Chapter Text
The first thing everyone noticed about the Centaurs’ new power line was how unfair it looked on paper. Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, now somehow on the same side of the ice. To analysts, it was history in the making. To critics, a looming threat. To fans, it was meant to be. Inside the Centaurs’ locker room, though, it felt like chaos.
“Stop distracting me,” Shane muttered, even though he was smiling.
“I am not,” Ilya said mildly, which was a lie.
The pregame buzz hummed around them. Music was thumping low from someone’s speaker, the hiss of skate blades on rubber mats, the smell of grip tape and sweat burned into the backs of noses. The Centaurs logo was emblazoned across every stall. It was their first home game of the season, a national broadcast. The kind of night that turned moments into headlines.
Shane was halfway into his gear, shoulder pads strapped and his compression shirt clinging to him. Ilya, already mostly dressed, leaned back against the wooden divider between their stalls like he had nowhere better to be.
Which he didn’t.
They’d chosen adjacent lockers without discussing it. No one had commented. The team had long since adjusted to the fact that the two biggest names in the league operated as a matched set. Where one went, the other was just behind.
“Coach is going to give the pregame talk in five,” Shane said, reaching for his jersey.
“I know.”
“Then why are you still—”
Ilya stepped forward, close enough that Shane’s sentence dissolved somewhere between his throat and his lips. He reached up, slow and deliberate, adjusting the collar of Shane’s undershirt with a gentle tug.
“There,” Ilya said softly. “You were crooked.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
Shane rolled his eyes, but he didn’t step back. He never really did. Years ago, being this close had felt electric and unstable, something they’d both claimed not to want. Now it was effortless. Familiar. Dangerous in a completely different way.
“Focus,” Shane said.
“I am focused.” Ilya’s mouth curved. “On you.”
Shane snorted and pushed lightly at his chest. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you love me.”
That, at least, wasn’t in dispute. Around them, their teammates were too busy lacing skates and arguing about faceoff percentages to pay attention. With a locker room full of vets, the Centaurs had long since stopped reacting. Shane and Ilya being Shane and Ilya stopped being interesting a long time ago.
Still, Shane lowered his voice. “We do have to actually play hockey tonight, you know.”
“We will play, eventually” Ilya promised. “But first—”
He leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t desperate. Just a quick, warm press of lips that felt like muscle memory. Shane’s hand came up automatically, catching in the front of Ilya’s shirt, steadying himself. The moment stayed small. Private.
Shane pulled back first. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“I have been getting you in trouble for fifteen years,” Ilya said. “This is tradition.”
Shane shook his head, but he was laughing now. He grabbed the jersey in front of him, black, Centaurs crest blazing across the front, tugging it over his head in one smooth motion.
Beside him, Ilya did the same.
They were still adjusting elbow pads and gloves when Coach Wiebe called for them. The room shifted instantly from loose to locked-in. Helmets on. Chin straps snapped. Sticks grabbed. In the rush of it, they fell into formation and headed down the tunnel.
The arena roared as they stepped onto the ice.
It hit Shane like it always did: the light, the sound, the sharp cold bite of air in his lungs. He tapped his stick against the ice twice, scanning the stands out of habit. Centaurs jerseys everywhere. Signs with their names already paired together.
Rozanov and Hollander. He still found it surreal that they could have this. That they were allowed.
He lined up for warmups opposite Ilya. They exchanged a look that said the same thing it always had before a game.
Let’s go.
The first few minutes blurred into drills and effortless tape-to-tape passes, the kind that made the game look simple. Shane slid a puck cleanly onto Ilya’s stick, and Ilya buried it top shelf with a snap that pulled a collective gasp from the crowd. Chemistry, that was the word analysts liked to use, as if it could fully explain the instinct behind it. But when they lined up at center ice for the national anthem, the rhythm faltered. Something shifted, subtle but unmistakable. Shane caught the opposing winger across from him narrowing his eyes, studying him a beat too long.
“What?” Shane muttered.
The guy grinned slowly. “Nice name.”
Shane frowned.
Across the red line, Ilya was looking at him with an expression that could only be described as delighted confusion. Shane glanced down automatically, but of course he couldn’t see his own back.
The anthem ended. Helmets came off. The crowd cheered.
As they moved toward the bench for final instructions before puck drop, their rookie defenseman, Mateo, nearly tripped over his own skates.
“Uh,” Mateo said weakly, staring at Shane.
“What?” Shane demanded.
Mateo pointed between Shane and Ilya.
Ilya twisted at the waist, craning around to look at his own shoulders. Then he barked out a laugh so loud it echoed under his visor.
“Oh,” he breathed.
Shane grabbed the back of Ilya’s jersey and hauled him closer so he could see.
HOLLANDER.
Across the plane of his shoulderblades.
Shane’s stomach dropped.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
Because when Ilya spun him around in return, there it was, bold white lettering across Shane’s back:
ROZANOV.
They stared at each other. Somewhere above them, the broadcast cameras zoomed in.
“You took mine,” Shane hissed.
“You took mine,” Ilya corrected, utterly unbothered.
“In the locker room—”
“You were distracted.” Ilya shrugged.
“You distracted me!”
Bood then skated over, eyes wide behind his visor. “Guys. You’re aware—”
“Yes,” Shane snapped.
The referee blew his whistle for them to line up.
“Too late to change,” Ilya said cheerfully. “Unless you want to explain to the entire arena why we are undressing at center ice.”
Shane closed his eyes briefly. The Jumbotron flickered to life above them.
There they were. Side by side.
With each other’s names.
The arena went quiet for half a second, then it exploded.
A wave of laughter, cheers, whistles. Someone started chanting, “Switch! Switch! Switch!”
Shane felt heat crawl up his neck. “This is a nightmare.”
“This,” Ilya said, skating into position for the faceoff, “is art.”
The puck dropped.
For the first shift, Shane tried to pretend nothing was different. Hockey was hockey. Edges digging into ice. The sharp crack of sticks. The rhythm of it steady and grounding.
But every time he circled back toward the boards, he could hear it.
“Nice try, Rozanov!” a fan shouted at him.
He nearly whiffed a pass.
Across the ice, Ilya was grinning like he’d just been handed a personal gift from the universe.
Midway through the period, after a particularly pretty give-and-go that ended with Ilya scoring, he skated past Shane and yelled, “Great assist, Rozanov!”
Shane shoved him lightly as they celebrated. “Shut up.”
The camera lingered on them as they lined up again, clearly aware of the comedy gold unfolding. The commentators’ voices boomed faintly from the overhead speakers.
“…and in a bizarre turn of events, Hollander and Rozanov appear to have swapped jerseys…”
“…you have to wonder how that happens…”
Ilya tapped his stick against Shane’s. “They are talking about us.”
“They’re always talking about us.”
“Yes, but now they are confused.”
“That’s not a good thing.”
“It is my favourite thing.”
By the second period, the joke had fully landed. The opposing bench was chirping nonstop.
“Hey Hollander!” someone yelled at Ilya. “When did you learn to shoot like that?”
Ilya skated by and blew them a kiss.
Shane buried his face in his glove for half a second.
When they returned to the bench after another shift, Coach leaned in, trying—and failing—not to smile.
“You two done making headlines for one night?”
“Probably not,” Ilya said.
Shane shot him a look. “We’ll fix it at intermission. We’ll change.”
Coach glanced at the clock. Two minutes left in the period. “Not worth it. Just play.”
Shane exhaled. “Yes, Coach.”
As they waited for the next line change, Ilya nudged him gently with his shoulder.
“You hate this,” Ilya observed.
“I hate that this is happening on live television.”
“It is funny.”
“It is humiliating.”
“It is iconic.”
Shane fought a smile. “You’re impossible.”
“And you are skating very well, living up to Rozanov name.”
Despite himself, Shane laughed.
The rest of the game took on a surreal, electric quality. Every pass between them felt like an inside joke. Every time the announcer tripped over their names, the crowd roared louder.
Late in the third, the game tied 2-2, it was time for the power play. They lined up the way they always did now, Shane at the half wall, Ilya drifting into the left circle.
Shane held the puck, scanning. The penalty killers shifted toward him.
For a split second, everything slowed.
He sent the pass cross-ice.
Ilya caught it clean and fired.
Goal.
The arena detonated. The sound vibrated through the ice and up through their bodies.
Ilya tore across the ice, arms wide, before circling back to Shane and grabbing him in a fierce hug that nearly knocked them both off balance.
“Beautiful pass, Rozanov!” Ilya shouted into his ear.
Shane laughed helplessly against his shoulder. “You’re never letting this go, are you?”
“Never.”
When the final buzzer sounded, sealing the win, they lined up for handshakes still wearing the wrong names. By the time they reached the tunnel, Shane felt the embarrassment had softened into something else. Something lighter.
In the quiet just off the ice, he grabbed the hem of his jersey. “Okay. Now we fix it.”
Ilya caught his wrist.
“Wait.”
“What?”
Ilya stepped closer, eyes bright, cheeks flushed from exertion and joy. “Just one more minute.”
“For what?”
“For them to take pictures,” Ilya said. “For the headlines. For the story.”
Shane stared at him. “You like this.”
“I love this,” Ilya corrected. “Do you know how many years we had to pretend? To hide? And now we accidentally wear each other’s names and the world laughs instead of—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
Shane’s chest tightened.
The tunnel cameras were still rolling. Their teammates filtered past them, shaking heads, grinning.
Shane looked down at the name across Ilya’s shoulders. Hollander. At the way he stood, utterly unapologetic. Proud.
“Okay,” Shane said quietly.
Ilya’s smile softened. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
And when they left the arena that night, side by side, the story already spreading across every sports feed in the country, neither of them felt like they’d worn the wrong name at all.