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Preface: The Blog
It started innocently enough, it really did. He’d created his Tumblr account primarily for personal use. Almost a journal of sorts, reblogging his various interests and obsessions. It helped him learn English to fluency and gave the typically shy boy an outlet. His blog was mostly hockey things, with a small smattering of TV shows and movies he enjoyed. And then the hockey switched from hockey in general to Boston Raiders hockey. Why? Because of Ilya Rozanov, of course.
He distinctly remembered it was around 2012, at the MLH awards in Vegas. A picture of Ilya in his tuxedo made its way across Tumblr like wildfire. He looked so unbelievably handsome, and Luca was absolutely hooked. He quickly became a fan of the Raiders and even hung a poster of Ilya in his bedroom, a fact he’d later vehemently deny.
But everything for him changed after that; his blog shifted from hockey to Boston Raiders hockey, to Ilya Rozanov hockey. And then, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander. Not Ilya and Shane playing hockey, but the relationship between the so-called “rivals.”
Pinpointing where the “Hollanov” obsession stemmed from was a little harder to pinpoint. Somewhere in the midst of his Ilya fascination, he began to pick apart his idol’s interactions with Shane Hollander. The timing of it all was a little jumbled, but he remembered very clearly that it mostly started in jest.
He was combing through pictures and interviews of the two, trying to determine whether they truly hated one another or whether the rivalry was a bit of a PR stunt. There was a lot of jibing back and forth over goals and stats, but very little evidence of actual dislike between the two. But the further he combed over their interactions, the more he built his own narrative in his head.
It was actually a 2011 interview that really made him question their relationship. He was on YouTube, watching old interviews of theirs, and came across footage of the European vs. North American MLH interview. He had seen the interview before, of course, but not from this angle. It wasn’t a professional camera; it was someone in the audience, maybe filming on their own camera, so it showed the whole table rather than just their torsos.
It was a quick moment, blink and you’d miss it, when under the table their shoes touched in a deliberate movement. It sounded crazy, but it felt like such an intimate moment. And it was the first time Luca posted specifically about the idea of Shane and Ilya being in a secret relationship, making a gif of the moment and tagging it #Hollanov on Tumblr.
The first post didn’t get much traction, but he didn’t stop there. Once he was looking, he found all kinds of little moments. Pieces that looked like nothing by themselves but made a larger picture when added together, smiles during face-offs, predatory grins against the boards, and small glances. He renamed the blog and dedicated it purely to Hollanov content in 2014.
From there, it only grew. What started as a personal project, a small obsession, grew into a living, breathing thing. His blog became popular, or at least popular among a certain crowd of hockey fans. What started as him personally posting evidence he noticed became him reblogging other blogs’ theories and posts, and, most intensely, a place for anonymous tips.
It wasn’t something he asked for, but one day, a hotel worker sent him an anonymous story of Ilya and Shane being spotted in the same room. He posted it, removing any personal details, and all of a sudden he was the Gossip Girl of the Hollanov community. And once he posted one tip, they began streaming in from all over.
A housekeeper who worked for Shane in Montreal to clean his rental properties. A bartender in Boston who heard a drunk Ilya mention Shane. An MLH player (from a burner account) who attended the All-Star Game and noticed them acting very friendly. It went on and on, and Luca did his best to vet the stories before he posted them.
But it was all conjecture, the muttered rantings of a sixteen-year-old with too much time and not enough friends. Or at least real-life friends. He had built quite a community of friends online. He had also built a community of haters, people who constantly complained about his theories, offering counter-evidence or just sending him general hate. There was even a subsection of #Shayden shippers (people who shipped Hayden Pike with Shane). They were a united front with Hollanov shippers when it came to Shane Hollander being gay, but hated each other in every other way.
It wasn’t until December 2017 that his theories faced their first major hitch. It didn’t come from his online haters in any way, but from the source itself: Shane Hollander had a girlfriend. It was odd that this felt like a proverbial nail in the coffin for Hollanov when Ilya was frequently spotted with women, very frequently, but somehow it felt different with Shane. Shane had never publicly dated anyone, and definitely not a major movie star.
Luca was in the trenches for a few months after that. Shane and Rose weren’t even spotted together past January, but he was fighting through the waves their “relationship” made on the internet for what felt like an age. At least he fought until April, when Shane Hollander took a hit on the ice and fractured his collarbone.
Shane was okay, totally recovered so he could say this now. But Shane getting hit during that game brought his blog back to center stage, not because of how he was injured, but because of how Ilya reacted. Ilya did not act like a rival when Shane was injured. He didn’t even act like an opponent, or at most a friend. No, he reacted like a spouse. Like someone who had just watched the love of their life get knocked down and not get back up.
He wasn’t alone in seeing this; the internet took it all in. Not every corner of the internet, but Tumblr and Twitter were all over it. Luca was busy building posts, making gifs of Ilya’s expressions, and reaching out to anyone who thought they could lip-read what he was saying. This might seem extreme, but it was not the first time, nor the last, that lip readers were utilized to decipher Hollanov content.
The whole thing felt almost confirmed when he received two anonymous tips the next day. One from a nurse from the hospital Shane was in, claiming Ilya had stopped by his room. This could be explained; it wasn’t uncommon for a team’s captain to visit an injured opposing player. But the other was more concrete, and unfortunately, not something he could post.
The tip came from one of the paramedics who transported Shane to the hospital, who claimed Shane had been asking for Ilya, complaining that Ilya would worry about him. Luca didn’t doubt the veracity of the claim, but it was from too personal a source. He couldn’t release that information without getting that paramedic in trouble, so he kept it close to his chest, a little tidbit in his back pocket.
Scott Hunter came out rather publicly that June, and once again, the “Gay Hockey” community was in shock. It wasn’t something Luca was ever particularly invested in, but he couldn’t deny it was a massive step for the league. He was hoping to play in the MLH himself in the next couple of years, and having an out gay player made him feel a little more assured that he wouldn’t have to hide who he was when his own time in the league came.
There was a calm after the Scott Hunter storm, and things returned to business as usual for Luca. He played hockey, and in every other spare moment, he updated his blog. It had practically become a historical archive at this point. Every Time Shane and Ilya Looked at Each Other with Gay Yearning, a collection of moments by Luca Haas.
In November of 2018, he truly thought it was going to happen. Shane and Ilya were going to admit the truth at the joint press conference they had scheduled. Luca stayed up to watch the press conference even though it happened after midnight local time. Shane and Ilya did not admit they were in love at the press conference, unfortunately, but they did announce their new joint foundation and their “friendship.” It wasn’t an admission, but he and his blog treated it like one.
He felt like that might be the closest he would get to solving the great Hollanov mystery. He was still posting, and there was a lot to say now that Shane and Ilya had been spotted in public together as “close friends.” Right…and history would call them roommates. Ridiculous.
He was still hard at work on Team Hollanov when his dreams became reality in June of 2019, and he was drafted to the Ottawa Centaurs. It wasn’t the best MLH team by any means, but he did it. He would be an MLH player.
He was preparing in 2020, moving to Ottawa and getting settled before all the official pre-season requirements occurred. It really should have been an easy process to achieve a goal he’d worked for his entire life. But you know what they say: “Man plans, and God laughs,” because in March of 2020, the trades for the upcoming season were announced, and Ilya Rozanov joined the Ottawa Centaurs.
August 2020
Ilya Rozanov made his introductions to the Ottawa team easily, a man who had been in the MLH world for a decade and moved through the motions with practiced ease.
He shared jokes with players he had met before on the ice, and they seemed to breathe a huge sigh of relief to have him on their side now. He ruffled Wyatt Hayes’s hair like he was a dog and got shoved off. By the time he finally made it to Luca to introduce himself, Luca was sweating and breathless.
They said never to meet your heroes. It wasn’t advice that Luca had ever had to deal with before, but here he was in a locker room, face to face with Ilya Rozanov. THE Ilya Rozanov was standing in front of him. And oh shit, had he just said something?
Ilya quirked an eyebrow at Luca. “Hello,” he said, and Luca had the distinct feeling that he might be repeating it.
Luca’s mouth was dry, his palms clammy, and his brain was barely functioning as he tried to respond. He thought he might actually be having a stroke. This must be what they meant when they said, "Don’t meet your heroes." Don’t meet your heroes because you’ll turn into a wordless, idiotic mess.
“Is your English not so good, Haas?” Ilya asked, and Luca’s brain finally caught up.
“No, it’s good, I just… sorry, Mr. Rozanov,” he said, scratching behind his ear in embarrassment. He should have prepared for this.
“Ilya,” he corrected.
“Oh, sorry, Mr. Ilya. I mean, Ilya Rozanov. I mean… fuck. Hello,” he finished, the sentence clunky, mortifying, and successful in making his entire face flush red from both the attention of Ilya Rozanov and the shame of barely being able to speak around him.
Ilya clapped him on the back, and Luca nearly fell, not because of the actual hit, but because Ilya Rozanov was touching him. “I’m excited to play with you, Haas,” he said, smiling at him with bright eyes, blue like glacial water.
“I’m a big fan,” Luca responded, a little starstruck, but at least matching the energy that Ilya put forth.
He was proud of himself for not saying more and not telling him that he had spent the last seven years dedicating all of his non-hockey time to a very detailed blog about his alleged relationship with Shane Hollander. Sure, he had barely been able to string a coherent sentence together, but at least he hadn’t said more than he needed to.
December 2020
He was getting better at being around Ilya. It had taken a lot of practice, a lot of games, and a lot of awkward stammering moments, but he finally wasn’t blushing anytime Ilya was in the same room as him. Progress.
The blog was another beast entirely. He should have abandoned it the moment he started playing professionally. It was too risky, too public, too much chance of it being traced back to him. And yet, he didn’t abandon it. He kept posting; he told himself it was because abandoning it would be more suspicious, but really, he just couldn’t quite let it go.
There was a major problem, though. His proximity to Ilya had made him realize that he might actually be right. It was one thing to theorize when he had been a thousand miles away and in a different country, but a very different thing to sit next to Ilya on the team bus and get a Tumblr notification about him.
Ilya was gone almost every weekend, never coming to team events, which in itself was suspicious, but it was made even worse when he received his anonymous tips. Tips that said Ilya had been spotted in Montreal, or buying two coffees in Ottawa, one a caramel macchiato (Ilya’s drink order, which he shouldn’t have known) and a large black coffee (Shane’s order).
He fiddled with what to post and what not to. It felt odd to confirm some of the tips he had received in person, as if he were a spy privy to state secrets.
He didn’t always get it right, though, sometimes betraying his own knowledge a little too recklessly. It had happened just yesterday in the locker room when they were discussing the Irina Foundation. Ilya was campaigning for the guys to coach during the upcoming summer.
“It’s honestly really fun,” Wyatt assured everyone.
“Oh yeah, Hazy, I forgot that you were coaching with Hollander and Roz,” Bood supplied, glancing at Wyatt. “Still trying to wrap my head around you two being friends, Roz.”
Ilya blushed a little. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s a pretty big deal,” Troy countered. “How many people have to host a press conference announcing their friendship?”
“I forgot about the press conference!” Wyatt jumped in. “How long ago was that? It feels like it was yesterday.”
Luca should have stayed out of it, should have minded his own business, but couldn’t help it when he answered, “November 22, 2018.”
The whole room went quiet at his answer, and he immediately realized his mistake. Though the day had been rather monumental in his world of Hollanov Tumblr, it evidently had not been a day worth remembering to the rest of the team.
He waited for the sneers to start, for someone to make the stalker allegations that he might have deserved, but he got lucky. Rozanov smiled at him. “I’m going to have to keep you around to remember all my anniversaries, Haas. So nice to have a secretary.”
The room laughed at the joke, Luca blushed, and the conversation moved on. But that moment would replay in his mind every night for the rest of his life.
February 2021
Ilya Rozanov was wearing a ring. Ilya Rozanov was wearing a ring (on a necklace, but still), and Luca had accidentally told the world.
He couldn’t remember when Ilya had started wearing it, but it was definitely after the plane incident. Not that he liked thinking about the plane. One day, Ilya had been in his shirtless glory in the locker room with just his mother’s crucifix necklace. Luca had been very familiar with the necklace; he had once written an entire post about it. And the next, Ilya was wearing the same necklace, with a ring on it.
It was a habit. An unconscious ritual that had led him to post. He had been sitting in the locker room, then gone home to post a simple: “Ilya has started wearing a ring on his mother’s necklace, do we think he is engaged?” A simple sentence, but one that he shouldn’t have posted, because how could he have known if not for being in the locker room seeing a shirtless Ilya every day?
His followers descended on the post, just as he had thought they would, spiraling about the ring and about theories of engagement. There were requests to zoom in on any recent pictures of Shane to see if he had a matching one (he didn’t) and to provide photographic evidence.
It was the photos that made him realize he had fucked up. Because anything he posted himself was always backed with evidence. He was very clear when he was posting an anonymous tip, and he hadn’t made that distinction with this post. And he didn’t have any proof, because there wasn’t a photo of Ilya shirtless with a ring around his neck. Shit.
He went to practice the next day, practically shaking, waiting for a confrontation about the post. Waiting for Ilya to call him out on the blog and kick him off the team, for, well, there had to be something against blogging about your teammates in their contracts. But the next day was business as usual, and Luca reminded himself that no one on this team was on Hollanov Tumblr except for him, and that was a very good thing.
March 2021
Luca was jolted awake by his phone exploding. Not literally, but it sure seemed like it. His phone was resting on the bedside table when it began buzzing nonstop, vibrating against the wooden surface and echoing through the room, pausing only briefly before starting again.
He groggily turned it over and was greeted by 78 notifications. His eyes were blurry, contacts not in yet, but he could make out the gist of the alerts.
Leaked Footage Rocks MLH: Hollander and Rozanov Caught in Intimate Moment
He sat bolt upright in bed at the headline, bringing his phone an inch from his face as he clicked the link. It directed him to a fanmail video from Hayden Pike. At first, he thought the headline must have been clickbait, but then he saw it. Shane and Ilya were in the mirror background, kissing, like really kissing.
He dropped the phone on his duvet in shock, where it continued buzzing with Tumblr, Google Alerts, Twitter, and every other kind of notification under the sun.
Holy shit.
He was right.
He scrambled to the bathroom to put his contacts in, and then he got to work. He dove into his Tumblr and quickly typed a post, then re-typed it, then re-typed it again. It was hard to encapsulate the feeling of his prophecy being correct. He felt like the world’s greatest detective. Move aside, Batman, Luca Haas would take it from here.
Eventually, he settled on a post, announcing the news, gloating a little, and also announcing his retirement from the blog. He should have let it go when he started in the MLH, but there was a nice symmetry to it now. It had started with hockey, then Ilya, then Hollanov. Now he was friends with Ilya, and Hollanov was confirmed, and he could finally rest.
He made it through practice the next day without incident. Ilya wasn’t there; supposedly, he had been benched until everything was “figured out,” and the coach seemed to have reiterated that decision.
He was halfway down the hall toward the exit when someone called his name. “Haas.”
Luca froze, waited for the other shoe to drop, and slowly turned. Harris Dover was leaning casually against the wall, arms crossed, like he had been there the whole time. Like he had been waiting.
“Hey,” Luca said, because that was a normal thing to say. Harris was one of the nicest people in Ottawa; there was no way he was in trouble with him. He probably just needed to film a video or something.
Harris looked at him for a second. “Big week for you, huh?”
Luca blinked. “What?”
Harris tilted his head slightly, studying him. “What, why?” Luca added quickly, the words coming out a little too fast.
Harris kept his smile on as he said, almost conversationally, “Are you not hollanovwatch?” he asked with a smirk.
Everything in Luca’s body stopped. “…what?” he said, because that was all he had.
Harris didn’t move, just watched his words hit Luca. It was honestly good that he was so calm. It would help when he had to describe to the paramedics that Luca was having a heart attack.
“I’m the social media manager, Luca,” Harris said simply. “It’s kind of my job to know what’s out there about our players. Their social media accounts, of all types.”
Luca’s brain was scrambling. That blog has nine years of history. Nine years of posting, most of which had been the horny ramblings of sixteen-year-old him. He cringed and wished he could delete himself from the face of the earth. “Oh my god,” he breathed.
“Yeah,” Harris said, not unkindly.
“But you never…” Luca started, his voice climbing before he could stop it. “You didn’t…why didn’t you say anything?”
Harris huffed out a quiet laugh, pushing himself off the wall. “It wasn’t hurting anything,” he said. Then, after a beat, a little more honestly, “And I was invested.”
Luca stared at him, dumbfounded.
Harris shrugged again, like it was obvious. “You were thorough.”
Luca dragged a hand over his face, already feeling the heat creeping up his neck. “I’m going to get fired,” he said, more to himself than anything.
“You’re not getting fired,” Harris said immediately.
Luca looked at him, searching for any sign that this was a joke. He wasn’t entirely sure he was breathing.
Harris met his gaze, steady. “Just don’t do it again.”
Luca nodded once, then again, because once didn’t feel like enough. “Okay,” he said. His throat was scratchy, and his eyes were threatening to water, from relief over not getting fired or from lack of oxygen from not breathing, he wasn’t sure.
Harris’s mouth quirked slightly. “For what it’s worth,” he added, “you were right.”
July 2021
Luca Haas was at Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s wedding. Let’s repeat that, because Luca wasn’t quite sure he wasn’t dreaming. Luca Haas was at Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s wedding.
The whole day passed in a delirious dream for Luca as he watched the two men he had devoted almost a century of shipping to swear their vows to each other and exchange rings.
After the ceremony, Luca socialized with the rest of the Ottawa team, sipping on beers and playing defense against Evan Dykstra, who kept trying to take on DJ duties. Luca was enjoying himself, feeling like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders over the past few months. Like it had been his secret decade-long love affair, hidden, and not Ilya and Shane’s.
He turned from the living room and nearly crashed into Shane Hollander, who was coming around the corner with a huge smile on his face.
“Hey, Luca, right?” he said, holding out his hand, presumably for Luca to shake.
Luca stared numbly at it. “Mr. Hollander,” he said, and it was like PTSD, flashing him back to his first meeting with Ilya.
“Shane,” he corrected.
“Right,” Luca said, taking a breath and resolving himself to be normal. “Hi, Shane,” he said, shaking his hand. (He had just shaken the hand of a three-time Cup winner!!!)
“Looks like we’re going to be teammates,” Shane said with a smile, glancing at Ilya, who was holding court with Harris and Troy across the room.
“Looking forward to it,” Luca said calmly. No sputtering or stuttering, just two hockey teammates chatting about the upcoming season. Shane smiled and walked away, presumably to rejoin his husband.
Who said you should never meet your heroes? Luca would like to have a word with them.
Across the room, Cliff Marleau caught his eye. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t even particularly ambiguous, just a slow, deliberate glance that lingered a second too long before Cliff looked away, like he knew exactly what he was doing.
Luca’s brain lit up instantly. Okay, that was something. He could track this and cross-reference it with past behavior, locker-room dynamics, and post-game habits. He could build something out of this. A few posts, maybe.
He stopped. He cut the thought off completely, like a junkie stopping himself from a relapse. He would not be handling this via anonymous blogging.
Luca exhaled, tipped back the rest of his drink in one go, and set the empty glass down on the nearest table. Then he pushed off the wall and headed straight across the room. He’d just have to figure this one out himself.