🐞

You see the pictures of them together? Shane looks, happy, actually happy, this time around. (The simple joy of spending time with a friend).

You see them at the club? Shane’s actually dancing, twirling Rose, they’re laughing. Rose even interrupts the hollanov stare-mate to pull him towards the exit, and he goes. (She’s figured them out and will be interrogating this man).

You see Shane well dressed in Tampa? Well yes, Rose Landry, who has a famously good fashion sense, helped pick out all of his outfits. (To help woo one Ilya Rozanov).

Oh and the worst part, actually…

Ilya who's an incredible musician/singer, who won Eurovision less than a year ago, who is the perfect candidate to be held up by the regime at the Olympics to go "we aren't just superior sportsmen, we're superior artistic patrons too".

Ilya who finds Shane fascinating as they stumble through communicating (why would Ilya have to have learned English? What reason would Shane have for even thinking about learning Russian?) and get Shane back to the Canadian delegation. Ilya who shows up to all of the Team Canada games because he's curious. Shane who finds Ilya in the stands every time because once is coincidence, twice is freaky, thrice? That's a pattern.

Ilya who, post Russia's Eurovision, post Olympics, is signed to an American label. His popularity explodes. It's incredible, but most importantly it's a way out. He's proven himself to be a good investment and it's easier for his label to sponsor his citizenship in the US than it is to continue to deal with Russian banks and laws and royalties.

Shane who finds his mind wandering to the pretty Russian musician who sang at the opening and closing ceremonies, who he never told his name, who he never got the name of. Who he couldn't really have a conversation with but who made him feel safe regardless.

About a year later, fresh off his first cup win, he gets a google alert. A entertainment magazine posted an article with a photo from the Olympics of him and the pretty Russian. And now Shane has a name. And a screenshot of said pretty Russian boy tweeting publicly "don't suppose a stanley cup winning captain would have the time to show a russian around montreal?" There's no capitalization which Shane finds endearing, and he manages to get Ilya's number.

Ilya has a concert in the Metros' arena. Shane sneaks in easily because it's his arena.

If they fuck in the Metros locker room with Shane bent over the bench in front of his stall well.

- Oh that's Gaga. You know Lady Gaga? Of course, Ilya! She was in A star is born. Really good actress. She is more of a singer actually... Oh yeah that makes sense, I guess. You guess?! Please tell me you know Poker Face, lyubimyy. I know for a fact you have been to a club, you must have heard Poker Face before. I don't know, maybe. [Ilya starts singing Poker Face]. You're lucky you play better hockey than you sing, baby. Oi!!

- Oh I know how him! That's Armando! That's Pitbull. I'm pretty sure that's a human? Are you fucking with me Shanya. Of course baby. I know that he is a rapper but it feels so weird to call him Pitbull, when we met in Miami he said he was Armando. You met in Miami?? Yeah well, was a few years ago, he invited our team to this house- Pitbull invited the Montreal boring fucking Metros to his fucking house???

- Kesha! Do you know her songs? Absolutely none, no. How the fuck- Why am I even suprised you know her too. Oh we met at Roses birthday party in LA. She is so funny, I think you would like her! Maybe I should introduce you. What the fuck- You know what, I call her. Shane!

- Oh that's Kayleigh right? Kayleigh. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's her. That's Chappell Roan. Dykstra is playing her non-stop in the lockerroom. Oh, really? Pink Pony Club? Good Luck, Babe? Casual? Sounds familiar yes. [Ilya starts singing Casual] [Shane blushes] I think... I think I remember now yeah. Didn't know that was Kayleigh. How do you know all these people but have no clue what they do? Oh funny story, she is a good friend of Rose actually-

- Oh, that's Sam! Sam Smith. I've been to a concert. Met backstage. Really cool person. Shanya, you're surprising me? You go to concerts? Well uhm. When... when I was with Rose she got us tickets and - Yeah okey.

- Montero! Or Lil Nas X. Shall I guess: Another friend of Rose? Maybe, I should ask her. Actually we did this campaign together and- I hate you.

- Oh thats the actress from the movie. The movie with all the actresses. Oceans Eight. That's Rihanna. Yeah! Rihanna. I really liked her there, she should do more movies. Shane, she is actually a singer. Oh, that's cool. You're killing me. What? Should I know her? Shane. Lyubimyy. We literally had our first dance to her song.

Okay so idk I’m back in my a/b/o bag again idk why. Anyway ! Pretty canon right like all the same but omega Shane alpha Ilya. They are hooking up casually, and it’s fun and hot but it’s clean, so clean. They are ! Careful ! No biting, scenting but only during sex and strictly never ever any sex around heat/rut. Not even the week before their scheduled times off to have them if it overlaps with the times they are playing against each other.

Anyway. It’s pre tuna melt, like close to it- maybe a month or two before and Ilya is in rut. He’s out for a week, Shane notices, his absence from his games- “rut leave” their texts silent.

Shane can’t help it but he’s been thinking more and more and more about what Ilya’s ruts look like, who he spends then with, if he spends it alone, if he does spend it alone- does he have toys he likes to use, what ones, what does he think about. Does it ache like Shane’s heats do- does he feel cold and lonely after unsatisfying fake satiating with toys that imitate knotting. Does he crave the feeling of a warm body with him. Does it draw out, body desperate to mate, string out every opportunity for it to happen. Does he enjoy them, feel powerful and strong, in control, more himself in rut- he’s heard it’s like that for some. 

Ok and so Shane’s tucked up in bed one night, half asleep as he keeps his eyes open to catch the last of his chapter.

And then his phone rings- and it’s, it’s Lily ?. Worry and thrill shivers in his gut, and he bites at his lip, lets it ring out a few more times. his mind races, calculates that Ilyas ruts must be short, wonders what on earth he might want. Shane couldn’t stop himself from knowing, from needing to know. He always needed to know with Rozanov, it was undeniable to him somehow. He swears, snatches his phone up, presses answer and cradles it to his ear.

“Rozanov?” He asks when the line is quiet for more than five seconds. Then, a hot panting breath, a slick wet sound that makes goosebumps prickle up over the back of his neck, heat turn in his stomach and then- then the slick sound again, again, another heavy pant low through the phone.

Shane almost swallows his tongue.

“Rozanov?” He says again, but his voice is dry and catching and soft through the phone and it’s answered with a low rumble, one that makes Shane’s chest twinge.

“Shchenok” the foreign word makes him frown, and he makes a soft questioning sound.

“What, what do you want?” Shane asks, fingers reach up to pinch at his bottom lip, chest hot and tight at the desperate sound of Ilya’s breathing.

“Puppy” he translates and the nickname makes Shane’s lips part, his cock throb and start to fill. Heat a dark rush on his cheeks.

Puppy. The one thing they let slip. Rozanov said it sparingly, often in the depth of orgasm, when his knot was securing inside Shane, cum filling the condom.

“Rozanov- I. What’s? What’s going on” he swallows around the whine fighting up his throat, the way it makes his eyelids go heavy, think of the way Rozanov usually says it to him. “My puppy” “good puppy” “going to fill you puppy” “feel so fucking good puppy” against his ear right in the peak of his orgasm.

“Where are you puppy?” Ilya sounds drunk, words slurred and soft, mumbled.

it’s about growing up, leaving home, building a life elsewhere, and realizing that return doesn’t restore anything—it only reveals what’s been shifted. the buildings are still there, your old haunts are still there, the people still recognizable, the past still intact in its own way, but something in the way you meet it has changed. you have changed, and in that change, no longer fit in the same way.

what the album keeps circling is not any one moment, but an accumulation: missed conversations that never fully reopen, relationships that continue but subtly drift, versions of yourself that still surface in memory but no longer really exist in the present tense. a yawning gap that forms not in rupture, but in time.

and layered underneath that is something sharper: the way separation isn’t just geographical or relational, but expressive. the voice itself changes. what you want to say doesn’t come out the same anymore—filtered through distance and everything that has happened in between. life lived apart. time that has left everything slightly out of sync with itself.

and so even the attempt to reach becomes something else: not return, but translation. not closure, but articulation across a space that no longer guarantees being heard properly—at all like before.

time doesn’t heal all. success doesn’t overwrite where you came from. leaving doesn’t undo what you still carry. it just changes what you’re able to access, and what only exists now as something you can look at but not step back into.

what emerges is separation as lived condition: the strange experience of loving what you no longer fully belong to, of still recognizing who you were without being able to become that version of yourself again—a version that once fit here, without question.

Unless.

You consider that the Metros know that Shane absolutely does know how to fight. They've all done checking clinics with Shane. They've all wrestled and roughhoused with Shane. He's strong and he's fast and he wants to win.

The Metros understand that Shane doesn't fight, not because he can't, but because he's a little too good at it. And Shane generally doesn't even like violence. He likes to win by playing the game, not hurting the other team.