha, or so help me.

"Do you want to check out some farms? The sheep are cuter up close," Shane asks as Ilya switches to video mode. He's planning on sending Svetlana vlogger-style videos as an apology. Eventually.

"What?" Ilya asks against the rushing of the wind. He heard Shane just fine, he just doesn't believe his ears. He'll need to check his video evidence later.

"I said," Shane raises his voice. "Do you want to check out. Some farms!"

Ilya puts his phone away to focus on studying Shane's face. "Going off itinerary? Who the fuck are you?"

Before they left, Shane had meticulously gone over the itinerary with him until his eyes glazed over. The trip has been planned down to the hour with a color-coded excel sheet. Ilya hasn't retained much except for the broad strokes: they'll spend five days on the road, driving up towards the eastern coast. Afterward, Shane will drive back to Montreal on his own to attend a week-long event — the purpose of which he's exceptionally cagey about — and Ilya will take a flight from the Gaspé peninsula back to Ottawa to resume another round of physical therapy. It's the perfect goodbye trip.

Shane ignores Ilya's questions. "We can take a quick detour through Champlain. There are, like, a million farms there. Exit 17 is right ahead, do you want me to take it?"

It's a bright and blue day, cloudless, and Ilya can't help but stare at the way Shane's features glow in the sunlight. His freckles. His freckles.

"Yes," says Ilya after a few minutes of bewildered blinking.

Shane turns off the exit. They coast leisurely along Barb Road with both windows down, through rolling hills and grazing fields, with red barns punctuating the green in the distance. Sheep and cows roam open pastures right along the road edge.

Shane hums the tunes of 80s songs Ilya doesn't recognize with his left arm resting on the driver side window. When they reach a wide gravel shoulder on the road, Shane pulls over. While Ilya leans against the fence and tries to pet the cattle, Shane tells him about how his family used to drive all the way to Champlain Township every summer just to buy cheese at the region's farmers' market. How David picked up knitting because one of the alpaca farmers became fast friends with Yuna and kept gifting them hanks and hanks of spun yarn. How Shane used to be terrified of the alpacas roaming the farms because their neck-to-body ratio felt wrong, and the texture of their fur gave him goosebumps.

Ilya wants to tell Shane about the drives that he took his mother, and the regular late-night ones he started going on as an adult, but doing that means revealing the deep, ugly well within him. So, instead, he listens and files everything Shane tells him into the Shane Hollander cabinet of his mind palace.

He plucks a few blades of grass from the field and feeds them to the cows. He thinks, isn't this detour so precious, and idly considers how he can convince Shane to take all of the detours on this trip.

Thinks, maybe they can just detour for the rest of their lives. Wouldn't that be nice.