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Harris had stuck the little camera to the top of the dashboard with some sort of clear tacky substance he insisted wouldn't leave any residue on Ilya's car. It was technically Shane's, but Ilya was driving so Shane could rest his wrist in the splint.
"Okay, Ilya clip this to your shirt, same for you Shane." Harris handed two little wireless clip on microphones forward. Shane took them both and clipped Ilya's on. Harris waited for the rest of the microphones to be attached before clapping loudly.
The video screen comes to life with the phrase Hollanov Newlywed Game over the image of six NHL players and their coms director sitting in a large 7-seater SUV.
"Okay everyone introduce yourself."
"Really Harris?" Ilya scoffed.
"Yes, this is an official video." Harris looked over at Troy who caved instantly.
"Troy Barrett," he said.
"Wyatt Hayes!" Wyatt's head popped up over the back of Harris' seat. "And that's Zane Boodram and Luca Haas."
"Shane Hollander," Shane said flat but smiling a little.
"They know who you are," Ilya insisted. "If they are clicking on silly video about our relationship filmed in a random car they know who we are."
"Thank you Ilya for the segue. So, we've all got a list of questions to ask, since this is Shane's first Centaurs training camp we're 100% taking advantage of him being stuck in a car with us for 45 minutes!" Harris' cheerful voice introduced the videos concept. "I figure we can knock some easy ones out of the way quickfire. So, when did you two get together?"
Ilya smirked and Shane flushed, ducking his head and looking away from the camera.
"More specific Harris," Ilya insisted.
Harris laughed. "When did you kiss for the first time? Sleep together for the first time? Pick one."
"Both is the same day, in July 2010," Ilya answered.
"Summer before our rookie season," Shane added, and with the straight part of road ahead of them Ilya dropped his right hand from the steering wheel to hold Shane's hand.
"Jesus fuck," Bood swore.
"Wait. The whole time?" Wyatt shouted, the volume artificially lowered on his mic, and Bood's, and Luca's, and Harris'.
"Is small car Hazy, volume please. And yes, the whole time. Except for a few months in the 16-17 season."
"A few months?" Harris pressed.
"Da, Shane panicked when we started inching towards being more than just hooking up and decided to date the most beautiful woman in the world. Might as well make sure he's fully gay-"
"Ilya!" Shane admonished.
"Rose says the same thing!" A photo pops into frame in between the two arguing hockey star husbands showing both of them attending a recent movie premiere, one on either side of Rose Landry. Rose and Ilya are laughing while Shane is looking at them with a mix of fear and adoration.
"You are the worst influence on her."
"She is worse influence on me," Ilya corrected and despite the narrowing of his eyes a small smile spread across Shane's lips.
"Oookay. So you've been together in some capacity your entire NHL careers," Harris confirmed and Ilya and Shane both nodded, the photo popping out of the video. "Alright. This makes none of these easy questions easy ones oh my god."
"When did you think we got together?" Shane asked the rest of the car.
"I figured the 2017 All Star game," Troy answered.
"I guessed after you traded to Ottawa-" Bood cut himself off. "Rozzy did you move to Ottawa for Hollander?" Ilya made eye contact with is alternate captain in the rear view mirror and winked. "FUCK! Who wins that?"
"I think Cassie takes it, she's closest saying he moved for love," Wyatt answered.
Harris pulled the conversation away from the team's betting on each other's lives. "Who spends the most time getting ready?"
"Shane," Ilya answered.
"I was gonna say you."
"Mm," Ilya ceded. "Depends on the situation. If it is public? Shane. If it is normal practice day is me."
"Who would survive longer in a zombie apocalypse?" Luca asked, his accent making the semi-depressing scenario turn into a lighthearted question.
"Shane," Ilya answered. "I would not be able to live without him."
"We've been over this-" Shane started and a small shake of Ilya's head was enough for him to drop it.
Troy went next. "Who is the first to fall asleep at night?"
"Ilya."
"Me."
"My brain takes a bit to slow down, usually," Shane explained. "If I'm thinking out a problem I'll wake Ilya up to tell him whatever solution I figured out."
"Yes, is very sweet and a little annoying. My sleepy brain does not do great with English." Ilya glanced over at Shane with a wink and said "narrative," in what could only be described as a sultry tone. Instead of making Shane blush it made him laugh instead.
"Who is the most competitive?" Harris asked.
"I think we're equally competitive on the ice-"
"Is Shane," Ilya interrupted. "Hockey is more important to him than it is to me, not by much but it is. Hockey is something I am good at and have fun playing, for him it is his purpose in life." Ilya lifted their joined hands to kiss the back of Shane's hand. A silent and that is okay obvious in the gesture.
"You're competitive too," Shane argued, squeezing Ilya's hand.
"Yes but," Ilya turned the but into a little sing-songed tune, "that is because I like to compete with you and you, moy chaynik, are very competitive. It makes me more competitive as the result."
Shane could be heard vaguely muttering under his breath, the captions read "(in Russian) teapot?"
"Weirdly sweet," Harris mused.
"They're weirdly everything," Troy chirped. "What is the one thing they can’t live without?"
"Seaweed shampoo," Shane answered quickly.
"Correction, your weird seaweed shampoo." Ilya smirked again. "My c-"
"OKAY!" Harris shouted. "PG-13 Ilya! Please!"
"-ooking! I was gonna say cooking!" Ilya insisted.
"No you were not." Shane smacked Ilya's shoulder.
"Ow! Harris! Make him stop!"
"You are a toddler," Harris sighed fondly.
Shane was quick to add, "yeah and he eats like one too."
"What is their go-to comfort food?" Bood asked, eyes glinting.
"Bilini, they're kinda like crepes but they're different." Shane tilted his head from one side to the other. "Or chicken parm."
"Snickers bar," Ilya teased.
"That's not really a comfort food," Harris pointed out
"Yeah but he's not wrong, it is kinda my main comfort-food-slash-cheat-snack thing," Shane agreed.
"What actor from any point in time would play them in a movie?" Bood asked.
Ilya glanced over at Shane again and hummed noncommittally.
"I don't think anyone could play him," Shane answered honestly. "Or write a movie that did any sort of justice to either of us."
"Da, there was so much that happened privately, that we keep private, that any film would have to guess on and would guess wrong." Then Ilya smirked a shit-eating smirk and looked right at the camera for just long enough to say, "anyone but Adrian Dela Cruz."
Troy's choked laugh was barely audible on the microphone.
"Yeah it would have to be someone actually able to act," Shane added.
"What is their hidden talent?" Harris quickly supplied before the question could linger for too long.
"Ilya can play piano," Shane answered. "Like, really well. We were at a hotel on our honeymoon that had a dance competition happening and some kids were dancing to the Nutcracker and one of their siblings was trying to play it on the lobby piano for them before giving up and Ilya just sat down and played the whole damn Sugarplum song."
"Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," Ilya corrected. "Tchaikovsky is gay Russian icon, do not disrespect my forebear like this. What is Shane's hidden talent?" Ilya hummed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "Being friends with Hayden Pike?"
"Ilya," Shane sighed.
"Not being able to do simple math in recipe?" Ilya chirped.
"That was one time-"
"Seven," Ilya corrected, "maybe always losing at Yahtzee-"
"Because you cheat!"
"You cannot cheat at Yahtzee, we use the same dice. I am just the luckiest." Ilya winked at Shane who flushed and looked away.
"If they could time travel, when would they visit?" Luca put forward after a few moments of silence.
"Saskatchewan," Shane answered, softly enough that Harris had to push up the audio level in editing.
"They'd not a time," Wyatt helpfully pointed out.
"Yes it is," Ilya backed Shane up, voice gentle. "It means we would not waste so many years, if we had the chance."
Harris muted his own soft "oh" from the final cut of the video.
"What is the most unique date you have ever been on together? Roz's gotta do some sort of crazy shit," Bood added, grinning.
"Bood we have been on a single date outside our homes," Ilya stated, voice flat. Harris cut that question from the video and the private conversation of all the things Ilya and Shane had given up to hide away together. That was offered to their friends, not to the public.
By the time the video cut back in they were on to raunchier questions.
"What is your partner’s biggest turn-on?" Harris asked, elbows on his knees looking at Shane with a wide smirk.
"Glasses," Shane sighed. "And freckles."
"Being carried," Ilya answered.
"Is that correct?" Harris clarified.
Shane scrunched his face and shook his head. "He knows the real answer, but I told him to behave. He's behaving."
"I have two that Harris said are raunchy and obvious," Luca piped up. "Who initiated the first kiss and who's better at sexting?"
"Ilya for both," Shane answered.
"Although Shane was first one to push things beyond kissing," Ilya supplied an extra answer and Troy deleted one of his questions.
"What’s the most romantic thing your partner has ever done for you?" Wyatt asked a gooey question.
"Shane bought out Costco's electric candle stock to propose," Ilya answered, smiling. "He also bought whole building to hook up in so we could stop going to hotels."
"Wait wait wait, Shane was the one that propose?" Wyatt butted in before Shane could answer.
Ilya released Shane's hand to flap it dismissively behind his head before returning it to the wheel. "Save your question! I want to hear Shane say I did romantic shit!"
"I mean. Ilya gave up his first solo sponsorship because he wanted to see me before our rookie season started, he came up with code names for each other so we could talk, he moved to my home town, he makes sure to clean up and carry me to a shower when I'm too tied after and that's just actions. And none of that even covers the stuff he says-" Shane flushed and cut off. "That's probably too long, sorry Harris."
"Buddy you're giving me so much to work with don't apologize for that."
"Okay now! Shane proposed?" Wyatt repeated.
"I mean. Yes and no," Shane answered. "When we made our initial 'be together in secret until we retire' plan Ilya said that he'd cover the dock at the cottage in candles and ask me to marry him. I just sorta... Stole the idea."
"Can't believe you copied Roz's proposal idea," Troy chirped.
"I was on a time crunch and it sounded romantic!" Shane defended. "And! Mine wasn't a fire hazard cause all of them were electric."
"Is dock on a lake," Ilya argued. "Very not fire hazard!"
"Why were you one a time crunch?" Luca asked before it could devolve into more Shane and Ilya bicker-flirting.
Shane blushed again, but he closed his eyes and took Ilya's hand again, both without looking at the other. "I just... When the plane shit happened in January, I didn't feel like waiting was a liveable option anymore." There was a moment of silence before Shane opened his eyes. "We were going to get married this summer anyways, after that, so the whole FanMail thing didn't really change much. I guess it was probably good, to find out who had our backs and who didn't like that, when the whole world found out at the same time. If I'd just told people who I was marrying I think it would've leaked and it wouldn't have been as easy to protect against discrimination."
Harris cut the silence that took up the rest of the drive to the arena, and instead went straight into the questions from the drive back.
He started off again with, "who said the first I love you?"
"Ilya," Shane answered easily. "I didn't understand that's what he was saying but he said it... Three? Four times?"
"I barely remember what I said," Ilya admitted. "More just... Vague gist. But yes, four months before I said it in English I said it in Russian."
"When did you know they were 'the one'?" Bood put air quotes around the phrase.
"When I realized it was possible to have more than just hookups," Shane answered, now in the driver's seat and Ilya nodded in the passenger's seat. "So... June 2017, I guess."
"What's your favourite tradition?" Luca asked, not letting the date hang long enough for it to fully register to anyone else. Shane shot a thankful look at the kid through the rear view mirror.
"Hm..." Ilya smirked. "Turning work into foreplay."
The video cut here with a bright yellow background and words that read "The Centaurs Upper Management Have Declared The Hollanov Sex-planation Is Not Main Channel Material" in big bold black letters before the video cut back in.
"What’s the best trip you’ve taken together? I mean you guys went to fucking Spain for your honeymoon-"
"Because Hunter said it was, and I quote, 'gay as shit'," Ilya interrupted Bood. "He was right, was very gay. And Shane in Ibiza was wonderful."
"Shut up," Shane blushed.
"So...?" Bood prompted.
"First time at the cottage, obviously," Ilya answered as Shane nodded his wordless agreement from the driver's seat. "Was the proper start."
"What was the first thing you thought about each other?" Harris asked.
"Are we answering for what the other thought about ourselves?" Shane clarified.
"No, like, Shane what did you think the first time you saw Ilya, and vise versa."
"Well, I saw him before he saw me," Shane answered honestly. "Canada's practice was before Russia's in 2008, so I remember looking at him after seeing all this press about him and realizing he was better than the English sources were saying, and they were already pretty full of praise. Watching him practice, watching him skate, he was a really good player. I remember being so excited to play against him even though we weren't supposed to have a match up for a while so I had to meet him. And then he was blunt, and fucked up my perfectly polite scripted conversation and he was annoyingly hot smoking literally right in front of a no smoking sign."
Ilya was grinning gleefully, listening to Shane's short soliloquy somehow without the usual level of smug pride whenever someone talked about him being a young prodigy of a player. Instead he was just smiling at Shane like he had personally hung the stars, moon, sky, and was himself the sun.
"Ilya?" Shane prompted. "Please don't make me feel like an idiot-"
"Ya tebya lyublyu," Ilya said instead, kissing Shane's knuckles between each word and Shane sighed softly.
"Ya tebya lyublyu," Shane repeated, his Russian noticeably more accented.
"I thought he was prettier than the photos showed," Ilya spoke without looking away from Shane. "And I thought he was sweet, clearly trying to stick to a script that said 'Hi I am a Good Sport' and I almost felt bad for not having enough English to follow it. He noticed, too. When we had that press conference at the first All Stars, he answered a question for me." Ilya made a vague gesture. "It was stupid nothing question but it was so many words and so many parts and the words were stupid long."
"It sounded like the guy used a thesaurus to make his question a certain number of lines," Shane confirmed.
"What is the most memorable gift you got each other?" Wyatt read from his phone. "That was Lisa."
"Our first hook up was after a photo shoot where we couldn't keep it together it felt so silly," Ilya started with the explanation. "Last Christmas I called the photographer and they still had pictures from when we started to lose it, it was the first time we weren't opponents. The first time we did anything together. I gave him the photo-" Wyatt started to interrupt but thought better of it when Shane levelled his don't you fucking dare glare at him through the mirror "-for Christmas. All of our pictures have been deleted, not just the sexual ones but any we took together or of each other had to stay at the cottage or be lost forever. When the video leaked Shane put the photo on the mantel in his house in Montreal and when he moved to Ottawa permanently this summer it was the first thing he unpacked."
"The tattoo," Shane said simply. "Or his whole Instagram. They're kinda tied, honestly."
"Explain," Harris demanded.
"I mean, the tattoo is kinda personal-"
"Not about the tattoo about his stupid fucking Instagram feed!"
"Harris is personally offended by the lack of cohesion," Troy explained.
Shane laughed. "That's- Okay there's a through line, but it's just us, but secretly. Like the plastic ring he posted at the beginning of last season is from when the Pike's twins decided we had to get married and they threw a wedding in the living room while Hayden and Jackie were at urgent care for her sprained ankle."
"And the random fucking fire hydrant?" Harris demanded.
"It's in front of the hotel we hooked up in for the first time," Shane dismissed. "I will sit down with you on a bus or something later this season and explain them to you, I promise."
"And I now post my husband in public," Ilya added. "No more secrets needed."
"For the sake of my personal opinions of both of you can I please request some secrecy?" Luca's voice was quiet and sweet and met with a car filled with laughter.
The video faded out to the Centaurs channel end card.
Centaurs HQ: Hockey's first #powercouple on the ice answer some #newlywedgame questions!
Comments:
RusHollanov: Not them saying I love you in 4K and thinking no one would catch it
haashaasbaby: Rozanov keeping everyone on task was not what I expected
reply to haashaasbaby CensHQ: We're all just as shocked, maybe 21-22 is the year Ilya Rozanov's Menace Behaviour is directed only at the other team and not his beloved social media team? Pretty please?
cens0nly: Hunter giving honeymoon recs is the gay elder shit we need
reply to cens0nly IlyaRozanov81: He is ancient yes, much advice but none applicable it is so old
reply to IlyaRozanov81 ScottHunterHockey: Watch it Rozanov
reply to ScottHunterHockey IlyaRozanov81: Watch what? You slowly age? Would rather watch paint dry, is faster than you
reply to IlyaRozanov81 ShaneHollander24: Ilya stop it
reply to ShaneHollander24 cens0nly: For posterity's sake everyone should know it's been 3 days and Ilya's shit talking has stopped in this thread
reply to cens0nly IlyaRozanov81: Shane had compelling arguments. None of which are appropriate to share ☺️