Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Fix-It of Sorts, Episode: s01e04 Rose (Heated Rivalry), Tuna melt fix-it, Shane Hollander Deserved To Crash Out And I Will Die On This Hill, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, The Inherent Romanticism in Moaning Your Fuck Buddy's Name and Proceeding to Freak The Fuck Out About It, gratuitous use of both the word 'fuck' and italics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-24 Words: 4,114 Chapters: 1/1

tail between your legs you're leaving

Summary

“Where was this in Sochi, huh? Where was this in Las Vegas? You’ve had me every way you could’ve fucking wanted me, made me turn myself inside out with wanting you, with goddamn embarrassing myself all for a fucking shred of your attention, and all of a sudden now that you have decided you want it, what, I have to play along like a good little boy? Fuck you, how about that?”

There is a moment of ringing, brutal silence. Shane’s chest is heaving like he can’t quite get air in. Rozanov is staring at him across the few feet of space between them, gaze darting across his face quickly. “Las Vegas?” He finally asks, voice sounding smaller than Shane ever thinks he’s heard it. “What are you talking about, Las Vegas?”

God. Fuck. That’s infinitely worse, that Shane has carried this hurt for all these years and Rozanov - he doesn’t even fucking remember.

Or,

Another post-tuna-melt-Shane-stays story.

Notes

much like everyone across the world, this silly little hockey show has taken me by the throat. i love them and their inability to communicate with one another v much, but i do think shane maybe deserved to be a little more angry for a lot of different things, and it never stuck right with me that ilya never apologized but shane did. idk, that's just me tho.

disclaimer that i have not read the books, only seen the show. love you all.

title is, of course, from the black dog by taylor swift.

In the horrible aftermath, neither of them moves. 

Ilya - no, Rozanov is smearing wet, needy kisses across his face, and Shane feels the scrape of his five o’clock shadow like a knife between his ribs. When Rozanov moves just enough, a clear attempt to capture his mouth, Shane tilts away. Before it happens, he doesn’t mean to, but he also knows himself well enough to know that if he lets himself be kissed, he will never want to stop. 

With a Herculean effort, fighting every urge that’s telling him to stay here, in Rozanov’s living room, on his couch, on his lap, Shane pulls away and gets up. He fumbles for his t-shirt, clutching it to his chest, and swallows down the ache when he steps far enough away from Rozanov for his hand to slip off his side. 

“I should, um,” he starts. Pauses, to swallow and take a breath, shame burning hot through him at the way his voice trembles. “I should go. We have - um. Practice.” 

Rozanov’s hand is still outstretched towards him, eyes on his face. Shane can’t bring himself to look back. “Practice,” he repeats blankly. 

“I forgot,” Shane says stupidly. He twists his fingers in the t-shirt. Shane, Rozanov had moaned. And in response, caught up in the moment and the heady, burning want in his chest, Shane had breathed out, Ilya. Like a fucking idiot. 

“You forgot practice,” Rozanov echoes flatly, disbelievingly. “Really.” 

Shane bobs his head. His gaze is fixed to that ugly abstract painting Rozanov has above his couch, a monstrosity of blue and red and black and yellow and geometric shapes. “Yes, I have to go.” His voice sounds robotic to his own ears. 

There is a moment of silence, and then Rozanov moves, sharply enough that Shane glances down on instinct. The hand that had been pressed to Shane’s side, that had been down the back of his t-shirt, is lingering in the no-man’s-land that gapes between them. “Hollander,” he says softly, a little tilt to his head, and for some unknown, unnameable reason, that is worse. To go from Shane to Hollander is the worst kind of punishment, even though it’s a punishment of his own making. 

He forces himself to look away, to step back, so he doesn’t fall into Rozanov’s waiting arms. “I can’t, uh,” he says shortly. “I can’t - do this. Anymore.” 

This: the hooking up. The texting. The sexting. The flirting on the ice. The wanting and wanting and wanting. The moaning his fucking name. It’s gone too far, and Shane knows that if he lets it go any further, it’ll spin out from underneath him into something even more unmanageable than it already is, and he can’t let that happen. 

“Hollander,” Rozanov says again, and this time there’s a pleading edge to his voice, on the cusp of begging, like if he says it enough in the right way, he can go back and undo the critical blow he’s dealt to their foundation. Shane still flinches back like he’s been hit. 

“I’m sorry,” he bites out, and then he turns and walks away. 

His phone and wallet are still on Rozanov’s kitchen counter where he left them, and his shoes are still in a neat little row by the front door, but his clothes are somewhere in Rozanov’s room, folded up neatly and set to one side. Rozanov had done that, he thinks dizzily. He’d stripped Shane to nothing in his goddamn bedroom, and then bent down and collected his jeans and his shirt and his boxers, and folded them up into perfect squares like it was no big deal, and Shane had been so desperate for him by then that it had barely registered. So now his clothes are back somewhere in Rozanov’s room, and Shane can’t walk past him on the couch to go get them, so he just snatches up his phone and his wallet, jams his feet into his shoes, and scurries to the front door. He has to leave. He can’t stay here any longer and risk ruining this any further. 

Shane has one trembling hand on the door handle, willing himself to find the strength to walk out, begging himself to be strong enough to do what needs to be done. He’ll call a car back to the hotel, make up some story to Hayden about why he’s back so much earlier than anticipated. About why he’s wearing different clothes - different shirt, different sweatpants, different fucking underwear. He’ll sleep at the hotel, wake up tomorrow and go to TD Garden and kick Boston’s ass, and maybe, some day, forget that he ever had Ilya Rozanov’s dick in his hand, in his mouth. Inside him at all. Maybe one day he will forget that he ever kissed Ilya Rozanov. That he ever moaned Ilya Rozanov’s name. That he ever wanted Ilya Rozanov at all. 

If only he could get his fucking hand to move on the door handle. 

For some reason, it makes him think of Vegas, all those years ago. How he’d stood in the living room of that expensive fucking hotel suite, jacket slung over his arm and shirt haphazardly tucked in, mouth still tasting of vodka he didn’t even fucking want. It makes him think of the way he’d asked, practically begged, Rozanov to want him, to need him the way Shane sometimes felt like he needed Rozanov, like he was being split down at the atomic level with pure, unfiltered want. It makes him think of the way he’d crawled across the bed, taken Rozanov into his mouth. Tilted his head desperately while Rozanov fucked him, pleading for a kiss in the only way he knew how. It makes him think of how Rozanov had evaded him at every turn, chewed on his neck like a dog with a toy instead, shoved his fingers into Shane’s mouth with brittle uncaring force. Shane had wanted and wanted and wanted, had spent months texting Rozanov back then like some desperate fucking fool, and then embarrassed himself even further by acting like it. 

And now, here, Rozanov has changed the rules. Again. 

The anger is a surprise, when he realizes that’s the emotion that’s clawing its way up his throat. He keeps such a tight lid on his feelings at all times, bottles them up and forces them down, that he’s almost blinded by the rage that boils through his blood. This was supposed to be casual. That was the fucking deal. Rozanov made that very clear when he begged to fuck Shane, had him, and then fucking ghosted him. Rozanov made that very clear when he put Shane through that fucking humiliation ritual in Vegas. At every turn, Rozanov has made it unbelievably clear that this is nothing more than a goddamn convenience. So why the fuck does he get to be the one to decide that the rules have changed? How fucking dare he? 

Without even realizing it, Shane has relinquished his grip on the door, toed off his shoes, and is marching back towards the living room, so angry he thinks he might vibrate out of his skin. 

Rozanov is still sitting on the couch in the same position, staring mutely at the dark TV, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when Shane comes barreling around the corner and into the living room. He blinks at Shane in clear surprise, goes to open his mouth, but Shane beats him to it. “What the fuck was that?” He demands. “No, seriously, Rozanov, what the fuck was that?” 

Rozanov blinks again, looking startled. “Hollander—.”

Oh, Shane’s so mad his vision has gone spotty. “Fuck you, Hollander,” he seethes. “That’s not fair. You don’t get to - to change the rules without telling me!” He’s yelling, he knows he is, and maybe he shouldn’t be, but - but this is Rozanov’s fault. 

“Rules?” Rozanov echoes. His eyes are so big, blurred and confused. “What - what rules?” 

“Our rules,” Shane spits. He gestures between them, as if there’s any other our he could be talking about. “The rules of what we do. We don’t do names, we don’t do - we don’t fucking stay the night. You don’t ask me to stay. I thought we agreed on that. I thought that was the fucking deal!”

For the first time, something sharpened flickers across Rozanov’s face. “Where are these rules?” He repeats derisively. He’s sitting up further now, turned to face Shane where he’s still standing on the raised platform surrounding the living room. Ugly thing to do, Shane thinks viciously, to set a living room into the floor. “I do not remember agreeing to ‘rules’.” Like an asshole, he puts airquotes around rules. If Shane’s hands weren’t shaking so aggressively, he thinks he’d walk over there and hit him. 

“Oh, fuck you,” he snaps, stepping down and moving closer. Rozanov tracks his movement with the intensity of a predator tracking prey. “You invited me over. You asked me to stay. You made me lunch. You fucking moaned my goddamn fucking name. We don’t do these things! We’ve never fucking done these things!” 

Rozanov stands, abruptly enough that Shane steps backwards out of instinct more than anything else. “So, what, we cannot do them now?” He demands meanly. “You are so afraid of change, of me saying your fucking name, you have to make up lie to prove it is no big deal?” He lets out a scathing, nasty laugh. “Practice, Hollander, give me a fucking break.” 

Shane laughs, too, though it sounds slightly hysterical. He wants to rip his goddamn hair out. “It is a big deal, asshole!” He yells. “I’ve never fucking asked you for anything more than this because at every step of the way you’ve shown me you don’t want anything more! So don’t sit here and act like I’m the one being fucking unreasonable because you’ve all of a sudden decided we can do shit like this!” He wants to stop, wants to chew back the hurt so it doesn’t bleed out of him like an open wound, but suddenly the words are spilling out of his mouth and he can’t stop them. “Where was this in Sochi, huh? Where was this in Las Vegas? You’ve had me every way you could’ve fucking wanted me, made me turn myself inside out with wanting you, with goddamn embarrasing myself all for a fucking shred of your attention, and all of a sudden now that you have decided you want it, what, I have to play along like a good little boy? Fuck you, how about that?” 

There is a moment of ringing, brutal silence. Shane’s chest is heaving like he can’t quite get air in. Rozanov is staring at him across the few feet of space between them, gaze darting across his face quickly. “Las Vegas?” He finally asks, voice sounding smaller than Shane ever thinks he’s heard it. “What are you talking about, Las Vegas?” 

God. Fuck. That’s infinitely worse, that Shane has carried this hurt for all these years and Rozanov - he doesn’t even fucking remember. 

All of the fight leaves Shane in one fell swoop, and he reaches up to press the heels of his hands against his eyes as if he can force down the tears he can feel burning through sheer force of will. “Fuck,” he rasps, half a laugh, even though none of this is fucking funny. “Fuck, just - fucking forget it. I just can’t fucking do this anymore, okay? I have to go.” 

He turns, for the second time, to leave this house, to leave Rozanov, but Rozanov says, “wait, Shane, I am trying to understand–,” and he must have moved, because his hand brushes against Shane’s wrist like he’s going to grab him, going to stop him, and the panic is hot and biting in his chest as he yanks his arm away, stumbles back like he’s been hit. 

“Don’t,” he gasps, some sort of wounded animal noise ripping out of his throat. “Don’t - don’t fucking touch me.”

Almost immediately, Rozanov backs up, hands up in a gesture to show he’s not a threat, but Shane barely notices it. Everything feels so loud, so unmanageably large, and he feels like he can barely get a breath in, like his spine has turned to jelly, like his legs have lost all their strength. Fuck, he thinks he might be sick, all over Rozanov’s nice beige couch. 

Like a puppet whose strings have been cut, Shane drops into a crouch, still cradling the wrist Rozanov touched to his chest like he’s guarding a wound. He tucks his chin against his chest, closes his eyes against the onslaught of sensation, of pain, of devastatingly precise hurt, that ricochets through him. Down here, the world seems much quieter, at least. Each breath is a ragged inhale and exhale, a pinpointing hurt in his ribcage, but at least the world doesn’t seem quite as large. 

It’s hard to say, in the long run, how long he stays in his protective little curl. When he does come to, head still down, it takes him a long moment to realize that Rozanov is sat on the step next to him, close enough that he can feel the heat of his body but far enough away that he’s not touching. 

It’s so unreasonable, but for a moment, all Shane wants is for Rozanov to touch him. It’s so blisteringly unfair, especially after the way he reacted when Rozanov tried to do exactly that, but he wants it so badly that his teeth ache. It makes him sick, to think that even after all of this, he still bends toward Rozanov like a pathetic little sunflower. Has maybe been conditioned to bend towards him since a parking lot in Saskatchewan. 

They’re both quiet for a long moment, as Shane inhales and exhales with ragged intensity, forcing himself to drag breath in through lungs that don’t feel like they want to do much of anything. It is, for now, all he thinks he’s capable of doing. 

Eventually, though, Rozanov must hear a change in the treble of his breath, because he shifts and clears his throat. A soft sort of movement, but abrupt enough in the uneasy silence that Shane flinches. 

Rozanov goes still. 

“I will not touch,” he says quietly. “But can I - will you come sit?” He hesitates, then adds, “cannot be good for your knees, yes?"

It’s so absurd, such a silly thing for him to worry about, in the grand scheme of things, that Shane chokes out a laugh. He rolls his forehead against the jut of his knee, lets himself acknowledge the pins and needles that are burning up his legs from his awkward positioning, and then whispers, “okay.” 

True to his word, Rozanov doesn’t touch while Shane unfurls himself and stands, though he hovers, clearly worried Shane’s about to collapse again. He only relaxes once Shane’s back on the couch, but as soon as he sits, Shane folds over again, heels of his hands pushing against his eyes. 

“Fuck,” he chokes out. There’s something messy, painful, crawling up his throat, pushing out of his mouth. Shame, maybe, at the mess he’s made of this day. Embarrassment, at the raw edge of confession he’s left in a tangled heap on Rozanov’s carpet. His lashline is wet with tears he’s blinking back, and his hands are shaking against his face. He feels flayed open, raw and bleeding like a hooked fish, torn between a desperate need for Rozanov to touch him and the desire to never be touched again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” 

“Hollander,” Rozanov says quietly. There is, if Shane were to put a name to it, a bite of panic in his voice. “I don’t know - what do you need from me?” 

A hysterical noise slips out of his mouth before he can stop it; a laugh, maybe, but only if he were feeling exceedingly generous. Need. What does he need from Rozanov? What has he ever needed from Ilya fucking Rozanov? 

Everything, his traitorous, breaking heart whispers. I need everything.

But he can’t ask for that. He’s not brave enough, and he doesn’t know if Rozanov is willing to give it. So he doesn’t ask for it. 

So instead he asks, “why did you ask me to stay?” 

He can’t bring himself to lift his head from his hands, but he can still feel the way Rozanov goes tense next to him. The way he hesitates, before he says softly, “because I - I wanted you to stay.” 

Shane shakes his head, forces himself to sit up and lean back against the couch. He still doesn’t look at Rozanov. “That’s not good enough,” he whispers to the ceiling. “That’s not an answer. I don’t know what that means, I don’t know why all of a sudden you want me to stay when you - when you never have before.” 

There is another brittle, cracking silence. “What did you mean,” Rozanov suddenly asks, voice so low he’s almost whispering. “You say where was this in Las Vegas - what does this mean?” 

Jesus. Fuck. Okay, so they’re doing this. 

“The MLH Awards,” Shane starts. 

Rozanov makes a disjointed, dismissive noise. “2014, yes, I remember,” he interrupts, abruptly enough that Shane tilts his head and looks at him for the first time since he got off the floor. His hair is messy and unkempt, curls twisting around his face. His eyes are focused solely on Shane, and there is a desperate, frightened gleam to them. “I remember Las Vegas, but I do not,” he trails off for a moment, looking vaguely frustrated with himself the way he does when he can’t translate something through his brain fast enough before he apparently finds it again. “What does this have to do with today, Hollander? What does this have to do with rules?” 

It could, from anyone else, maybe sound dismissive, but coming from Rozanov, it just sounds pleading. And Shane has chewed on this hurt long enough, has let it curdle and calcify in his chest for so long. He doesn’t want to carry it alone anymore. 

He rolls his head back again so he’s staring once more at the ceiling. “You didn’t even kiss me,” he murmurs, a rotting, bruising confession. Rozanov sucks in a sharp breath, but Shane barely hears it. “That night. I hadn’t heard from you in months, I let you fuck me, and the next time we saw each other, you...you couldn’t even kiss me. You just…you just took what you wanted, and kicked me out when it was over.” Tears are leaking out of the corners of his eyes, but he can do nothing to stop them now. Doesn’t even lift a hand to wipe them away. Doesn’t have the strength anymore. “It fucked me up, you know? Not even just that you didn’t kiss me, but that I’d spent so long trying to pretend it didn’t hurt that you ghosted me, so long building up all of these walls, and you brought them down so fucking easily that night just to…just to do it all over again.” 

He’d gone back to his room in Vegas feeling off-kilter and out-of-sorts, shaky and weak and far too sober. For perhaps the first time since he and Rozanov had started this thing, he’d hated it: the sticky feeling between his legs, the want that nudged and whimpered in his chest, the taste of expensive vodka in his mouth. He’d only managed a few sips, in the cooldown before Rozanov had bluntly kicked him out, but back in his own room, he’d knelt over the toilet and retched up bile and clear liquid, giving in to his body’s desire to remove any remnants of what had happened. He’d showered, water so hot it had blistered against his skin. He’d curled up in bed, sore in all the wrong ways, and tried to pretend that none of it had hurt in ways he could hardly describe. 

“And now,” he continues, his voice little more than a hoarse croak. “You’re changing all the rules again, and I can’t keep up, and I just. I can’t do that again. I can’t feel the way you made me feel that day. I can’t let that happen again, just because you’ve all of a sudden decided that that’s what you want. That’s not fair. You can’t keep changing the rules without telling me first.” 

Another layer, beyond the dirt and debris of this awful confession, the other part of it that he can’t quite force out: Shane can’t keep letting him.

Rozanov hisses out a Russian curse, блять, which makes Shane smile against his better judgement. “Hollander,” he breathes. He shifts, a cautious movement, and then his hand is on Shane’s thigh, a warm and comforting weight against the crashing waves in Shane’s mind. “Hollander, I do not know - I cannot explain why I acted this way. I did not mean to hurt you. You do not have to believe me, but you need to know. I am sorry, okay? I am sorry for what I did in Vegas. I am sorry for how I treated you in Sochi. I am sorry for sending…confusing signals?” 

“Mixed signals,” Shane supplies absentmindedly. 

“Yes,” Rozanov continues. His fingertips are digging into Shane’s thigh now, grip tight and unyielding, but Shane presses into it out of instinct. He’s still staring at the ceiling, but he doesn’t think Rozanov is taking offense. “I am sorry for sending mixed signals. Is not an excuse, I know, but in Vegas.” He inhales, heavy, and exhales, slow. “In Vegas, I knew that if I kissed you, I would not want to stop. Is how I always feel, around you. Sometimes I think that if I touch you, I will never stop.” There is a moment of hesitation, and then Rozanov’s hand moves from his thigh, slowly, up the planes of his chest, past the column of his throat, to rest against the curve of his cheek, his touch so gentle and light that it sends shivers down Shane’s spine. He could push him away, flinch away from the touch, but instead Shane folds, easy as a house of cards, when Rozanov nudges his cheek gently to get him to turn his gaze from the ceiling and down towards the man whose couch he’s currently sitting on, whose heart is currently bleeding out of his mouth. When Shane meets his eyes, Rozanov smiles, small and strained, but no less real for it. 

He’s so beautiful, Shane thinks miserably. Even like this, he is so, so beautiful. 

“I am sorry,” Rozanov whispers again. His mouth curves around the words in an unfamiliar way. “I have not been fair, and I am sorry. I hurt you, and I am sorry for this too.” His fingers flutter, ever so gentle, against Shane’s cheek, and Shane leans into it like a cat leaning into pets. He feels cracked open like an egg, the gooey yolk of him spilled onto Rozanov’s couch and carpet and entryway. 

He knows, suddenly, what it is that Rozanov wants. Why he invited him here, asked him to stay. Made him a tuna melt and offered him a ginger ale and moaned his name into his mouth like a benediction, like a prayer. Shane wants to be scared of it, and he is, but it’s buried under the floaty, weightlessness of honesty, of baring his soul to Rozanov and watching in strangled desire as Rozanov bared his soul right back.  

Moving slowly, as if he were approaching a wounded animal, Rozanov leans forward and presses a kiss to Shane’s other cheek. Moves, from there, to press a kiss to the bridge of his nose, his top lip, his bottom lip, the square of his jaw. He punctuates each kiss with a whispered apology, I’m sorry, мне жаль, любимый, прости меня, I’m sorry. By the time he moves back to Shane’s mouth, pressing a kiss soft as air there, Shane is putty in his hands. But for the first time, he’s okay with it. 

Shane wants, and wants, and wants. And maybe, just maybe, Rozanov is okay to give, and give, and give. 

“Ask me again,” Shane rasps into his open, waiting mouth. “Please, ask me again.” 

There is an entire lifetime crammed into a heartbeat of a moment, and then Ilya breathes, “stay,” right back. He doesn’t let Shane answer, instead closes the distance between them with a biting, hopeful kiss, stealing the words right out of his mouth, but that’s okay.

Shane was going to say yes anyway.