Chapter Text
🏒 2026 🏒
Shane and Ilya have talked a lot about retirement over the years, mostly in those early years when it was a marker for their future. Retire, come out to the world, and then, finally, get to love each other loudly in public. Fortunately, that plan shifted, and retirement became less about them getting to live their lives authentically and more of an abstract thought, something that would inevitably happen but not for a very, very long time.
But then the years start passing, and despite still dominating on the ice, all the press wants to talk about is retirement. Some reporters have the decency to disguise the question, asking if they ever got tired of being on the ice, while others go for the jugular, commenting on their drop in skating speed or pointing out that they’ve been racking up more minor injuries as of late. As if they don’t wake up every morning with aches in their bones and take on extra sessions of physical therapy.
Shane tries his best to answer professionally, even though he wants to curse every reporter out with a sharp tongue and a deathly glare. He wants to tell them all to go to hell with the same vicious lift to his voice that he spouts at Ilya when he’s ranting about a particularly bad press day.
“They think they know our limits,” Shane seethes, pacing in their bedroom. “That they get to write our ending. Haven’t they forced enough out of us!”
In private, Ilya holds Shane and lets him feel the anger for both of them, but in public, he handles things like he always does, with a cocky smirk and a sarcastic answer.
When asked if they’ll retire together since they started playing together, Ilya responds with a short “No. Hollander will retire before me. He is older.”
Shane, always quick to become irate with Ilya’s quips, rolls his eyes. “By a month.”
“Yes, that still makes you older.”
Shane doesn’t understand what the obsession is with them retiring. It’s not like they’re holding the Centaurs back. They’ve won three straight cups and are on their way to a fourth. They just came back from winning Gold at the Olympics, both getting to play for Team Canada this time.
Sure, maybe they’ve gotten a bit slower, but they’re still keeping up with the rookies.
Still learning.
Still growing.
Besides, retirement doesn’t look so great anyway. Sure, Hayden gets to spend more time with his kids now that he’s done playing, but Shane and Ilya haven’t started their human family yet, so that’s not an issue for them. JJ’s been off traveling since leaving the league, and Hunter’s in talks to start coaching after a few years away from the ice, and all of that is great for them, but Shane doesn’t see the appeal.
They’re just not programmed to think fondly of retirement. They love hockey too much.
But then Ilya starts complaining more as practices start up again for Ilya’s tenth season as a Centaur and Shane’s sixth. He takes longer to dress out and makes little comments about wishing he could stay home and do puzzles all day like David does now that he’s retired. He even starts playing the part of team Dinosaur in front of the guys, limping around and holding his back after a long practice as if he didn’t fuck Shane into the mattress two nights ago with the raw energy of a twenty-year-old.
Shane thinks it’s Ilya just being Ilya. He’s always been dramatic, theatrical. Shane figures it’s another version of that.
They’re in bed together in Ottawa, sated, cleaned up, and cuddling after another successful home game when Shane realizes Ilya is being serious.
Shane’s tucked into Ilya’s side, head on his chest, silently replaying the highlights of tonight’s game. The team was on fire, so in sync they were untouchable. It’s still early into the season, but Shane can feel it in his bones that they’re going to win the cup again. First team to four straight since the eighties. A dynasty more impactful than the one he helped build in Montreal.
Ilya plays with Shane’s hair, fingers carding through the slightly matted locks. Shane feels himself getting sleepier; Ilya’s magic fingers the soothing touch he needs to quiet his mind. He’s halfway to sleep when Ilya stirs slightly under him.
“I think I am retiring,” Ilya mutters, more to himself than to Shane.
Shane jumps, no longer tired, and nearly knocks his head against Ilya’s. “From fucking me?”
Ilya laughs, his entire body shaking. It’s one of Shane’s favorite songs, and it does settle some of the anxiety pooling in his gut, but he doesn’t appreciate it fully, still worried about Ilya’s sudden outburst.
“Shane, moya lyubov, no. Never. I will be on my deathbed still fucking you. I will die inside you.”
Shane’s nose crinkles. “Maybe we don’t make that a reality.”
“What are you saying? You will not want my old, dying dick? What kind of husband are you!”
“That’s not—“ Shane shakes his head. “Don’t distract me. What are you retiring from?”
“I fuck you so good, your brain no longer works?” Ilya chirps, gently rapping his knuckles against Shane’s head. “Hockey, Shane. I am retiring from hockey.”
Ilya says it definitively. He’s not asking for permission, and Shane would never want to have to make that choice anyway. Still, the news is shocking. He knows they’re older, has noticed both of them slowing down, but he thought they had a few more years. At the very least, he thought Ilya would put up more of a fight, not wanting to retire before Shane did.
They sit in silence for a moment, not awkward, just weighted. Ilya gets his arms around Shane, tugging him back to him until Shane’s tucked under Ilya’s arm. Shane tries his best to steady the erratic thrumming of his heart and closes his eyes, hoping to chase away the thousands of thoughts whirling around his brain like a goddamn tornado.
He feels a lump in his throat, and he tries desperately to choke it down before he speaks again.
“When?”
He doesn’t think Ilya would do something rash and retire right this second. Not when they’re on a winning streak and well on route to win the cup, but up until five minutes ago, he was convinced they’d both be forced out of the league before they willingly retired.
“After we win cup.”
“And if we don’t win?”
Ilya hisses, swatting Shane’s shoulder. “Not possible! We are winning. Have you seen our team? We are unstoppable.”
“But if we don’t? Will you still retire?”
“I think so, yes. Probably.” He closes the gap and seals his lips over Shane’s in a quiet, chaste kiss. “I love you, and I love hockey, and playing hockey with you has been greatest part of my life. But I think it is time. Hockey has been my whole life, and I am ready for next phase.”
Shane nods and tips his forehead forward until it’s resting against Ilya’s. Their noses brush, eyes locked, and Shane can see the confidence in his eyes. The finality. This is happening, whether Shane wants it to or not.
Shane closes his eyes and drops his voice, “I’m not ready. Not yet.”
“I know, sweetheart. I am not asking you to retire with me. Never. You play for as long as you want, and I become sexiest WAG in history.”
Shane snorts, grateful for the sudden levity of the conversation. “I’m sure the ladies will love that.”
“They’ve been begging me for years! Ilya, when are you going to retire to be one of us? Ilya, you would look so good in Hollander jersey. Ilya, please join our group chat, you are so funny,” Ilya says, pitching his voice slightly higher. “Violet already promised me I can take over as Captain of Wags whenever I retire.”
“Absolutely not,” Shane objects. “That would mean we’d have to host all the barbecues and dinners. I know how the guys clean up after themselves; we’re not turning our home into a pig farm.”
“You will deny me this great honor?”
Shane sighs. When Ilya puts it like that. “Fine, you can be Captain WAG, but maybe keep the entertaining to away games when I don’t have to see or deal with the mess.”
“I can do that.”
“And no gossiping about our sex lives to the WAGs. The team knows too much about what we get up to as it is.”
Ilya pouts. “You are no fun.”
“I am plenty fun.”
“No. You are very boring. Most boring man in all of Canada.”
“Oh, is that so? Maybe I should take my boring self somewhere else then.” Shane makes a big show of kicking the sheet off his body. He gets as far as throwing his feet over the edge of their mattress before Ilya’s hands are on his shoulders, tugging him back onto the bed. He falls willingly and lets Ilya manhandle him until his knees are on either side of Ilya’s torso and his ass is hovering just over Ilya’s bare lap. Shane tips forward, placing a ghost of a kiss on Ilya’s lips before pivoting his mouth to nip at the tender skin where his jaw meets his neck. He takes his time working down Ilya’s body until he’s practically squirming when Shane shimmies his way down Ilya’s body so he can more easily get his mouth on him.
Ilya gasps as Shane takes him into his mouth in one slow drag, his hands instinctively making a home in Shane’s hair not to guide, but to cling to. Shane melts under the touch.
A few minutes later, when Ilya’s panting and Shane’s peppering kisses up and down his softening length, Ilya sighs.
“I think I will miss post-game blow jobs most when I retire.”
“Oh fuck off,” Shane says, slapping Ilya’s thigh on his way back up the bed.
They settle against each other again, this time to actually sleep. Or try to, at least. Shane’s head is already spinning over what comes next now that Ilya’s made the retirement decision.
“You’re going to have to tell the team and Coach. And you’re telling my mom.”
Ilya grimaces. “Yuna will not be happy with me.”
“No, but she’ll come around,” Shane says, kissing Ilya’s shoulder. “You should probably loop Farah in too, so she can work on your public statement.”
Ilya blows a raspberry. “I am a 35-year-old professional. I can make my own statement.”
“You can, but you should still run it by Farah and maybe even Harris.”
“You worry too much, Shane.”
“You don’t worry enough, Ilya.”
🏒 2027 🏒
Ilya breaks the news to the world in January with a flashy Instagram post of himself standing in the player’s suite in Shane’s jersey with a sign that reads “Only Winners Get Happy Endings.” The caption is even more cheeky, announcing that he’s retiring to focus on his performance in the bedroom.
Shane wants to kill him, but he hardly sees Ilya off the ice that week as he is sequestered to the press room to give dozens of interviews where he’s asked the same questions over and over again.
Thankfully, the hype dies down when playoff seasons hits and the Centaurs fly into their fourth consecutive Cup with a new record high of wins under their belt.
They’re 3-1 heading into Game 5 of the finals, and they’re hungry for it. The team wants to win for themselves and to cement their dynasty status, but they also want to send their Captain off on a high.
“Let’s fucking do this!” Ilya shouts as they take the ice for the final period, already up by two points.
For a brief moment on the ice, Shane considers throwing the game. He’s not ready to look to his left and not see Ilya there, waiting for him to pass the puck. He can’t imagine walking back to the locker room and not getting a sweaty kiss from his husband, regardless of whether they win or lose. Shane thinks he might even miss the chorus of booing and “save it for your bedroom” outburst that usually follows said kiss.
Most of all, he doesn’t want their hockey story to be over.
But throwing the game would be selfish.
Ilya wants to retire on top, and Shane owes him that much. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he were the reason for Ilya’s dream not happening. He also doesn’t think he’d survive Ilya, the team, and his own mother’s wrath if they ever found out, so he goes out there and plays hard like he always does. And when Ilya sinks the final shot, he chokes down his own tears and skates over to his husband with so much force he knocks them both on their asses. The team jumps on top of them a second later.
And so Ilya retires with a fourth consecutive cup win and tears in his eyes, and Shane tries desperately to live in the moment and not spiral about this being the end of a huge fucking chapter of their lives.
🏒 🥅 🏒
Shane’s worried about the transition when hockey season rolls around again, but Ilya sprints headfirst into retired life like he’s vying for a best retired player trophy. At first, Shane can’t complain, not when their sex life becomes even more frequent. Ilya jokes it's because he isn’t killing himself in the gym anymore, but Shane has a sneaking suspicion he just wants to feel close to Shane after spending several hours of the day apart while Shane trains and he stays at home.
Ilya’s never bored, though, at least not that Shane can tell. He picks up hobbies and takes on the captain of the WAGs status with a concentration only rivaled by him at a face-off in an important match. He wears Shane’s jersey and sits with the WAGS at every home game and tells fans that he loves being the first professional hockey player to go from cup winner to WAG.
They still skate and play together when they can, during Game Changers camps and occasionally at the Ottawa arena, but mostly Ilya stays home, happy to get some distance from the sport that’s dominated his life for decades.
It isn’t long before Ilya starts building a family for Shane to come home to, the same way he slowly built the Centaurs for him to join all those years ago. It starts with Pavlova, a three-legged Samoyed he rescues after instantly falling in love with the sweet girl on his volunteer orientation at the local animal shelter. Ilya had sworn off owning dogs after losing Anya a few years back, but one look into Pavlova’s big eyes and he folds.
Shane comes home from a long series of away games a few weeks later to a timid but mischievous black kitten sleeping on their expensive couch. Ilya claims Herman, the Ottawa Arena janitor, found him lurking by the dumpsters, alone and scared, and Shane rolls his eyes. There’s never once been a cat sighing at the arena in all the years Shane’s been playing for the Centaurs, but he doesn’t call Ilya out on the clear fib. Instead, he rolls his eyes and lets Ilya lead the introduction between the two. Before long, Shane finds his lap occupied by Puck whenever Ilya isn’t.
Things get progressively more serious on a random night in late November when they get a call from a woman who says she’s from Child and Family Services. Zora, a ten-year-old girl they’ve been training at Game Changers camps for years now, has been picked up by her agency. They learn that her mom has been killed in a hit-and-run accident and that she has no close relatives in the city, much less the country.
Shane and Ilya don’t have time to question why they’d been deemed the emergency contact without a formal conversation with Zora’s mom, but of all the kids they’ve mentored over the years, they’ve always been close to Zora, often going out of their way to attend her games when they can. Neither one of them hesitates to jump in the car to go pick her up when the woman on the phone tells them Zora either goes to him or gets placed in a group home.
They’ve always talked about kids, but like most things in Shane’s life, he thought it was something that would happen in retirement. He didn’t think about the possibility of them becoming parents while he was still playing, but he can’t say no to Ilya or Zora or his own deep desire to be a parent.
So they take in Zora, and it’s rough at first. Zora is clearly struggling through her grief, and try as he might, Shane struggles to fill a role he has no clue how to handle while still playing elite hockey.
Thankfully, they both have Ilya.
Beautiful, kind, always knows the right thing to say, Ilya.
He doesn’t falter like Shane does.
Seeing Ilya excel at parenthood gnaws at Shane. Ilya’s always been happy around kids, and he can’t help but wonder if they should have made the decision to start a family sooner. He worries; he’s robbed Ilya of this parental relationship for years, the same way he forced Ilya to hide his true self and his love for Shane back in the early days of their career.
Did he also force him to keep playing longer than he wanted to? Could Ilya have been a younger father instead of a thirty-six-year-old with the knees and back of a seventy-five-year-old?
Ilya denies all of it and chases Shane’s fears away by fucking him deep into the mattress when Shane finally has the courage to voice his concerns a few weeks later. He promises to never bring it up again, and that’s that.
🏒 2028 - 2030🏒
Things improve with Zora, but the same can’t be said about the Centaurs' miserable season. It’s the first year since Shane signed with the team that they haven’t made the playoffs, and he can’t help but blame himself. He’s been distracted, and it’s shown on the ice. The press is relentless, pointing out how few goals he scored this season and speculating if the team is struggling because of Ilya’s absence on the team.
It brings him back to his dark final season with Montreal, and as hard as he tries, Shane can’t help but bring the turmoil home with him. It puts a strain on things between him and Ilya before he finds himself being tugged into the trophy room so Ilya can remind him who the fuck he is.
They have a great summer together — him and Ilya and Zora — and they spend several nights talking about what the next steps for their family will look like after they both admit that they want more kids. Shane doesn’t bring up retirement, and neither does Ilya, as they pour all their time and effort into making sure Zora is doing well and researching surrogacy agencies.
🏒 🥅 🏒
The Ottawa Centaurs start the 2028-2029 season on uneven footing after some trades and new rookie signings, but they manage to make it to the playoffs. Unfortunately, they falter again, and Shane lets himself fall apart in Ilya’s arms later that night.
“Can you come out of retirement?” Shane asks, half-kidding, half-not, one night after reading yet another think piece about how Ilya Rozanov's presence on the ice is what made Shane Hollander great.
Ilya hums as if he’s really considering it before shaking his head.
“But I play better when you’re with me,” Shane all-but whines. “I suck now.”
“You do not suck, well, not at hockey. You do suck other things,” Ilya says, winking. “It takes time to build chemistry with new line mates. It will be better soon.”
Shane doesn’t believe him and finds himself seriously considering retiring over the summer break. He’s not skating as much, too busy bonding with Zora and setting up a nursery for the twin girls they have on the way, and he feels okay about it. Mostly. Maybe hanging up his skates and stick won’t be the end of the world; he’s made it out to be the last few years.
And yet he can’t bring himself to talk about it with Ilya, so when September rolls around and the 2029-2030 season starts, he gets back on the ice. This time, when he looks up to the player’s box, he sees Ilya and Zora smiling at him, each holding one of the twins, swaddled within an inch of their lives, in their arms.
The Centaurs win the Cup that year, and Shane can’t help but smile as Ilya takes turn setting Kat and then Ami into the cup, snapping photo after photo of them. It’s getting to watch Zora hoist it over her head, though, that really gets Shane crying.
A part of Shane thinks it’s a sign from the universe. It’s the perfect storybook ending he’s unknowingly been dreaming of for his career. A win and a family that supports him, what more could he want? But later that night, when he’s blissed out and bone tired, Ilya still trailing kisses up and down his sternum, he starts thinking about it. Really thinking about it.
It’s not that he’s afraid to be retired or worried about spending every second of every day with Ilya and the kids. He’d do that in a heartbeat. But retiring is final. Permanent. Is he really ready to have tonight’s game be the last time he wears his name on his back and skates on Ottawa’s ice?
He realizes quickly that he needs one more season. A farewell one for himself, so he can soak in every single last one and build one last season of memories. Shane doesn’t think Ilya assumed this would be Shane’s last season, but he has noticed the toll being a father to three kids has taken on him and doesn’t think Ilya would object to an extra pair of hands and eyes around the house more reliably. He puts off telling Ilya he wants to play one more season until they’re home from the cottage, and then it spills out of him.
“Good,” Ilya says, like Shane asked him how he is, and not to shoulder another season of Shane playing hockey. “I am not ready to not be WAG.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Shane rolls his eyes in mock annoyance, while inside his stomach is a flurry of butterflies. He has no idea how he got so lucky.
Shane doesn’t want to make a formal announcement about this being his final season. The retirement questions have lessened over the years, the journalist finally realizing that Shane isn’t going to let their stupid opinions or hockey stats convince him that he’s done, and he doesn’t want to open up Pandora’s box by announcing it’s his farewell season.
He doesn’t tell the team either. They can’t afford any distractions if they’re going to win another cup. He hates lying to them, but he tells himself it's for the best. Shane does tell Farah in January, though, so she can have a statement ready for him to release when he feels like it’s time.
The reality of the situation hits him a few days later as he reads the beautiful statement Farah sends over for him to review.
He’s really doing this.
Retiring.
Saying goodbye to his dream and the sport that has given him everything good in this life.
He lets Ilya read the statement that night and then lets himself cry, clutched to the chest of the man he loves and only knows because of hockey.
🏒 🥅 🏒
October rolls around, and it’s another rocky start.
It’s the first time Shane’s felt old on the ice, struggling to keep up with their new rookies and even some of the veterans like Luca. Part of Shane thinks it’s his brain’s way of letting him know he’s doing the right thing. That his body really is done.
But a bigger part of Shane can’t accept that.
So he pushes and pushes, playing through exhaustion and frustration and minor injury after minor injury. He takes photos at every game, tries to really soak in everything he’s accomplished, every win and every loss, and slowly things start to work again. The team makes it to the playoffs and then farther and farther, and all of a sudden it’s 2031, and Shane is staring down his final Cup appearances.