Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Romance, Humor, Established Relationship, Wow...genetic, Insecurity, Domestic Bliss

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Cottage Core

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-23 Words: 4,508 Chapters: 1/1

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Summary

The world is a cruel place, and Ilya Rozanov suffers greatly on a near-daily basis.

Notes

Is it really a romcom if it's not seasoned with a soupçon of angst?
Just a tad...barely even there.

This story would have happened just a few days after cookie-gate. It was an eventful week at the Cottage.
Thanks for the warm welcome, btw! ♥

He was a pet.

It wasn’t the first time Ilya had had the realisation, but it was undeniable now. He whined happily as Shane threaded strong fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp, and raking his blunted nails over spots that made Ilya shiver. It would have been embarrassing if Ilya cared, this needy, pliant thing he turned into in Shane’s presence. But he didn’t care—Ilya embraced his truth wholeheartedly. The world would be shocked at how quickly he would gladly abandon his devilish rake persona to sit at Shane’s feet to bark and beg for treats and affection.

He shivered again at another brush over a sensitive spot, and groaned as he rubbed his face against Shane’s chest. His body was being pulled in two directions. Shane was taking his sweet time mapping Ilya out, memorising which spots soothed him or turned him on, depending on the applied pressure. Ilya wasn’t sure whether to drift off to sleep or prepare for another round while his refractory period waned.

“You’re so fluffy,” Shane laughed softly, pausing his ministrations to tease Ilya’s hair up.

“Is too much?” Ilya murmured into Shane’s skin. “I was supposed to get a haircut before I came out here, but I got caught up.”

“Nooo, you’re perfect. No haircuts; maybe no haircuts ever again.”

Ilya snorted and nobly sacrificed his massage therapy to pull himself up and stare down at Shane.

“You are big fan of my hair?” he said, grinning widely.

“Big fan of the whole package, really.”

“You would still love me if I was bald?” Ilya asked next, squeezing Shane’s hip and basking in the glow of Shane’s attention.

“I would love you no matter what,” Shane answered sincerely. “There’s nothing on this planet that could make me stop loving you.”

It was such a strange and powerful magic, this alchemy that could turn the phenom that was Ilya Rozanov into a useless puddle. 

“Could I still fuck you, though? Now that’s the question.”

For as large and dramatic a life as Ilya had lived, he didn’t actually have as many needle-scratch moments as one would think. Even for those he did have, most of them happened on the ice, made for highlight reels and instant replays. This, though, this was a moment.

“What?” Ilya started quietly at first, blinking down at Shane in disbelief. “You would not fuck me if I were bald? Is this what you are saying? Why would you say this, Shane?!”

Shane was starting to sense a shift in the vibe. He blinked back at Ilya, pausing for a moment as he quickly recalibrated. See, this is why no good ever came from trying to address subtext. It was a fool’s errand.

Shane had been learning for over a lifetime that people rarely just said what they meant, or meant just what they said. There was subtext and context, deeper meanings and words hidden between the lines. It was as if most of the world just silently decided to place their communication settings on hard mode for no goddamned reason. 

Ilya, ESL be damned, was one of the worst offenders. This man never met a layered thought he didn’t immediately start torturing. The ground had shifted for Shane the moment he realised that they hadn’t been having a light and casual conversation about fashion updates and All-Star guests, but rather had been taking part in some investigative journalism hit piece about Rose Fucking Landry.

So a duck was never just a duck, no matter how much it quacked, but whatever Russian equivalent there was of a stupid Canadian wolf-bird. So, obviously, “You would still love me if I were bald?” was just the sweet cover for baser concerns… right? And they were having a sexy, lighthearted moment, so obviously it was okay to tease his usually unserious boyfriend just a little, right? 

RIGHT?!

“You could not fuck me if I were bald?” Ilya repeated, now sitting up and definitely bringing their snuggle session to a grinding halt. 

“That’s not what I was saying,” Shane laughed awkwardly. “Of course I would still fuck you! I mean, it would be an adjustment. Maybe we’d have to paperbag it for a while, but–”

“PAPERBAG?!” Ilya’s voice climbed several octaves over the course of three syllables.

“It’s this joke about putting a paper bag over someone’s head when they’re–”

“I know what paperbagging is, Shane!” Ilya raged. “You think I am butterface. You think I would be ugly?!”

“Oh my god, get a grip. No one in their right mind would ever think you’re ugly, Ilya,” Shane scoffed. “You’re gorgeous. Your face is a work of art.”

Coco Chanel, speaking on the importance of editing, advised that a person should take one thing off before leaving home. In a world of undiagnosed neurodivergence, the same could perhaps be said for stopping one sentence shorter than one typically would. Ilya’s hackles had been in the process of slowly being lowered when his boyfriend hit him with:

“And just like many works of art, it just benefits from proper framing,” Shane said reasonably, staring pointedly at Ilya’s wild curls.

Hackles hit the fucking roof.

---

“And then you just went on and on about how ugly and unfuckable I would be without hair,” Ilya ranted over the remnants of their breakfast on the deck. “You would fuck me in the dark until you left me for some Yeti.”

“Hmm…huh,” Shane hummed softly and took a sip of his tea. He made a mental map of the Cottage’s potential escape routes in case he had to run from an axe-wielding lunatic at some point during his vacation. He then glanced inside through the open doors. “I should probably check the carbon monoxide detectors after this. Make sure they’re functioning, and the air quality is okay.”

“Okay?” Ilya snorted, incredulous that this would be the thing Shane would choose to focus on while their relationship was in crisis. “You have nothing to say? You will not even apologise for your cruelty?”

Shane sighed and put down his mug. “Okay, listen. You remember way back to a couple of days ago when I told you that you couldn’t yell at me because other people may or may not be flirting with me?”

Ilya crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, glaring at Shane impassively. “Perhaps.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and make an addendum to that rule,” Shane continued. “In fact, I’m just going to assume, moving ahead, that this is a non-exhaustive list of rules that I’ll be updating periodically. Rule #2: Don’t yell at Real Shane for shit Dream Shane did in your dreams.”

This did not strike Ilya as a particularly reasonable or well-thought-out rule. “But you are Dream Shane.”

“No, no, I most certainly am not,” Shane insisted before going on to drop some harsh truth bombs. “I am Real Shane. Dream Shane is you, or whatever flavour of psychosis you happen to be cooking up at the moment. I don’t have enough pop psychology knowledge to expand on this any further. Just get your shit together.”

Because Shane knew he was many things: singularly focused, artless, oblivious, and painfully blunt to the point of accidental rudeness, maybe, but he wasn’t certifiable. In no universe would any version of him look Ilya Rozanov somewhere in the vicinity of his eyes and declare him to be ugly and unfuckable. Please be so fucking for real.

“All of these words and not one of them says you would fuck me if I lost my hair,” Ilya grumbled.

“Ilya, I would love you no matter what–”

“I am not talking about love!” Ilya waved a hand dismissively, as if eternal love and devotion from your soulmate were some cheap tchotchke anyone could order off Amazon. “I am talking about fucking, yes? Attraction, desire, heat! The thing you are feeling when you have kung-fu death grip on my hair. So you’re not helping, by the way. Fucking saboteur.”

Shane was trying not to burst out laughing because he had a feeling that would be catastrophic. He couldn’t hide his incredulity, however. “Why would you think I couldn’t fuck you?!”

“Name one hot bald man,” Ilya challenged.

“What?”

“One bald man you have hots for.”

This was a trap. Shane knew this. There was no right answer he could possibly give. Either he couldn’t think of a worthy bald man and ended up validating Ilya’s insecurity, or he would name a bald demi-god and suffer Ilya’s jealous wrath until the end of time. The only way to win this rigged game was not to play and–

“Mr Clean!” Shane said desperately, feeling as if he were under exam conditions.

Ilya was magnificently unimpressed. “What?”

“Mr Clean,” Shane repeated with a self-satisfied nod.

“The cartoon disinfectant man?” Ilya clarified before rolling his eyes. “Am I a joke to you? I say name hot bald man, and you give me cartoon? No one is having their grand sexual awakening to Mr Fucking Clean, Shane.”

How did they get here? Nobody’s supposed to be here. Shane just wanted to go inside, wash the damn dishes, and check to see if it was carbon monoxide or the antihistamines that were eroding Ilya’s brain. It was his fault for even engaging with this mental break for as long as he had. He needed to cut his losses and redirect this–

“Jason Statham!” Shane declared triumphantly. This gave Ilya pause. “He’s hot! He’s so hot! He’s bald, and it totally works.”

“This is true,” Ilya admitted grudgingly. Jason Statham was the perfect bald specimen. Ilya fell silent as he mulled this over.

“I wonder if he has any new movies out,” Shane wondered idly, reaching for his phone. Ilya smoothly pulled it beyond Shane’s reach.

“Probably. Unfortunately, we will never see them,” Ilya said. “Jason Statham is henceforth banned in all Hollander-Rozanov households. Tell your parents.”

Shane rolled his eyes heavenward, his lips twitching.

“If I find out you are watching his movies behind my back, I will kill him and then myself.”

“Harsh, but fair,” Shane said drily. “But what if he finally stars in a Hitman movie, though? We have to watch that. How have they not cast him as Agent 47 yet?”

“I fucking know, right?” Ilya threw his hands up. “He was fucking born for that shit.”

“They’re just leaving money on the table at this point.”

They fell into a companionable silence. Shane contemplated whether it was now safe to clear the table and head inside while Ilya stared out at the idyllic scene. In the distance, a lone loon called mournfully. Ilya’s brow furrowed, and Shane tensed.

“What were we talking about?” Ilya asked.

“Nothing, baby, we were just–”

“How Jason Statham is the only acceptable bald man for you?”

Shane dissolved onto the table. “Oh my god,” he laughed. He then sat up and levelled Ilya with a look. “Alright, tell me where this is coming from.”

“Does everything have to come from somewhere?”

“With you, it does,” Shane replied. He hooked Ilya’s leg with his own and looked at him imploringly. “Please help me out here. You know I’m not great at this. I’m not sure how serious you’re being right now, and I don’t want to trip over myself.”

Of course, Ilya folded hard. He scoffed lightly, rolled his eyes, and shrugged.

“I was reading some random things yesterday, and I was reminded that baldness is genetic. Then I just…” Ilya trailed off, shrugging with his whole body as if it didn’t really matter before glancing up at Shane.

With all the useless degrees and disciplines in the world, Ilya wished with all his heart that they would give accreditation to something that mattered. Maybe McGill could get off their ass and do something noteworthy for a change, because he wanted his doctorate in Shaneology so badly. Shane Hollander didn’t do big expressions or telegraph his thoughts easily. He was a study of microexpressions, slight movements, and subtlety, and Ilya Rozanov was about to prove his thesis.

First, there were the raised eyebrows as Shane took in what Ilya said and quickly began processing the implications. Next, there was the glance out towards the water, where Shane appeared to contemplate the beauty and serenity of the scene. He was thinking of David Hollander in that moment—David and his full head of thick, salt-and-pepper hair. Then Shane briefly sucked in his lower lip and looked sideways for Yuna. Well, not Yuna exactly, but Yuna’s father—the sweet old man who had only aged by shrinking slightly and maintaining his K-pop boy band hair to the very end.

There was a soft exhale and the slightest upturn of the corner of Shane’s mouth, indicating his massive relief that nature was on his side, and he would report to his grave with every hair follicle present, accounted for, and working their damned hardest to make him proud. Well, whoopty freaking do for him. Not everyone could be blessed by the hirsute gods.

This entire interplay took place within mere seconds, and now, Shane was looking at Ilya again. Except, Ilya knew it wasn’t merely looking. Shane was superimposing Grigori’s wrinkled, barren ball sack of a bald head onto Ilya’s and giving himself the biggest ick in the process, as evidenced by the short, forceful expulsion of breath out Shane’s nose. Ilya was mortified, devastated, and betrayed. He raised a shaking finger at Shane.

“Don’t you do it, don’t you fucking do it,” Shane warned. “If you fucking j’accuse me again, I will shove that finger so far up your ass, you’ll be feeling yourself from the inside.”

Ilya snatched his hand back with a quickness. “My god,” he whispered at the ferocity—a little scared, and perhaps a little horny.

Shane cleared his throat and got back to the matter at hand. “Look, I am a hundred per cent sure that if you went bald, it would work on you. I would not be any less attracted to you. It’s not even a guarantee that it has to happen, either. I’ve been tugging on your hair for a decade. Haven’t yanked any out yet. It’s in there pretty deep.”

Ilya started laughing despite himself.

“And, if it does start to happen and you don’t like it, it’s not as if it’s an instant process. There will probably be a cure by then, or you can do what Sanders did from the Admirals. He came back from that ‘wellness retreat’ in Istanbul during the off-season with a head the size of a full moon, but once the swelling went down, I heard he looked great!”

Ilya was cracking up even harder. “Why would you know or care anything about fucking Sanders from the Admirals? He’s a third-line Hayden Pike.”

Funnily enough, Hayden was the only reason Shane knew that story. His best friend had relayed the story to an uncaring Shane like the breathless gossip he was. Shane had retained the information for no other reason than that his brain was a steel trap for anything even tangentially hockey-related.

“I don’t think I would want hairplugs,” Ilya said, pouting a little as he ran out of gas.

“Then don’t. Just don’t be that guy with the combover, holding on for dear life,” Shane teased. “That’s all I ask.”

Ilya huffed softly, but he was finally grinning back at Shane until the two of them were playing footsy beneath the table. 

“Suppose I gain 100 kilos?” Ilya said suddenly.

“Okay, you know what? I’m going to do the dishes and finish off my checklist for the day,” Shane said, planning to make good on his escape. “While I’m doing that, maybe just condense all of these freakouts into one massive ‘what if’ scenario, and I’ll deal with it when I get back. I don’t think I have the bandwidth to deal with them individually. Write it down if you have to”

---

And the idiot did it too.

By lunch time, Ilya had compiled a staggeringly comprehensive list of nonsense that only grew less serious the further down Shane read. Shane stroked his cheek thoughtfully and finished his first read-through while Ilya ate his food and watched him like a movie.

“You’re ‘at least’ 200 kilos?” Shane asked, lowering the paper to squint at Ilya.

“We are retired. I am happy and in love, and I have let myself go a bit.”

“Okay, but why 'at least’ 200?”

“It must be number you cannot bench press.”

Shane was offended. “But, I mean, if we’re retired and all, I could just up my gains and focus more on powerlifting. I don’t think 200k is that crazy.”

“No? Change it to 250.”

Shane rolled his eyes and went back to the list. “I’m pretty sure half of these are fictional conditions.”

“You do not know everything.”

“And what could possibly cause your dick to transform into this?” Shane said, pointing to a crude drawing of what he thought had been a Chanterelle mushroom.

“Strange things can happen, Shane.”

“Strange? I’m trying to figure out how you could get hit with Chernobyl-level doses of radiation for all of this to happen to you. This list describes a Deadpool anti-hero.”

Ilya started giggling. “But you would still fuck me?”

“Can I still fuck you? It’s not a matter of attraction any more, Ilya; this is about logistics,” Shane shook his head at the sheet as Ilya cracked up. “I wouldn’t just have to refurbish all my properties; I’d have to defy some laws of physics, too.”

“But you would do this for me, yes?” Ilya said, grinning irrepressibly.

“For you? In a heartbeat.”

---

“You don’t sleep?” Ilya asked thickly as he stirred next to Shane.

He had woken up to find Shane sitting up in bed, still awake and staring out at the moonlit water.

“Brain hasn’t slowed down enough yet,” Shane answered honestly. “I’m okay, though. Go back to sleep.”

“I have not exhausted you enough,” Ilya said. “This is great shame for me. After how I carried on today, I didn’t wear out your body or your mind?”

There was something odd in Ilya’s sleepy inflection that caught Shane’s attention. He couldn’t begin to pinpoint what it was, but he decided against overanalysing and simply acted on instinct. He slid down next to Ilya and stroked his thigh soothingly. He waited before asking, correctly guessing that Ilya would fill the silence.

“I was a lot this week, hmm? Too much?” Ilya joked, only it didn’t sound that much like joking.

The suggestion caught Shane completely off guard. The very idea was almost funny. “You could never be too much.”

“Oh no, it is very possible,” Ilya continued teasingly, though the slight edge in his voice didn’t quite disappear. He curled around Shane’s body and rested his head on Shane’s chest. “Big, loud boy, with big dick, and big emotions, and big, loud personality. It can be–” he blew a raspberry into Shane’s skin and laughed. “It is exhausting. Not everyone can handle it or wants to.”

Grigori Rozanov certainly didn’t, not when it was Ilya, and he had loathed it in Irina.

It must have been charming and refreshing for his father at first—Irina being this manic pixie dream girl that was all love, light, and too loud laughter. But her moods were mercurial and quickly palled for Grigori and grated on his patience. Her beauty wasn’t enough to compensate for the sheer exhaustion of her existence. Soon enough, it didn’t matter whether she was up or down, or how hard she tried; everything annoyed Grigori in equal measure.

And she did try. She would try to find that balance that once delighted her husband, but could never pull it off. By the end, she had tried shrinking in his presence, making herself smaller and smaller, until one day she wasn’t there at all.

Ilya didn’t know what he would do if Shane ever looked at him the way Grigori looked at his mother. The thought terrified him, because there wasn’t a day that passed that he didn’t feel more and more like her. Being larger than life was fine on the hockey rink, but maybe not so great in quiet spaces, and what was Shane Hollander if not the greatest of quiet spaces?

The irony of being unable to contain himself around the one person he never wanted to overwhelm. And he would try to contain it sometimes; he really did, but Shane amplified everything in Ilya to their highest volumes, to intensities that shocked even Ilya. And it was amazing, it was always amazing, until those small, quiet times when Ilya was left wondering how it all appeared from the outside.

“You’re not exhausting, Ilya,” Shane laughed with genuine amusement. “You’re the only person on the planet that energises me.”

Ilya scoffed, but Shane was serious.

“No, really, it’s–” Shane took a moment to arrange his thoughts, because it was never a feeling he had to verbalise before. “Everyone else drains my energy, you know? It happens at different rates with different people. It drains super slowly with Mom and Dad, right—unless Mom is in Momager mode, then it can drain a lot faster. It’s slow with Rose and Hayd. Those stupid awards shows wipe me the fuck out.

“Da, I imagine being around Scott Hunter is like unplugging life support,” Ilya added, making Shane snort.

“Sure, fine, but the one person who has never run my battery down is you…no matter what nonsense you’re on.” Shane buried his hand in Ilya’s hair and smiled as he made the curls dance.

“You should love someone quieter.”

“Yeah, well, you should have told that to Shane Hollander at seventeen. When he said you were amazing to watch, he wasn’t just talking about the hockey.”

“Oh, Hollander subtext. Nice,” Ilya murmured and slowly began working his way up Shane’s body.

“Fuck you. It’s rare, but it happens.” 

He toyed with the crucifix dangling from Ilya’s neck and tugged gently. Shane Hollander, at seventeen or seventy, would never care that Ilya Rozanov was a tsunami waiting to happen. If IIya ever receded, Shane would be at the edge of that beach, ten toes deep in the sand, patiently waiting for the wave to come back and crash over him.

“You worry about everything way more than you let on,” Shane mused.

Ilya trailed kisses along Shane’s jaw and buried his face in his neck. “You talk a lot more than anyone realises.”

“Ah, okay, conversation over?” Shane asked as if he couldn’t tell from Ilya’s hand sliding between his thighs. “You’re going to wear me out now?”

“You said it is impossible, so now I have to try.”

Shane let Ilya fondle him for a moment before suddenly grabbing his hair and yanking him up to meet his eyes. “But we’re okay, though?”

“Da, we’re okay.

---

A few years later

Ilya found Shane reading on their couch in the middle of the day, like the nerd he was. Ilya took the book, thoughtfully placed a bookmark at Shane’s current page, and set it aside on the coffee table. He quickly straddled Shane, took his bespectacled face in his hands, and looked deeply into Shane’s confused eyes.

“There is something I need to know,” Iya said gravely. “Would you love me if I was a worm?”

“Get the fuck off me.”

Shane actually tried to shimmy out from underneath Ilya and army-crawl away, but Ilya grabbed onto his legs and ended up pinning him to the floor.

“No, moya lyubov, I must know. It is important question from the internet!”

“If you don’t get the fuck off me, Ilya Rozanov…”

“Please, tell me,” Ilya begged.

Shane groaned loudly and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Why are you a worm?”

“Why are the details needed? I am a worm; that’s it.” It was Ilya’s turn to roll his eyes when Shane simply glared at him. “Fine. I was cursed by Etsy witch who told Scott Hunter that younger, more beautiful queen was coming to cast him down.”

“Hmm, a likely story,” Shane said with a nod. “Well, are you sentient?”

“What do you mean by this?”

“Are you aware that you’re a worm? Are you still Ilya? Or just a regular, run-of-the-mill worm?”

Ilya was slightly offended. “I could never be run-of-the-mill anything. I am Ilya, in worm form. It’s like Beauty and the Beast but with annelids.”

Shane hummed in contemplation. “Do you still have the hair?”

“Seriously?”

“I’m just world-building at this point and creating visuals. Answer the question.”

“Sure, I am worm with insane hair.” Because, honestly, why the fuck not? “All my moles are still there, too.”

“Oh, so you’re a sexy worm?”

“Possibly the sexiest.”

“I like how you leave room for the possibility that there may be other, sexier worms,” Shane laughs. “It’s humility like that that will have me hunting down Etsy witches to get your body back.”

“But you will love me in my worm form in interim?” Ilya said hopefully.

“Until you get snatched up by a loon, sure,” Shane confirmed and then cut Ilya off before he could speak again. “And yes, I’d still think you’re hot even though the mechanics are against us.”

“Actually, I thought about this.”

“I really wish you hadn’t.”

“I am worm, yes? In long, tubular, segmented body–”

Shane was seized by an existential dread about the direction of this conversation, so powerful that he tried to army-crawl away again.

“I’m pretty much ribbed and pre-lubed for your pleasure, if you think about it.” 

This had to be some kind of violation of the Geneva Convention. Ilya was keeping Shane pinned with the weight of his body while they both slowly lost their minds in different directions.

“Whenever you really need me to, I could just slither up there and body-slam myself against your prostate until you had a good time. I would do this for you whenever you need it, moya lyubov…because I love you.”

Shane lost it. He almost died laughing. It was the worst fucking thing he had ever heard, and it was breaking him into pieces. Of course, Ilya was also cracking up, only it was over Shane’s hysterical laughter instead of his gross-out humour. Shane covered his face with his hands and tried to pull himself together.

“You’re so fucking gross! I can’t believe you would even think that! What is wrong with you?! I hate you so much.”

Ilya was always beside himself with glee whenever he could make Shane come undone, no matter how he managed to do it. He slid his hands under Shane’s tank top and went for his ticklish spots.

“You looove me,” he sang to Shane. “You think I’m funny.”

“I fucking don’t!”

But they both knew Shane was a lying liar who lies. Ilya Rosanov was the funniest, sexiest, most lovable man alive. Please don’t let him go bald.

 

THE END