I know that Heated Rivalry is one of those pieces of media where COVID never happens but what if it did? Imagine the lockdown shenanigans.
Shane and Ilya are obviously hunkering down at the cottage together. There's no hockey, but they don't know for how long, so they're still training all the time. They're doing interviews and having to make it look like they're in completely different places. Ilya has to keep being reminded that he's supposed to still be back in Ottawa.
Ilya's teammates keep asking if they can be in a lockdown bubble together and he's gotta be like "No, can't do that. I'm not taking any chances." But now they're worried because he hasn't seen or been around another human being in months and they've noticed that even before lockdown he made more jokes about killing himself than the average person, so they're stressed to their eyeballs about his mental health.
Meanwhile Ilya's living the kind of domestic fantasy with his man that he didn't think they were going to get until retirement. For the first time ever most days he can truly pretend that he and Shane are the only people in the world. Sometimes David and Yuna come over for dinner because they are also isolating at their cottage. But most of the time it's just endless hours of just the two of them and neither of them could be happier. Their biggest decision every day is when and where to fuck. Some people are getting into sourdough – Shane and Ilya have committed to learning one new sexual position every day.
I just think that lockdown would have been the ideal codependent situation for Hollanov.
