Ilya widens his eyes, moves his hands in an impatient “get on with it” motion. He has the urge to say it for him, end both their misery. Shane blinks rapidly a few times, takes another deep breath. “I want to stop,” he says simply.

Ilya lets out one humorless laugh, “Stop what?”

Shane ignores him. “At the All Star Game, I told you I liked you. And you said about Russia and your family. And I looked some things up. I get it. I get it better now. I know we can’t but I can’t stop wanting to be…more. Unless we stop.”

OR

Ilya Rozanov is many things—a pain in Shane Hollander’s ass, hockey’s biggest playboy, a better chirper in his second language than most people are in their first, the only player who can challenge Shane for the title of “best of his generation.” But when Shane and Ilya get stuck next to each other on a long-delayed flight to the MLH Awards, Shane realizes something else about him: Ilya Rozanov is hot.

A fiery plane crash claims Ilya Rozanov’s life in January. By April, Shane Hollander is dead of a broken heart. The truth dies with them.

Yuna Hollander will do anything to get her son back, including hiring a shady shaman to resurrect him. There’s just one complication — Shane isn’t coming back alone.

Now there are codependent (not)zombies in her house wearing Ilya and Shane’s faces. When they inexplicably act more like a married couple than the bitter rivals she expected, Yuna is convinced that they came back wrong.

Shane Hollander is worried about everyone and everything.

Ilya is mostly just sick of air travel.

Or: Shane and Ilya are having trouble balancing their very private relationship and their very public lives.

Yuna slides a folder on the table closer, pulling out two packets of paper. She’d gone all out with the contracts. Mainly, Shane suspected, to ease his nerves about the lines of the relationship. Plus, she was always nothing if not prepared.

She hands one contract to Shane, then another to Rozanov. “As a reminder, this is not legally binding. If either of you wants out early, can’t meet obligations, or wants to change things down the line, that is perfectly fine, and we can work with that. This just lays out the exact timeline of the relationship,” she begins, “down to the start and end dates."

With the Montreal Metros suddenly in need of a new head coach, General Manager Shane Hollander turns to the one person who might know as much about winning as he does: his fellow Hall of Famer and ex decade-long situationship, Ilya Rozanov.

The week before the 2017 All-Star Game, Ilya Rozanov is placed on IR. Ten days later, he disappears from the league entirely. Boston says nothing, and for once, a notoriously fickle league closes ranks.

Every attempt Shane makes to find him hits a wall. In one last desperate, life-altering bid to reach him, Shane comes out to the world, only to be met with Ilya’s silence.

By the time the 2020/21 season begins, Shane has nothing left but hockey and regret. He builds a dynasty, guts his life, and pins the last scraps of his hope on the Metros’ newest transfer, the dangerously hot-headed Cliff Marlow.

Stepping back into the public eye after the worst three years of his life, all Ilya wants is to find some kind of purpose. Shane is done with him, he made that much clear. Ilya isn't about to try to convince himself otherwise. He just wants to prove he still has some use left in him.