Chapter Text
When Shane arrives to the Centaurs’ locker room for practice on the morning of January 20th, he’s late. He’s late, and he’s got wet, dirty stains on the side and knees of his jeans, and his hair is tangled under his knitted beanie.
He’s not in the best mood.
His teammates seem to notice as they greet him with somewhat caution to their amusement. Bood comes over and throws an arm around him almost immediately, pulling his beanie off to ruffle up his hair even more than it already is.
“Hey, Hollzy. What happened to you?”
Shane just huffs, leaning away and raising a hand to flatten out his raven strands. It’s probably a lost cause.
“It was slippery out. And I was in a hurry.”
His comment, despite not being very funny, provokes sudden, chiming laughter from the bench across from him. Shane doesn’t have to look up to know who it’s coming from.
“Ironic, no?” rings Ilya Rozanov’s voice.
It’s not even that bad, but it still manages to make Shane’s face heat up despite being bitten by raw cold. The contrast tingles uncomfortably.
“Fuck off, Rozanov,” he mumbles, kicking off his shoes a little too aggressively.
“No, it’s good. You should do it more often, maybe. Get it out of your system before we play.”
“I never fucking trip on the ice.”
Ilya clicks his tongue, an infuriatingly familiar smirk pulling at his plush mouth.
“Of course. Only if you are in hurry. Is that why you’re always so slow?”
It takes all of Shane’s willpower not to throw his roll of stick tape at his head. He opts for needlessly slamming his locker closed instead. In his periphery, Ilya’s beaming like nothing has ever delighted him more.
It’s a bit of a routine, this. Not one that Shane ever signed up for. But a routine nonetheless.
Look. Shane’s not unfamiliar to chirps and jabs on or off the ice—that’s just part of the game. It’s fun. He likes it, actually, even if he personally doesn’t indulge as much as some of the more hot-headed players. He’s usually more oriented towards simply playing well and strategically. But regardless, chirping’s not the problem. He can usually hold his own more than well enough with that when needed.
The problem is that Ilya Rozanov’s many piques and provocations feel different.
They’re fucking constant, for one—Shane’s not sure he’s ever said something sincere in his entire career. They’re also pointed at Shane way more consistently than anyone else. And lastly, they feel too deliberate; it’s like it’s his main purpose to undermine Shane at every turn, to belittle his strategies, to dismiss his reasoning, to poke and prod at his little peculiarities until he feels like a fucking alien.
Ilya simply seems to have made it his mission to be Shane’s personal tormenter ever since they ended up on the Ottawa Centaurs together. Perhaps even before then. Perhaps from the very first time they ever met at the Junior World Championships and Shane was momentarily tongue-tied by golden curls and honeyed skin and a pronounced cupid’s bow, Ilya’s haunted him. His English had come out in sharp hacks, his whole body had exuded a confidence and naturality that Shane didn’t know what to do with, and he’d gotten into Shane’s head enough that despite putting up a commendable fight, he’d lost Canada the final (well, he alone isn’t to blame, he supposes. But that’s how it had felt at the time). His eyes are as furiously beautiful now as they were then, clean and crisp like winter and just as sharp in their stare. Every time he looks at Shane it’s like he sees all the way into his bones, like Shane’s entirely vulnerable and transparent, and it grits at his nerves. Like Ilya knows he makes Shane feel small and unremarkable. Like he’s enjoying it.
When they finally start making their way out of the locker room and onto the ice for drills, Shane’s skin is still buzzing a bit, but the cold air of a hockey rink always does something for his nerves.
Troy Barrett comes up beside him, nudging him a bit.
“Hey,” he says. “You know he’s just being a dick, right?”
Shane scoffs softly. Troy’s Ilya’s best friend on the team, he probably has to say stuff like that. Still, Shane likes him; he doesn’t quite know how someone as mellow as Troy endures Ilya. Perhaps opposites attract. Or perhaps Ilya can make himself perfectly likeable to everyone else. People seem generally endeared with him despite being a little shit on the daily.
“Obviously. I’m fine, Barrett, don’t worry. It’s an off day, that’s all.”
“Just checking.”
“I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
“Mm, Hollander,” a distinct Russian accent cuts through on his left side. “I am sure you can, but don’t distract me yet.”
He’s flown past the pair before Shane can even start thinking of a retort, leaving him there to blush a feverish crimson. His stomach churns violently.
Troy just looks after Ilya with tired eyes, and then claps Shane’s shoulder.
“He really should try to tone it down a little. He’s the fucking captain after all.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“No! No, no. That’s okay. Really, I don’t care. He just wants to get in my head a bit, that’s the only reason he does it. Standard gamesmanship.”
Troy frowns a little, tilting his head.
“I don’t really think that’s it, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
Before Troy can clarify, a whistle blows. Shane shakes himself and redirects his attention to Wiebe.
Right. Hockey. Hockey, hockey, hockey. He’s fine.
~
The worst thing is, of course, that Ilya Rozanov plays hockey like his skates were kissed by God. Shane can’t deny it even if he wanted to, and he hates how much it’s thrown him. Shane’s been the best his whole life—he’s worked to be the best his whole life, and perhaps he should’ve never started taking that for granted, but he’s never been given a reason not to. At least not until this infuriating, cocky, impishly charismatic larger-than-life boy stepped out and won their first face-off and then never left his radar again.
It's not all his fault, to be entirely fair. There’s also an injury to blame, right before the drafts, right when Shane’s career was supposed to truly start. Fucking ligament tear. His body was young and healthy and with some additional cosmic luck he’d made as good of a recovery as he probably could’ve, but it had set him back a full year. By the time he made it onto the team, Ilya was already there, integrated, prodigy star center, beloved by Shane’s city. Shane knows, logically, that he can’t blame him for that, but it doesn’t stop him very much when Ilya’s already so goddamn annoying to begin with.
At the very least, it always makes Shane try harder and harder to stay good. To stay the best. He tells himself it doesn’t matter all that much if he has to play second line more often than not, and it doesn’t matter if he isn’t captain, because he’s fucking good, and people know he is. He’s leading the scoring race, for god’s sake. These are the things he sacrificed to play for Ottawa, and it wasn’t necessarily the tactical choice, but it was the choice he made. There’s never been any other tangible reality for him—it’s his home team. He’s always known he wanted to play for them. That he wanted to be the one to help lift them from the bottom of the league, finally, to redeem them, to fulfill their potential.
He's an only child, he never did too well with sharing. That’s all. Especially when he’s pretty sure the only reason that Ilya’s the one getting all the accolades is because he’s exciting—forceful, intelligent, unpredictable, and yeah, an asshole. The fans fucking love it just as much as the other teams loathe him.
And Shane, well. Shane’s always kept his head down and worked hard and kept strict diets and strict routines and he knows people are terrified of him on the ice in his own right, but he’s just not—he’s not exciting, he doesn’t think. Not as a person. He’s perfectly media-trained at best, kind of awkward at worst, calculated and low-tempered and polite.
(Ilya likes to underline this a lot. Mr. Perfect, he’ll quip. Mr. Golden Boy. Once he learned the phrase ‘goody two shoes’ it, too, fit in seamlessly. Boring, boring, boring.)
That’s just who he is, unfortunately. This is his lot, and ultimately, he likes the way he’s wired. It’s what’s gotten him here and what will keep getting him places. If he could just figure out how to never let Ilya get to him, everything would be perfectly fine.
“Beautiful job today, boys,” Ilya says in the locker room once practice is over, taking a lap around the room to point at each and every one. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful—”
He lands on Shane last and says:
“Beautiful.” And he launches forward to place a loud, theatrical kiss to the side of his temple. Something short-circuits in Shane’s brain for a second, until Ilya continues. “But your backhand is still weak. Let me know if you want private lesson.”
He wishes he could dive back into his helmet. He bets it would do a decent job of hiding his scowl.
“Now we have beautiful long week off before All-Star Game. And boring Olympics, for you who play.” Ilya says, waving a little dismissively.
“Aw, Roz, don’t be moody. You’ll have your citizenship soon enough,” Wyatt interjects from next to him.
“Canada’s loss, not mine. I will enjoy precious rest while you miss me terribly.”
He claps a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder affectionately, squeezing briefly, and Shane has another moment of dissonance; he wishes he could sort out why it feels so different, whatever Ilya’s doing with him. He’s a good captain. Relentless and tantalizing but affectionate when it matters, that’s supposed to be part of his charm, as Shane’s understood it.
It just feels more genuine with other, maybe. Like there isn’t something nestled underneath, like it’s effortless and not something near compulsive.
A tiny, miniscule part of Shane might be bitter because Ilya looks rather lovely when he loves others. His eyes crinkle, familiar and soft, clean linen, his body looks warm as it crashes with other bodies. It triggers a cacophony of other, other, other in Shane’s head that’s exhausting and migraine-inducing and makes his own body feel strangely cold and strung.
He’s always worked really hard to not be other. He’s learned to be very, very good at it, even. To everyone except Ilya.
“Anyways,” the boy continues then, snapping Shane out of his spiral. “Time off. That means—”
“Fucking boys’ trip!” Bood cuts in, pumping a fist.
“Fucking boys’ trip,” Ilya confirms. Then, his face turns to Shane’s, and his smirk slips into something wider. “Everybody say thank you, Hollander.”
An enthusiastic chorus of ‘thank you Hollander’s bounce off the tile walls, and Shane actually feels a smile taking over this time.
A lot of things in his career may not have planned out exactly how he imagined them. But he does love his silly, boisterous team. He loves the Ottawa Centaurs, and he knows he’s made a right choice, there. He may be newer than a lot of them still, but when he’d suggested a trip to his cottage a while back, he’d been met with unconditional eagerness. It’ll be good for him. For all of them, probably.
(He can feel a certain pair of eyes linger on him as he nimbly folds up his gear and laces up his winter boots, bodies starting to empty out of the locker room, and just the smallest twinge of nervosity pinches his lungs. True to his strictly maintained survival tactic, he doesn’t look back.)