Chapter Text
Shane Hollander said from the beginning that he would never submit for the NHL draft, but nobody ever believed him. How could they? He had dominated the Junior leagues, playing at a level that most of his competitors could only dream of. Fast and deceptively strong despite a slighter frame than most other players, Ilya remembers studying his tape for nights on end, with the demands of his coaches running through his head.
This is your competition, they told him. Learn him. Beat him. Make us proud.
He remembers the way Hollander came up to him behind that rink in Saskatchewan, frowning at the cigarette between his lips, with dorky, sexy glasses resting on the bridge of his perfectly straight nose, and introduced himself. He remembers the sting of defeat as Hollander pulled off impossible move after impossible move, skating faster than Ilya had ever seen before that moment, gliding along the ice with a power to his legs that seemed almost inhuman as he slipped past his defences. It felt almost inevitable, like Hollander was simply on a different level, always destined to beat simple, normal, Ilya.
He remembers shaking his hand hard and saying, “See you at draft.”
“Nah,” Hollander had replied, something sad in his eyes. “I’m not submitting for the draft.”
They were the last in their line-ups, giving them time to linger at centre.
Ilya frowned. “Next year, then.”
“I’m not playing in the League,” Hollander had insisted. His mouth was twisted, like he didn’t really want to say it, but had to. “I’m going to university.”
“No,” Ilya said, “It’s not right. You are very talented, Hollander.”
Hollander went rosy in his cheeks at that. “Thanks, but, um, I’m still not going to.” He shook Ilya’s hand again. “Have fun in the League, Rozanov. You’re my pick for first overall.”
Then, he skated away, leaving Ilya alone on the ice.
That feeling didn’t fade, not for a year. Not when Hollander was proven right, and Ilya was drafted first overall by Boston, his victory empty without his promised rival. Every time he took the ice, his mind drifted to the empty space by his side in the rankings. Some sports journalists were still holding out hope that Hollander would submit for the draft this year, even after missing it the year before. They still brought their names up together, still comparing their stats as both boys played out their final years of Junior Hockey, but it wasn’t quite the same anymore, not when Ilya knew that Hollander would hang up his skates.
The World Juniors came around again, and finally, Ilya felt alive. Sharing the ice with Hollander was like doing a party drug of the highest calibre; it got him amped up to eleven, his blood singing as he threw himself into the activity, fully and completely, without thought of what might come after it. They weaved through each other again, poking holes in the other’s defence, and speeding through the pockets of space they created. Russia came up short again, with Hollander putting on a truly spectacular and impossible performance in the final period. Ilya wondered if it was because he knew he would never play like this again, that whatever facsimile he settled for would never be that game, against him.
They shook hands again. Ilya felt the need to say, “You should submit to draft.”
“Can’t convince me,” Hollander said, smiling. “It’s just not what I’m meant to do.”
“And what are you meant to do?” Ilya said.
“I’m going to be a physiotherapist,” Hollander said. He was smiling, but the edge of it was bitter. “I’ll be the one you should call when the League runs your joints into the ground.”
It drove Ilya crazy. Clearly Hollander wanted to play, so why didn’t he? What could possibly stop him from pursuing this career? He glanced at the stands. Could it be his parents stopping him? Did they not want him to?
“Boring,” Ilya said.
“Yep,” Hollander agreed. “Very boring. It’ll be great.”
Then, like the year before, Hollander skated off, and Ilya was alone at centre ice.
The loneliness didn’t leave him this time. Not when he won Rookie of the Year, uncontested by the other candidates. Not when he became the highest player in the league, or even as he hoisted the Stanley Cup above his head. That loneliness, that feeling of someone missing at his side, remained there, in a shadow shaped suspiciously like the Canadian Wonder Boy that never was.
He almost got used to that emptiness, to the ache for something he had never truly known. So it’s strange when the space is filled on a random Thursday in the middle of the season.
Ilya was going to physio for his check-up with Mark when he stumbled on Shane Hollander, in the flesh.
He is still annoyingly beautiful. His frame, which has filled out now a bit with the years that have passed, is huge and strong, with biceps as large and larger than most of the guys on his team. His thighs are still as thick as any hockey player, pressing against the fabric of the Raiders-branded pants, begging to be released. His hair is longer now, no longer cropped into those awkward bangs, falling over his face, like a model. Pulling the picture together are his glasses, significantly sexier, but no less dorky. The plain black frames of his youth switched out for a tortoiseshell pair that make him look like a professor. His face has only been perfected with age, the round childishness of his seventeen-year-old self replaced by a square, strong-looking jaw.
“Hollander.” The name slips out of him before he realizes it.
“You remember me?” Hollander says, his tone coloured in surprise.
“Why do you sound surprised?” Ilya asks, closing the rest of the gap between them.
“You’re a professional player now.” He says this slowly, like Ilya might have forgotten. “Surely you don’t remember every player you played with in Juniors.”
“Not every player, no,” Ilya agrees. “But I remember you.”
Hollander goes a nice, pleasing shade of pink, the flush beginning in the apples of his cheeks, and travelling to his ears and down his neck.
“So, um, I heard you have a knee injury?”
Ilya sighs and climbs onto the table. “Is fine. Mark just exaggerates.”
“We’ll see about that,” Hollander mutters, a determined look passing over his face.
They spend the next few minutes asking each other questions. Hollander asks him questions about his knee, while Ilya asks Hollander about the past few years of his life.
“What have you been doing all these years, Hollander?” Ilya asks. He wiggles his toes. “What has the hockey robot been doing without hockey?”
“God, I almost forgot that they used to call me that,” Hollander mutters, examining his files. “And you can call me Shane, you know. I’m not a player.”
You should be, he thinks.
“Fine, Shane, tell me what you have been doing.”
“Well, I did my undergrad and masters at McGill,” he says. “Then I got a job for the Metros before I ended up here.” He flicks through his pieces of paper. “Have you been doing these exercises?”
Ilya hums his assent before saying, “The Metros are a terrible team. You would be best player on ice if you joined their roster right now.”
“I haven’t played a serious game in years, Rozanov,” Hollander replies, absent-mindedly.
“If you are Shane, then I am Ilya,” he insists. “Do you play non-serious games?”
“I played in a Beer League in Montreal before I moved,” Hollander says. He’s taken a knee, examining Ilya’s mobility, gently moving his leg. “I need to look for one here.”
“You should let me join if you play,” Ilya says, playfully. Beneath him, Shane huffs.
“Why, so you can finally beat me?” He asks, the smallest smug smirk on the corner of his lips. “Don’t tell me you’re still bitter about Juniors, Ilya. Hasn’t the Stanley Cup healed that wound?”
“If you are scared, is okay,” Ilya says, smiling. “I know that I am so impressive and professional now.”
Seemingly despite himself, Shane’s eyebrows furrow together, a bit of that competitiveness that Ilya remembers from their teenage years rearing its ugly head.
“I’m not scared of you,” Shane huffs.
“Then why won’t you let me play against you again?”
“You’re not going to bait me into it, Ilya,” Shane says stiffly. “I’m retired from that kind of play now.”
Ilya hums, but doesn’t agree. Maybe Hollander isn’t as good as he used to be. Hell, he probably isn’t. But Ilya doesn’t care. The Canadian belongs on the ice, and he’ll be damned if he isn’t there to see it when it happens again.
“You see the new guy?” Connors asks this eagerly, his eyes wide, like they always are when he has a good bit of gossip.
“The physio?” asks Hammersmith. “He’s built like a fuckin’ house, dude. I’m pretty sure his thighs are bigger than mine.”
“That physio is Shane Hollander,” Connors says, like it’s some sort of revelation. “He’s Rose Landry’s boyfriend!”
“What?” Ilya asks, shaking off his still-wet hair. He rubs his towel into it aggressively.
“Well, they say that they’re broken up,” Connors says, “But they’re always spotted together. All of her fans are sure that they’re going to get married.”
“They think our physio is going to marry Cryptique?” St-Simon asks. “For real? He’s just some dude. She’s a fucking movie star. She should be with, I don’t know, Superman, or something.”
Ilya feels himself bristling at that. Hollander isn’t just some dude. He’s the best fuckin’ hockey player that never really was. Still, Ilya’s not sure if any hockey player can measure up to Superman.
He remembers the first time that he heard about the hero. He was in Russia at the time, nursing his loss at his final World Juniors, when he overheard his father speaking in the other room.
“Su-per-man?” his father had said. “What is this Western trick?”
There was no response. He must have been on the phone. Ilya could hear him as he paced across the room, his measured steps becoming increasingly erratic.
“Cease these lies,” he had snapped. “Men cannot fly, nor can they lift cars, or reflect bullets off of their skin. Whatever information you have must be flawed or your informant, delusional.”
Ilya remembers balking at it when he first heard it. A bulletproof flying man that could lift cars? It sounded too fantastical to believe. Even as rumours of such a man began to grow, Ilya found himself dismissing them out of hand. It was only when he saw the evidence for himself that he finally started to believe it. Svetlana had been the one to send him the video, a shaky recording of a child being thrown off of a building somewhere in Montreal, and the impossibly quick blur of blue and red that interrupted his fall. The video continued until Superman was flying slow enough to be visibly humanoid, hovering in the air like some sort of god as he visibly comforted the young kid.
His belief in the man was cemented when he saw him for the first time in person. He’d been in Montreal for a game on his way to the stadium when a fire broke out in a large office building. He’d watched in awe as Superman appeared, backlit like he was in some sort of film, floating as he surveyed the scene for just a moment before throwing himself into the action. It had been an unreal few minutes of people suddenly appearing next to them as Superman flew in, saved them, and then dropped them off onto the street faster than they were able to comprehend, the sidewalk getting progressively busier as the occupants came out in droves.
When he spoke to one of them, a woman in her twenties, she said that, “It was like I blinked, and suddenly I was safe. One moment I was surrounded by the flames, sure that I was about to die, and then I was here.”
When the building was empty, Superman stopped the fires completely, covering the entire building in a thin layer of ice with a single breath. There wasn’t so much as a scratch or even a slight burn on him.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked, his voice surprisingly normal. “Anyone missing?”
It was ridiculous. He was almost a caricature of what you might expect a superhero to be, and so powerful that he would be unsettling, if it weren’t for his kindness and handsome face.
Needless to say, comparing him to regular, boring, Canadian Shane Hollander didn’t exactly seem fair, no matter how good at hockey he was.
“Hollzy isn’t just some dude,” Marley says, echoing Ilya’s initial thoughts. “I played with him years ago. He’s the best centre I’ve ever winged for.” Then he winces. “Sorry, Cap.”
Ilya huffs and shoves his friend.
“No loyalty,” he mutters.
“You know you’re my man,” Marley says, “But sometimes Hollander would do things that the rest of us just didn’t think was possible. He was faster than anyone else on the ice, and could take a check like nodboy’s fucking business.”
“So what, did he get injured?” asks St-Simon. “Why’s he not in the League?”
“Does not want to be,” Ilya says. “I ask him same thing years ago, in Juniors. He never submitted for draft even though he was never injured.”
“I think he would’ve given Roz a run for his money for that first overall pick,” Marley said. “For real.”
The room dissolves into bantering after that. Ilya’s thoughts remain loud and fixated on Shane Hollander. What has he been doing all these years? Where did he meet a movie star? Was he really going to marry her? Why did he quit playing?
None of it makes any fucking sense. Not at all.