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July 2017
Shane bolted awake, face wet from crying in his sleep. He patted around until he felt Ilya beside him. The movement woke his boyfriend.
“Moy lyubov? What’s wrong?” Ilya wiped the sleep from his eyes and tried to focus on his distressed boyfriend.
Shane couldn’t get any words out, just hitching breaths interspliced by sobs. Ilya turned on the lamp beside the bed and scooted closer to Shane, pulling him into his arms.
“Shane?”
Shane curled, silently crying, into Ilya’s arms without saying anything. It was worrying, but Ilya was more focused on getting the panic to subside so Shane could actually tell him what was wrong.
“Bad dream?” he asked and Shane nodded. “What happened? It’s ok, whatever it was, it’s not real–”
“But–”
“But what, solnyshko? It’s not real,” Ilya comforted, scooting back to sit more comfortably against the headboard, keeping Shane held tight in his arms.
“It felt real, and–”
“But it’s not,” Ilya repeated, using his thumbs to wipe his boyfriend’s tears away.
“But it could happen,” Shane bit out sharply. “I dreamed–It felt real–and…”
“Ok, ok,” Ilya used his firm grasp on Shane’s biceps to hold him in place and focus on him. “What could happen?”
Shane told him, with shuddering breaths between sentences, about Ilya in Ottawa, and Troy Barrett, and Hayden Pike, and fucking Brad, and the Voyagers, and Ottawa again. “And you were being so mean to me.” Shane’s chest was heaving. “About everything. My diet, and coming out, and–and–”
“Shane, hey, look at me.” Ilya cupped Shane’s face and forced him to make eye contact in the low light of the bedroom. “It’s not real. Ok?” He waited for Shane to give him a shaky nod before continuing. “When you calm down, you can tell me more about it, ok? Make a list of all the bad stuff your brain is telling you and we can make sure it doesn’t happen, ok? Then we make a plan, you like plans.”
“It felt real, like really, really real,” whispered Shane. But in the light of day, Shane could categorize each thing that scared him a little better into reality and fear. “The whole dream felt like I lived a whole five years.”
“It’s been,” Ilya checked the clock, “seven hours. Not five years.”
“I know,” whispered Shane, finally slumping against Ilya’s chest and hiding his face. “It’s not real, but it felt real and it scares me how real. Some things make less sense, now that I’m awake, but they still scare me, does that make sense?”
“Like what, lyubimyy? Give me example,” asked Ilya.
“Like Russia,” said Shane. “No one cared what would happen with your passport. Not even you, but I know that’s not how you really feel–”
“No,” agreed Ilya.
“And Hayden,” Shane continued. “He found out, I think, because he made a joke about you being Boston Lily. But I know I’m a better liar than that and he… He hit you, when he came over for dinner. Tried to defend my honor and just… It was all fucked up. I wouldn’t tell him about you–us–that’s… I wouldn’t trust him with a secret like this, no matter what. He might be my best friend on the team, but he can’t keep a secret for shit.” Ilya snorted. “It’s true, it only took him a month to tell the team about Jackie’s first pregnancy and she didn’t want anyone to know until she was further along. And he spilled the beans to JJ about… doesn’t matter.”
“No, what? Tell me,” Ilya whined, teasingly. “What did Hayden Pike fail to keep secret?”
Shane dropped his forehead to Ilya’s shoulder, embarrassed. “I’ll tell you later, but the point is he’s bad at keeping other people’s secrets. He’s also bad at keeping his own secrets. In my dream, he outed us. He joined this app where he sent fans videos for birthdays or whatever and caught us kissing in the background. The guy who got it posted it on twitter. Then–” Shane’s voice hitched again and he paused so he could try to hold back more tears. He was unsuccessful and Ilya prompted him to continue without forcing him to move from where he’d hidden his face. “Then everybody knew about us. And when Montreal and Ottawa faced each other, I fucking… I tripped,” he admitted. “I fucking tripped and Ottawa won and everyone kept asking…”
“They said what Yuna did, yesterday? If you tripped on purpose so I would win?” Ilya asked and Shane nodded. “Bastards. Idiots. Stupid, stupid people. Who? I will kill all of them for you.”
“The team,” whispered Shane. “No one stood up for me.”
“Not even stupid Pike and his stupid actions that caused it in first place?” Shane shook his head.
“He tried, but he ended up calling our relationship ‘weird and gross.’”
“Weird and gross? Hayden Pike called our relationship weird and gross after he outed us?” Ilya deadpanned, no longer going for a joking tone.
“He said, if I’m remembering correctly, something like, ‘I get it. Their relationship is weird and gross, but there’s no need to accuse Shane…’ or something like that.”
“Ok.”
“Ilya?”
“What? I said ok,” Ilya grumbled. “What does stupid Pike know anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anything else you want to tell me now? Or do you want to go back to sleep? It’s still,” Ilya checked again, “four in the morning. We can get a few more hours. And I’ll make sure no more bad dreams find you.”
“I don’t know if I’ll fall asleep again, but I want to lay down.”
“Then we do that,” said Ilya, already laying back to arrange them in a cuddling position where Ilya could hold his boyfriend to his chest. After a moment he asked, “Why was I so mean to you?”
He felt Shane shrug against him. “I don’t know. Depression, probably. We fought a few times in my dream, mostly about stupid stuff, like coming out and telling people about us.”
“Ok, why would we fight about that?” Ilya asked, a note of genuine confusion in his voice. “We know we cannot do that. Like you said, Russia. And also the tripping.”
“You wanted to,” Shane told him. “You changed your mind and didn’t tell me about it until we were fighting and then you just dropped it on me like it was my fault you couldn’t come out. You wanted to tell people you were bisexual, or had a partner. You complained that I had all these people I could talk to and you had no one.”
“Explain to me,” Ilya asked.
“Like, I had Hayden–”
“Stupid, straight, Hayden Pike who outed us.”
“And was mean to you. And me about our relationship. I also had my parents.”
“I assume I also had your parents. They like me, I think. And they live in Ottawa, not Montreal.”
“Yeah. They do like you,” Shane agreed. “And I came out to the Voyagers, but that didn’t really go well.”
“Stupid, what would you talk to them about?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t, like, come out in my dream. That part didn’t happen that I remember, but they all knew I was gay. Dream-logic, I guess.”
“Who else?”
Shane shrugged. “Jackie, I guess? Hayden’s wife. And Rose.”
“Rose who is busy and also your ex-girlfriend.”
“Yeah, that.”
“Who did I have to talk to?”
“Your therapist and my parents.”
“I had a therapist?” Ilya was surprised by that.
“Yeah, I don’t know how much good it did, cause things didn’t get better after you started seeing her. At least by the time I found out about it, there hadn’t been any change.”
“Ok. Was I friends with anyone on the Centaurs?”
“Kinda? I think,” said Shane. He started tracing patterns into Ilya’s skin while he talked. “You were close with Troy Barrett, which…”
“What? Why would I be friends with Barrett?”
Shane sighed. “This one might have been on me–dream me. Troy… In my dream he was gay, I don’t know if that’s real or just some fucked up special torture just for me from my brain…” Shane described Troy’s treatment of him and those like him from over the last few years Barrett had been playing in the NHL. Ilya was quiet, listening intently to the whole thing. “So, I didn’t tell you any of that, but I don’t think I could, to dream-you, so I didn’t. I hated it. And if he is gay, I hate it even more that he just gets to walk away from it all. Be an asshole, make it harder for people like us–people like him, if it’s true–and then poof, none of it mattered because he’s actually gay and feels bad.”
“Ok.” Ilya’s hand continued to stroke through Shane’s hair, mulling over all of the information Shane was dumping on him. He didn’t think Shane was lying, quite the opposite. The dream had felt real enough to scare his boyfriend, someone who didn’t scare easily, and it was based on very real feelings. Feelings Shane was sharing with him now, in what was an attempt to get ahead of what sounded like an awful future. One where Ilya’s actions didn’t prove he loved Shane, and where Shane was the butt of every joke from both his peers and the universe. “If I am ever mean to you like that, and I don’t listen, punch me.”
“Ilya–”
“I’m serious,” Ilya said, in a deadly tone. “Punch me. I have been replaced by alien, or double person, or something, but you have permission to punch me. I love you, I love you so much. I won’t turn into that, into someone you’re scared of.”
“Ilya–”
“Promise you’ll punch me, Shane.”
Shane sighed. “Ok, Ilya. I promise I’ll punch you if you’re ever mean to me in a way I don’t like. I promise to stand up to you and tell you when you’re being a dickhead instead of an asshole.”
“Thank you.”
“It was my dream,” Shane pointed out.
“But dream-me in your dream was acting like my father,” whispered Ilya, a little raw at the edges of the confession. “I don’t ever want to act like that.”
“Ilya…”
“Yeah, moy lyubov?”
“Maybe we should both go to therapy.”
“I thought therapy wasn’t working?”
“What if we went to therapy?” Shane repeated. “They’re literally paid not to tell our secrets, so we can both have someone to talk to, professionally. That way we’ll know if it’s working or not. It doesn’t have to be the first person we find, or anything, so we keep looking until we find someone who works out. I don’t think it was the therapy that wasn’t working. I think it was just my brain making up the worst version of you. And whatever therapy you were doing wasn’t working for you. But that doesn’t mean therapy is a bad idea.”
Ilya rolled on top of his boyfriend, looking down at him and thinking. “Fine. I will try. For you.”
“Thanks, Ilya,” said Shane. “I don’t really want to either, but for you–for us–I’ll do it.”
They laid there in silence, Ilya’s head taking its place on Shane’s chest and crushing him beneath his weight. Shane brought his hands up to comb through Ilya’s curls. It was no use trying to stop his mind from digging through everything it remembered from the dream, but Shane tried not to linger on any one thing too long. Most of it was illogical and could be solved preemptively.
“Ilya?”
“Hmmm?”
“If you get a dog without talking to me first, I’m breaking up with you.”
“What?” Ilya looked up at that odd ultimatum. “What are you talking about?”
“You got a dog. She was really cute, and it was your house, obviously, but if you get a dog without talking to me about it first, I will break up with you. We’re trying to build a future together, right? So major life decisions should be talked about together. I’m not saying no to a dog, I’m saying don’t surprise me.”
Ilya blinked a few times, but accepted without arguing. “Ok, I will talk to you first.” Then he decided to address something else. “First thing, I made joke yesterday when you said we should tell people.”
“You did, but that–”
“No, listen. I don’t want to become dream-Ilya. So maybe, before things get bad, we talk in the morning about people who are safe to tell. Together. Maybe not Hayden Pike.”
“We can do that,” agreed Shane. “And I agree about not telling Hayden. I’m going to have to break up with Boston Lily, though. I can’t believe he managed to rub enough brain cells together to pull that out of his ass, even in a dream.”
“Noooo,” Ilya whined. “Don’t break up with Boston Lily. Maybe Boston Lily becomes Ottawa Lily sooner.”
“Or Boston Lily becomes New York Lily, and Ottawa Lily, and Buffalo Lily–” Ilya wrinkled his nose, “–and Nashville Lily–”
“Ok, ok, I get point,” Ilya said. “You start going out and pretending to have more hook ups.”
“Pretending being the operative word here.”
“You will call me instead?” Ilya asked hopefully.
“Yeah, or explore the city. Or get a second, secret hotel room and pretend I’ve gone out, or something. But I’ll break up the pattern.”
They lapse into silence, both letting their minds wander with the new information. Shane was trying to retain and categorize as much of the information from the nightmare as possible. The big details that mattered and could be changed, like coming out, who would possibly be safe to tell, how he would handle being outed on a large scale like that, how he would handle being subtly outed to the league like he’d been by one of his teammates, that sort of thing. The dream-Ilya had been at the epicenter of a lot of dream-Shane’s stress, not the cause, but definitely not helpful. That was something that was already being worked on, just by telling Ilya what had happened.
Ilya was trying to imagine what would need to happen for him to end up behaving like the worse version of himself. He was always so scared of ending up like his mother that he never considered ending up like his father or brother, putting Shane in Irina’s place. He felt sick at the thought of being the driving force behind Shane’s stress to the point of killing him–physically or emotionally. The Shane in the nightmare should have broken things off with dream-Ilya a long time ago, before it had reached that point. He was already thinking of all the things he would make sure he changed so that Shane never felt like he couldn’t be honest with Ilya–meaning that Ilya would have to accept that getting professional help was probably the best way to combat it.
For Shane, for their relationship, he would do it, even if it went against everything he’d been raised to believe about therapy and getting help and the weakness it implied about him.
Stroking his fingers through his boyfriend’s hair, Ilya could tell that Shane had already dozed back off. Ilya didn’t move, just continued to play with his hair, deciding that staying awake and standing guard over Shane’s dreams was where he needed to be.
—
“Do you want to change plan?” Ilya asked in the light of the morning. They were making breakfast side by side, Ilya at the stove and Shane at the blender.
“What?”
“Ottawa plan? Do you want to change it?” Ilya’s tone was nervous, like he was waiting for Shane to decide–based on his nightmare–that breaking up with Ilya was the better option. Better to avoid the heartache before it could start.
“What? No! I don’t–” Shane sighed. “No, Ilya. I don’t want to change the plan. Not the basics. Obviously, I want it to go smoothly. As smoothly as possible. I hate the idea of Montreal turning on me. I hate the idea of losing hockey. I hate the idea that Ottawa will turn me into a commodity. That all of my accomplishments will boil down to just being your husband. That being Shane Hollander will mean nothing in the long run, but I don’t… I’m not going to break up with you over it. I want the chance to do things on our terms. I want to communicate better, because that’s where we’ve always broken down. I want to find a balance of privacy and secrecy. I don’t want to be outed. I don’t want my professional integrity questioned. I don’t want people to act like I have to choose between you and my career. That’s stupid and no one else has to go through that. I know it was a dream, but between everyone that came out, no one else was torn to shreds by the media and peers alike. Not even you. I hate how realistic it was and I want to avoid as much of it as possible. Or at least actually have support from my friends and family if it happens.”
Ilya listened intently. “Ok. So, what do we change? We already decided therapy, and no telling Pike, but what else? Shane, I am trusting you to tell me what you need here. My only concern is Russia and not turning into my parents. You have the harder job. I might be in more danger, physically and legally, but you have the most to lose. I’ve already decided I’m not going back to Russia, and that I want to move to Ottawa. I’m going to be ok. What do you need?”
“I want you to be safe,” whispered Shane. “I want you to have support from people who know. I want people to know who will trust us and who love both of us, not just tolerate our relationship.”
“Secrecy and privacy,” repeated Ilya. “Like, maybe come out to a few people we trust. Friends and family, but we don’t come out publicly until we retire.”
“Maybe,” agreed Shane. “I was thinking about being friends publicly, before we start the charity. Maybe once the season starts, we start being seen together and we can say that after all-stars and my injury, we started talking and buried the hatchet. It would cut into us time, but when Boston and Montreal play each other, we could go out with a few friends. Say you convinced me to loosen up. And when you announce that you’re going to Ottawa, that would be another reason to be close. Make people think that that’s another reason we became friends. You approached me because you were already planning on moving. That would also throw people off our scent, if the Ottawa move didn’t seem fully last minute… What?” asked Shane.
Ilya was grinning widely and had settled his chin in his hand. He was staring at Shane with a twinkle in his eye.
“What? Nothing,” he dismissed. “I just love your big, beautiful brain and all your ideas. Is very sexy and you have good plans. Thinking of everything.”
Shane blushed. “Fuck off. I’m just trying to–”
“No, I know,” Ilya cut him off. “I love it. Maybe, when I am on Centaurs… Maybe I tell them I have partner. No pronouns, just let them assume either way. It gives me reason to, ah… avoid team things when I want to see you, but then I don’t hide from them completely. If that’s ok?”
“That’s a great idea, Ilya.”
“Really?”
“Don’t sound surprised, I like the idea. I was also thinking… You need a place close for game days and stuff, but what if we got a house together somewhere between Montreal and Ottawa? That way we can actually live together most of the time? Instead of one of us having to drive two hours, we each only have to drive one. Apartment in the city, shared house halfway.”
“Why didn’t dream-us have that idea?” Ilya questioned, more rhetorical than accusing. “That is great idea!”
“Because my dream was a manifestation of all of my fears and designed by my brain to torture me. Would you ever actually suggest a threesome with Troy Barrett multiple times after I told you no and I hated when you brought it up?”
Ilya looked aghast. “No! That is your one rule: no threesomes. And Troy Barrett is bad idea for threesome. I would suggest Scott Hunter, not Barrett.”
Shane laughed. “I know, but thanks. I needed to hear that. I don’t share, not you, not with anyone.”
“Dream-me is stupid and mean and I don’t like him,” Ilya announced. “But real-me says yes to living together. I will let Mr. Real Estate pick house. I only want big yard and sturdy surfaces to fuck you.”
Shane grinned, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend and kissing him slowly. “I can make that happen. But I do want more of your input. This will be our house…” he trailed off.
“What?”
“Nothing, I just…” Shane swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. “Our house. A month ago, you almost didn’t come to the cottage, now…”
“Oh, moy lyubov…”
Ilya stood and pulled Shane closer, kissing the top of his head and tucking him away, whispering I love you in two languages.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“Is ok, Shane. It’s overwhelming, yes? But I want this. I want you and a life with you. I want this to work, ok?”
“I love you,” whispered Shane into Ilya’s neck. “I love you so much and I want this too.”
~
Ilya ended up staying the whole summer, right up until returning to Boston was unavoidable. He left Ottawa with a nice tan, a boyfriend, meetings scheduled with three potential therapists–all online–a good mood, and two new phone numbers. The Hollanders had added him to a group chat, where he was saved as Shane’s Lily.
He and Shane had spent the summer discussing a more refined plan and deciding a number of things based on how the next year went. The plan was still for Ilya to sign with Ottawa when his contract with Boston was up. Until then, Ilya was going to start to drop hints about a newfound friendship with Shane Hollander so that they could be seen in public together without drawing attention to it too much. It was going to be a nightmare and a half for a little bit, but hopefully everyone would get on board, especially when it was clear that the on-ice rivalry was still going strong.
Shane did the same, dropping Ilya casually where he could find an opening. The two of them meeting up after the first BOS-MTL game caught everyone up to their new off-ice relationship. Frenemies with more in common than anyone else thought. Not many were on board with the idea of Hollander and Rozanov talking casually, but there was ultimately nothing anyone could do about it. On-ice, Shane and Ilya became more ruthless in both excitement that the plan was working out and to combat the idea that they would ever go easy on each other.
When Ilya announced that he hadn’t re-signed with Boston and was instead going to Ottawa, people went nuts. He cleared Shane’s name before anyone could accuse him of luring Ilya away from Boston in some convoluted plot. Shane made sure that the media and fans knew that he expected Ilya to still bring a challenge whenever they faced each other.
The house Shane found and got Ilya’s approval on was ready to be moved into right before the pre-season started. Ilya had an apartment in the city for when he needed to stay close and the Centaurs knew of its purpose. A few months into the season, Ilya casually mentioned that he lived with his partner–no pronouns or identifying markers–outside of Ottawa, but that they both would like privacy. None of his teammates tried to question it, especially after Ilya proved to be a fortress regarding information about his personal life.
The first teammate Ilya came out to was Wyatt Hayes.
The second person was Lisa Hayes.
And the first and second person Shane Hollander ever came out to (on purpose) were Wyatt and Lisa Hayes. The couple were sworn to secrecy about not only their sexualities, but also their relationship.
Shane liked the two of them. They were friendly enough and managed to make Shane feel normal. Wyatt had a similar fixation on his comics that Shane had with hockey, drawing them together while Ilya and Lisa enjoyed their two-person book club.
JJ and Hayden were the first (and only) of Shane’s teammates to learn he was gay and in a relationship. While they pestered him for information about his boyfriend, Shane remained tight-lipped. Shane would have liked to tell them about Ilya–dream warning aside–but when he thought about it, his gut churned with a bad feeling. On top of not being able to keep a secret, Hayden always had a weird comment lined up, or an odd question about his boyfriend or about being gay. It made Shane question how Hayden would react to meeting a real person as Shane’s boyfriend and not just as a hypothetical, vague idea. And telling JJ but not Hayden felt like a betrayal he couldn’t go through, so neither got introduced to Ilya yet.
The phone call Shane got from Ilya regarding Troy Barrett sent him into hysterics.
“What the fuck? Why the fuck did I predict that in my dream?” Shane asked. “How the fuck? I’m sorry? Troy Barrett is actually gay? Like actually? The guy who followed Kent around like a puppy, spitting slurs? That guy is gay? For real?”
Ilya laughed on the other end. “Yes! He came out to team and he’s dating Harris. You have super power, moy lyubov.”
“Fuck.”
Troy Barrett had been low on Shane’s list of worries. Ilya–knowing the extent of the damage Troy had verbally inflicted upon his boyfriend–had kept a respectable distance beyond his captain duties. He’d spoken to Bood at length when Barrett joined the Centaurs so he could have a baseline for keeping Troy in line. For his part, Troy kept to himself and kept his mouth shut. Ilya didn’t bother with his comings and goings outside of hockey.
Scott Hunter was the next person to learn about their relationship. Ilya had a great time driving the man crazy by casually dropping that Hunter and his husband should join Ilya and his fiance for a double date. Hunter had gone into the date suspicious, then flabbergasted when Shane had sat down.
“Close your mouth, Hunter,” Ilya teased. “You cannot swallow flies right now.”
Kip elbowed his husband.
“Sorry, what is Hollander–why are you here?”
“Ilya said he was bringing his fiance,” explained Shane, patiently. “Hi, I’m the fiance.”
“You-” Scott pointed between them. “You two? Engaged?”
“Yes, Hunter. We are engaged,” said Ilya.
Hunter didn’t say a word, just blinked rapidly.
“So, who proposed?” Kip asked, saving his husband.
“I did,” said Shane. “The Centaurs plane emergency. I realized that if anything happened, I wouldn’t have any say. No one–or almost no one–would know that we were together. So I decided to propose. I didn’t want to go any more time without marrying him.”
“That’s sweet,” said Kip.
“Sweet,” echoed Hunter. “You two… how long?”
Shane and Ilya exchanged a look.
“Depends,” said Ilya. “Exclusive? Or when we fell in love?”
“Both,” Kip answered for them.
“Two-thousand eight when we fell in love,” said Ilya.
“We were seventeen,” Shane added. “Exclusive since twenty-seventeen. After you two came out.”
“Technically exclusive since All-Star’s that year,” argued Ilya. “But we did not talk about it until after playoffs.”
—
They’d put off the Irina Foundation charity idea for a few years. As attached as they were to the idea, it wasn’t needed to sell their friendship and it felt like an extra thing on top of figuring out how to be in a relationship. By the time they stood up to announce it in late 2021, everyone knew Shane and Ilya were good friends and would make good business partners.
The foundation did everything they wanted it to. The best thing it did outside of the actual charity was the widened net of support Shane and Ilya got. Scott put them in contact with more of the queer hockey players he knew, retired and active. With their circle growing, and the wedding upcoming, it was time to come out to a few more people.
Shane sat JJ and Hayden down to tell them that he was engaged and he would really like to invite them to his wedding. JJ’s jaw had dropped when Ilya emerged from around the corner and he’d crowed his observation skills. He told Shane that he’d guessed Shane at least had a crush on Ilya, but he thought it was one-sided on top of Shane already having a partner.
Hayden had been less thrilled, but after being shut down after a few comments, had begrudgingly accepted that the same man he’d been hearing about for years from Shane and Ilya Rozanov were the same person. Jackie had been brought into the secret after that.
Shane and Ilya were married in the winter, exactly fourteen years to the day they met. Svetlana had ordained the wedding while Rose and Wyatt were their best woman/man respectively. They had less than fifteen guests at their wedding, but it was more than they ever dreamed would support them.
—
May 2028
The plan, had either of them won the Stanley cup, was to pull the other onto the ice to have what Ilya still referred to as a ‘Scott hunter moment.’
However, the Centaurs hadn’t made it past the first round and Montreal had been booted in the conference finals.
Thus, a press conference.
Shane’s foot tapped Ilya’s under the table and Ilya tapped back. They’d put their wedding rings on their fingers for this. The ones they usually kept on chains to hide their marriage. But today, they could finally show them off properly.
“Thank you, everyone, for coming,” Shane started. “Ilya and I have an announcement to make and we thought it would be best to do it like this.” He took a deep breath and took Ilya’s hand. “Last summer, Ilya and I sat down to have a conversation about our careers. We decided that it would be our last year on the ice.”
“Mr. Hollander,” a reporter interrupted. “Does that mean you and Rozanov are retiring now that the season is over.”
“Yes.” Shane didn’t even blink and kept going. “We have always agreed that playing against each other is the best thing about playing in the NHL. Our careers wouldn’t be what they are without the other and the idea of not sharing the ice was not one we liked. Sitting to have the discussion was because we knew that if we wanted control over how this chapter ended, we would have to have a serious talk about it.”
Ilya took over. “We are getting older and while we could both potentially play for more years, the likelihood that we both can keep playing on the same timeline is low. We also agreed that there were personal benefits to retiring before we are forced off the ice.”
“Why make the decision together?” another reporter questioned. “It’s established that the two of you became good friends since Rozanov moved to Ottawa, but this seems like an odd conversation for two former-rivals to have.”
“Yes, maybe,” agreed Ilya. “But we did not sit down as rivals or friends to talk.”
“Our careers have always revolved around each other,” Shane continued. “As I said before. It would feel weird to go into a new season knowing that something is fundamentally different. So when we sat down to talk about retirement and what it would mean for us, we didn’t sit down as Hollander and Rozanov. We sat down as Shane and Ilya, as husbands, to make a decision about our future.”
The room was pin-drop silent for a moment before it erupted. The reaction made Ilya break, covering his mouth to hide his laughter and hiding in Shane’s shoulder. Shane’s own lips twitched up in obvious mirth. Once the room had quieted down enough that individuals could get their questions out, it didn’t stop.
“I’m sorry, did you say husbands?”
Ilya nodded. “Shane and I have been married for a few years now.”
“How long have the two of you been in a relationship?”
“Over a decade,” said Shane, not clarifying further.
“Why not come out sooner?”
At that, Shane and Ilya exchanged another look.
“The league is not a friendly place for people like us,” said Shane. “Even after Scott Hunter came out, it did not improve much. Ilya and I knew that our relationship was unique enough that coming out was not something we wanted to risk our careers on. Being together in secret was not easy, but it was the option that felt safest not just for our physical safety, but our emotional safety too. Not a lot of people are going to be happy to learn about our relationship and we didn’t want to place our safety in the hands of an environment that would turn on us for falling in love.”
“Until recently, I had to worry about Russia finding out and restricting my visa,” added Ilya. “That was a level of secrecy that couldn’t afford gaps. The more people who knew, the more dangerous it was. Even if we trusted them, people don’t always understand the extent of the danger because they’ve never lived it.”
Shane and Ilya answered a few more questions, trying to stick to ones that aligned with the retirement announcement and not more probing questions about their marriage. When the press conference started wrapping up and they stood to leave with thanks to the crowd, one more question was thrown out.
“Mr. Hollander-Rozanov’s, if I may?” she asked. “You said that you’ve been together officially for over a decade, is there anything you’d like to clarify about that statement? A lot of people are going to have more questions about the timeline of your relationship and I’m sure they will be digging into any and all theories that they can. You’ve caused quite a few blown minds and we’d like to know if there are any more bombshells you’d like to drop?”
Ilya looked at Shane, who nodded.
Back to the reporter, Ilya said, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
In the stunned hush, Shane grinned and tugged a smug Ilya out of the room before anyone could say another word. That was sure to keep them busy.