FosterChild24

Holmberg: You mean the one that sounds like Hollie?

Lapointe:

Holmberg:

Luca Haas: Yeah, that one.

He counts down the days and as soon as he doesn’t have to worry about russia he starts posting online asking Shane Hollander to pretty please consider him for his next boyfriend and Shane visibly flirts back and people are going crazy because does this mean that the other guy is out of the picture or???

Only they post a picture of them together a few days later that reveals Ilya was the guy all along and the internet explodes

“I can believe I asked Shane Hollander if Ilya Rozanov could fight I just barely escaped with my jaw intact omg”

”sorry I said I was better looking than your boyfriend I have taken my humble medication”

He is now regular part of the little card playing group, playing one or two rounds of poker or asshole at the beginning of their flight. They are laughing and trashtalking and Shane's pleasently suprised he's not getting thrown out the group for ripping the others off with his stone hard poker face.

Shane accidentally started a book club that now semi-regularly holds meetings in their airplane to discuss hockey books, a tradtion that started when Luca asked Shane what he was reading and then proceeded to buy the books as well, which caused a handful more team members to follow suit.

But his favourite thing to do is talking shop with Ilya. Both off them sticking their heads together over their ipad, going though game tape, discussing strategies, examine plays with a level of perspicacity reserved just for them. Often they sit together with Bood and Troy, so they all can exchange their experiences with different opponents, examine weaknesses and strengths & Shane finds so much calm and joy in being part of a group of like-minded people, talking like equals, like a real team, not having to carry the burden of being the head of the team alone.

Ilya supposed that made sense; Grigori would sometimes burst into his bedroom in the mornings and scream at him for being lazy if he was still in bed. He had taken to leaping out from between the covers as soon as the first heavy thud of his father's feet on the stairs reached his ears. He sometimes found himself up and shivering against the cold morning air before he was even aware he'd moved.

But one morning at the start of Shane's first season with the Centaurs, he was awoken gently by his husband's hand on his shoulder and the sun streaming through the window. Brighter than he expected.

"Hey, baby," Shane whispered with a smile, "you look so cozy. I feel bad waking you, but you already slept through your alarm, and we're gonna have to leave soon."

Ilya sat up quickly and checked the time. Half an hour past his alarm. Never once had he slept through an alarm before. Confused, he asked, "It went off?"

"Yeah, I heard the tail end of it as I got back in from my run with Anya or I would've shut it off sooner, sorry."

Ilya thought this was a silly thing to apologize for since he apparently hadn't heard it anyway, but he too busy stuck in his head to comment on it.

Somehow, Ilya's brain must have felt safe enough for him to fall into a deeper sleep than he had in years. Where once this accident would have been met with cold and reprimand, here he was met with warm sunshine and his love's gentle hands. Ilya felt at home.

▪︎ ▪︎ ▪︎

Before he moved in with Ilya and they started spending nearly every night together, Shane was practically dead to the world every time he went to sleep. He was just always so tired after long, physically intense days, okay?

But he was Shane Hollander so he would drag himself out of bed the next morning like clockwork for his run, and if it was earlier that he would like, well, that's just one of the sacrifices he's willing to make for his career. He could relax a bit more in the off-seasons.

It's not like he didn't get enough sleep. A full eight and a half hours on game days, maybe a little less the rest of the time, but never fewer than six hours. He tracked it. And stimulating his muscles was a great way to throw off any lingering drowsiness, so by the time he got back from his runs, he was ready for the day. Work hard at the rink, crash hard at home, rinse and repeat.

A few weeks into the regular season his first year with the Centaurs, Shane woke up in the early hours of the morning. They'd had yesterday off, and spent it lazing about and enjoyed each other's company, which had resulted in a mid afternoon nap. They'd gotten up around an hour later and made an early dinner, before Ilya had taken Shane to bed and worn him out so thoroughly that they'd still ended up going to sleep around the usual time.

But now Shane was awake, and feeling sore and soft and sleepy but not tired, and he could hear Ilya's heartbeat and the deep huffy breaths he took when he was sleeping well. At the foot of the bed, Anya was making quiet doggy snores that, hilariously, almost matched Ilya's. Shane smiled, chest pleasantly full of affection for his little family, and let himself gently slip back to sleep.

Lots of jokes and speculation about the relationship like Ilya having to give up his cool life for bland Canadian guy who never heard of anything but missionary or even perhaps Shane having to become a super freak to keep roz around

Shane is kinda annoyed by it but it’s a better reaction than he was expecting.

Ilya tho….ilya is outraged by the people saying Shane being boring is bad and cracking jokes about it and In a drunken outrage posts something like ‘my sexy husband wears the sleepy time tea bear pajamas to bed and it’s so hot it makes my dick explode’ and other horny posts which immediately goes viral until Harris logs in and takes them down but screen shots have already been taken

The only exception was whenever he or Ilya slept over. Their time together was so limited that Shane sacrificed his strict 10 pm bedtime and 6 am run for evenings spent in Ilya's arms and lazy mornings in bed together.

So the first time Ilya really becomes aware of this habit is after Shane moves to Ottawa. He wakes up, careful not to disturb Ilya, and sneaks out of their bedroom and when Anya wakes up to the sound of him moving around the house, and starts whining at the door, what is he supposed to do other than take her with him on his run?

When Ilya eventually gets up, Shane is back home, freshly showered and sitting on one of their barstools, enjoying his morning smoothie. Ilya appears, bleary eyed eyed and half-asleep, in a robe and wordlessly places a kiss on the crown of his head before gathering Anya's leash and whistling for her to come so they can walk around the garden and she can take care of her business. Shane tells him that's not necessary, they went for a run this morning and Ilya reacts as though this is high treason. He accuses Shane of robbing him of quality time with his daughter and leaving him out of family bonding. It's mostly done in jest but Shane can see that there's a grain of something there.

Shane Enabler Hollander: ok so Ilyusha this player has had zero assists in the entire season, he got drafted last, and finally - and this is crucial - he once scored a goal in his own team's net

“i don’t know, probably that i can have ilya’s photos on my phone now :).”

On to of that, he is a first generation immigrant responsible for financially providing for his family, and that is a position that comes with a very specific mindset.

He may enjoy the finer things in life, but he is not reckless with his money. He has seen and experienced far too much to view money as something that can be treated with any degree of frivolity, and this mindset informs almost every action he takes.

This ranges from small things such as buying cheaper options whenever possible, all the way to having his wealth spread out across multiple banks, in multiple countries, in multiple currencies. He has seen how political unrest can tank the value of a currency previously thought to be incredibly stable.

When they started living together, this caused some conflict between him and Shane. Shane grew up similarly to how he did, with a father working in the government making a considerable amount of money. The difference is that Shane didn’t grow up in a newly reformed country scrambling to restructure its entire government while its banks fail.

Why would he buy the organic option when it’s more expensive and he can barely taste a difference? Why would he keep his money in only one or two currencies when it’s so much safer to have it scattered? Yes, it’s harder to manage that way, but can’t Shane see how fragile the world is at any given moment? How close it is to falling apart? Can’t Shane see that he just wants to protect him the way Ilya’s own country failed to protect his people?