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Shane knows the second he steps onto the ice for warm-ups that something is wrong.
Not with him. His legs feel good, loose, and the blade bite sharp under his skates, but there is an empty space that should be occupied by one very specific, infuriating presence.
Boston is already circling at the far end, black and gold blurs cutting arcs across the rink. Shane glides once around centre, scanning automatically.
Rozanov is impossible to miss even when he wants to be, broad shoulders, curls sticking out the bottom of his helmet, the lazy way he flips a puck onto his blade and kills its momentum dead. Captain’s C stitched over his heart. Same as Shane’s.
Rival. According to the media.
According to literally everyone.
Shane angles his warm-up lap to drift closer, just enough to cross paths, just enough to-
Ilya pivots before they intersect.
Shane slows, irritation prickling under his pads.
Oh, come on.
Usually this is the part where they exchange something stupid and ritualistic: a shoulder bump that rides the edge of incidental contact, a muttered watch it, a look that says I’m going to ruin you tonight in a way that only means hockey. Usually Ilya grins like he enjoys being hated.
This time he just…doesn’t.
He peels off toward the boards, fires a puck into the far net, collects another.
Shane stares after him for half a second too long.
Jesus.
The locker room smells like tape and deodorant and menthol. Montreal is loud in that pre-game way, the music thumping through Shane’s skull. The lack of sleep isn’t helping. He’d spent most of the night staring at the ceiling of his hotel room, replaying the previous night over and over in his head.
A pair of socks fly past Shane’s head, snapping him back to the moment in time to hear a lazy chirp of the Bears slung across the room.
Shane sits at his stall and re-laces his skates for the third time. Across from him, Hayden watches.
Not subtly.
“You planning on strangling your feet,” Hayden says, “or is this a new superstition?”
Shane tugs the lace again. “They loosen.”
“They absolutely do not.”
Shane shrugs, which is easier than admitting his stomach hasn’t settled since about two minutes after he walked out of Ilya’s house yesterday with a lie burning his tongue.
Team meeting, he’d said.
Idiot.
Hayden leans against the stall divider. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
Hayden’s eyebrow lifts.
“Just locked in,” Shane adds.
“Uh-huh.”
The music swells. Someone slaps Shane’s shoulder pads in passing. He barely notices.
He can still see it if he lets himself.
The kitchen light warm and yellow. Ilya in just a pair of sweatpants and socks, curls messy from their time in bed, constructing a tuna melt like he’s done it a hundred times.
Stay, Ilya had said. Like it wasn’t a thing. Like it wasn’t a big, terrifying, relationship-shaped word.
He presses his jaw tight. Don’t.
Hayden nudges his knee with a stick. “Earth to captain.”
“I’m here.”
“Sure,” Hayden says. “You look like you’re about to fight a ghost.”
Shane forces a grin. “Save it for the ice.”
***
He wants the hit.
That is the first thing he realises once the puck drops.
The first time their lines rotate out together, Shane takes the inside lane through the neutral zone and subtly widens his path.
An invitation.
Ilya could step into him. Shoulder to chest. Drive him into the boards. Whisper something irritating into his ear while they’re tangled up in skates.
Instead, Ilya dumps the puck and swings wide.
Avoids him.
Shane coasts a stride too far before correcting.
What the hell.
Later, Shane wins the drop clean and drives forward, tracking Ilya through traffic. He angles for him behind the net, puts a little extra speed on-
Ilya passes before Shane can get there.
Nearing desperation for some contact, any contact, Shane forechecks hard enough to be obnoxious and slams the boards a foot from where Ilya had been standing.
Ilya has already rotated out.
Shane’s chest burns.
Stop it, he tells himself.
He tells himself a lot of things.
Then Ilya skates past his bench without looking at him. Not even a flick of the eyes. Shane grips the top of the boards hard enough that his glove creaks.
He wishes Ilya would chirp him so badly that it physically aches.
Call him something stupid in that accent.
Clip him from behind just hard enough to toe the line. Smile that sharp little smile that says you’re mine to mess with on this ice and nowhere else.
Anything.
Instead there is nothing and Shane can’t think of anything worse.
Hayden skates up next to him on the bench, breathing hard. “What’s up with you and Rozanov?”
Shane doesn’t look away from the ice. “What?”
“Don’t what me. He hasn’t checked you all game.”
“Game’s young.”
Hayden hums, unconvinced.
Shane shifts his weight. His legs are buzzing with unused aggression.
He keeps tracking Ilya anyway, even when he should have his focus elsewhere. He can’t help but keep counting his strides, anticipating his routes, drifting into his orbit like gravity still applies even if the other body refuses to acknowledge it.
When Ilya finally does make contact, it isn’t with him.
It’s with Shane’s winger, flattening him into the glass in a way that makes the place roar.
Shane bristles.
Ridiculous.
Possessive.
Stupid.
He hops the boards on the next change and goes straight at him.
This time, Ilya sees him coming, their eyes locking for half a second. Shane’s heart does something embarrassing but the second before contact Ilya veers, skating backward, pivoting, and feeding the puck up the boards.
Shane almost overcommits. “Fuck,” he mutters, too low for the cameras, too loud for himself.
By the end of the first, he’s furious.
Not outwardly. He is excellent at not being outwardly anything. He takes hits, gives them back, wins draws, blocks a shot with his shin and barely flinches.
Inside, it’s chaos, guilt sitting heavy and slick in his chest.
Because now he knows for sure what’s going on.
Because Shane panicked over a name.
Because Shane said he would stay and then bolted.
Because Shane can still feel the warmth of Ilya’s hands on his hips and the way his voice had gone soft when he’d said it.
Shane.
Not Hollander. Not anything sharp and safe. Just Shane.
He sits on the bench and stares at the ice while the next line cycles, jaw tight.
He could fix this. He could skate over and mutter something infuriatingly normal like what the hell is your problem. If he’s feeling really brave he could attempt an are you okay?
He could start something, anything. He doesn’t.
Because the other thing sitting in his chest is panic. This thing between them, whatever Shane calls it, can no longer be kept in a nice neat box inside of him. It has spilled out, tangled up with the rest of him in ways he is unprepared for, all because of his name on Ilya’s lips. Rozanov’s lips.
The horn sounds the end of the first period and Shane pushes finally catches Ilya’s eye across the rink.
For a split second, the mask slips.
Hurt.
Quick and sharp and immediately buried.
Then Ilya turns away.
Shane stands there with his stick dangling uselessly in his hands and thinks, dimly, that being checked into the boards would have hurt less.