Chapter Text
Shane Hollander really doesn’t like to think of himself as jealous.
He knows he is, but he doesn’t like to think of himself that way. There’s something almost invalidating about being called jealous, as though he would ever worry that Ilya would want someone else.
He does, of course, but he doesn’t like to admit that either.
Still, lately, that nagging feeling is far easier to ignore. Ilya isn’t spotted with hordes of beautiful women every night due to the fact that, instead, every night is spent facetiming Shane. He would almost be able to forget the green, impish feeling he gets – it could be so easy – if it weren’t for TMZ.
Shane hated TMZ. They were a scourge, in his book, reporting on anything and everything, true or false. Shane could understand reporting on sordid scandals with actual evidence backing them up, but some of the lies he’d seen on there had made his blood boil many times – lies about Rose, mostly. They’d lied a lot about his relationship with Rose, during and after its tenure, and had gone so far as to claim that she was pregnant with his baby. That in particular was not just wrong, but physically impossible – not because either of them were infertile, but because there was no way that Shane could get it up with a woman, let alone finish inside her. The thought made him sick.
But Shane, bless him, had a bit of a masochistic streak. Something about making himself angry before the game just made him play better, and made his sex with Ilya better too. Just his luck, the morning of their home game with Boston, TMZ published a “story”. This one was about Ilya.
“Ilya Rozanov’s Most High-Profile Hookups”.
Shane scanned over it, almost wanting to see himself on there before stopping, reminding himself what that would mean, and scrolling through again, slower this time.
With each name that passed, that gnawing, greedy, green little voice in his head only got louder.
“High-Profile”? Of the twenty women, Shane only recognized one of their names – Svetlana – and two of their faces – Svetlana and some other chick. A model, apparently.
Shane felt himself shaking his head as he read through it again. If they knew. If only they fucking knew, he would be at the top of this list. “High-Profile”. Bullshit.
His silent rage only deepened when he got to the rink, the guys in the locker room talking about the article. They knew all of the women on it, apparently, and pretended to be shocked that Ilya could pull such beautiful women. That wasn’t why Shane was mad. He knew Ilya was hot, he could pull anyone he wanted. He was just mad to be reminded that he would never be Ilya’s first. And that, despite Shane being damn near celibate without him, Ilya had always made his way around.
They’d talked about it before, and they were technically well past it, but the fact that the rest of the world didn’t know pissed Shane off even more.
There was only one, small sliver of hope. Hope that maybe, maybe, they were taking the hint.
The last lines of the article, which read:
“Despite his past blatant promiscuity, Rozanov hasn’t been spotted with a new woman in almost a year – and his teammates can often be heard teasing him about someone from Montreal named ‘Jane’. Who could this mystery woman be, and will Rozanov be visiting her ahead of tonight’s game?”
Shane kept himself from laughing at his team’s speculation.
“Maybe she’s really locked him down. I don’t think he’s ever seen at clubs anymore.”
“Is she even real? ‘Jane’ sounds like a fake-ass name, like Jane Doe or some bullshit.”
“I think she’s got to be fake and it’s a cover for his erectile dysfunction or something. No way he stops for some girl, especially one he could only see a few times a year.”
Mitty was right. Ilya would never stop for “some girl”.
But for Shane Hollander?
Without question.
—
The Raiders’ locker room the day after the Montreal game was less than fun. Nobody liked losing, but losing to the Metros always dealt a particular blow to the whole team.
Well. Almost the whole team.
When Ilya walked into the locker room to change for practice, the other guys could tell that he definitely hadn’t been dampened by their loss the way the others had.
Some whistles flew around the room as he pulled his shirt off, hickeys and bite marks blanketing his skin all over, the skin on his back red with claw marks.
“Damn, Roz,” Cliff chuckled, changing beside him, “got busy yesterday, huh?”
“Maybe,” Ilya smirked, shrugging nonchalantly. This was the first time Shane had ever left this many marks on him, and he had to admit, he liked looking claimed. It was like his skin was screaming: “Mine. This man is mine.”
That was only more evident when he pulled off his pants and the bruising and bite marks continued to his inner thighs. He was particularly pleased by the sight of those. He’d probably love to see the scratch marks, too, but he couldn’t exactly see his own back easily.
“Fuck, Cap,” Connors scoffed, “if you didn’t, then you got mauled by a wild fucking animal.”
Ilya just laughed, and Cliff shook his head in disbelief.
“You know, after all these years, I thought, ‘there’s no way Jane’s the jealous type, this relationship wouldn’t survive,’” he chuckled, “I think this just proves the opposite, though.”
“Why would she be jealous?” One of the rookies – Jones – glanced over, head tilted slightly to the side.
Connors’ reaction was almost instantaneous, leaping to sit beside the rookie as he pulled out his phone, showing him the article.
Cliff turned to Ilya, grinning in that way he did when he was plotting something.
“What?” Ilya furrowed his brow, but couldn’t push away his curious smile. “What are you thinking?”
—
It had technically only been thirty-five hours since that idiotic article had been posted, but Shane was floating. He’d won, gotten fucked out of his mind, and marked up his boyfriend to high heaven.
Little did he know, it was about to get even better.
“The nerve!” J.J.’s voice was the first thing Shane heard as he walked back into the locker room after a routine post-practice meeting with Theriault.
“What?” Shane could never tell the severity of things by J.J.’s reactions, given the fact that they were always over the top.
“Fucking Rozanov!” He huffed, grabbing his phone from the group he’d been showing it to. “That whole team, fuck them!”
Shane glanced at Hayden nervously when J.J. looked away, and Hayden just stared at him with a blank sort of disappointment. What was that for?
He understood immediately when J.J. shoved his phone in Shane’s face. There, on the Boston Raiders official Twitter account, is a picture of the captain and alternate captain after their practice. They’re sweaty, and they both have their shirts off, facing away from the camera and laughing at something together.
Cliff’s back looks normal – muscular, obviously, with some cupping marks spread across it – but Ilya’s looks absurd. Scratched to high heaven in the way that can only be done when you’re fucking someone into a mattress. Along the parts of his neck and shoulders that are visible, bite marks and dark hickeys are scattered about, no part of his skin unmarked.
The caption makes Shane’s stomach do a flip.
“The guys know how to loosen up after an unfortunate result. Some do PT. Some are Ilya Rozanov.
The team thanks Jane for her contributions to the positive energy in the locker room.”
Shane can’t help himself, he laughs. Hard. J.J. just stares at him in shock, as though he just shot someone.
“Capitaine…” he whispers, face contorted in horror as he watches Shane try to catch his breath. “I know you and Rozanov are not enemies anymore on account of being business partners, but you should not be so happy for him.”
“Sorry, J.J.,” Shane hums, a hand pressed to his chest as he settled, “I just could not have imagined that that would be what was on your phone. I thought he’d just said some shit like he always does.”
“Obviously he did! This caption has Rozanov written all over it.”
Shane shook his head, smiling fondly.
“Nah,” he grinned, grabbing his phone from his cubby. “The grammar’s too good.”