Rating:

Explicit

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:

Established Relationship, Ilya Moves To Ottawa, Phone Sex, Sexual Roleplay, (sort of), Men Try To Work Through Big Feelings By Jerking Their Thangs About It, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Boston (City Of) Loves Ilya Rozanov And Wants To Know If Shane Hollander Can Fight

Language:

English

Series:

Part 6 of my heated rivalry fics

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-22 Words: 9,281 Chapters: 1/1

raison d'être

Summary

On July 4, 2018, Ilya announces to the world that he has already played his last home game on Boston Raider ice. He's an Ottawa Centaur now, for better or for worse.

Most all of Boston Twitter agrees it's for worse.

Shane Hollander, watching alone on his couch at the cottage that Ilya just left a few days ago, knows it's for the better. And he thinks he knows that Ilya thinks it's for the better too, that Ilya's excited for the move, excited to be closer to Shane. It's just hard to remember that when Ilya looks so distracted and sad in the wake of the news breaking.

But one day, Shane's going to promise this man that he'll be there for him through better or worse, so he may as well start practicing now.

Notes

and what if i told you i had a 7 step outline for a story about ilya having Feelings about leaving boston and moving to ottawa because that was his home for eight years and he realizes when he's packing that he still has money on his subway Charlie card that he doesn't know what to do with because he's never gonna be living in this city again and he was ready to move because he wants to spend the rest of his life with shane, he just also didn't realize saying goodbye would be so difficult in so many weird ways and so shane flies down to spend a day with him after he realizes what's going on and they go around the city and ilya shows shane his favorite parts that have nothing to do with the tourist spots and they fall even more in love than they already are.

and then i started writing this fic a scene before the first step of that outline, to add context and exposition, and suddenly i had 9k words and a rookie roleplaying sex scene that was definitely not on the outline. what then.

(i think i'm still gonna write the original boston fic i imagined, but this right here is a complete story in of itself with a much more lighthearted tone than all of that 'leaving homes and versions of yourself that you became there that you'll never get back' nonsense)

(also, there are tweets in this fic - i did the lazy man's move and did not use a work skin because work skins scare me lol but i may rethink this in a few weeks, especially if i do write the part two....)

Shane watches the news break from the cottage, wrapped up in one of the sweaters he’d lifted from Ilya’s suitcase when he wasn’t looking. Ironically, maybe inescapably, it’s a Boston Raiders hoodie, large white and yellow logo on the black cotton front worn soft with time.

Ilya flew back to the States two days ago, lingering first in the doorway to the kitchen, then in the entryway, then on the front stoop of the cottage. Shane’d kissed him once for every second of hesitation he gave him, following him out to the car he’d rented from the airport and lifting his suitcase into the back while Ilya buckled his seatbelt. Then they’d both stopped, car idling in the drive, window down and heads resting together, fingers intertwined on Ilya’s thigh, like Ilya would drag Shane into the car if he could, like Shane would let him in a heartbeat.

It’s been getting harder and harder each time, to separate. To leave and to be the one left. It goes against everything Shane thought he knew, every lesson training as an athlete has ever taught him: constant repetition is supposed to build endurance. Eventually, as the muscle strengthens, it stops hurting.

It’s not supposed to hurt every time like it’s the first time all over again. Shane’s supposed to build up immunization or something. Antibodies to defend against the sight of Ilya Rozanov standing by the hotel door with that look in his eye that means the clock’s down to its final seconds, the third period’s almost over, and they’re fighting a game that’s already been lost.

It’s not always supposed to feel like it did that very first time last summer when they’d spent two weeks trading I love you’s and kisses and dreams and plans before Ilya had to board the plane back to Boston and Shane had looked around his oasis of a cottage, built to his every specification, and felt like something integral was gone.

But it does. 

Hence the way Shane’s stretched out on his couch, curled up in the hoodie he stole out of Ilya’s luggage, drawstring in his mouth and iPad resting on his chest as he scrolls through Twitter. Today was the day he was supposed to start pre-training for the season. It’s the fourth of July. Five years ago, Shane would have already been knee-deep in his off-season training plan, up at dawn for an hour and a half of intensive yoga before running the circuit around the lake twice before breaking for a late morning breakfast before hitting the weights in the basement before, before, before.

But that was in 2013, when Shane had Ilya but didn’t at the same time. When he had him, sometimes, but existed separate from him as well. Looking back at that time now, at the person he’d been, is like looking into a fogged up mirror—he can see the vague outline of himself but the image is blurred, warped into a stranger.

Now it is 2018, and Ilya left for Boston two days ago and took some vital part of Shane with him when he went. It’s been like this for ages, even before they officially sorted out their shit. Before the cottage, last year. For years now, it’s felt like parts of Shane were only accessible to him when Ilya was next to him, like Ilya’s fingers were a key that unlocked something in Shane’s chest no one else has ever been able to shake loose, and every time he leaves, he puts it right back where it came from. He takes pieces of him with him, and Shane’s stopped expecting to be able to breathe the same when he’s gone.

So in the wake of Ilya’s departure, Shane coaxes himself through the heartache like it’s a shitty hangover. He should be up and running, hitting the trail and the personal gym he’d built in the basement of the cottage just for the summer months, but he isn’t. He takes it slow. He treats himself gently, even though he thinks it’s stupid to ache so much just because his boyfriend’s in another country. It’s not even a country that’s that far away. They’re still in the same timezone, for Christ’s sake.

But he’s starting to think he’ll miss Ilya every time they’re not right next to each other, which is inconvenient but survivable. Survivable because he knows Ilya feels the same way.

And, more importantly, survivable because they’re about to be closer than they’ve been their whole careers. They’re about to be in the same country, only two hours apart, which is nothing compared to how it was during the worst of their becoming, when Ilya was in Moscow and Shane in Ottawa, when Ilya was in Boston and Shane in Montreal, when Ilya was looking at him with naked love in his eyes and Shane was stuck somewhere inside his own head and unable to see it for what it was. 

Ilya had given another year to Boston after they got together. It was less of a courtesy and more of a necessity, with his contract turning belly up and run through at the end of this season and his agent needing a few months to iron out a deal with the Centaurs.

It’s all been very hush hush, the deal, the move, the new team. It’d been obvious from the moment Ilya’s agent had approached the Centaurs, back in December, that they’d take Ilya Rozanov in a heartbeat. The contract could have been written up on a used bar napkin, and they probably would have signed it. It’s Ilya Rozanov. Shane’s not about to judge someone else for what they’d do to get Ilya Rozanov; that’d be pretty hypocritical of him.

But Ilya had wanted an ironclad contract, and his agent had proved to be worth every bonus Ilya’s ever paid him by making it happen, working February through the play-offs to seal the deal and keep it under wraps. It’s a good contract, Shane had read through it over his mom’s shoulder after Ilya had sent it over to Yuna for a second review.

A no-trade clause, a mind-boggling salary, an air-tight conditional that ensured Ilya wouldn’t be kicked off the team roster even if he was put on LTIR for a whole season, which was a situation Shane’d had only ever thought about in terms of his worst nightmares.

It’d all happened in secret. 

But it can’t stay that way.

Ilya’s too honorable to slink out of Boston with his things in a moving truck and his head ducked down between his shoulders. Even if that were an option, he wouldn’t choose it. 

There’s a press conference instead, and Shane watches the news break from the cottage. It’s the fourth of July in the States, 2018, and Boston is reeling. They’ve just lost their captain, and no one but the most cynical hockey fans saw it coming.

Shane’s heart goes out to the city, which is sort of a weird feeling for him because he hates Boston on both a professional and conceptual level. But he knows how he’d feel if he had Ilya and then lost him without even realizing that could happen. It’s a scenario that scares him more than LTIR, if he’s being honest. 

He refreshes the Twitter feed. Immediately, his dashboard is flooded with a new cascade of posts, each one more and more riddled with capslock and spelling errors than the last.

It’s not something he likes doing, being on social media. He doesn’t have the head for it or the patience. But he’d made Ilya promise to stay off it once the press conference in the Garden concluded, and he feels—he doesn’t know. Obligated. To know, to read.

Ilya wouldn’t be moving teams if Shane hadn’t asked him to. He’d have stayed in Boston, maybe married Svetlana for an American citizenship even if that was the stupidest idea Shane’s ever heard in his entire fucking life. He’d have stayed though, gotten his team another Cup, maybe two. He’d have stayed til he retired, til they put his jersey was up in the rafters. That’s the kind of man Ilya is, unwavering and loyal to the things he loves.

He just loves Shane more than the city that drafted him, and that’s something Shane’s known for a year now even though it’s blindsided Boston. Shane knows. But this feels like the very first time he’s actually realizing what that means, scrolling through picture after picture of Ilya standing awkwardly behind a podium in front of the Garden, notecards between his hands and face expressionless as he announces that he’s already played his last game on Boston ice. 

He’s a Centaur now.

So Shane doesn’t sift through the Twitter reactions and Instagram comments and Tumblr posts because he wants to. It just—it feels like he has to. Like it’s his fault. Like he’s on trial for doing something horrible, committing mass murder or something, and he has to sit in a court room and look all the family members of his victims in the eye.

He loves Ilya Rozanov. He’s felt guilty about that on and off for the last ten years for a myriad of different reasons. This is just the first time that he feels like he’s really, actually maybe done something wrong, in black and white, like he’s hurt someone, even though objectively the only people who could possibly, actually be wounded by the Boston Raiders’ Captain moving teams are probably overly invested in hockey to an unhealthy level anyway.

Which is saying something, coming from Shane Hollander.

Boston Hockey Watch @PucksAtTheGarden: BREAKING: Ilya Rozanov announces that he will not be returning to captain the Boston Raiders for the 2018-2019 season. The star center and 2008 first overall draft pick has signed with the Ottawa Centaurs for. . . 

Cliff Marleau @Marleauhockey7: Players moving teams is always one of the hardest parts of the show. Ilya told us in January that he wouldn’t be signing onto another season with the Raiders, and I know I speak for the team when I say that we wish him the best. We’re hard at work now to make sure our next season is. . .

Future Mrs. Rozanov in Black and Yellow @sticksnshouldershigh: Marly campaigning for captain next season already akdgjghla bro Rozanov’s body ain’t even COLD YET

Peter G @petergowan2222: I wish Rozanov well if that’s what he wants. If a captain doesn’t want to be on the ice, it weakens the whole team. And he skated like shit this past season, so….

Rozanov’s Raider of the Lost Arts @emptyheddies: the CENTAURS?? What the fuck do you mean Rozy is going to play for the CENTAURS??? 

Hannah Banana @skatersfordais: i want to go back to sleep. this is worse than zayn btw im literally on the brink

Thinskinned Mooni Baby @RozyBear81: never love something the end of an ELC can touch i guess 

Puck-er Up Bambi @cxrolinechange: whatever boston went through in 1776 is nothing compared to what boston is going through 2018. i need a day of mourning stat cancel the fireworks no one’s in the mood

Hockey-hivemind @sisidownthegreen: @cxrolinechange babe i KNOW, my boss is opening the store late tomorrow out of respect. i’m gonna wear black to work

Scott Hunter Never Retire Please @admiralsforlifebb: oh it is a great day to be an Admirals fan. And a Montreals fan. Boston’s got nothing if they don’t have Rozanov

Boston Stanley Cup Run 2k19 Manifestation @kellygreenbostonblack: @admiralsforlifebb so first of all it’s never a great day to be an admirals fan, so jot that down. second, who the fuck raised you!!! 

Scott Hunter Never Retire Please @admiralsforlifebb: @kellygreenbostonblack probably time to change your display name huh 

Rozanov’s Raider of the Lost Arts @emptyheddies: im sorry, it’s just—the fucking CENTAURS????

Rozanov’s Raider of the Lost Arts @emptyheddies: this is like the you vs the guy she told you not to worry about meme but the guy she told you not to worry about is the fucking Ottawa Centaurs and literally NO ONE was worried about them!!!!

The Official Ottawa Centaurs @TheOttawaCentaursMLH: @emptyheddies  [image still from a Monty Python sketch of three men dressed in red robes with heavy-looking crucifixes around their necks. Each man has been given the torso and legs of a horse (poorly edited). The dialogue ‘No one expects the Spanish Inquisition’ is written in yellow text at the bottom of the image, but the words ‘Spanish Inquisition’ have been crossed out and the words ‘Ottawa Centaurs’ have been added in]

Rozanov’s Raider of the Lost Arts @emptyheddies: @TheOttawaCentaursMLH oh my god???

“I don’t get why they have to keep mentioning that you were drafted first overall when they’re summing up the move,” Shane complains the moment he answers the phone. It’s almost midnight, but he’s been waiting for Ilya to call. He’d wanted to give him space, if that’s what he needed. 

Sometimes it’s hard for Shane to tell, what Ilya needs and what Shane can give him. It’s easier to let Ilya show him most of the time, even though it makes Shane feel like a thirteen year old boy, awkward and on the edge of fucking up his first serious relationship because he can’t remember if his girlfriend likes daisies or roses more even though she’s definitely told him before. Like all he wants is to be good but he can’t quite remember how.

Ilya lets out a tired sort of chuff of laughter. “Is because I was drafted first overall,” he says, fond, even if the fondness is hard to hear under the exhaustion.

“Yeah, I remember, I was there,” Shane replies, rolling his eyes. “In 2009.” 

He pushes himself up against the pillows stuffed behind his back, adjusting his glasses so he can study Ilya better in the small iPhone screen. He wasn’t even reading before Ilya called. He’d just grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and put them on when his phone buzzed with the incoming call because he knows Ilya likes the way he looks in them.

Never let it be said he doesn’t know how to do nice things for his boyfriend. Sometimes, he remembers to choose daisies and it turns out to be the right call.

“ESPN called me Cup winner,” Ilya says, rubbing at the edge of his jaw as he yawns. “I wanted to write to the journalist and ask her to add One year before Shane Hollander won the Cup, but I thought, hm, that is probably implied, yes?”

“Asshole,” Shane says, automatic and in love.

Ilya shrugs. His eyes cut off the screen. “They are calling me that too,” he agrees, and for a moment his mouth pinches. His eyebrows furrow. 

“Oh, Ilya,” Shane whispers, and the fact that Ilya doesn’t smile back at him the way he usually does when Shane says his name—just something small, something tucked into the corner of his mouth—betrays exactly how stretched-thin he must be feeling. 

It’s always a little bit awful to disappoint the fans. To come home with your tail between your legs after a solid thrashing from another team or a close-call loss that you just couldn’t turn in your favor. Shane’s felt like that more than he cares to count, returning to Montreal defeated by one team or another.

He can only imagine the feeling’s ten times heavier to bear when you have to tell the fans who have supported you for almost a decade that you’ve just decided to leave on your own free will. Especially when you’re the Captain. Especially when you love like Ilya Rozanov does.

“I think it would have been easier to be traded,” Ilya is saying, an unknowing echo of Shane’s thoughts. 

“The GMs are used to being the bad guys,” Shane agrees, tugging at his bottom lip. The feeling is back. That courtroom sort of feeling, except this time the only victim he’s looking at is his boyfriend. “Wesson was pretty clear in the pressroom that this was your decision though.”

“Yes,” Ilya says. He runs his hand through his hair, props his phone up against something. He’s in his kitchen, Shane thinks. The shining chrome of the refrigerator takes up most of the background. 

It looks wrong, for some reason, just a little out of place. But it’s hard to focus on kitchen appliances when Ilya looks wrong too, disjointed and off-rhythm.

“You promised you wouldn’t look at what people were saying,” Shane says. Most of Ilya’s hair has been swept up and pinned behind his head in a lazy half-up style. He’s shaved sometime in between leaving the cottage and tonight. He’d still had the beard at the press conference. Maybe he kept it until then as a reminder to the audience that he’d led the Raiders through another deep play-off run, losing out against Philadelphia only in the Eastern Conference Championship round. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to give up even the thinnest layer of defense.

Ilya shoots him a look. “Oops,” he says, deadpan. “My thumb slipped.”

Shane shakes his head, but it’s not like he can blame him. Shane would be looking too, if he announced his sudden departure from the Metros. He’d need to know what people thought.

During his rookie season, when he was racking up points and icetime and goals good enough for the highlight reel, each loss had been devastating. Even the games that they won but Shane hadn’t clicked with the team on the ice, hadn’t been able to make the plays, hadn’t been able to meet his own standards—those had been awful. He’d scroll through hockey blogs and news-sites and the comments left beneath Youtube videos of missed passes, shots on goal that went too wide. It’d been like a punishment for him, to know. To force himself to know. 

He hadn’t realized until a few years later exactly how excruciating it’d been for his parents to watch him like that and be unable to help. Unable to rip the phone away from him, send him into time-out or up to his room or to bed or anywhere they could keep him safe from the razor-sharp claws of other people’s freely given opinions. 

Maybe he hadn’t known at all, really, until now, on the other side of it. “Some people are pretty happy for you,” he tells him, rubbing at the back of his neck. His own hair has grown out a bit lately, mostly because the only hairdressers he goes to are the ones who clean him up before he shoots for a commercial or ad campaign and they haven’t been bothering lately to do more than trim it at the ends. Ilya likes it.

Shane wishes he were there. Or Ilya were here. It’s that pointless kind of thought that’s just his new normal now. Like living in Vancouver, or Seattle maybe. You get used to the constant drizzle, can’t change it so you learn to live alongside it, learn to carry that instinctive yearning for the sun between your ribs, tucked away and private, as life moves you along through the rain.

“Yes, I think Admiral fans want to petition for a national holiday,” Ilya says, dry. His eyebrows are still furrowed. If Shane were there, he’d kiss at the wrinkles until they smoothed out. 

“I think July 4th is already a national holiday for Americans,” Shane tells him, but the joke is weak. Ilya barely smiles. He tries again. “I saw a few people who’ve already changed their socials to Centaur colors. Apparently there’s been a run on the pre-order for your jersey.”

Ilya smirks, and maybe Shane’s just trying to fool himself, but it looks like there’s more color in his face. “So many future Mrs. Rozanovs,” he says. “I will be very busy on the Centaurs.” 

Shane scowls automatically, teeth grinding so hard together that his jaw twinges. There’s only going to be one future Mrs. Rozanov—Mr. Rozanov—Mr. Hollander-Rozanov. Rozanov-Hollander. Whatever. It’s below them to pretend otherwise. An offense to their relationship and what they mean to each other. 

And it makes Shane so jealous he can’t see straight.

“Well, besides them,” he says, which is pretty fucking diplomatic, “my parents are still thrilled.”

Ilya grins. Finally. It’s soft, his face tilted down to the counter as he messes with something in front of him Shane can’t see. “That is because their prodigal son is coming home,” he says, sounding the word out slowly, and Shane’s chest is like a big bruise: tender and aching.

“Whatever,” Shane says, but there’s no bite at all to the word. There’s just so much affection that it feels a little bit embarrassing. He feels a little bit stupid with it, how much he loves Ilya. How happy he is, despite everything else, that Ilya is moving to Ottawa. They’ll be closer. They have their foundation. They’re already more friendly in the public eye, having met for a few casual coffees in Montreal over the past season. Ostensibly to iron out some details of the Foundation, and to let people see them together, as friends instead of rivals. Warm people up to the idea, like it’s their job to hand-hold grown men into accepting the fact that two professional hockey players don’t want to beat each other up off the ice. 

The words slip out before he can stop them. “I’m happy,” he tells Ilya, whose smile grows into something even softer. Not a smile at all, but just an easing of his entire face. The furrow in his eyebrows is almost entirely gone. In the face of that, it’s easy to add, “and I’m the only future Mrs. Rozanov that matters.” 

Ilya lets out a surprised huff of laughter. His hands pause, shoulders flexing beneath the lines of his tank top. Shane’s pretty sure that if they were together, he’d find himself sitting up on the kitchen counter with Ilya’s fingers in his hair and his teeth on his neck after a line like that.

Even just the thought—and the sense memory it triggers—has Shane squirming slightly on the mattress. It’s still embarrassing, how much he wants Ilya, despite having had so many years to get used to the need thrumming under his skin. Now, he clears his throat like maybe Ilya won’t have noticed his lapse in concentration even though Ilya’s pretty good at noticing everything about him, when Shane wants him to or not.

“When’s your move date?” he asks, plucking at a loose thread of the quilt thrown over his legs. It’s an unnecessary question, of course, because Shane already knows. He and his mom had organized out the next few weeks for Ilya in a clearly labeled spreadsheet, down to when the movers were scheduled to arrive at Ilya’s Ottawa apartment with his Boston furniture. 

He asks anyway, probably because there’s love in going over well-trodden ground. Shane’s been captaining hockey teams most of his life; sometimes you call a team huddle and you tell the guys what they need to do and it’s not like it’s new information—pass, shoot, for the love of Christ, keep your head up—but it’s like saying it again is just reminding them that you think they can do it. 

“In four days,” Ilya says, because he’s a hockey captain too and he doesn’t need Yuna or Shane Hollander to pencil out his schedule in order to get things done. But there’s love too, in the letting.

“Mhm,” Shane nods and makes himself relax back into the pillows. In four days, the movers will come to collect whatever Ilya’s decided to keep from his Boston place. Ilya will pack a few suitcases and boxes of the more fragile, personal things into his car and make the drive up to Ottawa by himself afterwards. The Centaurs have set him up in a nice rental in a good area near the training rink, twelve month lease already signed. It’s about a twenty minute drive from there to the house where Shane’s parents live, in the suburbs. By Saturday night, Ilya’s going to be sitting at the kitchen table in Shane’s childhood home. 

Shane’s dad is planning to make borscht, which Shane knows because he called him yesterday to tell him about the movie he’d just seen in theaters, and his fingers had been stained red. He's been practicing all week, according to his mom. Their deep freezer is fit to burst with different recipes of the same dish.

Suddenly it feels so unfair that his parents will get that, will get Ilya again before Shane does, that he’s blurting out, “I was thinking.”

Ilya pauses. “Oh no.”

“Shut up,” Shane says, reflexive, before forging forward anyway. “Listen, so. You know how my dad’s been putting off surgery for his shoulder?”

“Da,” Ilya says, only half listening. There’s a tearing sound from his end of the line, and then a crinkling sound. Oh, Shane realizes a beat late. That’s what Ilya’s doing. He’s packing his kitchen. 

“Wait, Ilya, the moving company does that stuff, you don’t need to, like, pack up your plates,” Shane says, distracted by the way Ilya’s tongue has poked out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.

Ilya shrugs, waving a hand. “They are my plates,” he says. “I want to make sure they get to Ottawa safe.”

“They have IKEAs in Ottawa,” Shane says. “Where you can buy more plates.”

“I like these ones,” Ilya responds. He pauses for a moment and frowns thoughtfully down at the counter, the plates. It is, Shane realizes belatedly, the first time Ilya has stopped moving since the call connected. “They are from…mandatory team bonding day a week before, hm. 2015 pre-season, I think. I took suggestions on what to do. Braxy was not serious, but he did not think I would make the team go antiquing.”

“So of course you made the team go antiquing,” Shane says, smile slipping onto his face and into his voice. “Those poor shop owners, they must have been terrified some clumsy hockey player was going to break half their stock.” 

“We were very well-behaved,” Ilya disagrees with a sniff. “And we made Marley wait outside just in case.” He holds up one of the dishes he’s been wrapping so that Shane can see them. Shane blinks. It has bunnies in its center, drawn in an old-fashioned style that wouldn’t look out of place in a children’s book.  Around the rim are similarly drawn pictures of vegetables, all neatly labeled. Carrot, beetroot, corn, lettuce.

“What the fuck,” Shane says.

“I like,” Ilya shrugs again. “I buy.”

“Uh huh,” Shane says.

Ilya looks offended, mouth twisting into a frown. “It is artwork you eat off of,” he says defensively. “What is not to like? They are little bunnies. It reminds me of you, zaychik.”

Shane raises an unimpressed eyebrow. He thinks about taking off the glasses, for effect, but it’s not like he wants to actually punish Ilya or anything. 

“...and Carmichael broke two of them so I paid for the set,” Ilya admits after another moment of silence. “Is why I have them even though they are a bit ugly.”

Shane can feel another smile tugging at his lips. He can picture it clearly: eight or nine hockey players, professional ones who all weigh over two hundred pounds and stand north of six foot, crowding into one of those labyrinth-like antique stores probably found on every other corner in Boston. “What’s the saying, like a bull in a china shop?”

“Yes, yes,” Ilya huffs, but he’s smiling too. Softer, not even into the camera lens, but it counts. “So you see why I cannot trust them with a moving company, yes? They have proven already to be very fragile.”

“Yeah, alright, I’ll give it to you, I guess,” Shane says, leaning back into the pillows again. He doesn’t point out that that explains why Ilya has the dishes in Boston—not why he’s decided to take them with him to Ottawa too.

He isn’t sure Ilya would be able to explain that one so easily. Not in English, maybe not even in Russian.

“Anyway,” he says. “My dad’s shoulder surgery. I was thinking, you know. If he got it done this summer, in August or something…you’d be in Ottawa for training, you could come by the house, and he’s my dad, so….” 

Ilya hums and tears a piece of tape off the roll with his teeth.

“What do you think?” Shane prompts. Ilya’s lips purse out, and he tilts his head back and forth, an over-exaggeration of a thoughtful expression that he pairs with a shrug, a wave of his hand.

“I think, hm. He is not top of my list of Hollanders I play sexy nurse for,” Ilya says, touching his chest, lips curling down then up. “But he is your father, I can make an exception if you want.”

Shane’s face creases up in immediate and visceral disgust. “No, ew, Ilya, that’s gross,” he complains, but he can hear the laughter in his voice. Ilya can too, because that soft smile is back, and he’s looking at the camera instead of down at his counter. “I just meant that, you know, if he has the surgery, I can tell Montreal that I’ll do my trainings in Ottawa instead of splitting time between the cottage and Montreal. So I can be around, for him and my mom. And you can be around. Because you’ll live there.” 

If anything, Ilya’s amusement grows, eyes twinkling even in the lowlights of his kitchen. “Solnyshka, you do not need an excuse to visit Ottawa, it is your home. Metros coaches will understand, yes? Most players go home for the summer. Say you are homesick. No need for David to be cut open first, I will come around anyway. Yuna makes very good garlic bread. And sometimes she lets me have seconds.” 

Shane’s mom usually makes sure Ilya has thirds, usually even fourths, but that’s not the point. “I—yeah,” Shane says. “Okay, you’re right. Okay.”

He doesn’t say that it feels like he needs an excuse, something to hide behind. That it’s always felt like he needs an excuse. That doing something just because he wants to has never felt like reason enough, not before he met Ilya. Ilya was the first thing he took for himself that he couldn’t reason his way out of or defend against. There was no cover story or alibi he could paint over the way he wanted Ilya, again and again.

He doesn’t say that though. He doesn’t have the words, not in English or French.

Shit, Shane can’t remember the last time he spent a summer in Ottawa just because he wanted to. He can’t remember the last time he felt homesick. He’s always thought maybe he didn’t get homesick, not like some of the guys on his teams have. Like there was a boy who billeted with them for a summer, back when Shane was twelve, and he cried in his bedroom at night for two weeks because he missed his mom. But when Shane spent a season billeting with his coach’s family and playing in the youth circuit in Vancouver, he’d been fine. There’d been hockey. How could you be homesick if there was a rink for you to play in, ice under your blades and your parents on the phone every other day to talk over your practices and your games?

But that was also before Ilya. Homesick sounds like the best word to describe the feeling that’s had Shane laid up and yearning the past few days. 

“I could be there end of next week,” Shane says, swiping away from the call to examine his calendar. “There’s a bunch of promo stuff on the schedule I have to shoot, but I mean, it’s only two hours. I could drive up afterwards, be back in Montreal the next day.”

“Sounds good,” Ilya responds. There’s the sound of more tearing, paper wrinkling. “No need to rush though, solnyshka. I am doing Prospect camp with Ottawa next week.” 

Shane can feel his eyebrows fly up and he swipes back to the FaceTime call to get eyes on Ilya. “Why the fuck are you doing Prospects camp? This is your ninth season—you have a Cup.” 

Prospects camp, for the Metros and for most every other team Shane can think of, is for newly drafted rookies and AHL members tapped to potentially move up to the MLH in the new season. It’s not for Cup winners, trade or no trade.

Ilya shrugs though. “I asked. We always made summer trades do prospect,” he says. “I will be on the ice with some of them in September, it is good to see who they click with. I am prospect too.”

“You have a multi-million dollar contract,” Shane points out. “You’re on the cover of the MLH 2016 console game.”

“I remember,” Ilya smirks, preening in a way that’s two parts ridiculous and one part genuine. “I am still a prospect. New city, new team.” 

“You’re going to make them wet themselves,” Shane says, floored, thinking about how he would have felt as an eighteen year old rookie sharing ice with an MLH superstar his very first day of Prospects camp. Especially one who looks like Ilya.

Forget sharing ice, Shane would have been quaking in his skates at the idea of sharing a shower with the man. 

His face must be doing something weird, displaying some sort of tell that only Ilya knows how to read, because suddenly Ilya’s smile is shark-sharp and his whole attention is once again fixed on Shane, dishes forgotten. “Oh? What is this, solnyshka?”

“Ilya, don’t look at me like that,” Shane says. There’s a hint of a whine in his voice, even as he pushes his shoulders back against the pillows anyway, adjusting the camera angle so there’s more of him for Ilya to see. If he wants to. “‘S not fair.”

He means, of course, that it’s not fair that Ilya’s not here. That they’re not together. That they have to have this conversation, strung out over telephone wires and not in person, chest to chest like it should be.

“Hm, tell me what has made you so flushed, solnyshka,” Ilya demands, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the counter behind him so that the long line of his body is on full display. “The idea of me in Prospect camp as a rookie? And in this, you are, what, very big MLH Captain of franchise team?"

“I am a very big--ugh, I—no,” Shane says, but his face is red. He can feel it. “No. Shut up."

“Ah,” Ilya says, a fucking dog with a scent, looking smug. Looking lethal. “Is you at Prospect camp as a rookie.” 

“We’re not doing this,” Shane decides, sitting up and fightng the urge to bury his face in his hands. “No, no thank you.”

Ilya looks relaxed in the camera, head tilted as he examines Shane. It’s unfair that his gaze can still feel so piercing even just over a call. Shane feels rooted in place by it. “But imagine,” Ilya tells him. “Your very first season, you are all shy and pretty. Very big eyes, very big shoes to fill. Very hungry for it.”

“For what,” Shane hears himself whisper, even if he doesn’t want to engage. Engaging with Ilya sometimes is like…baiting a lion that’s already got its sights set on eating you alive. 

“For all the things you were hungry for when you were eighteen, solnyshka, don’t you remember? Goals and glory. And cock.”

“Ilya.”

“My cock,” Ilya adds, like that was ever in doubt. Like there was ever anyone else for Shane.

“Ilya, c’mon,” Shane says, thready and high, and he means it like stop, what are you even saying, this is gross, as much as he means it like, keep going, get me there, take me with you.

Thank God Ilya’s fluent in everything he wants, even when Shane himself isn’t quite sure, because his voice goes all cocky and sure when he says, practically a purr, “You would be my rookie, of course.”

“Of course,” Shane repeats. It’s stupid that he sounds breathless. This whole thing is stupid. He’s halfway chubbed up in his sweats anyway.

“Because I would see your potential, kotyonok,” Ilya promises and Shane thinks maybe if he had a therapist, he’d have to devote at least a month’s worth of sessions to untangle why that makes his dick twitch. “Second best center in the league.”

“Fuck off, asshole,” Shane snaps, instinctive, even as he shimmies down on the bed and kicks off his sweats so he can get a hand around his cock. “I’d be someone else’s rookie, just for that.”

“No,” Ilya says, all hard and confident, a brick wall of a rejection. It’s a fact, not an imagination, when he continues, “You wouldn’t. You would be mine because I would not let you be anyone else’s.”

Shane's voice breaks on a whine that takes him by surprise. He starts stroking himself in earnest now. The grip’s too dry, but Ilya likes it like this. Likes him like this. He gets wet so fast too, when he’s turned on like this, when he’s listening to Ilya dirty talk him to that edge only Ilya can ever get him to, that the slight hint of pain now is good. Helps sharpen his mind. 

“What, uh,” he stutters. “What would that mean, being yours—being your rookie?” 

Ilya hums, like an asshole. He’s not touching himself yet, maybe has too much pride to jerk it in the kitchen in front of his little bunny plates, but his expression is all heat as he stares into the camera. At Shane. At whatever Shane looks like right now.

“Hm, it would mean my eyes on you, always,” Ilya replies like it’s a promise. “You would need a firm hand, da? The MLH is different level, all very bright and big and overwhelming. Many people would watch you, all the time, because you would be Shane Hollander. But I would never take my eyes off you, kotyonok, because you would be my rookie. Before you are their Shane Hollander.”

Shane is wet now. The glide of his fist is easier. He can imagine it, see the picture Ilya’s painting. How it would feel to be so young and so eager to prove himself in every practice, to have a seasoned MLH star at his shoulders, correcting him and guiding him and caring about his performance and personal development outside of what he can do for the team as a whole.

“On the ice and off it,” Ilya is saying, like Shane’s contributing anything to the conversation outside of bitten-off grunts and embarrassingly high-pitched whimpers. “Someone would need to keep you out of trouble. So many rookies drink too much, fuck too much. Find scandal. But not my rookie.”

“I wouldn’t,” Shane whispers, because it’s the truth. He doesn’t have to imagine being a rookie, he was, and he definitely wasn’t living the kind of life some guys do when they finally make it big and look around to see people willing to buy them drinks and fuck them just because of their jersey. That was never something Shane did. That was, like, the opposite of what Shane did his rookie year. 

But he adds, “You wouldn’t let me,” like if Ilya weren’t holding his leash, Shane’d be knee-deep in pussy and tequila shots after every game. 

“Now you are understanding, yes,” Ilya smiles. He’s uncrossed his arms now, and his hand is massaging over the bulge in his sweatpants, working himself slow like Shane’s not feeling ten seconds away from begging.

Heat tightens in his stomach at the picture Ilya makes, all casual indecency. Barefoot, probably. Hair half-up, curls askew, veins in his arm bulging out underneath his skin as he fists himself. 

“What else?” Shane demands, rolling his head back on the pillow beneath him and arching up into nothing more than his own grip. He thumbs across the head of his dick, pressing down against the slit, the way Ilya likes to be touched. “Ilya, what else?”

Ilya obliges. “I would not trust you by yourself,” he says. Then, no-nonsense, “Flip over, Shane. You are shaking the camera. I cannot see. Put it against the pillows. You can fuck the bed instead, solnyshka.” 

It’s not necessarily a command, except for all the ways that it is. Shane’s moving, obeying, before he can even question it. He pushes himself up onto his knees and then turns to drop down onto the mattress, pushing his phone to rest on the pillows at the headrest. It’s hardly a good angle for Ilya, mostly just the top of Shane’s head and, further back, the swell of his ass, but maybe Ilya’s horny enough that he doesn’t care.

Shane’s close enough that he doesn’t care. He rubs himself against the sheets, cock catching on the wrinkles of the blankets and pulsing from the sensation. “Ilya,” he says, which is definitely supposed to be a command of his own, except for the fact that it comes out all weak and wanting. 

“No, look at you, I would not be able to trust you by yourself,” Ilya says, and he’s moved too now. Closer to the phone, hunched forward with one strong arm on the countertop in front of him and the other out of sight of the camera. “You would be too needy.” 

The last word is hissed out between his teeth, like fucking into his hand feels good. Shane’s mouth would feel better, if they’re talking about hypotheticals.

“I’d wanna follow you home from practice,” Shane mutters, muffling the words in his forearm as he rocks himself into the bed. Harder now, more desperate. Needy, because Ilya’s given him permission to be. “All the time, but I wouldn’t ask,” because he wouldn’t. Can’t imagine having the confidence to lean over after getting dressed from the showers and ask Ilya Rozanov if he wanted to have him over to play video games or something. It’d taken Hayden eleven games before he managed to convince Shane to stop in for a dinner at his place, and they’d been friendly from the beginning. An Ilya Rozanov who’s years older than him, infinitely cooler and more self-assured—Shane probably wouldn’t be able to look him in the eyes until the play-offs began.

But he’d never be looking that far away from him either. He wouldn’t be able to, like he’d be physically incapable of keeping his eyes off Ilya Rozanov, even when he knew he should. In the showers, the locker room, he’d be that guy and he’d hate himself for it but he wouldn’t be able to stop either. 

“I’d do this all the time,” Shane gasps, admits, hips speeding up. He lifts up onto his arm so he can sneak his hand back around his dick, but it doesn’t even feel necessary. He already feels like he’s toeing the edge.

“Do what,” Ilya demands, like he doesn’t know.

“Touch myself,” Shane gives him anyway. And then, too earnest by mistake, “and wish it was you.”

 Ilya curses in Russian, all hard syllables that clip against his teeth. “I would know,” he grits out. “I would make you come to my house. Get you on my–my couch—”

“On my knees,” Shane corrects, because it’d be so easy. If Ilya Rozanov invited him over to his house, maybe once after a game they’d won. Maybe they’d shared a line together—Ilya on the wing, just because it’s a fantasy and so of course they’re on a line together because the coach can see their chemistry, how well they click together, like the All-Stars game last year but forever—maybe they’d won in overtime and Shane forgets that he needs to be careful around Ilya, that he needs to control himself, so when Ilya offers, he accepts. And he comes over, they get comfortable, maybe they’re drinking a little because it’s a fantasy where Shane also lets himself drink during the season—well, maybe he would because Ilya would hand him a beer and he’d be starry-eyed and eighteen and be willing to do whatever Ilya wanted, so of course he’d drink if it meant drinking with his idol, with Ilya Rozanov—

And then—sure, yeah, they’d be on the couch. Comfortable and shit, but it wouldn’t be enough, close enough, it never is, Shane could be on top of Ilya with his arms around his neck and a part of him would still think it’s not close enough—

Anyway, he’d go to his knees for him. The details don’t matter, the how’s and the when’s and the risks. Maybe Ilya would just look at him. Maybe Ilya would—oh, Ilya would—

“You’d tell me that when you were my age, you’d be celebrating a win like ours by hitting the bars and finding a girl you can burn off the adrenaline with,” Shane says, and his hand tightens around his cock almost to the point of pain. The jealousy associated with the image makes his chest burn, but it feels good too. It feels better than good. He rocks his hips forward and watches Ilya do the same on the other end of the line.

“I cannot imagine that you like this,” Ilya mutters, and his mouth tugs up at the corners, because he likes the way Shane gets possessive. He thinks it’s cute, while Shane thinks he could really fucking lose his shit if he's tested on this enough. But—whatever. When Shane had suggested spending a by-week in Mexico, Ilya had nixed the idea immediately, like the whole country is on permanent probation cause one guy fucked Shane there a few years ago.

“I wouldn’t,” Shane admits, rubbing his cheek into the sheets in case he can catch the last remaining traces of Ilya’s scent. This is his side of the bed that Shane’s been sitting on. Sleeping in, even. For the last few days. “I’d wanna give you what you went to them for. Get on my knees so you wouldn’t wanna leave, let you fuck my mouth. Wanna be good, I’d be so good—”

“You are good, solnyshka,” Ilya says, and that’s enough to make Shane shoot off like a fucking rocket.

He buries his head in his arm, rubbing his forehead along his skin as the orgasm punches its way out of him. 

“Let you finish on my face,” Shane mumbles, even as his hips start to lazily rub up against the bed, chasing the remaining tendrils of his high. He recognizes the way Ilya grunts through his teeth when he gets close to coming, and he's there but he's not there yet. “But you’d wanna turn me over, stripe my back, wouldn’t you? My ass.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says, then curses again like the once isn’t enough. “Would wanna come inside you, kotyonok.”

“Mmm,” Shane hums. His limbs feel heavier, that sated contentment of a good orgasm flowing through his body and making his tongue slower, thoughts harder to grasp onto. He rolls his head on his arm so he can look at the screen of his phone again. Ilya’s face is twisted. Close. His eyes are fixed on Shane, on every part of him that he can see, so Shane arches his back, feeling fuzzy and kind. “Win kotyonok a Cup first, Captain, then we’ll talk.”

It’s probably the Russian that does it, or maybe it’s the Captain. Either way, Ilya hunches forward and comes with a groan, and Shane would definitely file that away to tease him for later if he hadn’t gotten hard earlier just from Ilya saying he saw potential in him.

“Fuck,” Ilya mutters a few moments later, pushing himself off the counter and reaching out of the camera range to grab a wad of paper towels.

“What, did you get it on the bunny plates?” Shane asks, a yawn breaking through the middle of his sentence. 

“No,” Ilya says, only a bit petulantly. “Just the cabinet.”

Shane grins and rolls himself onto his side so he can curl around his phone with the hand that’s relatively clean. He’ll have to change the sheets now, which means the new pair he puts on won’t smell like Ilya at all.

But he’ll see him in a few weeks. That has to be enough. 

“Hopefully no one comes through with a blacklight before buying the place from you,” he says, and Ilya throws him a dirty look.

“I never fuck in kitchen before you entered my life, Hollander,” Ilya snaps, which is probably a lie. Definitely a lie. Shane decides he doesn’t want to think about it either way. “You are bad influence.”

“Whatever,” he says, and he yawns again. It’s late and the orgasm’s practically knocked him out. He can feel his eyes drooping, even as he fights to keep himself awake. “Hey, are you feeling any better?”

It’s not fishing, or anything. He just—he wants to know if he got it right, between the daisies and the roses. If he chose the option that Ilya needed him to choose, found the best way to help him without being told explicitly what that was. And, sure he’s not gonna complain if Ilya wants to call him good again, but he’s not fishing for it or anything.

Ilya pauses in wiping down the counter and blinks at him, eyebrows furrowed. “I was not feeling bad in the first place.”

Which is just a lie so blatant that Shane would roll his eyes if he had the energy. “Ilya, c’mon. Did I—I mean, did the—you know, um, the phone sex help?”

“It was going well,” Ilya admits, leaning against the counter again. His expression is edged with wistfulness. “Then you take off your glasses halfway through. Downhill from there.”

“Asshole, c’mon,” Shane says, half-whine, half-protest. “I just wanna—like. I helped. Right?”

“Shane, solnyshka, you always help me,” Ilya tells him, and now his eyebrows look furrowed together for real, mouth twisting down in genuine confusion. “You do not have to do anything to help me. Is enough to see your pretty face on my phone screen.”

Shane turns his head away slightly, like that’s going to hide his blush from his perceptive boyfriend. “Yeah, but I want—I mean, like. I want to help. This is big—you’re moving teams, you’re leaving Boston, you’re dealing with all this noise about it and you can’t even tell them it’s for me, that you have a reason outside of hockey, and I want to—to make you feel better,” he finishes lamely. 

Make you feel better. That isn’t enough, doesn’t encompass enough of the feeling bubbling up in Shane’s chest. But it’s all he has, in every language he speaks. He shrugs a shoulder, giving up on finding a better explanation. Maybe the best thing about talking with Ilya is that he never has to be perfect, to be polished. He can pass over half-finished sentences, malformed thoughts and half-imagined nightmares, and Ilya will accept them every time.

“Shane, listen, is important,” Ilya demands. 

Shane closes his eyes. Ilya’s English is amazing now after so many years of learning it and practicing it. He kept up with all the media questions fired at him today after the press conference, answered in textbook perfect English, never dropped an article, never slurred his words together or switched the order of adjectives and nouns. For a few years, too, Shane was on the receiving end of that English, the media-trained kind. Spotless and practiced. But over the last year, more and more he’s been given this Ilya. This version of his English, the kind that’s not picked over for flaws before it leaves his mouth. The kind filled with tiny imperfections, missing articles, inflection on the wrong syllables.

It feels like a gift every time, since Shane’s noticed it. Like he’s being trusted with Ilya’s own half-finished sentences, his own scuffed-up and cobbled together thoughts. Like Ilya trusts him with them, and that’s big. That’s everything.

“I’m listening,” he says without bothering to open his eyes. He isn’t sure he can, really. It’s late.

“You make everything better,” Ilya tells him, very slowly. “Always, all the time. I could be, tch, on top of world, and having you next to me would make it even better. Could be lowest of low, and I would want you with me. Not even to do something. Just being. Okay?”

“Okay,” Shane whispers, feeling warm inside and out. He’s not sure if he should believe him, not sure if he can. It sounds like a fantasy on-par and as impossible as Shane being a rookie for Ilya’s veteran Captain MLH player, like something that maybe exists in a different world but just can’t fit right into the jagged pieces of this one.

But he loves Ilya and he trusts him, so he nods and he says, “Okay,” again. Then he says, sleepily,  “What time are the movers coming?” because there’s as much love in repetition as there is in remembering.

“In four days, solnyshka,” Ilya murmurs. “I will be ready by then, I think.”

Shane hums. There’s a weird note in Ilya’s voice that he can’t figure out, something that’s just a little bit off, and it nudges against Shane's mind, triggering another half-noticed revelation. Oh. That’s what that is. “You took the magnets off your fridge,” he mumbles. “It looks all weird and naked.”

Ilya hums in agreement. There’s a small smile at the edges of his lips. “You should change the sheets, sweetheart. You will hate me in the morning if I let you fall asleep with come all over you.”

“Wouldn’t,” Shane argues. “But yeah, I will. In a second.”  As soon as he opens his eyes, which will either be in a second or in eight hours. “Hey, Ilya.”

“Yes, Shane?"

He yawns again, nuzzling at his arm like it’s Ilya’s chest. Fuck, but he misses him. Fuck, but he’s so tired. He’s slurring his words together. His tongue feels heavy. “Which do you like more, daisies or roses?”

If Ilya replies, Shane doesn’t hear it. He’s already out.

Raiders Wizard 5eva @bleedingblackandyellow: it was a pleasure watching you skate, Mr. Rozanov. #itsbeenfun81

Cliff Marleau Liked My Tweet 2014 @pucksandluckandpractice: do i sell my #81 jersey?? Do i just burn it??? Do i cry over it like a war widow waiting for her husband who will never come back from the war??? #itsbeenfun81

Raider-sized Trust Issues @icyfeistycynthia: all men do is let you down…anyway gonna start watching the women’s league now!! FUCK MEN yk??  #itsbeenfun81 

Marlzanov Eight Year Anniversary @817rozanovmarley: i just know marly is begging Ottawa front office to take him too, i’m like. So sad about this? It feels like a kidnapping, i’m being so serious rn

Boston Proud and Loud @madisonandthegarden: honestly good riddance!!!! He could have re-signed!! He chose to leave and I’m not being sad about a guy who doesn’t want to be here!!

cricket chirps in TD garden @cellyandsin: @IlyaRozanov81 i just got a bonus and im not afraid to spend all of it on getting the etsy witches to curse you with 7 years bad sex for leaving us like this. #itsbeenfun81

 Ilya Rozanov @IlyaRozanov81: @cellyandsin is impossible, trust me. sorry about your big feeling though