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“Hey,” a familiar voice says as its equally familiar owner sits down in a loose flurry of limbs next to Shane at the bar.
“Hi?” Shane says back suspiciously as he turns to face Cliff Marleau.
Somehow, some way, the Metros and the Raiders have ended up at the same bar after the game, which Shane is beginning to suspect Comeau and Drapeau concocted in an attempt to continue antagonizing the Raiders post game, if the argument starting by the private tables is anything to go by. He’s only here for his customary single ginger ale to keep up appearances and wasn’t expecting to talk to anyone other than Hayden really, let alone Cliff Marleau.
“So, what are your thoughts on Roz?” Marleau asks the question with a very earnest face, so earnest it makes Shane look around like there’s someone else the question has to be being posed to. When he doesn’t see anyone close enough, he turns back to Marleau, still with the same open and expectant look directed at Shane, as if he’s absolutely dying to know Shane’s opinion on his captain.
His mind wheels frantically for an answer that won’t accidentally out them but also won’t get him punched by a man who has twenty additional pounds of muscle on him.
“He’s kind of an asshole?” He says tentatively.
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Marleau agrees easily, flapping his hand through the air like that’s just basics. “He’s also really good with the rookies, y’know?”
This is a fact that Shane does actually know. He’s even willing to venture that he knows more about Boston’s rookies this year than most of the Raiders’ other veteran players if only by sheer osmosis of listening to Ilya ramble about them like a preschool teacher excited about their new batch of charges.
“Okay,” he says, unsure of where this is going. It doesn’t seem like Marleau is going to hit him, or even like he’s really bothered by the night’s loss — which had come down to a really ugly and entirely accidental rebound against the post that had pinged off JJ’s stick straight into the net. Everyone had stared at the puck as the goal horn blared, including JJ, not quite able to believe the circumstances. It doesn’t mean Shane has any idea why the hell Marleau is talking to him.
“He’s a good captain. Always tells us he loves us and fosters a strong team environment,” Marleau continues, still sounding for all the world like this is something he does regularly, like he just sits down with Shane all the time to give him a rundown on Ilya’s finer points. “Makes a killer cake too. Honey cake, I think he said it was?”
That’s something Shane hadn’t known. Most likely because honey cake sounds like a food that doesn’t fit his diet anyway so Ilya probably just never saw fit to bring it up.
“I’m not big on cake,” he says and Marleau laughs like he’s said something funny.
“Right, right. That interview you did a while ago. I remember something about a diet. He’s good at cooking other stuff too,” Marleau says insistently and Shane has the insane revelation that this must be what it’s like to have a gigantic dog nudging at your hands, dead set on giving you its toy.
“Just something to think about,” Marleau says and clinks his beer against Shane’s glass before pushing off his stool to meld back into the crowd.
Shane watches him go with a sense of confusion that refuses to abate.
“What the fuck,” he says under his breath and goes to find Hayden to have him taste test his ginger ale for alcohol.
***
A little over three weeks later, Victor St. Simon ambushes him at the breakfast buffet during All-Stars weekend. The taller defenseman plops his heaping plate down across from Shane, who jolts because he wasn’t expecting any of the other players to really be taking a crack at the buffet at 6 am.
“Bonjour,” St. Simon says. “Tu t’es déjà entraîné?”
Shane nods, trying to figure out if he’s ever interacted with St. Simon off the ice before. He’s pretty sure the answer is no.
“Et toi?” Shane asks out of politeness.
St. Simon shakes his head with a chuckle.
“I am too lazy for 4 am, Hollander,” St. Simon says and then seems to consider it for a moment. “Do you know? Rozanov would do this though. Maybe you should ask him to do a session together this weekend.”
Shane is so focused on how interesting it is that St. Simon and JJ say Rozanov and Hollander with the same flair despite speaking French French and Quebecois French respectively that he nearly misses the second half of what St. Simon says.
“What? Why would I do that?” He puts his yogurt down and tries to puzzle out what St. Simon is trying to do.
“Lonely to do cardio that early alone, n’est-ce pas?”
Shane has officially lost track of the plot of this conversation. He’s never really found it lonely to do his early morning cardio alone. If anything, it helps that there are no distractions so he can just focus on keeping his body and breathing on track. Besides, Ilya could probably put a husky to shame in a whiny tantrum contest if Shane tried to drag him out of bed before the sun for cardio. Ilya doesn’t believe in leaving the bed unless the sun is out, no matter how much Shane tries to coax him.
“You should ask,” St. Simon says, nodding like an old mountain sage imparting the wisdom of a thousand ancestors instead of the brain melt that Shane feels like he’s actually getting from this.
“Okay,” Shane says because he really wants this particular strain of discussion to be over and any other answer feels like it has a possibility of prolonging it.
St. Simon nods emphatically, a satisfied smile breaking out on his face, and starts talking about possible team compositions, which is a topic Shane is much happier to engage in.
***
Two weeks after that, he almost says, “oh fuck no,” out loud when Connors catches him in the hall after Boston plays in Montreal, but Connors is known for being incredibly even keel - possibly the only Raider who doesn’t have an ego the size of the sun - and Shane knows he’d feel bad about being a dick to the guy.
“Hey Hollander,” Connors calls, raising a hand and pushing himself off the wall he’s leaning against.
“Hey Connors,” Shane says.
“Good game tonight.” He holds his fist out and Shane bumps it with his own, mostly out of habit. “Roz wouldn’t stop talking about your last goal in the locker room. He said it was beautiful.”
Shane…has no idea what to say to that actually.
“Thank you?” Wow. You’d think this was his first time ever hearing a compliment.
“Yeah—,” Connors nods enthusiastically, “—he’s got a real respect for your skills, you know. All the shit he says in interviews, it’s all just him putting on a show.”
“Yeah, the whole rivalry thing,” Shane says blandly, like he doesn’t have a vivid memory of Ilya telling Shane exactly how much respect he has for a certain subset of Shane’s skills in a low gravelly mix of Russian and English. He can feel his face start to heat up and he hopes that Connors attributes it to the extra layers he has on while still being inside.
Thankfully, Connors either doesn’t notice or chooses not to comment and just continues the extremely strange conversation.
“He talks a lot about you,” Connors says sincerely. “Always good things. Unless he’s calling you boring. But otherwise good things.”
“Right. He’s, uh—,” Shane scrambles for something to say that doesn’t scream I sucked your captain’s dick before the game and I’m going to do it again as soon as I get back home and comes up with, “He’s got good stick handling.”
Shane wonders if he should just head out the doors and walk right into the St. Lawrence and drown himself because that’s what an idiot like him deserves.
He’s got good stick handling, Jesus fucking Christ, Hollander. He might as well have just told Connors the truth for how subtle that entendre was. But Connors just seems pleased by Shane’s statement.
“You should tell him that!” He says in an excited but gentle manner that reminds Shane, oddly enough, of his mother. It lends an extremely surreal tint to the conversation.
“Here, let me give you his number,” Connors says, pulling out his phone, and Shane freezes.
“Oh no, I don’t think that’s necessary,” he says faintly but Connors is so earnestly holding his phone out for Shane to put his number in that Shane finds himself taking it and pecking his information into Connors’ contacts list.
A moment after he gives the phone back, a text arrives from Connors.
Unknown: Hey! This is Connors.
Unknown: Here’s Roz’s phone number
Unknown: <<Ilya Rozanov Contact>>
“Thanks,” Shane says weakly and Connors gives him a thumbs up.
“Seriously, text him!”
***
Two and a half weeks after that, at the last Montreal - Boston game of the season on Boston ice, Shane figures it out.
It’s Marleau again. He scrapes to a stop in front of Shane - still across the center line - while Shane is stretching. He drops to the ice and starts in on his own set of stretches, which would be weird enough, but then he says, “Roz is a good looking guy.”
What.
“He’s really been focused on packing some more muscle this season,” Marleau continues, like Shane isn’t staring at him in a sort of horrified fascination. He looks up when Shane doesn’t reply.
“His house is always clean,” Marleau says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. What the specific meaning is, Shane has no clue.
Ilya’s house is clean because he has a cleaning service, Shane’s brain supplies, which is not a helpful statement for him to voice out loud because how the fuck would he explain to Marleau that he knows about Ilya’s cleaning service. The second thing his brain gives him is that Ilya never puts his dirty socks in the hamper even though it’s literally right there when he takes them off. That tidbit is even less helpful than the first.
“He’s quit smoking unless he’s really stressed. He’s only had one since the beginning of the new year,” Marleau says emphatically, still looking at Shane like he should be catching Marleau’s drift. “He’s really trying to get his shit together. He’s even sticking to the diet the nutritionists gave him.”
Shane wants to say that Ilya is sticking to the diet not because he wants to but because Shane won their bet during All-Stars and used the win to make Ilya promise to eat like a real adult.
Wait. Is Marleau reporting this to him because he knows that?
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.
Shane is pretty sure he knows what’s happening now - the past incidents with Connors and St. Simon also coming to mind - and he’s going to kill Ilya, because it is definitely his fault. Somehow, Ilya has said enough that some of the Raiders, bless their collectively concussed souls, have figured out he and Shane are together. On the one hand, Shane is already trying to figure out if he can dump Marleau, St. Simon, and Connors in a trash compactor without anyone finding out. On the other, it’s kind of sweet that the Raiders seem to be accepting of their relationship and are trying to show their support in the clumsy way sports bros do.
And Marleau is Ilya’s version of Hayden and Shane knows he’d be really upset if Hayden just up and disappeared, so presumably Ilya would be similarly unhappy if the same happened to Marleau. But, holy shit, Marleau doing this on the ice is so dangerous. Shane knows discretion isn’t a quality hockey players are known for, but he would have assumed that some sensibility existed. Apparently not.
“After the game, okay?” He hisses and Marleau nods, content to get up and skate away.
The game is, admittedly, not one of Shane’s finer ones. His body spends most of it on autopilot while he frantically tries to figure out who else knows about them. None of the other Raiders give him any indication that they know and by the end of the game, Shane is pretty confident that it’s just Marleau, St. Simon, and Connors he has to worry about.
***
Ilya feels amazing. They’ve just beat Montreal 3-2 and Shane is going to be at his place in an hour and Ilya has some very thorough plans to debauch him in bed and then a second time in the shower. His plans are derailed rather annoyingly when he picks up his phone to find a cryptic text from Shane.
Shane: You need to invite Marleau, Connors, and St. Simon over to your place after the game. Non-negotiable.
Ilya looks up at the locker room but none of the three guys mentioned in the text look like anything’s off. Cliff is congratulating the rookie who deflected the shot from Montreal that would have tied the game. Connor is already heading to the showers before anyone else because he hates it when there’s too much steam and he can’t dry off properly. Victor is half in half out of his gear texting his wife, going by the silly smile on his face.
He pulls up a group chat with the three of them and sends one text.
Ilya: My place in 45 minutes. Miss out and I make you bag skate until you die.
***
“You think he knows?” Connor asks, hauling himself forward through the center so he can hear better. He usually gets relegated to the back seat because he’s the shortest, which he would normally be fine with, but this is an important conversation. He needs to know if they’re heading to Ilya’s place to get murdered for trying to help set him up with Hollander.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Victor says, seesawing his hand back and forth. “He did not seem to know before the game.”
“Maybe he was faking it,” Connor says. “Let me out. I’m too young to be a murder headline.”
He makes for the door handle and gets stopped by Cliff blindly reaching backwards and smushing his hand against his face.
“Fuck off, Marly!”
“We’re on the fucking highway! If you try to open that door, I swear to god, Connie, I’ll pull over and kill you before Roz has a chance.”
Connor subsides, only because they’re basically at Ilya’s place anyway and if he’s going to die, he’d rather not be discovered in a ditch by the highway.
“Ah, good, you are on time,” Ilya says when they pull up.
They troop into his house, removing their shoes as they go, which is another thing Ilya has started making them do in the past year. What Connor is absolutely not expecting as he rounds the corner is Shane Hollander standing in Ilya’s kitchen and he comes to a screeching halt, which results in him almost getting run over as Victor and Cliff smack against his back.
“Connie, you can’t just—holy shit.”
***
Ilya still has no idea what’s happening. All he knows is that Shane burst through the door approximately two minutes after he got home and got right to pacing and ranting about people knowing something and whether or not Ilya had strong opinions on playing with other people on his wing. Ilya’s pretty sure he heard “kill Marleau, how hard could it be to dissolve a hundred kilos in acid,” and had briefly wondered if he should worry. At one point, Shane had paused to ask whether or not Ilya had a waterproof tarp and looked highly offended when the answer turned out to be no.
“Why don’t you have one?” Shane had asked incredulously.
“Why would I have one? What do I use it for?”
“Camping?” Shane had said, like it was obvious.
“Shane, любимый, I have never been camping,” Ilya had said, which had made Shane regard Ilya like he was an alien making contact with earth for the first time.
But now, five minutes after the tarp conversation, Shane is wearing his angry kitten murder face as Cliff and Victor nearly send Connor tumbling to the ground with their combined bulk and momentum.
“Sit,” Shane says, pointing at the chairs across the kitchen island.
“Why do I feel like my maman is about to yell at me?” Victor whispers to Cliff as they pass Ilya.
Ilya bites down a smirk and a quip about Shane having nothing on Yuna Hollander’s death stare and meanders to stand on Shane’s side of the island. Shane fills and sets three glasses of water on the counter in front of them because he’s got manners hammered into him and all three men look at their proffered glass warily.
“So,” Cliff says, after a silent three way conversation between him, Connor, and Victor that involves a lot of eyebrow movement. “Why’s Hollander in your house? And is he going to kill us. Because he kinda looks like he’s going to kill us.”
“Oh my god,” Connor moans and drags both hands down his face.
“Mon dieu.” Victor smacks his palm against his forehead.
“This is good question. Why are they in my house right now?” Ilya turns to Shane, leaving the ‘and why are we not fucking’ unspoken.
“Look,” Shane blurts aggressively. “I know you three know Ilya and I are going out and—”
The rest of his sentence gets drowned out by chaos as Cliff, Connor, and Victor all shout over each other.
“You’re going out??” — “What the entire fuck is happening?” — “Tu fait quoi?”
Shane stares back at them, suddenly looking just as confused as they are.
“What do you mean what’s happening? You knew! You all knew!! You’ve been saying shit for months!”
“Hollander,” Cliff says, using a level even tone that people are always surprised he possesses. He’s not assistant captain for no reason, even if people want to believe that. “Shane. I promise you, we did not know you and Ilya were together.”
It’s weird hearing his first name out of Cliff’s mouth and even odder to hear Shane’s, but it’s a technique Cliff has described to him before. The strangeness of hearing a name it’s not used to is enough for the brain to latch onto and snap out of whatever spiral it’s gotten itself into. Shane is no different — he stops mid rant and looks at Cliff with his mouth open and mind stalling.
“But. The game. When you were telling me Ilya was eating better and not smoking. And all stars. When St. Simon said to do morning cardio with Ilya.”
“Will never happen by the way. Four am is not real time,” Ilya pipes up.
“Why does morning cardio mean I know about your relationship?” Victor asks, brow furrowed.
”I thought you meant sex!” Shane blusters and hides his face in his hands as Victor lets out a strangled laugh.
”I meant actual cardio in a gym!”
”Well I know that now,” Shane wails, beet red.
”Okay, now that we know is not sex cardio,” Ilya says, ignoring Shane hissing Ilya. “What were you three idiots trying to do?”
His teammates share another look and Cliff once again gets elected as spokesman, probably because Victor and Connor assume that - as Ilya’s best friend - he’s most likely to survive whatever reaction happens.
“We, uh, we were trying to help wingman him.”
Shane looks like he knows what each individual word means, but is unable to parse the sentence as a collective.
“What the fuck,” he says quietly.
“Okay so, last year—well, I guess technically the year before, December ish. Rozy got dumped by his Montreal girl—,” Ilya sees Shane mouth ‘Montreal girl’ as Cliff clips through the story, “—and we had him on homicide-suicide watch—,” Ilya squawks, “You what?” indignantly and Cliff shrugs, “Yeah man, you were like two seconds away from stabbing someone and then tossing yourself off a bridge.”
“Anyway, not important,” he says, waving his hand like they won’t be coming back to this specific topic at a later date. “What’s important is that Roz was in the hell pit until all stars and then you guys fucked and he was happy again—”
“Hold on,” Shane says, putting a hand up. “What did you just say?”
“You fucked at all stars?” Cliff blinks at them like this is a perfectly normal sentence to be coming out of his mouth.
“What? How? No??” Shane’s voice cracks.
Cliff rolls his eyes. Victor and Connor both huff their disbelief at Shane even attempting a denial.
“Don’t even try it, Hollzy. Everyone knows you two hate fucked. It’s basically an open secret at this point.”
Shane is going a concerning shade of red and making the same high pitched gasping noises dying air conditioners do. Ilya pulls a cold ginger ale out of the fridge and hands it over before slipping his hands into Shane’s behind the counter, giving it a squeeze. Shane hastily gulps half the can down before he squeezes Ilya’s hand back
“Why does everyone think we fucked at all stars?” Ilya asks, genuinely curious.
Shane groans and sinks to the counter, head pillowed on his arm.
“Are you serious?” Connor says, brows so high they’re hidden by his bangs. “You guys spend years beefing and then suddenly you’re kissing him on the cheek on the ice. Of course everybody assumed you hate fucked it out of your systems.”
“Since when am I not allowed to kiss teammate on cheek?”
“Since you didn’t do it to anyone else that weekend,” Victor says, with a level of bitchiness that rivals Shane at his very best. Ilya’s pretty sure it’s a quality everyone who learns French in their formative years is required to have.
Shane makes a noise akin to the whale on the nature documentary he sent Ilya a clip of.
“Моя любовь, breathe. Is okay. Is just Marly, Connie, and Saint Vicky. They will not say anything.” He rubs his hand up and down the line of Shane’s spine, kneading his neck a little at the top of every pass.
“But everybody else thinks we fucked at all stars.” The words are muffled into Shane’s arms and Ilya looks up at his teammates and jerks his head at Shane.
“Uh, if it helps, I’m pretty sure everyone else thought it was a one off boys will be boys experimental type thing,” Connor says.
Shane makes the whale noise again.
“Okay we move on, солнышко, whole story now, panic after, yes?”
Shane nods against his arm and slowly raises his head, pulling his captain face back on in real time.
“Keep going,” he says after a fortifying swallow of ginger ale.
“Oh, yeah. Well, Roz was happy again and, y’know, he talked a lot about you before that all stars but he talked way more about you after. And the three of us kinda figured that Roz had a massive fuck off crush on you.”
“And hey, weirder shit has happened,” Connor adds.
Cliff nods and continues on.
“And he’s our captain and our friend and we want him to be happy. So we decided to help wingman for him.”
Ilya takes in the story, absolutely fascinated by the leaps of logic his friends have taken to get to their only slightly off base conclusion. He’s also absurdly touched by their support, however mildly misguided.
Shane looks like he’s recalibrating his outlook on the last couple of months as he stares off into the distance and Ilya takes the opportunity to lean in and ask what each of them did. He knows he shouldn’t laugh, not while Shane is still trying to bend reality with the power of his mind, but it’s impossible not to as Cliff, Victor, and Connor all detail their encounters with the same confidence that Ruby and Jade show him their art from school.
“This isn’t funny,” Shane admonishes as Ilya wheezes with his hands on his knees for support.
“Мой помидор, is funny,” Ilya manages between gasps of laughter. “They are doing their best to help, yes?”
“I guess,” Shane grumbles reluctantly.
Ilya heaves in one last inhale and stands to press a kiss to Shane’s cheek. He studiously pretends to ignore the gooey looks on Connor and Victor’s face and the utter delight on Cliff’s as Ilya takes Shane’s hand in his again, this time on the counter.
“Is okay, see? They are okay with it. Tried to make it happen even,” he murmurs, bringing Shane’s hand up to feather a kiss to the back of his knuckles.
Shane grunts, but he’s moved beyond researching body disposal plans so Ilya figures that’s about as good as he’s getting right now.
“Now that that's out of the way,” Cliff interjects, actually rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain. “It’s question time.”
“No,” Ilya protests.
“You owe us!” Connor says, smirking now that the atmosphere has shifted. “How many times have you ragged on us about our relationships? Hmm? It’s time to return the favor.”
“Oui, Rozy, time for payback.” Victor leans in, hands folded together on the table.
“Only if Shane says is okay,” Ilya says, relatively sure that will stop this madness.
His teammates turn to look at Shane expectantly, who just blushes and says, surprisingly, “Yeah, I guess it’s fine?”
“When did this all start? Wait, is Holzy your Montreal girl? Holy shit, you’ve been doing this for six years?” Cliff boggles at them as he connects the dots.
“Nine, actually,” Shane says and the room devolves back into chaos.
Ilya sighs and gets the good vodka, already mourning the loss of his plans to take Shane apart piece by piece. But as he turns back with a stack of chilled glasses in hand, he sees Connor smile broadly as Shane stutters through the story about the CCM commercial while Cliff slaps a hand on the counter with a loud, “No! He didn’t!” Victor shakes his head and says, “This is exactly the kind of plan the Capitaine would think is good.”
Warmth spreads through him as he takes in the scene, as he watches the tension bleed out from between Shane’s shoulders and he thinks that though he maybe wouldn’t have chosen this exact methodology of telling his friends, the messy and loud and absolutely unapologetic acceptance is something he wouldn’t trade for the world.