Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, background Boston Players

Additional Tags:

character work, Ilya is The Loverboy, 5 + 1, Ilya and his constant need to fix things for others, and the one time someone fixed it for him, home as a concept, vignette style

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-03-08 Words: 2,395 Chapters: 1/1

my step is heavy but it tires not in the throe

Summary

Five times Ilya makes a home for others + the one time someone makes a home for him.

Notes

The title for this comes from this song by this band called from this tiny band with almost no following called The Delta Saints. They've been a favorite of mine for years now and they have this song called My Love and it reminds me so much of Ilya.

I know I have a long fic and it seems silly that I spent a whole writing morning working on a tiny one shot but this seized me as I was making my breakfast and I know myself. I will not be able to move on until I saw it through. So I did and now I can move on.

1.

Svetlana moves to Boston one year after Ilya does. 

She says it’s not for him, but Ilya knows that she had no interest in leaving her boarding school friends behind in Europe, but for Ilya…Well, she’s always been willing to do anything for Ilya.

And Ilya will never be able to repay her - not really - but, he’s going to make sure this is a home for her too and that’s how he ends up spending an entire afternoon with Marlow’s current girlfriend buying hair products and a blow dryer that is probably the same price as a refrigerator. 

But, Cleo insists that it’s the best one available and Sveta’s European one just won’t work the same here and that yes, Ilya really does need three types of conditioner and two body scrubs. Trust her. 

Ilya trusts her and he also wants Sveta to come to his penthouse and have everything that she could need because she transferred to Boston for him and has kept his secrets and made sure he wasn’t alone. 

He lets Cleo and Marlow arrange his kitchen and poke at Ilya about his girlfriend moving in even though she’s not moving in, she has her own luxury apartment not far from here and they haven’t slept together since before the draft anyway, but if she were to stay here…Ilya wants her to have everything she needs. 

Ilya adds her to his car insurance and he orders the silk pillowcases that Cleo showed him from that place that uses real silk that’s ethically sourced (whatever that means) and when Sveta gets off the plane, Ilya helps her with her mountain of bags and drives her to his place because her place won’t be ready until next week, and he shows her all of the things he bought for her and she pats his cheek - rough and affectionate. 

“Show me our new city,” she demands and Ilya appreciates that she doesn’t call it home. 

 

2.

Ilya gets a Swedish rookie and the coach hunts him down and asks Ilya to look out for him. Ilya’s first instinct is to tell him that just because they’re both foreigners, doesn’t mean they’re going to be best friends, but then he remembers the C on his jersey and decides to shut the fuck up. 

Ilya meets him for the first time in the training facility and tries really hard to be the captain everyone wants him to be. He gets his number. He shows him around. He tells him about when they go to dinner together and when they train together and when they all bullshit together on the road. 

Ilya tries to make sure he’s good and that he’s got somewhere decent to live and that he’s not completely alone. 

He says he’s not. He’s living with a guy from the farm team. Someone he met during World’s and he says it’s good because they’ve known each other a long time, but three months into the season, Ilya can see the same cracks that sometimes appear in him. 

And then an opportunity comes along.

Sveta calls and says she needs to move around their dinner because one of her boarding school friends is coming in from Sweden for some gala thing and Ilya is asking before he can stop himself. 

And that’s how he ends up walking into practice with a carry-on’s worth of junk that Sveta’s friend was kind enough to bring. Crinkly plastic and cardboard boxes and that waxy paper wrapped around little sweets. 

It’s home in the form of sugar and crunchy candy and Ilya watches the realization of what it is that he’s dropped down beside his rookie on the bench wash over him. 

“I had a friend coming to visit,” Ilya explains, shrugging it off. “I took four pieces,” Ilya holds up four fingers. “For taxes.”

His rookie laughs, but it sounds kind of wet and unnatural and Ilya turns away from him so he can give him a moment to gather himself. “Thank you,” Ilya hears the whisper right before the door bags off the wall as Marlow and Connors drift in.

“It is nothing,” Ilya tells him, and then waves at Connors, pulling him into a discussion about organizing something for them in Cleveland - signaling to his rookie that it really is nothing. A kindness he would do for anyone. 

 

3.

Russia is hard. 

His father forgets more and more of himself and Ilya thinks if he were here everyday, he could lie to himself like his brother and stepmother do and convince himself that it’s not clear he’s losing it. But, Ilya is not here everyday. Ilya is here in bits and pieces and so he comes back and his father is very clearly more sick than when Ilya last saw him and he knows that it’s a matter of time before no one can ignore how bad it is. 

Ilya doesn’t know which scenario is worse, but he knows Russia is not his home - maybe was never really his home - so he cannot come back here and play hockey and take care of his father. He can only do this.

He can only send money and yell at his asshole brother to make sure he buys the specific type of pickles that their father likes because if he doesn’t, he calls Ilya and shouts at him for spending his money on the wrong type of pickles. 

He can come home during the summer and buy clothes for his niece and a stove for his sister in law and the right kind of pickles for his father and make sure it's all right for everyone. That their home is right.

Ilya goes out with Sveta when she’s there and he sometimes takes girls back to his apartment, but rarely allows them to stay because he gets up and picks up breakfast from that bakery his mama used to take him to because his father has been forgetting more and more that his mama is dead and Ilya is trying to make sure that his outbursts are less because Ilya is tired. 

Russia is not his home, but while he’s here, he works hard to make sure it’s right and when he’s gone, he works harder to make sure it’s right. Like the pickles and the buns and the new dress for his niece for her school recital that he will watch on a plane over the Rocky Mountains.

Ilya makes sure it’s all right. While he’s there and while he’s away and he wonders what will happen to him when hockey ends and all there are are people who are meant to be his family with their hands out to him. Expecting him to make it all right even then.

 

4.

15 miles north of the city sits a tiny diner. It’s in the parking lot of a hardware store and it used to be some kind of fast food restaurant and is now owned by first generation immigrants and Ilya doesn’t get out there often enough even though it’s maybe the only place on this entire continent where he can go and sit and close his eyes and pretend. 

He follows them on Instagram because their hours are inconsistent and sometimes their specials are posted and that’s how Ilya finds out about the tax problem. 

The US is confusing and Ilya has a tax person and he’s still always afraid of fucking it up somehow so he’s not shocked that a small business run by people who are barely fluent in English would have problems with taxes. 

They’re closing and Ilya finds that out while he’s scrolling aimlessly through Instagram on a flight, trying very hard not to think about how he had Hollander underneath him last night and then he left and - 

Ilya meant to distract himself because Hollander is never on Instagram and Ilya really needs to forget Shane Hollander except now…

Ilya makes the decision before the plane has landed and he’s on the phone to his accountant before their bags are unloaded. 

The agreement is that Ilya owns a portion of the restaurant even though he doesn’t actually want anything to do with the business. He just wants it to stay open. He just wants to be able to go and sit and close his eyes and pretend. 

That’s what he tells them over the phone. “Please keep it exactly the same,” and they do. They stop letting him pay though. And he supposes that’s a small concession he can make to keep a piece of this. Not only for them, but for himself too.

 

5.

Ilya keeps opening his fridge and checking the temperature. Which is crazy. The fridge is working. It was working yesterday when he got home from the store. It was working last night before he went to bed. It was working both times he checked this morning. 

There is nothing wrong with his fridge. 

But after years of doing this with Shane, he knows a few things about him and one of them being that he’s a bit particular about food. 

He once watched him take a sip of warm ginger ale at an All Stars Game Weekend Fun Thing and he looked like someone had just told him that he would never play hockey again. 

Ilya tells himself that’s all it is. He wants the ginger ale to be cold because he wants Shane to not be sad about the ginger ale so that the game the following day is fun and hard and exactly what Ilya craves out of a game against Shane. 

But then Shane is there and he unravels Ilya one kiss at a time until all Ilya can do is hold out a can of cold ginger ale that Ilya only bought so Shane could feel safe here with Ilya and Ilya offers to make him food on that special seeded bread that Ilya doesn’t like but Shane does. 

Food that Ilya checked against Shane’s weird diet and ginger ale that Ilya bought and chilled because Shane doesn’t like it warm and he doesn’t like too much ice and he doesn’t like straws because of turtles apparently. 

“Thank you,” Shane says, looking down at the counter, his lips pulled up in a little smile. “This is really nice.”

Ilya can breathe. 

 

+1.

Ilya wakes up to the sun shining in the cottage windows and the sound of Shane’s voice. 

He vaguely remembers waking up when Shane wiggled out of his grasp this morning, saying something about a call with a team in England about one of the sponsor things that Shane moved around when Ilya extended his trip. 

Ilya rolls out of the warm bed and pulls on a pair of Shane’s shorts from the chair where they’ve been leaving half worn clothes for the last few days and Ilya goes in search of him. And some coffee. He would really like some coffee. 

Shane has a crummy little coffee pot that he bought probably just for Ilya’s visit and Ilya grabs his phone too because maybe if he asks nicely, Shane will let him buy a tiny little espresso maker for this place. He had brought up them coming back here for Christmas and it would be nice. To have good coffee. 

That’s what he’s doing while his coffee brews and he listens to Shane making little mhmm’s and of course’s from the hall behind the kitchen where he’s pacing. He’s got his thumbnail between his teeth. Ilya knows him. He believes that now. He knows him. 

Ilya cannot order the same machine he has in Boston because it’s big and obnoxious and he won’t be here enough to justify that, but also he doesn’t want Shane to hate how much space it would take up. 

They make a smaller model. The coffee pot clicks off and Ilya has to click over to a new window in his phone browser to look at the dimensions in real numbers, but then Shane is standing at the entrance of the kitchen, smiling at Ilya with his eyes crinkled up. 

Ilya wants to kiss him. 

Shane lowers the phone and presses a button. Ilya knows he’s muted it. He also knows Yuna is on this call and Shane doesn’t have long to be on mute so Ilya takes his moment, letting his phone clatter to the counter and stepping in to kiss him, feeling the warmth of Shane seep into his soul. 

Shane kisses him, one hand on Ilya’s face, pulling away immediately and whispering, “You are distracting me.”

Ilya presses his lips together and then into Shane’s skin because Ilya could do much worse. 

“There is jam in the fridge for you.” Shane whispers again even though he’s on mute. “The seedless kind you like,” Shane kisses his temple. “I bought some yesterday.”

Ilya has to take a steadying breath. The seedless jam. The kind that Ilya mentioned to Shane…one time. Maybe. Years ago in a hotel room in Montreal, he remembers it because they had found two packs of those individual servings of jam in a drawer and Ilya had teased him about spreading it on his cock and Shane had pushed him onto the bed and -

“And the bread in the cabinet is the kind you like,” Shane whispers, nudging Ilya’s chin with his shoulder so he’ll stand up. “Will you make us some toast? With a few eggs? I didn’t eat.” And then he kisses him again. “We’ll be done soon.” 

Ilya is still in shock over the jam. And the bread. 

Shane is juggling the phone so he can unmute it, but Ilya catches his arm. Swallows. “I might order espresso machine? For here?” And then he adds quickly, “smaller than the one in Boston.”

“Get anything you want?” Shane looks puzzled. “It’s your home too,” and then he really does take the phone off mute just in time to give another mhmm and he wanders back into the hall. 

Ilya has to take a deep breath, deep and steadying and then he opens the fridge to find the exact kind of jam he told Shane he liked sitting on the shelf. 

A home.

A home that Shane made for him. Jam and coffee and the man he will love for the rest of his life.