Chapter Text
Both Shane and Ilya knew that being famous came with its complications, both separately and together. On their own, they already had to deal with a lot and once they went public with their relationship…well, you get the picture. There was a lot of controversy and buzz surrounding their “enemies-to-lovers” debacle and the time-line of their very long situationship was a very popular topic for debate.
Then there were the invasions of privacy.
Not all of their fans were gross and overly nosy. If Shane had to give a number, he’d say 9 times out of 10 fans were kind and adoring, ready to go to battle if someone trash talked him or Ilya online or said something inappropriate during an interaction. But of course, not everyone could be so lovely and some were not just nosy, but downright hateful. Though the number had gone down significantly, there were still many hockey fans that were quite upset at the fact that two male players were happy and in love. One terrifying evening, the address of the hotel they were staying at was somehow leaked and Shane swore he had never seen Ilya move that fast or be that worried in his life.
And recently, some fans, one fan in particular, had started to cross the line into stalkerish territory.
At first, neither Shane nor Ilya thought anything of it. This whole thing started with a fanpage about Shane, posting moments about him at different events. Stuff like “Shane Hollander at the premiere of new movie!” or occasionally a photo of him and Ilya holding hands and walking in a park somewhere (albeit that was still quite strange for the both of them, but they had gotten somewhat used to it at this point). Fanpages for both him and Ilya, separately and about them as a couple, were not something that was out of the ordinary. Shane and Ilya both had some help managing their social media once they gained a substantial amount of fame, although neither of them were both really on it themselves, preferring to leave the overwhelming task of brand posts and stories and the like to their wonderful manager.
It was when Shane met the owner of said fanpage that things started to go downhill. The page was called “Hollander Update Corner” and Shane had actually ran into the owner of it while out at a restaurant with his team on a visit to New York City: the waiter serving them. The waiter had caught Shane on his way out, eagerly expressing his appreciation for Shane and how he was a huge fan, showing him the page and asking for a picture. Shane thanked him for being a fan, complimented the page, took the photo, and then left. But that wasn’t the end of it.
This “fan” began to show up everywhere in Shane’s life. At first Shane thought he was being paranoid. But when the superfan, whose name was found to be Bryson, started going out of his way for Shane to notice him, he knew that he wasn’t crazy. After meeting Bryson, the page had a dark shift. So dark in fact, that actual fans had become concerned and were reporting the account in droves, causing Shane’s managers to become aware. Instead of cute photos or asking for the brand name of what shirt he was wearing to an event, the page had shifted to nearly 24/7 location updates.
There were photos speculating on if a building was where Shane was staying for the night after every game without fail. There were videos popping up of him in places where he thought he was alone. He’d never looked at DMs that frequently in general, but they soon had to be turned off as his messages were flooding with requests from Hollander Update Corner on his location. There were threads trying to find out where his family lived and then, there was the movement. Bryson had been his “waiter” or dishwasher or janitor or something in every single city he had been in to play a game, all across the country, for months.
On that first visit, he’d been a waiter. When Shane returned to his hometown and tried to go out with his family, Bryson had been a dishwasher, eagerly attempting to get Shane to notice him from the back of the room. The next had been in his hotel halfway across Canada, where a founding incident happened. Bryson was one of the hotel staff and Shane had to literally run in circles as the “fan” berated him for his hotel room number. Bryson was officially a person of interest after that.
And now fast forward to modern day a few months later. Shane’s anxiety had been getting the better of him regarding the incidents with Bryson despite the extra security and watching occurring to make sure he didn’t try anything funny. Ilya had also been anxious, feeding off of Shane’s fear.
“You ok?” Ilya asked, fixing the cuffs on his partner’s suit (he knew Shane hated uneven fabrics touching him). Shane nodded.
“I’m just…nervous. This is a big event.”
“You sure? It is not because of that mega fan?”
“No one’s seen him for a while and the page got deactivated.”
“But he still make you nervous,” Shane sighed, nodding. It was true. No one had seen Bryson in person at restaurants or outside hotels since the hotel incident and the fanpage had been completely removed. That didn’t take away from the fact that he was worried and that that incident was really creepy.
“I just have a really bad feeling about tonight. Like, really bad, Ilya,” Ilya moved to hug Shane.
“If he shows up, do not worry. We will figure it out.”
“It’s not that it’s just…I’ve heard so many horror stories of creepy fans like these. They find you, they obsess over you, and then they go quiet before coming back out of nowhere. I don’t want anything to happen to you or one of our teammates .”
“I told you,” Ilya’s hand gently held his face, “we will figure it out,” And Ilya sounds so sincere that Shane can’t help but believe him at that moment. The pair left early that evening for the event they were set to go to.
But despite Ilya’s reassurances and the logical reassurances of his own brain, he couldn’t help but feel this gut feeling that something was terribly amiss.