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Shane Hollander was a very boring person.
Sure, some might argue that being a professional athlete automatically meant that he could not be boring. Shane was constantly surrounded by other professional athletes however, and compared to them he was very, very boring indeed.
Shane loved hockey. This was expected for a professional hockey player.
Shane was obsessed with hockey. Also partially expected for a professional hockey player.
What was unexpected was the extent that Shane was obsessed with hockey. Some would joke that it was the only thing he ever thought about, day in and day out.
They weren’t exactly wrong.
Take hockey out of the equation and Shane was, well. He wasn’t Shane Hollander at all. Hockey and Shane went hand in hand, and while the prior could and had existed without the other, there was no Shane Hollander if there was no hockey.
There were many ideas of how professional athletes, professional hockey players in particular behaved whenever they were not on the ice. Ideas involving lots and lots of sex with multitudes of women, extravagant dinners and clubs, and all inclusive vacations mixed with more women and more sex. These ideas weren’t exactly… wrong for certain players. Especially for the younger, unmarried players who were more likely to still have all of their real teeth. And even those married players were likely to experience and indulge in opulence and the exciting life that came with playing in and the salary that came with playing in the NHL.
However, these ideas did not align with Shane Hollander’s lifestyle. Not to say that Shane had not been to his fair share of clubs and dinners with crystal glasses and the smell of expensive alcohol and lust heavy in the room. But even as a rookie, Shane did not exactly… enjoy these settings. He liked hanging out with the team as much as the next player, he just wished they met in, well, quieter, more laidback places where he was less likely to look around the room and accidentally catch a teammate with his hand up a random woman’s skirt.
Clubs were overwhelming, loud, and full of drunk people. And since Shane was often not drunk in these settings, his tolerance for the drunkenness around him was (reasonably) low. Not to mention he couldn’t dance for the life of him, always too awkward to fully let himself go and enjoy the beat when he knew he looked like an absolute idiot to everyone that had the misfortune of witnessing him on the dance floor.
Safe to say, as Shane got older and felt (marginally) less pressure to try and measure up to the other players on the team, to earn their approval, he went to less and less clubs, seeing the team less and less when not on the ice.
Then there were the other factors of Shane’s personality. He had practically no hobbies outside of those that benefitted hockey, so those didn’t truly count. The yoga, the extensive diet, the exercise, they were all means to a better hockey career, not something Shane would be interested in with hockey out of the equation.
As far as relationships went, well. Shane was… acquainted with a fair amount of the hockey world. Hard not to be, after all. But that was about it. Sure, you could get pretty far talking about hockey as a professional hockey player to a bunch of other professional hockey players. But that was never all they wanted to talk about, they wanted to talk about women and their wives and their kids, the music and media they consumed, their other hobbies. And Shane tried to keep up with the conversations. But he had practically nothing to add, he rarely listened to music or watched anything aside from movies that Rose starred in to support his friend. He didn’t have a wife or kids, and to most of the hockey world was considered a painfully single guy who hadn’t gotten any for perhaps his entire life.
Ask anyone in the NHL and they could speak praise about how nice Hollander was, how he was a tough player to face on the ice. But that was practically it. No depth, only shallow comments and praise.
He had no enemies, besides his obvious rivalry with Ilya Rozanov, but even then he was annoyingly calm and rational about it, never speaking too ill about his rival, never appearing overconfident.
Besides Hayden and JJ, it could be argued that he didn’t even have other close friends on the team he had played with for his entire NHL career.
All this to say, Shane was boring. He was an incredibly remarkable hockey player, a player of a generation along with Ilya Rozanov, but he was very, very boring. Especially when comparing his lifestyle to Rozanov’s.
Shane Hollander was a neat freak. Shane Hollander was the type to fold his clothes when anxious, rather than get drunk or high to blow off steam. Shane Hollander wore boring clothes in his boring home and followed his boring, repetitive routine day in and day out. Shane Hollander owned a boring car that was boringly reliable and equipped for a Canadian winter and basically only drove it to do his boring errands or to go to hockey related events. He even had boring parents who were boringly in love and boringly caring towards Shane and his hockey career with their own boring jobs.
For a professional athlete, Shane Hollander led a very boring life.
Ilya Rozanov knew this better than anyone else, although no one else was aware of it. Shane Hollander was a truly boring and predictable person, and it genuinely pained Ilya how incredibly cute and adorable he found all of Shane’s habits to be, how deeply in love he felt when he realized that Shane alphabetized his spice rack or folded his clothes before sex, or any of the other incredibly Shane things he did.
Of course, Shane Hollander was also hiding a gay relationship with his rival and sort of colleague in a notoriously non-accepting sport that had started in their rookie year when the entire world thought them to be enemies, or at best reluctant friends that ran a charity together, but that was perhaps the only exciting thing in Shane’s life.
It was just a fact of the universe. The sky was blue, the earth kept spinning, and Shane Hollander led a boring, boring life.
Which is precisely why Ilya was having a hard time believing what he was seeing.
Ilya had google alerts set for himself (duh. He loved seeing people give him the credit he deserved), Hayden Pike (so he could make fun of him as soon as any embarrassing news of him leaked), and Shane Hollander because he was nothing if not obsessed with the love of his life.
Most of the time, the alerts were bullshit, full of dumb and lying headlines, or game facts/stats that Ilya was already aware of. But this alert in particular caught his attention in a way that could not be shaken.
BREAKING NEWS: Hockey Star and Rose Landry’s Ex-Boyfriend Shane Hollander Found Unresponsive and in Critical Condition After Intense Car Crash! Live Updates Here!
What.
Ilya gripped his phone tighter. His breathing was picking up, and he didn’t know how to make it stop. He fumbled with his phone, almost dropping it several times in quick succession as he hurried to put the headline in Google Translate, just in case his brain suddenly decided to not know English after practically living in North America for over a decade.
But no, the same information stared back at him in his native tongue, with a few grammatical errors included.
Ilya felt his heart stop beating in his chest.
This… this was not right. Ilya clicked on the article with dread in his veins, still not quite believing it. Shane Hollander is not the type of guy to get into any car accident, except maybe if someone rear ended him at a stop light because ice made their car slip. Shane Hollander was annoyingly attentive while driving. Ilya had witnessed it many a time. He always drove the speed limit, checked his mirrors obsessively and was the first to slow down at the very hint of collision. He even followed to stupid suggested speeds for curves! Everyone knew you didn’t need to follow those speeds unless the road was absolutely lathered in ice! Ilya actually found it painful to be in the car while Shane was driving and had to constantly distract himself by staring at Shane’s perfectly beautiful freckles to avoid the thought of how much faster they could get where they were going if he was the one in the driver's seat.
But when the article finally finally loaded on the stupid slow internet that was in the locker room, it was unmistakably Shane’s stupidly sensible car staring at him. But it was no longer in the pristine condition Shane kept it in despite how difficult his busy schedule and the Canadian weather made that task. It looked… god it looked bad. Ilya heard himself curse under his breath, but he could not tell if it was in Russian or English and had even less of a clue for any specific words he said. He reflexively found himself untucking his chain, rubbing his thumb over his mother’s crucifix before moving to thumb the still new addition of his engagement ring.
The car was totaled, that Ilya knew for sure. The frame was crumpled and the car was completely flipped over, and Ilya would bet that it rolled several times before ending up in its current position. There was broken glass everywhere, and Ilya could see that the driver's side door in particular was buckled into the interior of the car, practically in the driver's seat. Ilya could see the strands of the seatbelt handing that were obviously cut, they probably had to be in order to remove Shane from the car if the seatbelt mechanism had been jammed, because of course Shane would never dream of even starting his car before he was buckled in.
God, Shane. The panic never left Ilya, but he felt like he was on another plane of existence as his eyes bored into the photo, as if by will alone he could have Shane appear in the photo completely and miraculously unharmed. But all Ilya saw the harder he stared was more and more evidence that there was no possible way he was unharmed and… was that blood on the headrest??? Ilya's eyes fixed intensely on what could just so possibly be a rust colored stain, right where Shane was sitting, and oh God Ilya was about to throw up or throw his phone or both.
He forced himself to scroll past the photo. The photo of the crash wasn’t important, not right now. He needed information about Shanethink.
Most of the article was, frankly, bullshit. Focused on explaining Shane’s hockey career, paragraphs about Rose Landry (Why? They had been broken up for literal years), and stupid self-bragging about how good of a news site they were, and how fast they got news out, and where to check for updates and other stupid bullshit.
Ilya needs the facts about Shane’s health like. Yesterday. He’s honestly not sure how he’s still standing at this point. He needs Shane, needs him like oxygen, and he can’t deal with the possibility that he may not have him anymore.
He finally, finally got to where they described the accident but it was disgustingly lacklustre. A single stupid sentence about how there was an intense car crash (Fucking. Duh. That’s in the articles fucking headline) and that Shane was unresponsive when emergency services arrived and rushed to the closest hospital, where he was declared to be in critical condition when he arrived (Also in the headline, Jesus, what even was the point of this article if all the actual information is in the headline?), with no other updates since, probably because the hospital workers decided to be decent humans for once and got Shane into a private room away from nosy journalists. There was also a short blurb about how there appeared to be no other injured parties (as if Ilya fucking cares about other people right now. The entire world could be burning in front of his eyes, but it wouldn't matter as long as Shane was okay. Shane was Ilya’s world.)
There was also a sentence mentioning a potential hit and run situation, and how there were no first hand witnesses to the accident which. Ilya couldn’t even begin to process right now or he might actually smash his phone and punch a hole in his locker, or worse. The mere implication that someone might have done this to the love of his life, his future husband, his entire universe and just ran, leaving Shane to his life-threatening injuries alone, was just. Too much right now.
Ilya had the slight presence of mind to spare half a prayer of thanks to the person who came across his fiance and called emergency services, before he was swiping out of the article and scouring his contacts for Yuna’s number.
Never in his life had he wished that he and Shane were married as much as he did right now. If they were married, Ilya would not be finding out the love of his life was potentially dead because of a stupid gossip rag. Ilya would be the first one contacted, and would already be in the hospital, holding Shane’s stupidly pretty hand and frantically watching his stupidly pretty freckles as he waited for him to wake up. Because Shane would wake up. He had to. If he didn’t, well. Ilya wouldn’t either.
As it stood however, they were not married. No one, except a select few, even knew they were in a relationship. They were not each other’s emergency contacts in case the press caught wind, although Shane’s parents were Ilya’s, right before Svetlana.
Ilya’s hands were shaking as he finally, finally found Yuna’s contact, and he took half a breath before he hit the call button.
Shane was okay. He had to be.
The line rang once. Twice. Three times and Ilya's heart started beating faster, which he honestly didn’t realize it could do. Half of a fourth ring and–
“Hello?”
Yuna Hollander was a force to be reckoned with. She was never weak, or softspoken, or uncertain in her words. And yet, the voice on the line was unmistakably shaken and fragile and that made Ilya even more worried than the article.
He swallowed, his mouth so incredibly dry, before he replied. “Yuna,” His voice was too harsh, his accent more pronounced than normal, yet he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not right now. “How. How is he?”
“Oh shit David, Ilya. Ilya. Oh, Ilya, hunny I’m so sorry, I should’ve called you.” Yuna’s voice was shaken. Ilya hadn’t known that was possible.
“Is fine. Shane?” Ilya didn’t know if he wanted to hear the next words. At least now he had plausible deniability. Blissful ignorance. But if the next few words crashed his entire world, well. Ilya wasn’t sure he could handle it.
“He-” Yuna cut herself off with a sob (and Ilya’s heart dropped) before she audibly reeled herself back in. “He’s alive.”
Ilya’s knees buckled, relief coursing through him. He suddenly couldn’t find the strength to remain standing and stumbled backwards to the nearest wall before sliding down it.
“Yes?” His voice sounded weaker than it had since he was 12.
“Yes.” She confirmed, before taking a deep breath and continuing. “He. He’s not in a great place, but the doctors are certain he will live.”
Ilya was glad he was already sitting because the energy leaving his body was shocking his core. Shane would live. He would live, and suddenly Ilya could breathe again.
“He um. God, sorry” Yuna broke herself off with another half sob. “It’s. It’s bad hunny, I won’t lie. He’s currently in surgery, something about a punctured lung. He was um. Covered in. In blood when he came in. Head wound, but they said no concussion, no brain bleeds, just superficial wounds. He’s likely covered in bruises and cuts and will be in a world of pain when he wakes up, but he’s alive.”
Ilya heard sobbing but it took him several seconds before he recognized those noises were coming from him. God, Ilya had never heard better news in his entire life. Shane would live. He would live, he may be in pain, but he would live.
There were several seconds where the only sounds on either side of the line was heavy breathing and stifled sobs. But now that Ilya had confirmed that Shane would live, he needed to be there. As soon as possible.
“Where?” He asked, his voice desperate and rough in his own ears.
“Oh! Oh of course, you don’t know. Shit, sorry I’m just a mess right now.” Yuna half-heartedly chuckled to herself. Ilya didn’t comment on how utterly wrecked she sounded, just waited impatiently.
“I’ll send you the address right away, just text me when you arrive and I’ll come get you and bring you to the waiting room they have us in, alright?” Ilya nodded, as his breath punched out of him. He hoped, selfishly, by the time he got there Shane would be out of surgery and he could see him with his own two eyes. He wasn’t certain his pulse would lower without it.
“Ilya.” Yuna’s voice was suddenly as hard as the ice Ilya had become very familiar with in his career and his back automatically straightened in response. “You will not drive here. You are going to order an uber or, or a lyft or you have a friend drive you here, you understand?”
Ilya had half a mind to argue back, he was absolutely certain no one could get him to Shane faster than he could. As if Yuna could sense his thoughts, she quickly talked again, less harsh but somehow even more impactful.
“Ilya. David and I, and oh god Shane, we can’t deal with you also getting hurt. Not right now. Please. Get someone else to drive you. Please.”
“I will, Yuna. I promise.” The words came automatically, and for once Ilya didn’t even think of disobeying, of arguing in favor of himself.
“Okay. Okay.” The fight seemed to leave Yuna all at once and Ilya could hear rustling on the other side, most likely David comforting his wife and, god, did that just make Ilya want Shane in his arms even more.
“I love you, Ilya. See you soon, get here safe, okay?” Yuna’s voice was impossibly soft and Ilya felt his heart lurch.
“Yes. Love you too, Yuna. David too. See you soon.” And with that, the line went dead and Ilya let his head hit the wall as he felt tears fall down his face.
He did not think his tear ducts still worked. Of course Shane Hollander would prove him wrong in that regard.
He took a breath, two, as he collected himself.
“I’m coming, Shane. Hang on love.” He whispered to himself, his head hanging low between his arms, before he forced himself to stand, relying on the wall a lot more than he should as a professional athlete.
Ilya blinked slowly, giving himself a second before pushing off the wall. He had forgotten he was in the Centaurs locker room, taking his setting in for the first time since he saw that horrid headline on his phone. His teammates were probably on the ice, wondering why the hell their captain was skipping practice. Oh well. They would deal. Shane was more important than hockey would ever be.
He felt like a baby deer as he made his way through the halls, exiting the building without a singular thought towards his team as he started pulling up lyft on his phone, entering the address Yuna had texted. He was horribly relieved that Shane was in Ottawa at the moment, he doesn't think he could handle it if he had to travel two hours to see him. The priority ride option was double the cost of the regular ride, but could get him to Shane in 10 minutes, rather than the standard 12. Perfect.
He stumbled against the brick wall outside as he waited impatiently for the driver to arrive.
“Hang on, moya lyubov.” Ilya murmured as he saw a car pulling towards him. “I’m coming to you.”