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hollanov down bad

they are BOTH pathetically in love

and i have thoughts about it. and feelings

(part one?)

here’s the thing about shane hollander: he is precise. he is controlled. he is focused. he tapes his stick the same way every single game, he has a pre-game routine he has not deviated from since world juniors, he makes his decisions carefully and he keeps his circle small. he does not, as the rule of all rules, let things in that he cannot manage/control/regulate or some combination of that.

ilya rozanov came in out of nowhere. and disrupted it all. he let ilya in, before he could overthink it, before he could even think whether he intended to do that. that’s the part that probably kills him, some days. because he cannot look back and say there was a single moment of weakness and blame it on that and say look, this is where i made the mistake. or maybe he can. but you cannot recognize a thing as a thing if you refuse to even look at it too close. a blur is a blur is a b blur.

it was all incremental. but also sudden. and sharp. and dull. and everything in between. it was that first hotel room and then another, and another. one city. and another. and another. and another. and-you get it. it was the accumulation of those hotel rooms, and those cities, and those locked doors, and those stolen hour, and more than all of that, it was the specific way ilya looked at him like he was something worth looking at outside of shane hollander, hockey player. in between all that looking, something seeped in that shane did not know how to bleed back out.

and shane hollander, who could manage everything and who does manage everything, could not manage this.

so what he does instead is, he files it. he puts it in the category of things that exist (painfully so) but are not discussed. he is very very good at this. he has been doing it his whole career. but what do you do when you have not looked at a woman the way you look at your rival? from across a faceoff circle. so, there it goes: filed. managed. maintained at a functional distance from whatever he thinks is his actual life.

except, and this is the pathetically in love part, ilya rozanov keeps not staying at a distance.

ilya texts him before games. and after. i will make you cum hands free again. fix that backhand. purple, was it? 1221. you will lose tonight, hollander. and shane reads them in the locker room and something in his chest does a thing he has carefully decided not to examine, and so he scores two goals and he doesn’t know if he’s proving something to himself or he’s just answering.

he lets ilya into his apartment. and his cottage. this is one of those things that might break you if you think about it too hard. shane, who spends his money on private spaces to build them into what is essentially his carefully guarded nest, who protects his privacy and his home like it is the last (and only) part of himself that belongs only to him, who has let approximately four people in through his front door—he lets ilya in. there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, you get it.

he tells himself it’s convenient.

he stands in his own kitchen making coffee while ilya sits at his kitchen table being obscenely comfortable in a place that is supposed to be only shane’s and shane thinks: yeah, this is fine. everything is fine. this is nothing. this is just how it is. this is not a big deal. so what if i feel so much for this man who sees beneath all the laters. so what if i want to climb into his skin and live there. so what. SO WHAT.

he denies. like with everything that could ever be pleasurable. self-denial and all that rot.

his hands know it’s not nothing though. his hands. his hands sliding the coffee mug towards ilya, brushing fingers to fingers. his hands have been aware of ilya rozanov for years.

the problem is not that shane hollander is not aware that he is in love. the problem is, he knows precisely and thoroughly how pathetically in love he is. he knows with the same attention to detail he brings to tape reviews. he has watched himself fall in love (is fall even the right word when you have been hit by the force of an infinite number of oncoming speed trains?) with the clinical detachment of someone taking notes. and the notes say: you are in trouble. you are in serious trouble. you have been in serious trouble for years. you are not getting out of this. you are never getting out of this.

and then he makes the coffee anyway. and sits across from ilya anyway. and he tells him he loves him but he knows the magnitude of what he feels is too big for the words anyway.

#might do a part 2 #for ilya #might not #enjoy #tell me if you like it #or wanna read more #or whatever #love you loons #heated rivalry #shane hollander #ilya rozanov x shane hollander #hollanov