Summary:

Shane Hollander learns Russian in secret, eventually it’s not a secret anymore. Shane Hollander was anything but a slacker. He took everything in his life seriously. He woke up at 5am for his morning run, then he’d spend half an hour in his home gym before showering, eating a well balanced breakfast, and heading to the rink for whatever the team had planned that day. He took his routine seriously, and in turn, everything else seemed to fall into place. He was fast, on his feet and on the ice. He was strong, to the point where he could effortlessly pin some of the biggest guys in the league to the boards and slip the puck off their stick and onto his own. He even managed to finish his daily sudoku in about 5 minutes every day. He took to French like a fish took to water, that’s why he was so frustrated when he first started picking up phrases in Russian. He couldn’t manage to wrap his mind around the language at first, couldn’t make his mouth move correctly to get it just right. He spent hours staring at himself in the mirror trying to find the right way to move his mouth for different words, recording his own attempts and comparing it to the audio guide on the app he’d downloaded. He’s not sure why he started learning Russian, maybe it was to get an edge over Rozanov, to know what he would mutter on the ice, or whisper against his neck as he pushed inside of him. Or maybe it was because he had two teammates who spoke Russian and he was the captain, he couldn’t have his teammates feeling ostracized, could he? (They had little to nothing to do with his decision, but he refuses to acknowledge that). He had come a far way from where he was the first year, where he used to stumble and trip over the pronunciations, he now glided through them perfectly, at least that’s what the teacher he had hired around year 2 said. He felt confident he could carry conversations now, banter back and forth with his friends. He doesn’t know for sure, because the only person on the planet that knows about his Russian hobby is his teacher, Tonya. They had just finished their session for this week, he always felt strange after a session, a weird ball of guilt and shame welling up in the pit of his stomach he didn’t fully understand. It might have something to do with the Russian currently texting him, but he tried to block that out. Lily: Are your legs still shaking from last time? You skate like baby deer tonight. He rolled his eyes before typing his response Jane: Fuck yourself, I was skating fine. He was, it wasn’t his best night, and it pains him to admit it, but he’ll play better on Friday and that’s all that matters. He still scored a goal and got an assist. Lily: You will be shaking again in a week, yes? ;) Jane: Someone’s full of themselves. And he knew the second he sent it, he had walked right into a trap, he expected the response before he got it Lily: You can be full of me too. Shane turned his phone off and felt the flush creep up his cheeks. He should be used to the comments by now, but he’s not. And it’s only gotten worse since he’s started learning the others native tongue. All the whispered comments he makes, the words grazing his skin as he takes him apart. Sometimes he feels guilty for not telling him he knows what he’s saying, and then Rozanov calls him beautiful again and his brain shuts off. Before he’d thought whatever he was saying would be dirty, so filthy that Shane wouldn’t even want to know, and there are plenty of dirty things that have tumbled out in Russian, but mostly it’s soft praise ‘you’re so gorgeous’, ‘your little noises are beautiful’, ‘my pretty boy’. It might be one of the reasons he still refuses to tell him he knows, because what if he stops saying them? He puts all his things back where they belong, his Russian language book goes back in the bottom drawer, stuffed under two hockey biographies he knows nobody will care to read if they end up snooping, and his notebook filled with phrases, tips and notes gets put back in a bag that sits on the floor beside his desk, filled with random papers and forms. As he walks around his house that evening he’s practicing what they had went over in his lesson, wrapping his tongue around the words until they feel perfect before moving on to the next. Maybe he’ll finally work up the courage to tell his Russian teammates soon, then they could talk to him without trying to grasp the correct words after a particularly hard game, or a gruelling workout. Probably not, but it would be nice. ==== He was making an early lunch for himself before an afternoon practice when he stubbed his toe on the island, it happened without him even noticing at first. He had been going over some of his notes, and was practicing a few phrases he had heard in a post game interview with a Russian goalie on Washington’s team. So it wasn’t that surprising when he muttered a quiet “fuck” in Russian. He was actually a little proud, curse words had been one of the first things he learned, before he fully committed to his secret lessons, he would listen to certain words Rozanov would say, wether it was a whispered praise just for Shane’s ears, or a frustrated exclamation during a game, he would file it away and repeat it in his head until he got somewhere he could search it up. Rozanov’s favourite seemed to be “fuck”. Which Shane understood, it sounded rough, and aggressive, it felt dull in his mouth whenever he had practiced, different to English cursing. Not to mention it worked for most settings the Russian would curse in. Shane hadn’t thought twice about his slip up, just rubbed his foot and went on about fishing up his rice and chicken before heading out for practice. Nobody was around to hear him, it was nothing.