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Shane’s mouth tastes awful. Did he go to bed last night without brushing his teeth? What the fuck? And why is he so sweaty and warm? And why does he feel like-
Oh god. He practically rolls out of bed and races to the hotel bathroom, hurting his knees as he falls before the toilet and promptly loses his guts. His head pangs in time with his heaves, and he finally puts things together - did he drink last night?
Images flash, each one more confusing than the last. He definitely went out drinking last night, but it doesn't make sense. He flushes the toilet and stumbles to the shower, peeling off his boxer briefs and tossing them aside in favor of drowning himself in semi-cool water. He pushes his head directly under the stream, breathing in and out, before tipping his mouth up to gargle away the taste of his sick.
After a few minutes, he’s feeling more coherent. He scrubs over his face, then blinks at the weird texture and examines his fingers. He has a weird ring on his left ring finger; it’s like a dark, metallic stone. Grunting, he slips it off and sets it in the soap tray, a mystery to solve later. He hopes he didn’t spend some obscene amount of his signing bonus on it. His mom will kill him if he’s reckless with that money. Too many lectures-
Knock knock knock.
The gentle knocking on the bathroom door startles Shane so much he almost falls over in the shower and becomes one of those embarrassing death statistics.
“Hollander, can I come in? I need to piss like race horse.”
Shane’s heart nearly beats out of his chest because he recognizes that voice, and he'd been hoping that the flashes he had of last night had been incorrect. “Rozanov? What are you-”
Rozanov doesn’t wait for an answer but bursts inside, clearly needing to go. He pulls up the toilet seat, whips his dick out of his boxers, and sighs as he lets loose. It takes everything in Shane not to linger over the impressive line of Rozanov’s cock. Those are inside thoughts, and definitely not for when he’s sharing a fucking hotel room with Ilya Rozanov?
“What…what are you doing here, Rozanov?”
Still peeing, apparently. Rozanov just grunts, a sound that’s a mix between “I don’t know” and “I don’t care.”
Shane risks another glance around the shower curtain, because…because Ilya Rozanov is the peak male form and he’s just admiring it, one athlete to another, of course.
And then his stomach drops, because he sees the same dark stone ring on Rozanov’s left ring finger, which is propped against his hip as he shakes his cock with his right hand.
“Uh.” Shane looks back at his ring, then turns the shower off and grabs it. “Don’t look.” He shoves it on his finger, then makes a grab for one of the towels hanging over the toilet. Rozanov has moved to wash his hands, but he is, of course he is, fucking looking. And not the way bros do in the locker room. He’s raising an eyebrow in interest at Shane’s wet body.
Shane quickly wraps the towel around his waist without bothering to dry off and rushes out of the bathroom. He searches the desk, the dresser top, but finds no clues. He finds his clothes - the athletic wear he’d worn to work out at the gym last night - neatly stacked on one of the armchairs, and searches his pockets, triumphant when he comes across some crumpled papers.
His heart - and stomach - sinks when he reads the first line.
Marriage License, State of Nevada
This license decrees that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are married by the laws and statutes of the State of Nevada-
Both their names are barely a legible scrawl, but his name is definitely his handwriting.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Rozanov comes out in his boxers, looking like a fucking underwear model as he leans against the door jam. “What? Hollander, you are having panic attack.”
“Of course I’m having a fucking panic attack! We got fucking married last night, Rozanov. Or…this morning? We got fucking married!” Shane raises his left hand, pointing at the ring finger, then tossing the papers at Rozanov’s chest. Rozanov grabs them, his eyes going dark and serious as he reads them.
“I do not understand this,” he mumbles, looking perplexed at the English, and Shane winces.
“It’s a marriage license. It’s basically…it’s a legal document that says we’re married, as of this morning at…4am, apparently.”
“Твою ж мать!” Rozanov, presumably, curses.
“Yeah, same,” Shane mumbles, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t even remember anything after- after the gym.”
Rozanov looks over at him, his own breath seeming to come short. “I asked you if you want drink. I say, ‘let’s find place off strip that looks other way at ID.’”
“I…we’re so fucked. We’re so fucking fucked, Rozanov.”
“We are husbands, I think you can call me Ilya now.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“I’m not laughing!” Ilya yells back, starting to pace like a caged tiger in the small hotel room.
“We have to get it annulled. Or a divorce, whatever. I don’t know how this shit works, but we have to undo this. It’ll probably make some headlines for a couple of days but we can pass it off as drunken rookie antics, maybe-”
“Shane, I am from Russia.”
“Yeah, I fucking know-”
“No, I mean. I cannot marry you. I cannot marry man and return to Russia. I am- my family is there, Hollander. My family is police.” Ilya looks close to tears.
“Whoa, hey, okay,” Shane says, capturing Ilya by the shoulders on his next pace past him. “Let’s just breathe for a second. In for four, out for four, breathe with me. Good, good job.”
“Он и так считает меня ленивым и глупым. Он убьёт меня за это. Я стану его великим позором,” Rozanov babbles in Russian around the breaths. He looks young, and scared.
Shane has never felt so young in his fucking life.
“I think we need to call an adultier adult.”
“Shane, I’ve been texting all morning, your father went to go grab us some breakfast-” Yuna gets cut off as Shane pulls her into his hotel room.
“Can you have him get an extra serving?” Shane asks while his mom makes bug eyes at Ilya Rozanov standing in some clothes he’s borrowed from Shane, near the hotel room window.
“...Sure,” Yuna says, pulling out her phone to text his dad. “What, uh…what is Mr. Rozanov doing here, Shane?”
Technically, Mr. Rozanov is standing as still as a statue, as if he’s worried that Shane’s mom is going to report him directly to the Russian government.
“Uh. We kind of…uh. We got drunk last night, I know, I know, not the time or place,” Shane holds up his hands to fend off his mom’s lecture. “But, um. Now we’re, uh. Well.”
Oh god, he literally cannot say the words out loud. He chickens out and passes her the marriage license instead.
The room goes silent for a handful of seconds as Yuna’s eyes scan the paper, then go wide, then tip up to meet his and then Ilya’s. “Shane. Shane. Akio. Hollander. What. Am. I. Reading?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Ilya wince, and he holds his hands up placatingly again. “Listen, I know we fucked up, but-”
“But what? You hate him, Shane! He plays for Boston. Is he gay? Are you gay?” Yuna crosses her arms over her chest.
“I- that’s. That’s kind of irrelevant right now, Mom. He’s Russian. If anyone finds out…”
“I like both,” Ilya offers from the window.
Yuna softens, looking at him, then back at Shane. “Did you do this to help him? Like an immigration thing, protect him from the Russian police?”
“I…maybe? I don’t really remember. We were kind of…drunk.”
“When I find out who let drunk 18-year-olds sign legal documents-”
“Mom, you can’t. We have to…we just have to bury this.”
“Maybe…maybe things get better in Russia, and I would not have to hide,” Ilya murmurs. “In years, maybe? I do not know. I am sorry that I ruin your son’s life.”
Shane turns away from his mom to face Ilya. “You’re not ruining my life, Rozanov. It’s not like- I mean, I don’t have a girlfriend right now or anything.” He runs his hands up and down Ilya’s arms in comfort. “It’s fine. It’s no big deal.”
A soft knock on the door startles them all, but Shane recognizes his dad’s signature knock. Yuna moves to let him in, and he feels Ilya tense under his fingers and pull away.
David bustles in with several paper bags and a tray of drinks and a smile on his face, despite the obvious tension in the room. He takes note of Ilya, who is now standing slightly in front of Shane, but doesn’t say anything. Shane takes it all in, how stiff and formal and protective Ilya had become as soon as his father had walked inside.
“Well, there seems to be a story here, but we shouldn’t tackle it with empty stomachs. I got bagels. A little bit of everything because I wasn’t sure what people would want, but the coffees are all black.” He starts to empty the contents of the bag out onto the desk. Shane grabs for one of the coffees gratefully.
“I guess I’ll see you in Boston soon?” Shane offers as he and Ilya stand by the door of his hotel room several hours of planning later. His mom and dad had gone off to give them some privacy, though Shane knows his mom is going to spend all that time on her phone with their new plan.
The plan being: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are newfound besties, so they’re going to try and spend as much time together as possible in public to spin the narrative away from the rivalry story the MLH has been crafting.
“I guess so.”
Shane hesitates, then pulls Ilya in for a hug, rubbing over his back. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Okay,” Ilya echoes back in his heavy Russian accent.