Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Twitter, Canon Rewrite, Shane can be mean as a treat

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-29 Words: 7,620 Chapters: 1/3

@plainjaneplayshockey

Summary

Shane's, or Jane's he supposed, follower count grew, fell, wavered, then rebounded when something he said seemed to resonate with someone who shared it and then it spread from there. Presumably his team was also posting about his sponsorships and the partner brands who payed him exorbitant amounts of money to pretend he used their products. Nothing he could say as Jane could every compare to the slimy feeling that crawled up his spine each time he took a photo of his hand taking a bottle/can/container of something out of his fridge/cabinet/shelves to pretend it was part of his daily routine.

He'd take all the nasty comments because as Jane he'd earned them saying things he believed. Shane Hollander the Golden Boy didn't have beliefs, he had brand partnerships. He was a body who could smile and hold things, label out. He had a choreographed smile which said trust me I drink this, would I lie to you?

Jane didn't lie. Jane said what she felt, what Shane felt.

or

Shane makes a burner account and accidentally cements himself as Ilya's biggest fan.

Notes

Listen I love twitter fics and so I knew I had to try my hand at one! That said, when I finally learn how to add reaction photos in a way that doesn't make me tear my hair out, it's over for you bitches!

I'm not totally happy with it, but the draft is expiring soon, so I need to post it because I refuse to let all this hard work go to waste.

Chapter 1

Shane had exactly sixteen posts on his social media, all of them brand related, and absolutely no interest in the websites outside of that. Some of his teammates in the junior league had accounts, had bragged about all the girls they were talking to on them, but Shane hadn't been that interested. Neither would the girls if they knew the guys they were talking to were sixteen and had pimples everywhere.

He'd liked YouTube and all the compilations people posted, liked re-watching after-game interviews and mouthing along to the words to make sure when he was asked those questions, he would know the answers. Intermixed, and occasionally watched late at night, were clips of Ilya Rozanov, breathy and sweaty, making bold promises and ending his interviews with flirty winks.

Shane couldn't do that, his mom ran all of his accounts and when she landed him bigger brand deals like Rolex, those usernames and passwords were handed over to a team who sent him long briefs with lots of numbers he nodded at and pretended to appreciate. They said lots of words like "engagement" and "content" that he nodded along with, and directed them to Candi with an I who had just recently been hired by the Voyageurs as a social media manager. Shane thought it seemed like an easy job but didn't say anything when they talked around him.

By the time his rookie year was halfway over, his team told him that he had a hundred thousand followers. They seemed very happy with this so Shane nodded and smiled back at them and kept writing checks because his mom seemed satisfied with their work.

Beyond that, they were nearly ecstatic when he was called for All-Stars and had made half a million promises to take as many photos as possible for them to use because apparently the league photographers were bad. This was rich considering they had, politely like you have to talk to people who were paying you, told him he too sucked at photography.

It was why when the hotel door opened and spilled steam out onto the ugly patterned carpet before rolling up against the tall windows, Shane picked up his phone and opened the balcony door to make sure there was no glare on the picture of Nashville's skyline.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Rozanov demanded, looking up from his phone like he was surprised Shane was standing there, dripping onto the hotel carpet, and not that they'd just fucked for the first time and then Shane had been all but shoved into the shower.

"I have to take photos for my social media team."

Rozanov blinked. "I think you made up most of those words."

"They post them on my account?" Shane tried to explain, like that was the issue. "Don't you have someone running your accounts?"

"No, I want to post something, I post something. Sometimes management tells me to stop. Like that?"

"No, well, maybe like that." Shane wished he'd paid more attention when his team lectured him. "I just—I'd post the wrong thing."

"What about your burner accounts?" Rozanov hummed, already looking back down at his phone. Shane could just barely see the text boxes and the blinking dots indicating he was talking to someone. "Are those about hockey and fancy watches too? Or is only main account boring?"

"Burner?"

That got Rozanov's attention. "You have burner accounts, yes? Everyone does."

Those were two words Shane hated to hear. When said to him, everyone does implied a but you at the end. "Like burner phones in spy movies?"

"Yes, you make them so no one knows who you are." Rozanov was looking at him like Shane had grown a second head. "So what? You just use main account? How do you shit talk? Or like dirty pictures?"

"Is that what you use yours for?" Shane demanded, in part to avoid the blush rising up his cheeks and and also to try and also to flesh out a new facet of information he didn't know but apparently should have been well-versed in.

"Sure. I post all about how Rozanov is going to win Rookie of the Year and is so handsome and very good at hockey."

"Oh, so it's just a way to tell lies then." Shane had joked and it had worked to break the tension, Rozanov laughing and shoving him lightly, a sign that Shane had better dress and get out.

He left but the idea stuck around, something for him to gnaw over as he sat through more meetings and watched photos he hated captioned with words he'd never say. If pressed, Shane would have blamed Rozanov. Or maybe Rozanov's fucking comments.

Because people made jokes about it, commented on how various accounts could be him, casually, under almost any post involving his name. The more Shane went looking, careful not to click on anything and leave a mark he was somewhere deep in someone else's comments, he saw they did the same for Rozanov. Hell, when he went digging into Hayden's comments, people spammed Jackie every time someone complimented his looks.

So he started small.

Like buying a house or starting an investment portfolio, except this time his mom wasn't on the phone with him, he carefully made a new email on his personal computer separate and unconnected to his league given tablet. Then he navigated to where he figured would be a good place to start.

Watching his cursor blink, Shane let out a massive breath and then felt stupid, looking around like he expected someone to jump out and make fun of him for leaving a stupid comment. Still, Shane started at the comment and smiled. He'd wanted to tell this creator that for months. He watched every video, liked the cadence they used, and there it was. His comment, saying what he wanted to say and no one even knew it was him.

The other tab flashed at him and Shane clicked over to where Ilya's post sat menacingly. He had half a thought to make an account and say something, but he hesitated and then closed his computer.

The Metros scrapped their way into the playoffs, but never passed the first round. Not that it seemed to matter to the other players. The team had almost acted like they'd won the Cup the way the partied afterwards. It had taken his captain pulling him aside in a bar and clapping him on the shoulder to realize that to most of his teammates, the playoffs had seemed impossible before Shane's points pulled them there.

Ilya had done the same. Not that you could tell that if you looked online.

Maybe it was his mom plastering his face on billboards in his hometown or the most recent CCM ad which had dropped and made him look so serious it made him cringe, but people seemed to love pinning Shane up on a pedestal and equally enjoy trying to pull Ilya down off his.

Rozanov didn't seem to mind if his increasingly snarky posts were anything to go by. Still, Shane felt pissed on his behalf every time their lukewarm takes popped up on his dashboard because worse than being mean, they were just wrong. Unfortunately for some second rate publication, Shane'd had enough and before he knew it, he was filling out the sign up using his new email and then hesitating over the account name. He thought of only a few months prior, Rozanov's mouth shaping a different name as he handed back Shane's phone.

Finally, before he could talk himself out of it, he clicked create and then navigated to the post and carefully laid out his points.

Clicking publish had felt—good. It was almost what he wanted to say when reporters asked him stupid ass questions and then got snotty when he gave them the same boring answers.

He'd half thought using the name Jane could do for him online what it did in his phone, probable deniability, but all it did was sharply remind him that sexism existed and where to find the block button.

Leaving the comments was relegated to the list of things he couldn't do everyday and instead was saved for special occasions. Then their season was over and the radio shows and podcasts had nothing better to do than to pick through all of the games for something to talk about. Maybe it wouldn't have become so easy to do except that the texts from Rozanov kept it always in the forefront of his mind and every time he sat down at his laptop, it seemed to call to him, and Shane was learning that he was no better than the guys who drank too much or smoked weed, his vises were just more embarrassing.

For every clean cut ad, he let himself have three mean comments. For every hospital visit to sign pucks and kiss babies, he got five replies. He began rationing them like an addict would pills. That they were always, solely in defense of Rozanov was simply because of all the players in the NLH, he was the last one anyone would ever think Shane might be defending, even as a burner account.

So he said a few things that got him threats in his DMs and men commenting about his alleged body and intelligence.

It would probably take the threat of death to pry it out of him, but there had been a sick rush when the nastier comments had started pouring in. Never before had puck bunny been anything other than an insult, and even when that was exactly how these men leveraged it, something warm flashed in his gut every time it was thrown his way.

Dialing it back over summer was necessary, he was too close to his parents for it and his mom would know immediately that it wasn't on his main account, then she would push and push until he told her what he was doing and then she'd make him delete it.

He didn't want to do that.

So he commented in bathroom stalls and late at night with his door closed, the way he'd furtively started to sneak porn into his bedroom when he was a teenager, not really to jerk off to but to have when the boys at school asked about it.

By the time that pre-season started, Shane had accidently made something of a name for himself.

"That Boston girl really has you shaken up." Hayden Pike, a new winger who had been called up had laughed when Shane had been making faces at his phone. Shane had hidden his screen, but that only meant all the other guys started patting his shoulders and shaking him. It was an attempt at team building that Shane just smiled painfully through because the alternative was telling them that he'd actually been looking at posts of people electronically jumping a man he'd sicked them on.

Shane sent a fruit basket to his social media team and Candi with an I around November when his burner account followers started rising and he realized that while, yes he was right and this whole social media thing was easy, it was also messy and he was glad that the only responses he had to deal with were results of his own actions.

He was an asshole, but through the screen, not one of the insults landed close to home and that mattered somehow. No Asian slurs, no comments on his mom, nothing about him being a fag or a pussy, and he'd started to see being called a bitch as a mark of a job well done.

By the time of his second All-Stars, the posts came to him. The days of searching out the shitty, wrong comments were behind him, instead people tagged him and messaged him until he found it. He didn't always respond, some of it was valid criticism against Rozanov's plays, not all of his flashy scoring attempts paid off, and Shane pointing that out seemed to piss off the other side of the websites because people who had been cheering him on a week prior seemed out for his blood the next.

Not that it mattered, Shane was correct and got Rozanov in his bed, his face pressed into the pillow by a broad hand, a handprint on his hips, and a delicious ache that settled along his hips and deep in his jaw. He'd cum on the carpet thinking about all of those comments saying Rozanov wouldn't fuck him. If only they knew.

Then Rozanov made his job even fucking harder by letting his shitty Russian agent leak his new contract details and Shane was left putting out electronic fires when he should have been focused on the playoff run the Metros were just diving into.

Boston made it into the second round, Montreal did not and everyone seemed to think that was Shane's problem. Nevermind that he was still on the second string to pander to the ego of the first string center who was aging out of the sport, his coach was shifting lines without caring about how they played together, and let their d-men hang them out to dry in favor of lackluster goal attempts that never went anywhere. For nearly six weeks he was busy putting out fires, playing the good host to his teammates who always came over and touched his things and left shit in his fridge that he wouldn't eat. He liked talking with Jackie, she had an account too that focused on motherhood, but Shane felt telling her he was the account that a hockey podcast he listened to had called a "raging hormonal bitch" last week wouldn't endear her to him.

That second summer he probably should have told someone, but it seemed like the only thing in his life that was solely his. He didn't have to share Jane with his mom, his many managers, his team. There was no need to tone himself down, to make himself more palatable to the desired demographic. No one was asking Jane to move a certain way, say a certain thing, or keep herself so tightly wound it felt like she might snap.

Shane could also admit, only in the dark with his face lit up by his comments, that it might have gotten worse after they'd fucked.

It was believable that no one in the world knew Ilya Rozanov, not really, but Shane felt he understood him a bit better than most. Maybe it was their sporadic sexts, but Shane could feel the little niggling ripple of intense interest he'd gotten a handful of times in his life. His first had been for cicadas when he was four. He'd collected their sheddings and made little lines with them along his windowsill. He'd practiced the chirping sounds until one of the other kids on the playground had complained and then pushed him into the dirt until he'd stopped. His parents had been happy when his focus had shifted to hockey, and he'd never had the heart to tell them that at least some part of it had been because everyone had seemed to find hockey more acceptable. He'd loved the game the moment he'd stepped onto the ice with his stick, but not being pushed into the dirt had also been a nice motivation.

Jane could be bitchy and mean, catty and a bit cruel. She never, not once, had to be perfect and Shane reveled in it.

Yet, like an unwanted person butting into a conversation, Shane found the biggest annoyance were his own fans. Or, Hollander's fan, he should say. They were rabid, mass blocking his account and forcing Shane to delete posts and send him into long tangent conversations where people with variations of his name in their usernames would call him stupid for pointing out the ways Rozanov could outperform Shane. He knew he was good, his stats were climbing each year and he'd just hit his stride, but there was no interest in talking about himself and even less interest in some other mediocre player. Thus, he doubled down.

His follower count grew, fell, wavered, then rebounded when something he said seemed to resonate with someone who shared it and then it spread from there. Presumably his team was also posting about his sponsorships and the partner brands who payed him exorbitant amounts of money to pretend he used their products. Nothing he could say as Jane could every compare to the slimy feeling that crawled up his spine each time he took a photo of his hand taking a bottle/can/container of something out of his fridge/cabinet/shelves to pretend it was part of his daily routine.

He'd take all the nasty comments because as Jane he'd earned them saying things he believed. Shane Hollander the Golden Boy didn't have beliefs, he had brand partnerships. He was a body who could smile and hold things, label out. He had a choreographed smile which said trust me I drink this, would I lie to you?

Jane didn't lie. Jane said what she felt, what Shane felt.

Which was why well into his third year he learned what exactly a thirst tweet was because he got drunk and made one.

It hadn't been intentional. A truly spectacular game that ended with him scoring a hat trick along with an assist was the start, that the combined points from the win got them into the play offs, and it ended with him leaning over the sinks in a club bathroom with everything spinning.

He was waiting for someone, JJ Shane thought, and he opened his account to just look at it longingly. He wanted to post something and didn't he deserve it?

But Shane Hollander had rules and he hadn't met them for a post yet. He'd need to wait three days because he'd wasted his last one responding to some girl who'd tried to argue about scoring at All-Stars.

Before he'd realized it, his fingers were clicking on the tags and he saw Ilya's name was trending. #lililya was attached to it and he was stuck staring at his screen with bleary eyes as he parsed out what exactly it was all about. When realized, he nearly snarled.

Shane was gobsmacked. Ilya's dick was big! Massive, actually when Shane bothered to compare it to the myriad of other examples he could compare it to. More than that, it seemed mean spirited and had grown legs in the hours after Boston's loss that night. Maybe it was because Ilya had been on the front line for his entire tenure on his team while Shane had worked his way up the lines to be the first center. Maybe it was just because to the people of Montreal, Shane was a face on a billboard but Ilya was a body that moved through their city that they could take out their hurt on.

Drunk, upset, and annoyed by the sound of laughing, pissing, and the faint sounds of fucking from a back staff room, Shane was typing before he'd thought about it and then abandoned JJ in whatever stall he was in to go home and sleep for a week.

That wasn't the reason they lost in the second round of playoffs, but the constant barrage of tweets people tagged him as Jane in wasn't great.

He didn't respond for nearly two weeks. Ignored all the comments as they grew increasingly frantic responses. Honestly it was mostly because it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of him. There were billboards going up, ads airing, more calls than he could keep up with. His mom outsourced more to companies and when they'd asked for passwords or better yet for full access to his phone, he'd nearly thrown up all over their fancy shoes.

It was somewhere in the weeks leading up to the awards that he couldn't stand seeing his face anymore and shut off his phone.

Maybe if he'd had time to shut it down, post his normal hater content, it would have died down. But the stress of the playoffs and then the stress of the press and then the stress of the awards ceremony, Shane hadn't actually thought about what people might be saying about Jane until he was texting Rozanov his room number and while waiting, he clicked open his fake account and nearly dropped his phone at the number of people who'd tagged him.

A trend, he realized, Jane had started a trend of girls saying how good Ilya fucked them. They credited him. Shane's own fans were fighting for their lives in the comments. He saw his own marketing campaign posted often, like his face was somehow a defense in and of itself but he didn't understand how that worked.

Shane had clicked open the draft post screen right about the time that Rozanov texted that he was on his way up. His leg was hoping and Shane felt the need to bite at his nail or lip or cheek, a tic he hadn't ever quite outgrown.

It back fired spectacularly.

Shane spent the summer posting the types of posts he'd done before, but now people just laughed it off. Maybe worst of all, they'd tag Ilya's account. That really made Shane panic until he'd franticly emailed Candi with an I and learned he himself was tagged in about ten thousand posts a week. Still, Shane kept his comments neutral even as his small but dedicated followers seemed to gnaw at him for his comments on Ilya's ass, his lips, his fucking ankles.

Shane was almost happy to let Jane fall to the wayside as the season started up. His real account had required maintaining, he was told, so he had to come in early a few days to take a few shots on the ice and had three promotions he had to miss team flights to attend as the fall slid into winter. Every time the executives spoke of engagement and follower numbers, his phone felt uncomfortably hot in his pocket, like it might somehow connect to their wifi by itself and download his secret to the whole building.

But Shane was stubborn and it felt like giving up to just abandon her.

He hadn't decided what to do until the the Metros Christmas party where he hadn't known the eggnog was spiked until his third cup. He'd been splayed out on one of his teammate's uncomfortably twenty thousand dollar couches, watching his teammates argue about their scores so far, complain about their wives or kids or girlfriends, and swap benign stories over the lips of warming beer. It was all so boring, exactly what Ilya always accused him of.

That he'd been absolutely pounded into his mattress not three days prior surely had no baring on why he, surrounded on all sides by people who wouldn't hesitate to flame him for what he was about to write, pulled out his phone and opened up his account.

More comments, a few demanding he shut up and make them a sandwich, a handful tell him him to back off Ilya as he was dating whichever model of the week he'd last been spotted with, and the minority of whom had sent nice messages inquiring about his absence and wishing him well.

He replied to a few of them, citing long work hours and then he, for some reason, decided to branch out. He checked popular tags and tried his hand at deciphering the pop culture everyone always told him he didn't understand. He didn't like it; maybe it was the alcohol, but his fingers were moving before he could really parse through his own thoughts.

Then he woke up the next morning and resolved to never touch the hellhole website again until he inevitably caved a few weeks later.

When he and Rozanov met up again before they both flew out for the Olympics, Shane had felt a strange flush of shame at how the people of the internet talked about him. Somewhere between when Shane's legs had been shoved up to his ears and Rozanov's tongue curled it's way into his ass and when Ilya was pounding into him so hard that his cross smacked against their sweaty chests, Shane thought of how many girls talked about him. Shane was not the first, wouldn't be the last, but he had a strange rush of desire bubble up along with his orgasm at the thought that all the girls had made it seem like it was just a hook up. One and done.

Rozanov kept coming back to him, Shane thought right about the time that Rozanov shifted his stance and his cock hit Shane's prostate dead on and the curling pleasure racketed up several marks until Rozanov's lips caught his and Shane could feel his cum smearing between their bodies as it was dragged out of him along with his orgasm.

Floating in that buzzy headspace, Shane had decided to delete the account. It was too much of a headache, he thought as he listened to the sound of water hitting the special ordered tile in his custom shower. Retiring her would be for the best. She was too mean, Shane thought as he reached around for his phone, realizing it had been shoved off the bed at some point. Jane was comprised of the worst part of himself, the parts he'd buried for a reason and here Shane was, like an addict, wanting to keep hitting.

The app opened and Shane navigated to the settings right as Ilya stepped back into the room out of a wave of steam.

"What? You're like a bunny, jumpy." Rozanov made like he might actually hop and Shane was still so languid that he just let his phone drop to the floor and tossed his other arm out for the other man to lay on. He did. His hair was wet and curling up in brown little licks. Shane's fingers traced their curves as Rozanov seemed interested in what Shane was looking at. "Porn, Hollander? Did you film us?"

"What? No!" Shane hissed and then realized the shaking he felt was Rozanov laughing. "You're an ass."

That didn't stop Shane from leaning over and pressing a soft kiss against Rozanov's brow. He wanted to smell the man's hair because he'd used Shane's shampoo and that alone had his spent dick twitch against his thigh.

Like he was burned, Rozanov sat up and dressed. Shane didn't think about his phone again until Rozanov's car had already pulled away from the apartment and by then, the hazy resolution he'd had had vanished and he simply plugged his cord in and pulled the still damp sheets up to his chin.

Looking back, he must have made the post but Shane wore it was done in a strange fugue state because it was so embarrassing it made him want to throw his phone out a window.

He had spotty internet in Russia but he did take so many photos it seemed like his phone actually slowed down. His parents called and texted constantly, so mostly the pictures were to subdue them, but the other part was also to keep his phone up if Ilya texted.

He never did.

Not when Shane won gold, not when their planes landed, not to Shane's 'nice goal' text after their first game back. All of his followers were talking about his crush, but all Shane could see was the block of his messages staring at him accusingly from under Lily's name, like he'd obviously done something wrong and was an idiot for not noticing. He was half tempted to private message one of the girls who'd been responding to him. Most of them he'd known longer than some of his teammates.

He didn't but it was tempting as the silence stretched out into the playoffs where Montreal was knocked out in the first round and Shane had to spend a whole eight hours buried under little Pikes to brush off the lingering smear of disappointment. The twins helped and little Arthur loved Shane so it proved a great distraction.

Still, his hidden notifications were always there, and Shane caved to them as he watched Rozanov carve a bloody path through the teams, playing on what looked to be a twisted ankle and a bad shoulder.

He didn't reply immediately after the final buzzer. Not when Rozanov lifted the cup or even when the ice was flooded with random people who were hugging and cheering and screaming. Shane had to sit with it. Not that he could name what exactly what it was, only that it somehow soured his mouth and made his throat stick together, tight, while his stomach hurled itself in circles like a particularly excitable dog.

That night, having opened and drank a good amount of the wine he'd been pressured to bring but nowhere close to sloshed enough to actually account for his actions, Shane opened his account back up and clicked through the photos of the win. The video played through too, Shane tracking the way Rozanov's hair stuck unevenly to his face, the slightest darkening of one eye from one of the many meat grinders of a game the last few weeks.

One of their third string defenders, a guy named Tony, had won a Cup before he'd been traded to Montreal. He'd told Shane, in a hushed and quiet tone one usually reserved for church, that the Cup weighted thirty five pounds except for the time you first lifted it.

His phone screen went black with inaction and Shane saw his own face reflected back at him.

Awards was worse. Rozanov's name was on everyone's lips. It didn't matter that Shane scored the most points in the regular season, not when Rozanov ripped through the Western Division and made so many incredible saves and borderline impossible goals. His attitude was buoyant and he bounced like a ping pong ball between tables the whole night.

Never Shane's though.

The feeling of his hand down Shane's spine as they presented the award was like being doused in cold water, or choking and feeling the panic rising up as your breath thins out, or—

The door to the bathroom closed behind him and his breathing was tight. He wanted to open his phone and find some poor schmuck defending anyone other than Rozanov and tear them to pieces because it was something to do that wasn't looking at himself in the mirror.

When Rozanov left, after Shane had shaken off his stupor and the embarrassment was allowed to sink in, he did just that and, worst of all, it did make him feel a little better.

The flood of notifications was nice enough to bolster him through the night. His mini-hiatus broken, Shane almost missed Rozanov's text when avoiding the telling vibrations of his post gaining traction.

The penthouse was nice, spacious, and had an unfortunate number of windows. Not that he could think much of them when he got his face shoved down into the Egyptian cotton sheet and a firm, grounding hand along his hip to keep his arch perfect. Rozanov was saying something, but the words drifted in one ear and out the other, Shane focused on the places were their bodies connected, the slap of skin, the heady scent of a clean sweat and Rozanov's musky cologne Shane had a half delirious wish would sink into his skin.

When he was eventually wrung dry, he turned over and tried to lever himself up, but Rozanov had already gotten his legs back under him and was walking bowlegged into the bathroom. Shane let his arms give out and sprawled back onto the comforter they'd messed up in their haste to fuck. And it had been a fuck, the like that hadn't happened in a while. Their last few hookups had been frantic but fun, more laughter than Shane had expected, but this had been a true return to form for them and Shane picked through his emotions to understand how he felt about that.

Before he could so much as parse out the painful pleasurable ache of his lower body, a warm wash cloth smacked against his stomach with a wet splat. Shane jerked, unsure for a moment what he was suppose to be doing until he saw Rozanov turn and raid the mini fridge.

Shane had never cleaned himself before, not with Rozanov at least, so he took it delicately, slowly cleaning himself and then folding the washcloth and setting it on the side table in a neat square.

From the corner of is eye, he could see Rozanov hesitate just slightly in his pouring. Two little bottles were emptied over ice and handed to Shane who took them with a faintest burn in his stomach without ever taking a sip. He'd earned it.

Then he took a drink and remembered that he hated vodka, even apparently the kind Rozanov considered good enough. Still, it was his reward so he drank it carefully, mimicking Rozanov when he threw himself back against the headboard and sat there looking straight ahead.

Maybe he said something wrong, because Rozanov lit a cigarette. Shane knew he wasn't the best at subtle clues, but that was a pretty clear indication he wanted Shane out of his room. Shane stood and threw back the alcohol, realizing after the burn settled in his stomach that he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and that even two fingers of vodka might actually get him tipsy.

Moving quickly, he pulled his pants off the chair and to make sure they didn't wrinkle more than they already were, he sat his bulky phone on the glass table, a mistake because it sent the vibrations rattling through the room while Shane tried to rip up his fly.

"Who are you talking to?" Rozanov called, and Shane realized he'd stood and leaned against the dividing wall between the bedroom and the living room. Shane pulled on his shirt, fingers frantically pulling at the buttons while his phone buzzed annoyingly through the glass. Shane had gotten a handful of them up when Rozanov made a move to grab the phone and Shane bodily threw himself over it.

"It's nothing!" He said quickly, ignoring how even knowing it was so fucking bad for you, that the smell of smoke mixed with Rozanov's cologne was almost pleasant. A lie, he needed a lie… "It's a friend."

Rozanov's eyebrow raised and if he had the brain capacity under all the panic, he might have been insulted. As it stood, he instead just stood there until Rozanov grunted and moved back around the dividing wall and Shane listened as the crisp sheets were pulled around by the body between them.

He hadn't thought rationally about what he'd been waiting for until he said goodbye and silence greeted him. The door shutting was quiet and yet it felt harsher in the silence of a Vegas night. The Strip was alive with lights even so long after midnight and Shane sucked at his teeth as the elevator number climbed, the bite of vodka sticking to his gums.

The words were tangled up between his fingers, his head spinning and he didn't know exactly what he wanted to say until he saw the words sitting perfectly in the typing bar, perfect and impossible to send. Carefully, making sure each letter was carefully deleted, Shane felt something tight in his chest.

Without thinking and feeling almost timed as the elevator slowly crawled down to his floor, Shane, head a little hazy and something like a pit opening up in his stomach, typed out exactly what he wanted to say and then hit post right as the doors opened and he had to pick his way to his own room.

The post gained some traction, even as Shane brushed his teeth and flossed, changed into a worn shirt and plugged his phone in, rolling over so his back was facing the buzzing. Maybe if he'd bothered to look, he could have done—something.

But he hadn't, he'd dreamed of his cottage he was building and the long dock, and the way it was angled to perfectly catch the sunrise over the water and how maybe it would be nice to sit there in the morning before a run and just be. Maybe, he let himself think only when his head was still slippery with the alcohol and close to sleep, it would be nice to share that sunrise with someone else.