I don't know what to title this

he gets through practice by wheezing and letting out tiny coughs when he’s not near anyone (some would accuse him of trying to get out of playing because he’s a ‘traitor’)

instead of staying behind to shower, shane promptly leaves after helping (he did it by himself) clean up from the drills and getting dressed so he can just go home and breathe

the next day, at the game, shane is on the ice not even trying to hide that he’s coughing hard enough to taste blood. his shifts aren’t as long as they usually are. the second he’s off the ice, he’s doubled over with a crackly cough wracking his whole body. he’s pale and has an uncomfortable sheen of sickly sweat all over his body

his nose aches and is running like a faucet. he caved at the beginning of the second period and started wiping it on his gloves and jersey when he doesn’t have a towel and his immediate disposal.

even the opposing team (ottawa of course) has started to check him more carefully after a few with a normal amount of force leave shane stumbling and gasping to catch his breath. it’s humiliating.

ilya is absolutely aware of this and is fuming that shane’s coach hasn’t benched him or the medical team hasn’t asked to examine him to make sure he’s okay. he thought that shane had been quieter than normal when they met before the game, but assumed it was just nervousness over the game that he recently redeveloped

post-cottage, pre-outting ilya would get one and they’d ask what number to use (thinking he’d say 81) but he asks them to put 1221.

shane would rather die than change his stick, so he never really paid attention to new sticks being made and ilya was super quiet abt it, teasing him saying ‘u want to steal my stick to beat me?’ which causes shane to just subconsciously ignore the posts about the stick when he does (briefly) scroll through social media.

one day post-shane-to-cens they’re at a sports shop together in ottawa (lost a football or something) and some kid is coming to the hockey sticks and asks the employee and his mum for the ‘1221 stick, so i can be as good as ilya rozanov!’ and shane and ilya go still.

they go over and say hi to the kid, because how could they not, but they leave without getting the football.

“sweetheart, my shane…have you seen this?!”

“seen what ilya?”

“spiderman is on jimmy fallon and says he dm you about dinner and you didn’t reply?!”

“oh is that who that was..huh”

Some examples of Shane chirps that cause full-on brawls while he skates cleanly away to go chug designer electrolyte saline solution by the bench with his delighted husband:

"Hey Number 56 if you practiced your footwork more you could catch up to me and look me in the eye while calling me slurs"

"Hey 34 your team might have a shot at winning something next year without you so if you want to be a real team player then consider quitting"

"Hey bud, ice is pretty slippery and hurts to fall on so maybe consider learning how to skate before getting on the rink next time"

"Hey 23 I know you'll always be one behind me but you could try a little harder not to take that literally every time we play"

And Ilya's personal all-time favorite that has him giggling and kicking his feet for weeks:

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

humans are the moms

compared to other species on earth, humans have a really outsized "protect baby" instinct. you give a human a thing and tell them it's actually a baby thing and many humans will suddenly develop a complete and total aversion to harming it, even if it's like, a writhing mass of slimy tentacles in no way reminiscent of human infants

cats domesticated us by figuring out that they could leave their kittens with us when they went out hunting and come back and probably still have the same number as before they left. there is a decent chance that wolves did the same thing

word gets around the less parenting-inclined species and they're just like, are you doing a long haul space voyage? going to have to lay some eggs in the course of the trip? take a few humans with you. yeah they'll just start training the young and keeping from them climbing into the machinery themselves you don't even have to find specialists. I know a guy who budded unexpectedly on a freight hauler halfway through a four year trip, and not only did the humans not eat his spawn, they set up this thing called "babysitting" where they'd take turns monitoring its survival and helping to teach it basic skills

Connors: Hey man- I know you usually go home for the summer but I'm doing my birthday in Bali for two weeks... You want to come?

Ilya: Ah I cannot. My dad is sick

Connors: Oh dude that sucks. Okay.

<Or perhaps even more realistically>

Connors: [Making his invite list... Ilya always goes home for the summer so I won't bother asking]

<Versus>

Shane: Sick like how? Crazy? Cancer??

MyMarly opens up his phone on the day of the outing to basically every hockey player groupchat being revived and absolutely blown up, from last year's 'all stars party bois' chat to a text thread from his second year as a pro

And he spends waaaay too long reading them trying to see if literally anyone knew or if everyone is as shocked as he is (and it's not NOT about his need to validate that Ilya kept this from Everyone, that maybe he was a good ass cap and a good friend and Ilya just didn't share this with anyone but Hollander himself)

And the only "I Knew" he gets is from an old Boston Big Dogs chat from years back, where one Russian defenceman that got traded from the raiders insists that he Did Know that cap was 'a gay of some kind'.

And now he's feeling both very protective of his friend and upset that his friend may have told this Russian guy (who they didn't even have on the roster that long, god was the cultural barrier between him and cap really that big?) but not him. So he pushes this dude to admit how he figured anything out

"dude it was a long time ago but i do have video of you snorting coke off a strippers tits while engaged and i will show your wife"

"fucking fine. Was simple. You were all stupid Americans who heard man with accent say I love you and wave arms around all the time and went ah yes this is normal European man behavior. But it is not normal Slavic hockey player behavior."

"I think it's like super offensive now to say that cap is gay because he bro-ed out too hard man"

"his accent is also very gay sounding in Russian but you could not pick that up because you are american. That is not your fault, only Russian or Russian neighbour would know probably."

"also I'm pretty sure he's bi or some shit not gay"

"Yes I figure this from big clue that was him snorting coke off same stripper 🙄 I assume you are keeping video in case I say stupid shit about Rozanov?"

"you know it bud"

i think holmberg starts them off with good luck babe since it's her big breakthrough hit and ilya is like "hm. so this is a song about being in a relationship with someone who's in denial about being gay? and they won't admit to the relationship because of it? interesting" while staring directly at shane who is making very determined eye contact with the floor.

and holmberg (clueless) is like "yeah she writes a lot of situationship anthems actually!" and puts on casual.

which allows shane to pull an instant uno reverse card and stare daggers into the side of ilya's head while going "wow, imagine what it would be like to spend years sleeping with someone who sends really confusing mixed signals by saying that what you have is casual but then treating you like it's not casual at all. that would suck."