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:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Yuna Hollander

Additional Tags:

Irina Rozanova Haunts the Narrative, Magical Realism, who runs the world? Mom's, At least for Shane & Ilya they do, Yuna Hollander Finds Out About Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-11 Words: 3,534 Chapters: 1/1

in this crimson light I find the truth

Summary

Ilya Rozanov and the necklace of protection - kind of

Notes

This title is from Get on the Road by Tired Pony which is in a roundabout way how this fic came to live.
I have always always loved this song and wanted to write an AU based on it, but I did a hop skip and a jump and ended up here.

This is obviously canon divergence and (hand waves) magic.

It's NOT the next big thing I'm working on for this fandom. I just thought maybe Mother's Day is a good time to post this little fic.

As always, Ilya Rozanov gets loved.

Shane googles the golden pendant that Ilya wears one singular time. 

He’s tucked safely inside his own apartment, watching Ilya give an interview after a West Coast game (which is well after Shane is meant to be sleeping) without a shirt on. Shane backs up the interview and the second time he watches it through, his gaze is caught on the necklace. And because he’s touched Ilya with his hands and his lips, he doesn’t know if the necklace is…Ilya. 

Of the two of them, Ilya is the one with the least amount of hangups about sex - let alone gay sex - so it’s probably not that he’s devoutly religious. 

After googling what the little crucifix means, Shane is more sure than he was before that Ilya is not devoutly religious, which means the necklace is personal and Shane decides to put it in the little box of things about Ilya that are Not Allowed.

He tucks it in between knowing that Ilya is a kisser and that his attitude and cockiness is well earned and he shuts the lid and tucks it away because he can’t think about that during the season - shouldn’t be thinking about it at all. Ilya wears that necklace because it means something to him. Shane has a brand of socks that he wears because it’s the only one that’s comfortable and that’s probably all the necklace is. A comfort. Shane can leave it at that. 

He thinks perhaps it is more than a comfort the first time Ilya ever calls him on the phone. 

Shane is eating a protein bar because he started taking a new supplement that is supposed to help with muscle recovery and it makes him feel queasy if he doesn’t eat with it and maybe he’s avoiding going back upstairs a little bit. 

Ilya had been…gentle with him. Shane wonders if maybe it was Rozanov’s apology for the last year of…whatever this is. 

For fucking him so sweetly and wonderfully and then being a dick to him for six months and maybe he was feeling badly about that because he had been sweet and gentle and then he had lingered on the edge of Shane’s bed, pretending to be putting his socks back on but really he was just teasing Shane about the game tonight and how Shane had passed to Hayden and cost them the win. He had teased him softly, the way that he does with Shane that isn’t the way he does for the cameras. 

And he had lingered and lingered and when Shane walked him downstairs to the back staircase, Ilya had held Shane’s face in his hands and kissed him breathless. 

It had been different and Shane is thinking about just how different it had been when his phone starts to vibrate against the counter and he freezes.

He made this super special do not disturb for the rare nights he gets to spend with Rozanov because he is above all else, very paranoid. And the only people who can get through the little special do not disturb is Rozanov because he needs to know when he arrives and Farah because if his agent is calling him in the middle of the night, something needs his immediate attention. 

And it’s always texts with Ilya. They’ve never actually spoken on the phone before and so Shane watches it ring and panics and then thinks oh god what if he’s been mugged down the street and he is scrambling for the phone. 

It’s not like he could call the police and make a report at the corner. What would he even say about being so close to Shane’s? Or what if he’s -

“Hollander,” Ilya says when Shane finally gets his hand to work and he answers the call. 

Shane is immediately turned up to eleven. He is standing in the tunnel before a game he knows they can’t win. A reporter is shouting in his face after a hard loss in OT. There’s someone with a camera asking him to take off his shirt and soften his face. It’s so familiar. This alertness. This panic. Something is wrong. “Are you okay?” 

It sounds like Ilya sniffs - like he’s crying. “My necklace, Hollander, have you…could you please please tell me if it is in your house. Please.”

He has never…said please like this. Shane isn’t sure he’s ever heard him say please except during sex. Something is wrong. Shane can fix this. “Yeah, of course,” he says, trying to talk his heart down. “I don’t see it down here, let me check upstairs before I go out back.”

Ilya sniffs again and says, “thank you.”

This is so unlike him in a terrifying way and Shane rushes up the stairs, scanning each step, looking along the baseboards until - 

It sits on his nightstand, pooled into one gold tangle. “It’s here,” he says, picking it up, weighing it in his hand. “I have it.”

Ilya says something in Russian that sounds heartbreakingly sad and his voice is so small when he asks, “Could I come back to…get it? I know it is late.”

Shane cannot imagine telling him no. He doesn’t think anyone would deny him this when he sounds so completely…devastated. “Of course, Rozanov.” Shane clutches the cross in his hand, feeling the gold warm to his touch. “Text when you are close, okay?”

“Thank you,” he says again and Shane is…so confused. “I will be there as soon as I can get cab.”

It’s stupid and irresponsible and ridiculous and the worst idea he’s ever had. “I can bring it to you? I could park…behind your hotel or something. It’s the middle of the night. No one would see.”

There’s a long silence and Shane thinks he’s fucked it up, but Ilya finally says, “Okay, yes. I will send you address.”

Shane says, “Okay, see you soon.” And then he hangs up the phone because he’s starting to shake and scare himself - the force of Ilya’s devastation at having lost this…it is more than comfort. 

Ilya climbs into the passenger seat, a hoodie pulled up over his hair, but it does nothing to hide his red eyes. Shane holds the necklace out wordlessly on his open palm. 

He does not miss the way Ilya’s hand is shaking as he places his palm on top of Shane’s and they sandwich it between them. Shane realizes that he’s likely doing this because they can’t kiss - can’t risk it - and this is how Ilya is saying thank you.

Shane squeezes Ilya’s hand, the edge of the crucifix digging into his skin and he thinks keep him safe, whatever this means to him, I hope it works to keep him safe. 

The second time it happens, it feels cruel. 

Shane finds it on the nightstand of his hotel when he comes back from his morning run and he picks up his phone before he can even think it through. 

Is this a joke to you? Who helped you do this

He’s shaking. 

How dare Ilya do this to him, punish him this way. What was Shane supposed to do? How was Shane supposed to react to…all of that? And now Ilya is taunting him about the way he acted the first time this happened? That Shane will get in a car and drive it back to Ilya’s house after he embarrassed himself yesterday and probably…fucked this up beyond repair forever. 

Does Ilya think he’s a joke. Does he think he can just embarrass Shane.

His phone is ringing in his hand and it is fucking Ilya.

He rejects it. It immediately starts ringing again and he rejects it again, feeling a scream work its way up into his throat. He feels…He feels cold. He feels cold and distant and he knows his phone is vibrating again and he knows it’s Ilya calling him again and it’s selfish and horrible because he knows that whatever the fuck this is - whatever this necklace is - it means everything to Ilya. 

Shane puts his phone on the do not disturb - huge do not disturb that lets nothing in and he goes to his internet app and then opens a secret browser because he’s a freak, but this is a problem he can solve and then Ilya will feel like an asshole for doing this. 

There’s a courier shop down the block and he doesn’t bother telling Hayden where he’s going. Hayden is showering and Shane will hopefully be back before he’s done. 

He doesn’t even open the texts from Ilya, he looks up the goddamn address in his taxi app and then he pays one hundred and thirty nine fucking US dollars to get the thing to him in two hours and he goes back to his hotel and climbs into his bed with his outside clothes on, unshowered - that’s how serious this is. 

Hayden floats in from the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist. “Want to go to breakfast, man?”

“No,” Shane bites out and then pulls the covers over his head like he’s a child and tries not to think about how that necklace ended up on his goddamn nightstand. Like Ilya managed to get it here and into his room. 

Hayden has been blessed with many things, but situational awareness is not one of them. “Okay, sure,” he says. “I’m going with JJ then, love ya man.”

Shane thinks he grunts, but he’s not sure. All he knows is that sometime much later, after Hayden has gotten back to the room and fallen asleep for his pre-game nap, Shane picks up his phone and takes it off do not disturb and the response from Ilya is right on top.

Thank you for send it back to me

Shane is a piece of shit. Ilya did not put this in his hotel as some kind of fuck you. It means too much to him. 

Shane cannot even look at him during the game. He doesn’t deserve to. 

He tells him in Tampa. 

It was his mother’s - his dead mother’s. He doesn’t elaborate, but he says he was young and Shane tries to imagine doing any of this without his mom around and he doesn’t know what to say, so when Ilya pulls him in to kiss him, Shane allows himself to be pulled in and kissed. He allows Ilya to use Shane to distract himself from it. 

Shane touches the necklace a little gentler than he has before. It means nothing.

If Shane were maybe a bit more high than he is currently, he would be able to forget the devastated look on Ilya’s face when he walked into his hospital room. And maybe if he were a little less high, he would not be begging his mom to book a plane ticket to Boston through tears. 

“You don’t understand,” he whispers. His head hurts so fucking bad and everything is too bright and even though he can’t look at his phone, he knows Ilya is frantic with it. “He needs it, it’s all he has of her.”

Yuna and David are doing that thing people who have been together forever and ever do. They are standing side by side, wearing identical expressions of bafflement, occasionally glancing at each other to communicate something that only they can understand.

“Please,” Shane gestures towards his pile of stuff that Hayden brought over from the rink. He’s got the crucifix necklace clutched in his hand. “Take my card. Please take his number, tell him it’s here and you’ll bring it to him. Please.”

“Okay, Shane.” David says, slow and sure. “I think we can get this back to Rozanov, but could we mail -”

“No,” Shane is trying very hard not to cry. “Please take it to him, he needs it.”

Shane woke up with it clutched in his hand and he knows Ilya did not leave it with him and if he were less high, he would be able to connect the threads of memory that are floating around in his brain. Or maybe that’s the concussion. 

“Please,” he says again and Yuna acquiesces. 

“I’ll get on the first flight out,” she soothes, reaching for Shane’s hand. “I won’t let it go, the whole time.”

Shane’s head hurts so fucking bad and he wants Ilya back. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you. He’s in my phone under Lily. You have to text him.”

He’s already asleep and does not have to watch his mother cry - devastated that Shane did not tell them anything about whatever this is. 

Yuna returns in the middle of the night which means Shane wakes up to her the next morning, bringing him a plate of eggs, a pain pill, and his phone. 

“Mom -” he starts, but she shakes her head, sets them on the nightstand beside the bed in his childhood home and sits down next to his knee being very careful not to jostle him. It’s more than he maybe deserves.

David wouldn’t talk about it and Shane was left to…freak out on his own, driven here in Shane’s own SUV, while trying to do the math with his heavy brain about where his mother is and if she got Ilya’s necklace to him and what the fuck he was thinking telling them everything he did without Ilya’s consent. 

“I think you should call Ilya,” Yuna says carefully. “I will call him for you and you can talk to him, alright?” 

The shock of hearing his mother call him Ilya is overridden only by the tears in her eyes. 

She reaches for his phone, unlocking it, pulling up Ilya’s contact, holding it out. “I will be back after. We can talk, okay?”

Shane feels like puking, but can’t chase that down because the call connects and Ilya is very clearly crying and Shane realizes that he and Yuna coordinated this. He was expecting this call. 

“Ilya?” Shane asks carefully, “I am sorry I told her, I know -”

“Shane,” Ilya cuts him off, sniffing hard, “I will come to the cottage, yes? We will have dinner with lovely Yuna. I will come as soon as I have won second cup, yes?”

Shane cannot believe this is happening. “Mom says it’s the Admirals’ year,” he says so he doesn’t cry. 

“She says this to me too,” Ilya laughs. “We will seeeeeee.”

Shane is fucked and he wants Ilya here to ease this ache in his body. He doesn’t know what to say because he wants to ask about the necklace and about what else he and his mom spoke about and if Ilya is angry that Shane told her, but all he can say is, “Ilya.”

There’s a long pause before Ilya says, “Shane, Shane, Shane.”

It sounds like a prayer. Shane wonders if he should buy his own crucifix to touch every time he wants to remember the way he feels when Ilya says his name. That is a religion. 

Instead he listens to Ilya talk about hockey until Yuna knocks on his door and stares at him and Shane understands that his time on the phone is being cut off and he says his talk to you laters.

Yuna sits back down in the same spot, puts the plate of eggs on his lap and holds her hand out for the phone. “So, this is how we can make this work long term.”

Shane’s brain feels like soup, but he knows one thing for sure: Yuna has claimed Ilya and that makes all of this so much easier. 

On the second morning of Shane waking up to Ilya in his bed, he runs one finger over the gold chain, looking at the intricate weave. He knows nothing about jewelry, but the chain is fine and nothing like any of the necklaces he’s seen in the locker room and then it occurs to him that it’s likely the original chain - a women’s chain.

Ilya makes a kind of wet noise and places his hand over Shane’s. 

“I found it on my pillow,” Ilya says. “She wrote in her letter that she wanted me to have it, but it was not…she was not wearing it and no one could find it, but that night I went to my room and it was there on my bed.”

Shane is trying very hard not to disturb the moment by breathing too hard, but Ilya twists a bit to look at him anyway. His eyes are shiny, but he’s looking at Shane with so much gentleness and love. Even if they’ve not said it yet. 

“Yuna thinks maybe…when it would go to you, when it would be with you, it was because I did not want to be away from you.” Ilya’s voice shakes. “I had to go, I did not want to, and it was the same with my mama. She did not want to go, but she could not stay. No matter how much she loved me.”

Shane is going to break apart. It’s going to destroy him - the implication of what Ilya is saying to him. “Ilya -”

“My mama always said it was her..protection. I thought she means God all this time, but maybe she meant this. Maybe she meant it would always protect the one we love most when we could not do it ourselves.”

Shane presses his face into Ilya’s chest. He knows he’s shaking, but he cannot stop. Ilya is - Ilya is so much and Shane wishes he could make the world understand that he is the best of them all - that Ilya is so open and beautiful and he loves with his whole entire being and he made Yuna Hollander fall completely in love with him in 12 hours which is objectively insane. 

“Ya tebya lyublyu.”

Shane doesn’t know what that means in Russian, but he hears it anyway - he feels it. “Teach me,” he demands, swiping furiously at his cheek. “Tell me.”

Ilya huffs, but he points at himself, “Ya,” he says.

Shane mimics him, pointing at his own chest. “Ya.”

“Tebya -” Ilya places his hand over Shane’s heart, pressing down. 

Shane does his best, he knows he bungles it a bit. “Tebya.”

“Lyublyu,” Ilya whispers and Shane is on him, abandoning the words to kiss him, to kiss him and press the words into Ilya’s skin - Ilya frantic with the same mission. 

“I love you,” Shane tells him and he presses his palm into Ilya’s crucifix. The one that found him when Ilya didn’t want to leave him. 

Yuna cannot be held off for more than three days and Shane knew, but seeing the fierce way she pushes past him to cling to Ilya for far longer than she would ever dare subject Shane to contact - this is real. It rattles him how real this is. 

When she turns back to where he and David are still standing in the doorway, shocked, she says, “I brought the binder with the plan, but I thought we could eat first.”

Shane nods and takes the tote bag from David, maybe a little bit in shock. “We made burgers.”

“Shane made burgers,” Ilya says, winking at him as Shane walks past. “I stood at grill and looked pretty and ate the chips, oops.”

“Well, you are too skinny,” Yuna says, like she isn’t a stickler about ruining dinner with things like chips. She’s been body snatched. “All of you come out of the season skin and bones. I will make you some of those energy bites Shane likes. Lots of calories.”

Shane is thinking about that first night - the night Ilya called him for the first time because his necklace was missing. The first time they spoke on the phone.

Yuna and Ilya walk right past him and out to the back deck, deep in conversation about what exactly are in the oatmeal energy bites that Shane loves in the post-season to help put muscle back on. 

“Your mom,” David says, leaning into the counter next to him. “When she picks one to love, she is all in, huh?”

Shane thinks about Irina and he hopes wherever she is, she understands him at this moment. They’ve chosen him and they’re going to love him, but somehow Ilya had chosen him first and Shane will not waste that. They’re going to love him fiercely. Forever. 

“He’s a good kid,” David says, “I always thought that about him. Even with his -” he wiggles his fingers in Ilya’s direction. He looks so young right now, wearing one of Shane’s soft flannels and no product in his hair and smiling widely at whatever Yuna is saying. “And anyway,” he clips, reaching into the tote bag that Shane has made no move to unpack, “when you and your mom decide on someone, I just get on board.”

He picked us first, he wants to say. “I love him,” he says instead. 

David nods and hands him a bowl of salad like it’s a completely normal summer night and Shane realizes that it is. This is it for them all. This is their family. 

We have him, he thinks - prays. We have him.