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Luca Haas loves his team.
He’s been in locker rooms before that felt… off. He felt awkward and being in them was stressful. What to say. Trying to fit in.
This one is different. It fits. Easy, in a way that still surprises him.
But this wasn’t the locker room, but it was fun. Photo day.
It goes about as well as these things ever do. Individual shots for magazine spreads, online promos, the usual stiff poses. Then the bite sized video clips for broadcasts, ads, whatever the league needs this year.
Once the official photographer leaves, Harris immediately starts pulling people aside for social media content - TikToks, Twitter clips, the works. There’s some hesitation at first, a few groans, but Harris has a way of smoothing things over. Within minutes, people are laughing. Looser. Willing.
Harris has a way of extracting perfect soundbites from even the most bland guys.
“Break how?” Holmes asks, as Luca edges closer to overhear the conversation.
There’s a stool set up in the middle of the space, a projector positioned opposite it.
Harris gestures between them. “You sit there and stare down the camera. One at a time, the boys try to make you break. Smile, laugh, fall off the chair - I don’t care. You just have to look cool, in the zone, until you can’t.”
A few of them snort.
“Each challenger gets sixty seconds,” Harris continues. “Stand-up, weird faces, props - whatever works.”
“Tickling!” Young calls.
“No touching,” Harris shoots back immediately. “But-” he points at the projector, “-if you survive two rounds, the third and beyond get media support. The boys can pull up anything they like to break you. Videos, clips, articles, anything. Something funny. Or cute.”
“Cute?” Boodram scoffs. “Who laughs at cute?”
“Not laugh,” Harris says patiently. “Smile. Who doesn’t smile at cute kittens?”
There’s a pause.
Then a few guys shift, already reconsidering their odds, the correct strategy.
They get started quickly.
Luca hangs back at first, arms crossed, watching the early casualties. Dillon lasts maybe ten seconds before cracking, LaPointe does better - makes it halfway through a second round before he folds.
Luca gets dragged in next.
Holmberg tries and breaks him first. He opens with something that is supposed to be dancing - but the movement hardly qualifies - and when that doesn’t land, pivots into jokes. Bad, rambling jokes. Luca isn’t sure whether the goal was for him to laugh or cringe from second-hand embarrassment. In the last twenty seconds, Holmberg tries for humiliation with stories about Luca on the road, half-true, half-embellishment. It takes focus for the half-truths to not make him blush.. or wince.
He doesn’t get far before time’s up.
“Time,” Harris calls, already waving him off.
Luca stays still on the stool, expression carefully blank.
Boyle takes the projector round. A compilation of skating wipeouts - guys catching edges, colliding, going down hard. Nearly funny. A few of them look horrifying.
Luca fixes his gaze on a dead pixel in the corner of the screen and tries to unfocus his eyes.
He makes it through.
And then - Young.
Luca knows, immediately, this is a problem.
“Insider knowledge,” Young says cheerfully, already pulling something up.
The opening notes hit and Luca feels it before he even processes the image.
Potter Pals. The stupid, ancient Mysterious Ticking Noise clip that still ambushes his Tiktok feed every few months.
He holds on longer than he expects. Jaw tight. Breath steady.
Then the unclothed Dumbledore puppet pops into frame between Harry and Snape.
A sound escapes him - sharp, involuntary. He forgot that part. A puppet jump scare.
“Ha!” Young shouts, triumphant. “Got you!”
Luca sighs dramatically as he stands. “Yeah, yeah.”
He’s out.
After that, they fall in quick succession. One after another, smiles cracking, laughter breaking through. It turns into a blur of attempts and failures until Barrett digs in and manages to last a few rounds, stubborn about it.
Roz smirks as he waltzes up.
But before stepping up he drifts over to Harris, leans in close. They murmur back and forth for a few seconds - too low for anyone else to catch - before Roz straightens and steps into frame.
Fifteen seconds later, after a joke about some spa, something involving whipped cream, and a laugh that sounds almost too easy, Barrett is out and Roz claims his throne.
They can’t break the Russian menace.
No one can break him. Jokes, clips, cute videos.
Everyone else had one-on-one battles to see who would break but eventually.. they start working in tandem. Discussions. Information sharing.
But nothing sticks. Roz is like a brick wall on and off the ice, apparently.
“Fucking Russians, man,” Barrett exclaims loudly but Ilya Rozanov just stares harder.
More menacingly.
It all changes when Dykstra in a stroke of brilliance pulls up Shane Hollander compilations on the projector. His expression changes slightly but he remains impassive. While it plays, in hushed whispers, they continue to argue on what to do next. In an unspoken agreement between them all it is decided it must be a clip of Shane Hollander that will break him. But they can’t decide on what - if it should be funny, fan romance edits, and Young even suggests rather than video just bring up thirst trap tweets from those unhinged shippers.
Everyone knows how jealous Rozanov gets. That one tweet eighteen months ago from Harry Styles at a game where he wore Hollander’s number and when Shane had liked the tweet… well.. it was the Cold War all over again.
“Where even is Hollander?” Chouinard mutters. “The direct source would solve this.”
Luca frowns as he tries to remember. Oh! Tapes. He was in with Wiebe reviewing tapes about.. something. Luca wasn’t really paying attention at the time.
Luca turns and runs.
He bumps into Dale and Theresa as he runs down the hall and then bursts into the tape room.
“Hollzy!” Luca exclaims and Hollander and Wiebe look up, startled.
“Where’s the fire, kid?” Wiebe laughs.
Wiebe taps the screen with the end of his pen. “If you drive through that seam, you pull their D in and open the lane behind you.”
Shane leans forward, frowning slightly. The space is obvious now that it’s frozen on the screen - wide, open space. How did he miss that in real time?
He jots it down in his notebook.
The door slams open.
“Hollzy!”
Shane startles, pen jerking across the page as Luca Haas stumbles into the room, panting.
Shane blinks at him. Haas isn’t the type to burst into closed rooms.
“Where’s the fire, kid?” Wiebe asks, amused.
By the time Haas has explained, Wiebe is already packing up his papers and standing.
Shane is tempted to tell Haas that it’s just a video, but Wiebe is already up. “Go on, Hollander,” Wiebe says laughing. “Knock your man down a peg for the content.”
Shane exhales deeply, shaking his head, but he’s already standing up.
He follows.
Because of course he does. Ilya is extremely competitive.
So competitive.
And if Shane knows his husband, he knows he hates when Shane wins something just because Shane is his husband. Shane knows his presence will not be an automatic win. He’s going to have to bring something good.
Anything Shane says in Russian will be translated once online. If it was just a private jape he could whisper something sexy in Ilya’s ear but this is for the Internet. No way he can do that.
As they round the corner, Shane’s eyes widen.
Barrett is holding Chiron up at face level, the team’s overly enthusiastic mascot dog licking straight across Ilya’s mouth.
And Ilya… doesn’t react.
Not even a flinch.
Shane stops short.
Chiron is one of Ilya’s favourite things on the planet. Normally he’d already be crouched down, murmuring to him in Russian, hands buried in his fur, completely gone.
Now?
Nothing.
The puppy failed.
Ilya just sits there, expression carved from stone, eyes forward.
Shane feels something drop in his stomach.
Fuck.
This is serious.
This is going to be harder than Shane thought.
Shane despairs that he’s going to embarrass himself. He can already picture it: the camera, the silence, himself standing there with nothing, failing to get even a twitch out of Ilya as the team looks on eagerly. But as their eyes meet, it clicks. Shane knows what he has to do.
He walks up slowly and Ilya tracks his movement. Ilya’s eyes appear softer the closer Shane walks but the exterior is still broody Russian. Shane has to get the words right. This is going to be on camera, he needs to say it in a way to not expose too much.
Shane doesn’t use an exaggerated Russian accent but he mimics Ilya’s lilt and speaking tone as he brings it back to where it all started.
The CCM Shoot. 2010.
“Very pretty,” Shane mimics his husband’s cadence in a purr. “Like a doll.”
It’s small, the reaction.
Barely there.
But Ilya’s eyes sharpen, focus snapping fully onto Shane. Something in them flickers - recognition. Shane’s focus narrows as he feels electricity dance under his skin.
Shane steps closer.
“As I sat in One-Four-One-Zero,” Shane says carefully in his normal tone.
(Usually they say Fourteen-Ten when they speak of the code, the room that started it all. 1410. But he changes it for the audience, but Ilya still knows.)
“While I was waiting… ” Shane lets his gaze drop, just for a second - to Ilya’s mouth - before lifting again.
“I put on a suit and tie.”
His husband breaks into a full, bright smile.
Soon his husband is in full-bellied laughter, impossible to hold back.
For a second, the room disappears.
There’s just that look - open, warm - and Shane feels it land somewhere deep in his chest.
He did that.
The noise crashes back in around them - from behind him is cheering, shouting, - but it feels distant, muffled at the edges.
Shane doesn’t look away.
Ilya is already moving, pushing up from the stool.
“Okay, okay,” Harris starts, clapping his hands. “Shane’s turn, just sit-”
“No, no, sorry,” Ilya cuts in, too quickly, gaze not leaving Shane’s. “I think I forgot - I leave oven on. Shane and I must go home immediately.”
The room erupts.
Shane feels heat rush to his face as Dykstra whoops, Barrett cackles, and someone - Haas, maybe - calls out, “Why does Shane have to go with you?”
Ilya doesn’t answer.
He’s already got Shane’s hand, grip firm, tugging him toward the door like the rest of the team has ceased to exist.
“Someone call the fire department to the Hollander-Rozanov residence!” Barrett yells after them. “And not because of the oven-” but Barrett’s voice disappears as the door closes behind them.
“Ilya-my bag-” Shane protests, laughing as he stumbles after him.
They barely make it into the hallway before Ilya stops short and turns. Ilya crowds him back, heat prickling just under Shane’s skin.
Shane finds himself pressed between a wall and a fire extinguisher in an abandoned hallway.
“Do you still have the suit?” his husband purrs in Russian.
Shane laughs. “Of course not! I’ve grown a bit since eighteen!” he says, a little breathless.
Ilya groans in frustration.
“I still have the tie though,” Shane whispers in Russian, lips skating against Ilya’s neck.
Ilya whimpers and pulls in Shane in for a kiss.
Shane shoves him back - hard - and they crash into the opposite wall and a picture frame tumbles to the floor, cracking.
Shane lifts Ilya’s chin up between his fingers and drops his voice low, dangerous, commanding.
“You’re going to go wait in the car while I go get our bags. And while you’re in the car you are going to book a hotel room. If we’re roleplaying, we’re going to do it properly.”
Ilya’s eyes darken.
“Including waiting for a 9 PM knock,” Shane adds.
Ilya recoils like he’s been personally betrayed. “No!” Ilya yells, horrified, but Shane is already rehanging the picture frame and turning toward the locker room to grab their bags.
“Shane, you wouldn’t!” He calls after him in Russian.
Shane laughs, already halfway down the hallway, not looking back as he imagines his husband’s horrified expression.
It’s going to be a long day for his husband.
Shane’s going to enjoy the begging.