Chapter Text
Shane Hollander in the club was the funny sort of image that J.J. was going to be thinking about for a very long time. It was very clear that Hollzy had not given much thought to the club before, and he seemed very much like a fish out of water, standing awkwardly off to one side with a ginger ale in one hand - a white knuckled death grip - and wearing a Montréal fleece like it was not sweaty and boiling in the pulsing confines of the club. J.J. would have felt bad for the guy if it wasn’t such an amusing sight.
“Is Pike gone?” J.J. asked, gesturing to the empty space where Hayden Pike, Hollzy’s right hand man, had been standing pretty much all night, even if Hayden himself seemed like the kind of man who enjoyed a good night out.
Hollzy pointed across the club floor and to the exit. There was Hayden, sneaking out, with a cute blonde in tow, her hand firmly in his and the height difference between them pretty comical. She was attractive, and definitely up for a good fuck by the looks of it, but there was something in the way that Hayden was looking at her, like she could tell him to walk off the edge of a cliff, and he would do it for her, without question. Hopeless, J.J. thought, and settled against the wall beside Hollzy with another thought of hopeless.
J.J. wouldn’t abandon Shane in the clubs, of course, because he wasn’t a dick, but any chance he’d had of getting laid tonight had hinged on Hayden staying beside Hollzy, which clearly was not happening anymore. It was a shame; there was a brunette at the bar who had been given him a luck. But alas, the rules of going out meant either only of them or all of them would get laid, and Hollander was the sort of guy who probably had wet dreams about hockey statistics. They guys had asked Hollzy about his love life once - they had needed chirp material - and Hollzy had said he’d had a girl through juniors, but she’d broken up with him. He didn’t seem too broken up about it.
“You want to head back?” he asked, knocking his elbow against Hollander’s. The club was not Hollander’s scene - and all jokes aside, J.J. liked the guy’s company. He was odd and intense, but the guy was funny when you listened to what he was saying, and the sort of friend J.J. had never considered wanting but was rapidly beginning to think was a better friend than pretty much all the friends he had had before in his life. “We can have a nightcap in the room.”
“Head back?” said a voice to his left. “But the night is so young. Are Canadians really as boring as this?”
The hottest woman that J.J. had ever seen was stood beside him, having materialised from nowhere that he could see. And fuck, J.J. had never hated Hayden Pike for bailing out to get laid more than he did now. She was gorgeous, with long, lean legs for days and an ass hugged by the tiny leather skirt that she was wearing. J.J. looked her up and down, eyes trawling over the sheer vest that she was wearing and thought about what it might be like to take it off, to run his hands through the blond hair that she had slicked back with gel, though the ends tumbled loose and free down her back. There was a sultry come hither look on her face, accentuated by her pouty lips and the smoky eye make-up that she was wearing. And that accent - European, somewhere.
“Hey, darling,” he drawled. Flirtation wouldn’t hurt, surely - or maybe Hollander would understand? But those were the thoughts of a bad friend and J.J. was not trying to be a bad friend.
The woman scowled at him. “What do you want? Pity fuck?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said what do you want,” she enunciated, dragging out the words to a painstaking and mocking drawl. “Nothing? Cat has tongue, as you fuckers say? Da? I do not want to talk to you.” Then she levelled a beckoning finger at Hollzy, who had straightened to attention besides J.J. with a look of panic on his face. “Hello, pretty boy. You come here often?” she purred. “You down to fuck?”
J.J. spluttered incoherently, eyes darting between this strange woman and Shane.
He had never seen this look on Hollander’s face before, never seen this tumult of feelings rear their head to play across his expression. And he didn’t think that Hollander had experienced whatever the fuck he was feeling before either, because the look on his face was the look he got in tape review when passes weren’t connecting and he couldn’t understand why. Namely, this meant that Shane kind of looked like he was going to murder this woman and wear her skin, or something equally deranged, though J.J. was pretty sure that Hollzy was actually turned on and didn’t know what to do with it. But fuck, this girl was going to get the wrong idea and Hollzy was going to scare her away -
“I’m with my friend, thanks,” said Shane, a clear refusal.
J.J. was very tempted to smack some sense into him.
“I am more interesting than your friend,” the woman said. “Is promise. You will have fun. I will make it worth your time.”
“Hollzy,” J.J. whispered urgently to his friend. “Shane, a beautiful woman is asking you to go home with her. You go home with the beautiful woman.”
“Is hotel room,” said the woman. “But I make up for it.”
Shane wrinkled his nose, and the woman said, “I will take offence, if that is how you look when you think of fucking me.”
“I don’t even know your name,” Shane protested.
“Liliya,” she said. “Liliya Rozanova. I am big fan of yours.”
“The Voyageurs have been good so far,” Shane said, because he was always thinking about the Voyageurs.
Liliya Rozanova wrinkled her nose. “Voyageurs are stupid team. I only support good hockey - like Boston. Or you, Shane Hollander. And I would like you to come home so that I can fuck you, because you are very good to watch on ice and I like only to have the best.”
“The Voyageurs are not stupid,” argued Shane, and he looked actually offended by it, like he was going to throw gloves with some random chick in a club over the honour of their team.
“I want to fuck you,” Liliya Rozanova repeated. “Maybe you tell me then why Voyageurs are not worst team in the NHL, except for Buffalo and the dinosaur Scott Hunter’s team. Is pillow talk. Very romantic.”
Shane eyed her up. He looked intrigued, despite himself. “You’re Liliya Rozanova. The figure skater. You’re very good.”
“I’m the best,” she corrected.
J.J. wondered if maybe Hollander’s love of hockey was hiding a competency kink or something, because he looked more receptive to Liliya Rozanova’s (and now the name felt somewhat familiar) advances when she was talking about how good she was on the ice than when she was talking about what J.J. was enviously considering to be probably the most mind-blowing sex Hollander could ever be offered.
“Fucking get laid, man,” J.J. hissed, nudging Hollzy closer to Liliya Rozanova. “I’m going to…” He gestured vaguely at the bar; the brunette was still sat there, still glancing over at him periodically. He would buy her two drinks, he decided, and then invite her back to his apartment, and if she wanted to fuck, he would make sure that it was the best time of her life.
He did not see Hollzy leave the bar with Liliya Rozanova, but he did see the hickeys that she had left on him the day after in the locker room. It was an impressive array of red and purpling skin, and when Shane turned so that his back was to J.J., he hated neat scratch marks scored down his skin. No one else noticed, because they did not look for these things from Shane. J.J. waited until Shane had his gear on to whistle.
“I wouldn’t be getting changed in front of the guys if you want to keep this on the down low,” J.J. muttered to him.
“What?” said Shane. He was bright red.
“Your girl has left some serious damage on you, Hollzy. Good time?”
Shane shrugged, but his brow furrowed like he was thinking about. For Shane Hollander, who never thought about anything else when he was on the ice or ready for the ice, the expression spoke volumes. The furrow stayed all of practice; the thought, it seemed, was sticking around for a while.