Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Slow Burn, Homophobia, Hockey, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Found Family, It Gets Better (Eventually), Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Outing, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Being Assholes (Game Changers), Shane Hollander Leaves the Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Player Shane Hollander, Post-Episode: s01e04 Rose (Heated Rivalry)

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of The Ice Between Us

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-14 Completed: 2026-05-16 Words: 33,275 Chapters: 8/8

Hostile Ice

Summary

Shane Hollander has spent his entire career in careful control - of his image, his privacy, and the parts of himself he wasn’t ready to share with the world. One leaked conversation strips all of that away overnight, and what’s left in its wake is a locker room that’s turned on him, a coaching staff that wants him gone, and an organization that has decided the easiest solution is to make him disappear quietly.

Ilya has been in the league now long enough to understand that some things are too dangerous to want. He has his career, his team, and the laws of his home country to think about. He has very good reasons to keep his distance from Shane Hollander and the storm currently surrounding him. But he’s never been good at doing what he should do.

A story about what it costs to have everything taken from you - your privacy, your safety, your right to tell your own story - and what it looks like to slowly, painstakingly, build something real in the wreckage. About two people who have been circling each other for years finally running out of room to keep pretending. About found family, hostile ice, and the difference between the life you survived and the one you actually get to live.

Chapter 1: The Room Knows

Chapter Summary

Shane's POV

Shane knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into the locker room.

It wasn’t anything obvious at first. No shouting, no commotion, no dramatic silence that demanded attention. It was subtler than that, almost worse because of it. Conversations that had clearly been happening as he walked in tapered off in uneven fragments. A couple of players glanced up, then quickly away, as though they had been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been. In hockey, silence was rarely a good thing, but this wasn’t the respectful quiet of a team focusing before a big game. This was the heavy, static hum of a room holding its breath.

For a second, he wondered if he’d missed something - an injury update, a trade rumor, something that had moved through the room before he got there. But that didn’t make sense. On game days, he kept his routine tight lately. No distractions. No scrolling through headlines or checking notifications that could pull him out of focus before puck drop. His phone stayed zipped in his bag since that morning, exactly where it always was.

Whatever this was, it happened without him.

He slowed for only a second before continuing to his stall. His gear was already laid out in the usual order, as if nothing had changed. The familiarity should have grounded him, but instead it felt staged, like someone had carefully preserved a version of the room that no longer existed. He let his eyes move through the room in a quick, instinctive sweep. It was a habit - checking who was in, who wasn’t, where people were located. The absence registered almost immediately.

Hayden’s stall was empty.

Shane frowned slightly, more to himself than anything else. Pike had mentioned something earlier in the day - Jackie had tripped on one of the kids' toys and Hayden had to take her to the hospital - but Shane hadn’t thought much of it at the time, wishing her a speedy recovery. He wasn’t the type of captain to demand that a teammate attend a game while a loved one was injured. But, now the empty space felt… louder than it should have. Normally, if something felt off in the room, Shane would have looked to him without thinking about it. Not for a solution, not even for a conversation, just something steady to orient around. Someone that might have let him know what he was missing.

There was nothing there now.

He kept moving.

Shane stopped at his own stall, forcing his breathing to stay even. He could feel the air pressure in the room change as he sat down. It was like dropping a stone into a still pond - the ripples were invisible, but the water had been disturbed. He reached for his tape, his movements mechanical. Just another Tuesday. Just another game.

He focused on the ritual of his gear. Skates tightened to the exact same notch. Pads strapped in the same order. It was a meditation, a way to anchor himself when the room felt like it was tilting on its axis. He could feel eyes on him - not the admiring glances of the rookie trying to learn, or the assessing look of a coach checking his mental state, but something predatory and new.

Behind him, a chair scraped lightly against the floor. Then came footsteps, unhurried and familiar enough that he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was as they stopped near his stall.

Gilbert Comeau.

Shane didn’t look up immediately; he kept his hand on the tape roll, forcing himself to finish the strip cleanly before acknowledging anything else. When he finally did glance up, Comeau was standing there with an expression that didn’t quite settle into anything readable. Not openly hostile, but not openly friendly either. Something in between that felt intentionally uncommitted.

“Big night, Captain,” Comeau’s voice came from in front of him.
Shane looked back down to where he was threading the laces through his glove. “Every night is a big night, Comeau.”

Comeau didn’t move away. He lingered, leaning against the partition of his own stall, his tone dripping with a kind of sticky, false camaraderie that made Shane’s skin prickle.

“I meant for you,” Comeau corrected, and there was a weird lilt to his voice, like he was sharing a joke that Shane wasn’t privy to. “Surprised you can even sit down, honestly. How are you not sore after all of the… attention you get.”

Shane’s hands stilled on the tape. He glanced up, but Comeau was already looking away, exchanging a smug, tight-lipped glance with Antoine Couillard a few stalls down. The pair snickered, the sound harsh in the quiet room.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shane asked, his voice flat.

Comeau didn’t answer. He just smirked, a small, ugly twist of the lips, and turned back to his stall to finish taping his stick. The exchange was over as quickly as it had begun, leaving a residue of confusion in the air.

Shane looked around the room again, really looked this time. The dynamic had shifted from quiet to hostile in the span of a single conversation. He caught JJ’s eye across the room. He looked tired, his shoulders slumped, and he gave Shane a microscopic, helpless shake of his head before turning away sharply to dig through his bag.

It was a warning.

Coach Theriault’s office door was open, but the man himself was a silhouette of judgment framed in the light. He stood with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle of the room, refusing to land on Shane.

“Get on the bench,” Theriault barked, his voice lacking its usual pre-game bite, replaced by something cold and dismissive. “And for god’s sake, Hollander, leave the personal drama in the locker room. I don’t need my captain distracted by… whatever this is.”

Whatever this is.

The words bounced around in Shane’s skull as he followed the team out of the tunnel and onto the ice. The cold air hit him, sharp and biting, but it did nothing to clear the fog in his head.

He didn’t know what this was.

He skated through the warm-ups on autopilot, the puck feeling foreign against his stick for the first time in years. Usually, the noise of the arena - the music, the fans, the thud of pucks hitting the ice - was a white noise that calmed him. Today, it felt abrasive. Every cheer seemed to mock him; every glance from the guys on the bench felt like a laser sight on his back.

The game against the Centaurs was a disaster from the drop of the puck.

The Centaurs were a team struggling to find its footing in the standings. On paper, it should have been a rout. Instead, the Voyageurs were flat. The team cohesion that made them a playoff contender felt eroded, corroded by the poison in the locker room.

Shane usually prided himself on his vision, his ability to read the flow of play before it happened. Out here, things were usually simpler. The noise of the crowd, the sharp scrape of skates, the violent geometry of the game - it was a lnague Shane spoke fluently. Tonight, he was seeing ghosts. Every time he turned his back to the play, he felt a phantom twitch between his shoulder blades, an instinct that told him the danger wouldn’t be coming from the puck.

The first period was a sloppy, disjointed mess. The Voyageurs weren’t just playing badly; they were playing selfishly. Comeau was dangling at the blue line, trying to deke through three men instead of dumping it deep. Couillard was taking stupid risks, pinching in and leaving the zone side open.

They were playing like they didn’t trust him to carry the mail. They were playing like they didn’t want him to touch the puck.

It was subtle at first - a pass sent a fraction too hard, a skate just barely cutting across his lane. But as the second period wore on, the accidents started to hurt.

With five minutes remaining in the frame, Shane chased a loose puck into the corner. It was a routine retrieval, the kind of play he’d made thousands of times since peewee. He had position. He had his angle. He braced for contact from the Centaurs’ wing chasing him down.

He got the contact. He just didn’t expect it to come from his own teammate.

The hit wasn’t from the Ottawa winger. It was from behind. It wasn’t a bone-rattling check, but it was deliberate - cheap and dirty. A spear of a shoulder pad drove into the small of his back, right where his kidneys sat, catching him completely off guard. Shane’s skates came out from under him, and he slammed chest-first into the boards, the air leaving his lungs in a painful rush.

The glass rattled, a hollow, mocking sound.

For a second, Shane stayed there, his hand bracing himself against the cold, unforgiving ice, waiting for the whistle. The air was knocked out of him, sharp and hot in his chest, and the taste of copper bloomed under his tongue where he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.

It didn’t come.

Shane scrambled to get his feet under him, his gloves scraping against the ice. The whistle finally blew, a shrill chirp that felt like an afterthought. He spun around, ready to lay into the player who’d hit him, but all he could see was Couillard, who was already skating toward the faceoff circle, and the winger from the Centaurs looking just as confused as Shane felt.

Shane looked toward his own bench. Comeau was standing there, leaning over the boards, his grin wide and vicious. He wasn’t looking at the play; he was looking at Shane.

The buzzer sounded to end the period, but Shane didn’t head for the tunnel. He stood motionless, his chest heaving, his breath pluming in the frigid air like smoke signals he didn’t know how to read. He stared at the bench, specifically at Comeau, whose grin had faltered under the scrutiny but hadn’t entirely disappeared. It looked less like a smile now and more like bared teeth.

It took conscious effort to unlock his knees. Shane skated the long way around, circling the far end of the rink to delay the inevitable return to the locker room. The energy in the building felt wrong - twisted. He assumed the crowd was reacting to the sloppy play, the lack of cohesion. He had no idea that thousands of eyes were tracking him specifically, weighing the man against a headline they’d all read before the game even started.

The walk down the tunnel to the locker room felt like a march to the gallows. The air grew thicker with every step, heavy with the smell of damp rubber and seat, but beneath it was something sharper. The metallic tang of blood in Shane’s mouth mixed with the sour taste of confusion.

He stepped through the doorway, expecting the usual intermission bustle. Equipment managers gathering sticks, the clatter of water bottles, Theriault drawing on the whiteboard.

Instead, the room went dead silent.

The air in the room was thick enough to choke on.

Shane stepped off the carpet and onto the concrete, his skates gouging the floor with a harsh, tearing sound. Usually, this was the time for chirping, for yelling about passes missed or calls blown. Tonight, the silence was absolute. It wasn’t the respectful quiet of focus; it was the heavy, stagnant air of a room where everyone knew a secret that one man didn’t.

They were looking at him.

Comeau was leaning back against his stall, arms crossed over his chest, a smirk plastered across his face. It wasn’t the usual, easy grin of a teammate riding an adrenaline high; it was sharp, vindictive, and open. The pretense of camaraderie had evaporated, leaving something ugly in its place.

Beside him, Couillard sat on the bench, his head down as he ripped a length of tape off the roll with a violent jerk. He didn’t look up, but the tension in his shoulders was screaming. He was vibrating with it, the energy of a man waiting for a fight he knew was coming.

Across the room, Theriault’s office door clicked shut with a sound like a bullet being chambered. The coach had retreated. He had seen the hit, seen the cheap shot, and he had decided it wasn’t worth addressing. He had left his captain to bleed in the deep end.

Shane didn’t go to his stall. He didn’t sit down and take his helmet off. He walked straight for the corner where Couillard was aggressively sawing at the tape on his stick.

“You going to tell me what that was about?” Shane asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but in the suffocating quiet of the room, it carried like a gunshot.

Coulliard didn’t stop taping. He didn’t even look up. He just shrugged, the movement jerky and dismissive. “Just finishing a check, Captain. You should try it sometime.”

“Just finishing a check?” Shane repeated, the words tasting like ash. He took a step closer, invading Couillard’s personal space, forcing the defenseman to crane his neck to look up. “You hit me from behind - your teammate - while I was facing the boards. You know that. I know that. And I know damn well Theriault isn’t going to write you up for it.”

Couillard finally stopped taping. He set the stick down on the floor with a deliberate clatter and looked up, his eyes hard and flinty. There was no apology in his gaze. No guilt. Just a raw, simmering loathing that Shane had never seen directed at him before.

“I said I finished the check,” Couillard spat, his voice venomous. “Maybe if you weren’t so busy worrying about who’s looking at your ass, you’d have a little more awareness on the ice, you faggot.”

The words hit the air like a toxic gas. It wasn’t just an insult; it was a signal.

Shane froze, his breath hitching in his throat. The room felt suddenly very small, the walls closing in. He looked at Couillard, searching for a trace of the man he’d played alongside for so many years, but found only a stranger wearing his jersey.

“What did you say?” Shane asked softly. It was a dangerous kind of soft, the kind that preceded a storm.

From across the room, the sound of a throat clearing cut through the tension like a jagged blade.

“Hey, man,” Comeau drawled out, pushing off his stall and sauntering over. He didn’t bother to hide his amusement, his eyes dancing with a malicious light. “Careful. You might bruise his feelings. We all know how sensitive he is these days.”

Comeau stopped just shy of Shane, crowding him, leaning in so close Shane could smell the mint gum he was chewing and the stale sweat beneath his pads. He tilted his head, looking Shane up and down with a sneer that curled his lips.

“You have such a flair for the dramatic,” Comeau murmured, the words dripping with a false sympathy that grated against Shane’s nerves. “Always have to be the center of attention.”

He leaned in closer, invading the few inches of personal space that Shane had left. “Doesn’t matter if it’s scoring the game-winner or… well,” he paused, his gaze flickering down to Shane’s chest, then back up to his eyes. “Whatever this new act is.”

Shane stared at him, the heat in his veins cooling rapidly into something sharp and dangerous. The room went dead silent, waiting. He could feel the weight of twenty other pairs of eyes on him, most looking away, but some - like Couillard’s - watching with naked anticipation.

Shane didn’t blink. He held Comeau’s gaze, his own eyes flat and unreadable, the mask he wore for the press slipping over his face. It was a defense mechanism, a way to detach when the world got too loud, but right now, it felt like armor.

“Is there a point to this?” Shane asked, his voice deadly calm. “Or are you just trying to hear yourself talk?”

Comeau’s grin faltered for a fraction of a second, annoyed that he wasn’t getting a rise out of him. He leaned back, exaggerating a sigh. “Just making conversation, Hollander. We’re a team here. A family. We should be open with each other.” Then his voice dropped to a murmur that only Shane, Couillard, and the nearest few players could hear, “Just don’t be surprised when the family stops inviting you to dinner.”

The smirk was back, wider and uglier than before. “We wouldn’t want you to choke on anything.”

It was a crude, guttural sound, but the laugh that bubbled up from the back of the room - high-pitched and nervous - acted like a starting gun. The tension snapped, replaced immediately by a low, rumbling current of laughter. It wasn’t the joyous laughter of a group of buddies; it was the sound of a pack of hyenas circling a wounded animal, testing the fences to see how far they could push.

Laughter.

It was a sound Shand had heard a thousand times in this locker room. Usually, it followed a bad joke in the shower or a clumsy mishap during warm-ups. It was the sound of shared space, of brotherhood. Now, it sounded like something else entirely. It sounded like a gate being unlatched.

Shane felt the phantom pressure of the hit again - Couillard’s forearm between his shoulder blades, the violent collision with the boards, the way his head had snapped forward.

It hadn’t been a hockey play.

It had been a message.

Chapter 2: What They Took

Chapter Summary

Shane's POV

The loss didn’t feel like a collapse so much as something that never quite formed in the first place. 

 

The walk to the player’s lot was a blur of cold air and distant shouts, but the panic didn’t truly hit Shane until he was inside his car with the door slammed shut. 

 

The silence was immediate. 

 

He leaned forward, pressing the heels of his hands hard against his eyes as if physical pressure might stop the spiraling panic threatening to split him open from the inside. It didn’t help.

 

When Shane took out his phone from his bag, it was already lit up with notifications… so many notifications.

 

Shane didn’t check his phone on game days. Not before games. Not during games. Not in the immediate aftermath anymore, unless something was explicitly wrong or scheduled. That wasn’t discipline as much as it was containment. A way of keeping the outside world from folding into the one he was responsible for on the ice. But now he couldn’t stop it. 

 

Messages. Alerts. Headlines stacked over each other in uneven repetition, like they had been waiting for him specifically. 

 

He didn’t open them immediately. He just stared at the screen for a moment, thumb hovering without landing anywhere. Then he tapped the first notification and the article that Vincent Charbonneau, the Montreal Voyageurs General Manager, had shown him after the game in his office, loaded almost instantly. 

 

EXCLUSIVE: The Hidden Side of Shane Hollander

 

Shane’s stomach dropped. He knew Mercer’s work - pedantic, aggressive, always hunting for a scandal that didn’t exist. This was no different. 

 

His name sat at the top of the screen in clean, indifferent type, followed by lines of text that didn’t feel like they were meant to be read by him. He scrolled without thinking at first, eyes catching on fragments before his mind fully processed them. 

 

… private video recording…

 

… conversation between the star centre and his flame…

 

…Transcript of audio below… 

 

… the thing is, I… 

 

He stopped scrolling. 

 

For a moment, there was nothing. No car. No team. No game that had gone wrong before it began. Just the words. 

 

He read the excerpt once. Then again. It wasn’t fast enough to blur into denial. It stayed precise. Cleanly attributed. Carefully framed. The kind of language that didn’t accuse directly, but also didn’t leave room for misunderstanding what it was implying. 

 

His grip tightened slightly on the phone without him noticing. Not from emotion at first, but from focus. Because part of his brain was still trying to find the angle where this wasn’t real. Where this was misinterpreted, incomplete, something that could be fixed. But the longer he looked at it, the less there was to reinterpret. The audio was in his voice apparently, the video showed his face. The words were his. 

 

A slow exhale left him before he realized he was holding his breath. He lowered his phone slightly, not all the way, just enough to break direct contact with the screen. Then the weight of everything else started to return. 

 

The locker room. The loss. Comeau’s voice. Theriault. The volume of messages and notifications on his phone when he turned on the screen. The way the room had already known before he did.

 

Shane stayed in the lot long after he finished reading the article, he sat motionless behind the wheel with his phone clenched too tightly in one hand. 

 

It wasn’t the headline that hollowed him out, it was the transcript. 

 

The article itself had been written with the kind of restraint that only made it crueler. It danced around certainty while making sure no one could possibly misunderstand what it was implying. Every paragraph was careful, measured, professionally detached in a way that felt almost mocking considering the damage it was designed to do. 

 

But the transcript beneath it stripped all of that away. 

 

Because there was no implication there.

 

Only him. 

 

His voice. His hesitation. His confusion. Every unfinished sentence and nervous laugh and vulnerable pause laid bare beneath a headline for strangers to dissect. 

 

His stomach twisted violently when his eyes landed again on the final lines. 

 

Why haven’t you told anyone else? 

 

I can’t… I mean it’s this sport… no one would understand.

 

He could still hear himself saying it. 

 

Not the words themselves, but the feeling behind them. The exhaustion. The fear he had barely been willing to admit even in private. He remembered the warmth of the wine bar, the low hum of conversation around them, the soft sympathy in Rose’s expression as she gently pulled honesty out of him piece by piece.

 

It felt safe then. 

 

Now it felt catastrophic. 

 

His hands started shaking at some point without him noticing immediately. He tightened them around the phone enough that the edges dug painfully into his palm, trying to stop it. 

 

The transcript made him sound weak. 

 

That thought arrived suddenly and lodged itself deep. 

 

Not gay. Not exposed.

 

Weak. 

 

The uncertainty in his voice. The stammering. The way he had stumbled over every answer while Rose guided the conversation forward for him. The internet would tear that apart within hours. The league would too. Players. Reporters. Coaches. 

 

His teammates. 

 

A pulse of nausea rolled through him so sharply he had to close his eyes. 

 

His teammates were probably having a laugh, mocking him in a way that just yesterday he never would have expected to come from a group of men that he considered brothers. Someone was probably reading the transcript out loud. He could practically hear Comeau’s voice wrapping itself around the words already, turning them into something uglier than they had been before. 

 

I kind of prefer being the hole rather than the peg.

 

Fuck. 

 

He swallowed hard against the sudden rush of humiliation that climbed hot and suffocating up the back of his neck. He hadn’t even remembered saying that until he saw it written there in black and white for the entire world to consume. 

 

Rose had laughed kindly when he said it, had thought that it was the best thing anyone had ever told her before. 

 

The internet wouldn’t. 

 

Neither would a hockey locker room. 

 

His phone buzzed violently in his hand, dragging him back hard enough that he physically flinched. 

 

Notifications flooded the screen faster than he could clear them. Messages stacked on top of each other until they blurred together. Missed calls. Mentions. Unknown numbers. Reporters. 

 

One text from his mother sat near the top. 

 

Shane, sweetheart, please call us. 

 

Another from his father immediately beneath it.

 

We love you and support you, no matter what. We just need to know that you’re all right. 

 

His chest tightened so abruptly it hurt. 

 

He stared at those messages longer than anything else on the screen because they made this real in a way the article somehow hadn’t yet. His parents knew now. Not because he had chosen to tell them. Not because he had finally worked up the courage to have that conversation himself. 

 

Because someone had stolen that from him. 

 

His phone vibrated again.

 

Rose Landry. 

 

Her name filled the screen while the call rang out into the silence of the car. 

 

Shane couldn’t answer it. 

 

He couldn’t bear the thought of hearing pity in her voice, even if he knew she would never mean it that way. Worse than that, he couldn’t stand knowing she was hurting too. The conversation had belonged to both of them once. Something private and gentle and strangely comforting. Now her voice was attached to a media scandal she had never agreed to be a part of. 

 

The call finally ended. 

 

A text appeared almost immediately afterward. 

 

Shane, I’m so sorry. 

 

Another bubble followed seconds later. 

 

Please answer someone. 

 

His throat tightened painfully. 

 

He dropped his phone into the passenger seat and leaned forward, pressing the heels of his hands hard against his eyes as if physical pressure might stop the spiraling panic threatening to split him open from the inside. 

 

It didn’t help. 

 

Every thought led to somewhere worse. 

 

His teammates knew. 

 

The coaching staff knew. 

 

The league knew. 

 

Ilya… 

 

The realization hit so hard his breath caught halfway in his chest. 

 

He grabbed his phone again before he could stop himself, almost afraid to look at the screen now. 

 

Too late. 

 

Three missed calls. 

 

All from Ilya. 

 

A fresh text appeared while he stared at it. 

 

Shane.

 

Another one came less than a minute later. 

 

Please answer me.

 

Then finally… 

 

I am worried.

 

That one nearly broke him. 

 

Because, unlike everyone else, Ilya would understand exactly what the article meant beyond the headlines. He would understand the danger of it. The exposure. The scrutiny. The implications inside a league that barely tolerated difference when it remained hypothetical, let alone public. Ilya was worried about him, despite Shane having walked out of his door in a panic a few months ago and radio silence since. 

 

After he’d talked to Rose his first thought was of Ilya. He’d been overcome with anxiety, but also eager, at the idea of seeing him again during the upcoming All-Stars weekend.  He was hoping that they could talk, that maybe what he’d been feeling, that had sent him into that panicked state in the first place, wasn’t one sided. He wanted the chance to see if there was actually something there to be salvaged. 

 

But he couldn’t… not now.  Not when he was so exposed.  He couldn’t… he wouldn’t drag Ilya into this pit with him.  He… he loved him too much to do that to him. And that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? Shane Hollander loved Ilya Rozanov. It was such a simple thing. It had been staring him in the face for so long, he’d just been too blind… no, too stubborn to see it and admit it to himself.  

 

His thumb hovered over the screen, the urge to hear Ilya’s voice - to let that rough, accented tone wash over him and tell him it would be okay - so strong it made his hand shake. 

 

But he couldn’t. 

 

If he answered now, he’d break. And if he broke, he’d tell Ilya everything. He’d beg for things he couldn’t have. He’d drag the other man into a scandal that was currently eating Montreal alive. 

 

With a sharp exhale that tasted like defeat, Shane powered off the phone completely. 

 

The screen went black, severing the connection. It felt like cutting a lifeline, leaving him drifting in open water, but he gripped the steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white and forced himself to put the car in drive. 

 

He made it home on autopilot. The city lights of Montreal blurred against the windshield, streaks of gold and red that looked more like warning flares than scenery. He kept waiting for the inevitable - that a car would pull up alongside him, that someone would be waiting at his door, that the world had already found its way to his doorstep. 

 

The silence in his apartment wasn’t peaceful. It was the heavy, suffocating kind of quiet that felt pressurized, like the air inside the room had been sucked out and replaced with something toxic. 

 

Shane dropped his keys on the entry table and removed his shoes. He stood there, waiting for something… but he wasn’t quite sure what. He expected the world to crash in, but nothing happened. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the distant, muffled sound of traffic from the street. 

 

He walked into the living room, stripping off his jacket as he went, needing to shed the weight of the day. The TV was mounted on the far wall, a black mirror waiting to reflect his worst fears back at him. He knew he shouldn’t look. He knew better. But his feet moved on their own, drawn to the inevitable disaster like a tongue probing a loose tooth. 

 

He didn’t even sit down. He just stood there in the middle of the living room, the remote clutched in a hand that had started to tremble, and turned it on. 

 

“... unprecedented breach of privacy,” a talking head was saying, the headline OUTED blazing in angry red letters beneath his face. “But the question now isn’t just how the recording was obtained, but how the league responds to having its first openly gay active player.” 

 

Shane stared at the screen. They were showing clips of him on the ice - slapshots, face-offs, the captain's ‘C’ on his chest - then cutting to a still image of him and Rose at some event, looking like the perfect couple. The juxtaposition was brutal. They were dissecting his life, turning  years of careful compartmentalization into a prime-time narrative. 

 

He couldn’t watch it anymore. With a sharp, frustrated jab, he hit the power button, plunging the room back into a darkness that felt significantly more hostile than it had five minutes ago. 

 

Shane stood there for a long time, his breath shallow and ragged in the quiet. The silence wasn’t an escape; it was just a vacuum waiting to be filled by his own thoughts. Every replay of the conversation, every fear about what his teammates would whisper to him now, every terrifying visualization of Ilya finding out like this - from a headline, a ticker, a leaked transcript - swirled in a chaotic storm behind his eyes. 

 

A sudden, sharp knock on the door shattered the spiral. 

 

Shane flinched violently, his heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to break out. For a second, he just stared at the door, paralyzed. Was it a reporter? How had they found him so fast? Or was it someone from the team - management coming to deliver bad news in person? 

 

Another knock, sharper this time, more familiar. 

 

“Shane.” 

 

Hayden. 

 

The knot in Shane’s chest loosened just enough to let him draw a full breath. He crossed the room on legs that felt unsteady, undid the deadbolt, and pulled the door open. 

 

Hayden Pike stood in the hallway, looking less like a professional athlete and more like a man preparing for a siege. He was wearing his team jacket over a faded t-shirt, his cap pulled low, and his jaw set in a way that usually preceded a fight on the ice. In one hand, he held a crumpled plastic bag from Shane’s favorite deli; in the other, a six-pack of beer. 

 

“Move,” Hayden said, not unkindly, but with enough force that Shane stepped aside without thinking. 

 

Hayden brushed past him, the cold air clinging to his jacket, and kicked the door shut with his heel. He dumped the bag and the beer onto the kitchen island with a heavy thud, then turned to face Shane, his eyes scanning him up and down with the intensity of a coach assessing an injury. 

 

“You look like hell,” Hayden stated. 

 

“I feel like hell,” Shane admitted, his voice raspy from disuse. He leaned back against the wall, needing the support. “How did you find out?” 

 

“Jackie,” Hayden said simply, moving into the kitchen with practised ease. He pulled two bottles from the pack, twisting the caps off and leaving them on the counter. “She saw the news first. Then when you didn’t answer your phone we watched the game tonight. She cried for twenty minutes, then told me to get my ass over here before I did something stupid like try to fight the internet.” 

 

Hayden walked over and thrust a cold bottle into Shane’s hand. “Drink.” 

 

The beer was cold enough to make his teeth ache, but the bitterness was grounding. Shane didn’t usually drink during the season, but he took a long pull, the liquid settling some of the tremor in his hands, though it did nothing for the hollow feeling in his chest. He watched Hayden move around his kitchen, efficiently unpacking sandwiches from the deli bag. 

 

It was such a normal thing for Hayden to do. It was what they did after bad losses, or when road trips dragged on too long. But tonight, the familiarity felt fragile, like seeing a childhood toy in a war zone. 

 

“You didn’t have to come,” Shane said, his voice sounding too light in the quiet apartment. “I know… I know it’s a mess. I know what people are saying.” 

 

Hayden slammed the deli bag onto the counter, the plastic rustling aggressively in the silence. 

 

“I don’t give a fuck what people are saying,” Hayden said, his voice low and vibrating with anger. He turned around, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. “I care about what you’re dealing with. And I care that you didn’t call me after you found out.” 

 

Shane looked down at the beer bottle in his hand, watching a bead of condensation trace a path down the glass. “I didn’t want to drag you into it. We’re close… I didn’t want to invite speculation on you.” Shane swallowed, his mouth tasted like stale copper. “You have a family, Hayd. A wife. Three kids and another on the way. I didn’t want to bring this storm to your doorstep.” 

 

“Drag me into it?” Hayden pushed off the counter, his voice rising. “Shane, we’re in the same locker room. The storm is already there. You think I wouldn’t have found out the second I walked into the practice arena tomorrow? You think I wouldn’t have had to watch them tear you apart while wondering why my best friend didn’t trust me enough to tell me?” 

 

Shane flinched. “It’s not about trust. It’s about protection. If you’re standing next to me, you’ll get hit too.” 

 

“Then let them hit me,” Hayden said, stepping closer. “I can take a hit. I’m a big boy, Shane. I can handle a few slurs and some bad press. What I can’t handle is knowing you were sitting in this apartment by yourself, thinking you had to face this alone.” 

 

The anger in Hayden’s voice had softened into something rawer, more pleading. It stripped the last of the defenses Shane had been holding onto. The mask cracked, and for the first time all night, the exhaustion won out over the panic. 

 

“It’s not just the press, Hayd,” Shane whispered, the admission tearing at his throat. “It’s the locker room. It’s Theriault. It’s… everything.” 

 

Hayden didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at Shane, the righteous anger in his eyes curdling into something darker and more concerned. He knew how the organization worked. He knew the whispers that went around when the coaches weren’t listening. He knew exactly what Shane meant by everything. 

 

“They’re going to try to bury you,” Hayden said quietly. It wasn’t a question. 

 

“They’re already trying,” Shane said, his voice hollow. He finally moved away from the wall, sinking down on the leather sofa. The beer was still sweating in his hand, ignored. “I was in the office before I left tonight. Charbonneau looked at me like I was a lawsuit with a pulse. They’re releasing a statement tonight. Theriault… he wouldn’t even look at me. He just kept saying how this was a distraction and that the team needed focus.” 

 

“A distraction,” Hayden repeated, the words tasting like bile. He paced the small expanse of the living room rug, the energy of his anger too large for the quiet apartment. “You’re the captain. You’re the best player they’ve had in a decade. But because some piece of shit recorded a private conversation, you’re a distraction!” 

 

“He’s not wrong,” Shane said, staring into the middle distance. “It is a distraction. The media is going to be a circus. The fans… some of them will defend me, the others will wear “Hollander Swallows” t-shirts to the game. It changes the room.” 

 

“The room only changes if they let it,” Hayden snapped. 

 

“Don’t,” Shane said, the word sharp enough to cut through the air. “Don’t pretend the room is just going to rise above it. We both know what this team is like… how it works.” 

 

Hayden stopped pacing. He looked at Shane, really looked at him, and the fight drained out of his posture, replaced by a heavy, sagging weariness. He scrubbed a hand over his face, the gesture aging him a decade in seconds. 

 

“Yeah,” Hayden said, his voice rough. “I know. Have you talked to your parents?” 

 

The sandwich wrapped in wax paper sat untouched on the coffee table, the roast beef slowly congealing. Shane’s phone, a dark, dormant slab of glass on the cushion beside him, felt like a dead weight. 

 

“I have to do it,” Shane said, staring at it like it was a bomb he needed to defuse. “If I don’t call them… they’ll see it and then they’ll just assume the worst if I keep ignoring them.” 

 

Hayden, who was currently aggressively organizing Shane’s coaster into a perfectly straight line, looked over. “They’ve definitely already seen it, your mom was blowing up my phone on my drive over here.” 

 

Shane nodded, his throat tight. He picked up the phone, powering it on. The screen immediately lit up with a chaotic barrage of notifications - missed calls, texts, tagged mentions in posts he refused to read. His thumb hovered over his mother’s contact, the photo of her smiling at a family BBQ mocking him from the screen. 

 

“Do you want me to go?” Hayden asked, already pushing himself up to give Shane the illusion of privacy. 

 

“No,” Shane said, the word coming out faster than he intended. He looked up, the mask slipping just enough to reveal the naked fear underneath. He’d never told his parents he was gay, and this was how they had to find out… he knew they loved him, but he didn’t know what they would say about this. “Don’t go. Please.” 

 

Hayden didn’t hesitate. He sat back down, closer this time, his presence a solid, grounding anchor against the rising tide of panic. “Okay. I’m right here.” 

 

Shane took a breath, let it out, and hit the dial button. 

 

It rang four times. Four excruciatingly long rings where Shane’s heart hammered against his ribs so hard he was sure Hayden could hear it. 

 

Then, his mother picked up. Her voice was breathless, high and thin with panic. 

 

“Shane? Oh god, Shane! Are you okay?!” 

 

“I’m okay, Mom,” Shane said, keeping his voice steady even as his hand tightened around the phone until his knuckles turned white. “I’m okay. I’m home.” 

 

“Home?” She let out a shaky breath of relief. “Your father is beside himself. The news - it’s everywhere, Shane. We turned on the television and…” She trailed off, choking back a sound that made Shane’s chest ache. “They’re so out of line!” 

 

“Leave it,” Shane said firmly, though his eyes squeezed shut. He couldn’t look at Hayden, didn’t want to see the pity he knew would be there. “It’s a mess, I know. But I wanted you to hear it from me. I wanted you to know that it’s true.” 

 

The line was quiet for a heartbeat. Then, his mother’s voice came through, soft and steady, cutting through the static of his own panic. “Oh honey… we know.” 

 

Shane’s head snapped up, his eyes flying open to stare blankly at the phone in his hand. “You do?” 

 

Beside him, Hayden shifted, a small, knowing huff escaping him. Shane shot him a glance, but Hayden was just looking at the floor, a faint reassuring smirk playing on his lips. 

 

“Well,” his mother started, and there was a rustling on the other end, the sound of the phone being shuffled and likely being put on speaker, “a part of us always thought it was a possibility.” 

 

Shane stared at the phone. The ground beneath him felt like it was tilting sideways. For years, he had built walls around this part of himself, certain that they were the only things holding his world - and his parents’ perception of him - together. To find out those walls had been made of glass all along was dizzying. 

 

“I’m so sorry,” he choked out, the words scraping his throat like broken glass. A dam had broken somewhere deep inside him, and the pressure in his chest was unbearable. “I tried… I really did…” 

 

The admission hung in the air, heavy and trembling. It was an apology he had been drafting in his head for a decade, but saying it out loud made it sound small and foolish. 

 

His father’s voice came through the speaker then, deeper and richer than his mother’s, but stripped of any disappointment. Instead, he sounded tired. “We know you did, Shane… but you don’t have to do that anymore. You never had to do that.” 

 

“You never have to apologize for who you are,” his mom added, her voice thick with unshed tears but fiercely strong. “We love you… and we are so proud of you. Not because of what you are, but because you’re our son. And this… it doesn’t change that. It never could.” 

 

The release of tension was so sudden that it left Shane lightheaded. He leaned heavily against Hayden’s shoulder, the sturdy fabric of his friend’s jacket grounding him while the voices of his parents - steady, familiar, unbroken - flowed from the speaker. 

 

“We’re not going to let the media tear you apart over this,” his mother was saying, her voice hardening into the protective tone that Shane was thankful was in his corner. 

 

“We just want you to be safe, honey,” his father added. “And happy. That’s all we’ve ever wanted.” 

 

“I know,” Shane whispered, his voice cracking. “I love you guys. I just… I needed to hear that.” 

 

“We love you too, sweetie. Call us whenever you need to… we’ll be here,” his mother said. 

 

“I will.”

 

The line went dead, but for a long moment, neither he nor Hayden moved. The apartment was quiet again, but the silence felt different now like… a pause. A breath. 

 

Shane stared at the black screen of his phone, his thumb hovering over the power button. The crushing weight on his chest had lightened, just enough for him to inhale without his ribs aching. 

 

“Well,” Hayden said, breaking the stillness. He reached over and snagged the abandoned sandwich from the coffee table, unwrapping the wax paper with a loud crinkle. “That went better than the time she wrote that email to the head of officiating explaining, in detail, why a referee should be fired for a call he’d made in one of our games. I’m surprised she didn’t cc the commissioner, Shane.” 

 

The joke landed, intended to pull him back from the ledge, and it worked. A huff of laughter escaped Shane’s chest, deflating some of the tension that had been coiled there since the article dropped. 

 

“God,” Shane rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble rough against his palm. “She really hates the new interference rules.” 

 

“She hates bad calls,” Hayden corrected around a mouthful of sandwich. “And she loves you. Which is why you need to eat this half before I do.” 

 

“Eat it,” Shane said, waving a hand toward the sandwich. “I’m not hungry.” 

 

Hayden didn’t argue. He just took a massive bit, chewed thoughtfully, and watched Shane with eyes that were too sharp for the lazy posture. “You’re going to need your energy, you know. Coach isn’t going to go easy on you tomorrow, just to prove a point. I’m not sure what’s going to happen… but it’s not going to be good.”  

 

“I know,” Shane muttered. “But, I’m not skipping practice. I’m not hiding. That’s what they want.” 

 

“Just so you know,” Hayden said as he swallowed his mouthful. “I’ve got your back.” 

Chapter 3: Don't Close Your Eyes

Chapter Summary

Shane's POV

The air in the Bell Centre practice facility tasted like stale sweat and cold rubber, but under that, there was something new and rotten. The tension was heavier than the air itself, a pressurized weight had settled over the facility; not that Shane had been expecting anything less. It was like a cold, exclusionary void. There was no music thumping against the concrete walls, no banter about last night’s scores or the stiffness of the ice, no chirping… just the rhythmic, aggressive slice of skates and the sharp, hollow crack of pucks against boards. 

 

Shane had moved through the locker room like a ghost. He felt the eyes on him, heavy and jagged. He heard the muttered words as he passed - slurs that weren’t quite whispered enough, ugly laughter that cut off the moment he looked over. Faggot. Disgusting. 

 

He’d laced his skates with mechanical precision, pulling the strings tight until his feet went numb, trying to suffocate the ache in his chest. He hadn’t called Ilya back, or even texted him. Every time he picked up the phone, he saw the memory of their last encounter, the warmth in Ilya’s eyes, and he panicked. He didn’t deserve that comfort. Not now. 

 

Coach Theriault stood on the bench, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. He blew his whistle once - a sharp, short bark that signaled the start of a breakout drill. 

 

“Move it! We got another game in two days against Boston; I don’t want to see lazy legs!” 

 

Shane took his position in the high slot, his stick resting loosely in his gloves. He’d been in thousands of practices like this, his body moving on autopilot, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up. The temperature on the ice had dropped ten degrees since they stepped onto the surface. 

 

“Line one! Go!” 

 

Gilbert Comeau started the drill, carrying the puck with his head down. Shane curled to receive the pass, expecting the crisp tape-to-tape feed he’d been taking from Comeau for  years. Instead, the puck left Comeau’s blade late and hard. It didn’t hit Shane’s stick. It rocketed two feet off the ice, catching him flush on the side of his left knee with the dull, heavy thud of frozen rubber hitting bone. 

 

Shane’s leg buckled instantly, the shock of impact vibrating up through his femur and rattling his teeth. He stumbled, his skates scrabbling for purchase on the hard ice, barely managing to stay upright through sheer force of will as he bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting. 

 

“Oops,” Comeau’s voice drifted over, flat and devoid of anything resembling remorse. He didn’t even slow down as he circled back to the line. “My bad. Must have slipped.” 

 

Shane straightened up, fighting the urge to nurse his throbbing knee. He knew better than to show weakness. Not here. Not now. He just flexed the joint, wincing as a sharp spike of pain shot up his thigh, and tapped his stick on the ice. 

 

As the practice went on the drills started devolving. The whistle blew again for 2-on-1 battles down low. Shane was paired with Couillard, the defenseman who had hit him from behind in the last game. As they raced for the puck dumped into the corner, the tone shifted from clumsy to predatory. 

 

Shane got there first, using his body to shield the puck and hook it back toward his stick. He expected a body check - that was hockey. He didn’t expect Couillard to leave his feet entirely. 

 

The hit wasn’t a play for the puck; it was a missile. Couillard launched himself, leading with his forearm and elbow, catching Shane flush in the jaw. The impact was sickeningly wet - a heavy crunch of cartilage and bone meeting kevlar and plastic. 

 

Shane’s head snapped back with violent force, his world tilted on its axis, the bright white of the rink blurring into a nauseating smear of grey. He slammed down hard on the frozen surface, the back of his helmet bouncing against the ice, stunning him into a silence that was louder than any scream. 

 

Shane lay there for a second, the cold of the ice seeping through the back of his jersey, staring up at the high rafters of the arena. His vision swam, trying to find its focus. He could taste the metallic tang of blood filling his mouth again, bright and coppery. 

 

Above him, skates grated to a halt. 

 

“Jesus, Hollander,” Couillard sneered, looking down his nose. He didn’t offer a hand. He stood there, looming, his chest heaving with an exertion that looked suspiciously like rage. “You gonna stay down there all day? Maybe that’s where you belong. On your back.” 

 

“Get up, Hollander!’ Theriault’s voice cut through the ringing in Shane’s ears, not with concern, but with sharp impatience. “This isn’t a tea party! We don’t pay you to lie around!” 

 

Shane pushed himself up, his movements sluggish and uncoordinated. The world tilted violently to the left, and he had to brace his hands on his thighs to keep from pitching forward. Blood was dripping from his nose, hitting the white ice in dark, rhythmic splatters. 

 

Theriault hadn’t blown his whistle, Shane realized in a daze. He hadn’t stopped the drill. 

 

“Get the fuck out of the way, Antoine!” 

 

Hayden was there, shoving Couillard hard enough to send him staggering back against the boards. The fiberglass rattled, a hollow, mocking sound. Hayden stepped into the space, his back to Shane, putting himself squarely between his friend and the rest of the team. He was vibrating with a rare, visible fury and his gloves were gripped tight in his fists. 

 

“You cheap-shotting piece of shit,” Hayden spat, his face flushed. “That wasn’t a hit. That was a targeted attack!” 

 

“He’s fine,” Couillard scoffed, rolling his eyes as he wiped his mouth with the back of his glove. “Stop your crying, Pike. Maybe you should go join him in the corner if you’re that worried about him holding his own.” 

 

“Back off,” Hayden snarled, stepping in to shove him again. “That was bullshit and you know it.” 

 

Before Hayden could land another shove, hands grabbed him from behind - JJ and another winger, Miller, locked onto his arms and hauled him backwards. 

 

“Let go of me!” Hayden shouted, struggling against the grip of his teammates. “You can’t just let him get away with that!” 

 

Shane blinked, trying to clear the haze of pain from his mind. Every breath felt like shards of glass in his chest as he pushed himself upright, his knees trembling beneath him. He glanced at Couillard, who wore a smug smirk like a badge of honor, and the anger that coursed through Shane was almost as potent as the pain radiating from his jaw. 

 

“I’m fine,” Shane spat, forcing himself to stand tall despite the world tilting around him. Blood dripped from his nose to pool on the ice, a stark reminder of his vulnerability in the midst of hostility. He looked at Hayden, who was still struggling against the hold that JJ and Miller had on him, and gave him a small shake of his head, silently telling him to back down. 

 

With a shaky breath, Shane pushed through the wave of dizziness and gritted his teeth, shaking off the growing tightness in his jaw. Hayden shook off his teammates and gave Shane another look before skating back to his own position. The practice was chaos around him, but all Shane could focus on was the ice beneath his skates. He pushed off, moving back into his own position despite the throbbing pain and the sharp metallic taste of blood still lingering in his mouth. 

 

“Line two! Go!” Coach Theriault barked, arms crossed, voice cold and dismissive. “We don’t pay you to lie around, Hollander. Stop getting distracted out there!” 

 

As Shane took his place, he felt the weight of those words settle over him like a shroud. The practice resumed, but it felt different now, charged with an undercurrent of animosity. Every pass felt more aggressive, and the tension in the air thickened. 

 

The next drill started as a standard retrieval sequence. Shane pivoted first, tracking the puck deep into the zone while Couillard pressured from behind. He reached the boards half a stride ahead of the play and turned his body instinctively, preparing to absorb the contact and move the puck back into the slot. 

 

He never got the chance. 

 

The impact was catastrophic. 

 

Comeau came in from Shane’s blind side with far more speed than the drill required and the impact exploded through him before he fully saw it coming. 

 

His shoulder and upper back hit the boards first with a violent crack that echoed through the rink, loud enough to cut through the noise of skates and whistles instantly. The glass rattled hard behind him. His helmet was knocked off and went skidding across the ice as his head snapped backwards against the plexiglass before his body crumpled awkwardly downward under the force of the collision. Pain radiated through his body and his world exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors as his head made contact with the ice once more, this time without a protective barrier. Pain shot down his arm so fast that it barely registered as pain at first. It was more like a sudden electrical heat, sharp and blinding, ripping from his shoulder blade all the way into his wrist. The breath was knocked from his lungs and the cold surface of the ice bit into his skin as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. 

 

“Get up, Hollander,” Comeau jeered, standing over him like a predator. “You thought you could play with the big boys?” 

 

Shane could barely hear the sounds around him over the pounding in his head, but the cruel laughter of his teammates and the sounds of Hayden’s shouting sliced through the fog. Blood continued to flow from his nose and into his mouth, a dark reminder of his truth laid bare for everyone to see. 

 

Shane lay there, and realized with terrifying clarity that the game had changed. The puck wasn’t the target anymore. He was. 

 

He heard Hayden’s frantic voice cutting through the chaos and the sound of skates carving sharply toward him was muffled behind the pounding rush in his ears. He tried to sit up, but the movement sent a wave of nausea through him and a tearing pain across his shoulder that made his vision blur around the edges. 

 

“What the fuck was that?!” Hayden shouted, turning immediately toward Comeau before dropping down to his knees beside Shane. “Shane - hey. Don’t move.” 

 

“I’m fine,” Shane slurred automatically, the words strained and uneven. He was very obviously not fine. 

 

One of the trainers was already climbing over the boards while JJ skated in hard from the opposite side, furious. 

 

“That was not a hockey play,” JJ snapped. “That was bullshit.” 

 

Comeau lifted his hands slightly in mock innocence, breathing hard but completely unbothered. “He turned into it.” 

 

“The fuck he did,” Hayden shot back immediately. 

 

Shane was still dazed and on the ice, trying to force air steadily back into his lungs when the trainer crouched down beside him carefully. “Look at me.” 

 

Shane did, barely. 

 

“Are you dizzy?” 

 

He hesitated too long before answering and that was enough of an answer. Another trainer joined the first on the ice and placed a towel under Shane’s head to keep it from being in direct contact with the ice. They exchanged concerned looks, that Shane didn’t want to try to decipher right now. 

 

“Okay,” the first one said calmly. “Don’t try to stand just yet.” 

 

Across from them, Hayden and JJ were still arguing with Comeau and Couillard while the rest of the team hovered uneasily nearby, nobody willing to fully step into the confrontation, but nobody skating away either. 

 

Coach Theriaut finally blew the whistle again from his position on the bench. 

 

“Stop wasting time!” Coach Theriault snapped, voice echoing across the ice, eyes narrowing on Shane on the ground, his frustration palpable. “We don’t need this circus. Get off my ice if you can’t handle it!” 

 

The cold reality of the coach’s indifference settled over Shane. Hayden just stared at the man in disbelief. “Are you fucking serious right now?!” 

 

Theriault ignored him. 

 

“Okay,” the trainer said quietly. “We need to get you off the ice.” 

 

Shane shook his head immediately, out of instinct. “No, I’m fine.” 

 

“You’re not fine,” Hayden said flatly, as the trainers helped guide him to his feet, hands steady against his back. The moment he got to his feet and straightened up another dizzy wave rolled through him hard enough that he nearly lost his balance. Hayden caught him before he could stumble with a pointed look. 

 

Shane leaned against him automatically, jaw reflexively tightening against the pulse of pain radiating through him, but that only served to bring a fresh wave radiating through his face as he remembered the earlier hit he took. The trainers stayed close on either side as they started to slowly guide him toward the tunnels, skates scraping unevenly across the ice. 

 

Comeau pushed his helmet back slightly, breathing hard from the drill, and he let out a short laugh that carried farther than it should have in the stillness of the rink. 

 

“Careful with him,” he sneered. “Wouldn’t want the princess to trip.” 

 

A couple of players visibly stiffened, but the trainers and Hayden kept moving, clearly trying to get Shane off the ice before the situation escalated further. There was another shrill trill of the whistle and the coach shouting at everyone to resume positions and run the drill again, completely ignoring the state that Shane was in, not an ounce of concern; the absence of it felt louder than Comeau’s voice ever could have. 

 

Hayden looked back over his shoulder toward the ice, fury written plainly across his face as practice resumed behind them. 

The tunnel swallowed them in shadow, the temperature shift immediate and disorienting. Shane's skates caught on the rubber matting and he stumbled, and would have gone down if the trainer on his right - Marcus, he remembered distantly - hadn't tightened his grip.

"Easy, easy," Marcus murmured. "We've got you."

But Shane didn't feel got. He felt like he was floating three feet to the left of his own body, watching himself be half-carried down the corridor while his head pounded in rhythm with his pulse. The fluorescent lights overhead were too bright, each one a spike driven directly into his skull. He closed his eyes against them and immediately regretted it - the world tilted sideways, his stomach lurching. 

“Don’t close your eyes,” the other trainer said sharply. “Keep them open, Shane. Look at me.” 

Shane forced his eyes open, blinking against the assault of light. The trainer’s face swam in and out of focus. 

“Good. That’s good. We’re almost there.” 

The medical office was small and clinical, smelling of antiseptic and the faint rubber scent of athletic tape. They guided him to the examination table and he sat heavily, his left shoulder screaming in protest at the movement. The pain was different from the throbbing in his head - sharper, more localized, radiating down his arm in hot waves that made his fingers tingle. 

Dr. Fournier appeared in the doorway, his expression professionally neutral in a way that somehow felt worse than concern would have. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves with practiced efficiency. 

“Shane,” he said, his tone clipped. “Tell me what happened.” 

Shane opened his mouth but Hayden spoke first, his voice tight with barely controlled rage. “Comeau blindsided him. Full speed into the boards. Shane’s head hit the ice.” 

Dr. Fournier’s eyes flicked to Hayden briefly, then back to Shane. “Is that accurate?” 

Shane needed, then immediately wished he hadn’t. The room spun. 

“Verbal responses only, please,” Dr. Fournier said, pulling a penlight from his pocket. “Follow my finger with your eyes. Don’t move your head.” 

Shane tried to focus on the doctor’s finger as it moved left, then right, then up, then down. Everything had a slight delay to it, like he was watching through water. The light came next, shining directly into each eye, and Shane flinched away from the brightness. 

“Pupils are reactive but slightly sluggish,” Dr. Fournier murmured, more to himself than to Shane. “Any nausa?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Dizziness?”

“Yeah.”

“Headache?”

“Yes.” 

Dr. Fournier set the penlight aside and moved to Shane’s left side. “I’m going to examine your shoulder now. This is going to hurt.” 

It was the only warning Shane got before the doctor’s hands pressed against his shoulder, probing with clinical detachment. The pain was immediate and blinding, a white-hot lance that tore through him. Shane gasped, his right hand instinctively reaching up to push the doctor away. 

“Don’t,” Dr. Fournier said firmly, catching Shane’s wrist. “I need to assess the damage.” 

He continued his examination, fingers pressing into the joint, testing the range of motion. Shane bit down hard on the inside of his cheek - the same spot he’d bitten during practice, now raw and bleeding again - and tasted copper. 

“The shoulders dislocated,” Dr. Fournier said finally, stepping back. “We need to get you to the hospital for imaging. Concussion protocol as well. Marcus, call ahead and let them know we’re coming.” 

Marcus nodded and pulled out his phone, stepping into the hallway. 

Hayden moved closer, his hand hovering near Shane’s good shoulder like he wanted to touch him but wasn’t sure if he should. “How bad is it?” 

Dr. Fournier ignored him, addressing Shane instead. “Can you stand?” 

Shane slid off the table, his legs unsteady beneath him and Hayden caught him like he had out on the ice. The room tilted again as he steadied himself against the edge of the table with his right hand, knuckles white. 

“We’ll take my car,” Dr. Fournier said. “It’ll be faster than waiting for an ambulance.” 

The drive to the hospital was a blur of streetlights and nausea. Shane sat in the back seat with Hayden beside him, his head resting against the cool window. Every bump in the road sent fresh waves of pain through his shoulder and made his head pound even harder. He kept his eyes fixed on the passing buildings, trying to keep focus on something, anything, to keep the world from spinning. 

Hayden’s phone buzzed repeatedly in his pocket but he ignored it, his attention fixed on Shane. 

“Your parents are going to want to know you’re okay, I texted them and let them know you were hurt, while you were being prodded,” he said quietly. 

Shane didn’t answer. To be honest he hadn’t paid any attention to what Hayden had been doing while the doctor was intent on torturing him. He wasn’t sure he could form the words right now, wasn’t sure what he’d say if he could. Nothing about this was okay. 

The hospital emergency entrance was bright and busy, the automatic doors sliding open with a mechanical hiss. A nurse met them with a wheelchair and Shane wanted to protest - he could walk, he wasn’t that bad - but his legs had other ideas. He sank into the chair gratefully, his left arm cradled against his chest. 

They wheeled him past the waiting room, past other patients with their own emergencies, into a private examination room. The walls were pale blue, the kind of color that was probably meant to be calming but just felt cold. A poster about concussion symptoms hung on one wall. Shane stared at it, reading the bullet points: headache, dizziness, nausea, sensitivity to light, difficulty concentrating. 

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. 

A different doctor appeared - Dr. Reeves, according to her name tag - younger than Dr. Fournier, with kind eyes that crinkled at the corners when she introduced herself. She asked him the same questions: what happened, where does it hurt, rate your pain on a scale of one to ten. 

Shane answered mechanically, his voice flat. Eight for the shoulder. Seven for the head. Yes, he felt dizzy. Yes, he felt nauseous. No, he didn’t lose consciousness - at least he thought… he wasn’t entirely sure. 

They took him x-rays first, positioning his shoulder carefully while he gritted his teeth against the pain. Then a CT scan for his head, the machine whirring around him in the dim room while he tried to hold perfectly still. The technician’s voice came through the speaker, distant and tinny: “You’re doing great. Just a few more minutes.” 

Hayden was waiting when they wheeled him back to the examination room, pacing like a caged animal. He stopped when he saw Shane, his expression tight. “Well?” 

“Results will take a bit,” the nurse said, helping Shane back onto the examination table. “Dr. Reeves will be in to discuss them as soon as they’re ready.” 

The waiting was worse than the tests. Shane sat on the examination table, his shoulder throbbing, his head pounding, while Hayden wore a path in the linoleum floor, fingers typing furiously away at his phone. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, each second stretching into eternity. 

Finally, Dr. Reeves returned, a tablet in her hands. She pulled up a stool and sat, her expression professionally sympathetic. 

“Alright, Shane. Let’s talk about what we found.” She swiped through images on the tablet - his shoulder joint, grotesquely displaced; cross-sections of his skull. “You have a Grade 1 concussion. That means you experienced a mild traumatic brain injury. No bleeding, no fractures, which is good news. But you’re going to need to follow strict concussion protocol for the next couple of weeks. No physical activity, limited screen time, plenty of rest.” 

Shane nodded slowly, carefully. He was going to be out of a few games. 

“Your shoulder is dislocated, as Dr. Fournier suspected. We’re going to need to reduce it - put it back in place. I’m going to give you something for the pain first, and then we’ll take care of it. You’ll need to wear a sling for at least two weeks, possibly longer if you aggravate it.” 

She looked up from the tablet, meeting his eyes. “You also have significant bruising to your ribs and lower back. No fractures there either, thankfully, but you’re going to be very sore for a while.” 

“How long until I can play?” Shane asked. His voice sounded strange to his own ears - distant, detached. 

Dr. Reeve’s expression shifted, something almost like pity crossing her features. “With a concussion, we’re looking at a minimum of two weeks before you can even begin light activity. Full contact? Four to six weeks, possibly longer. And that’s only if you follow protocol exactly and your symptoms resolve. If you rush it, if you take another hit to the head before you’re fully healed…” She trailed off, but the implication was clear. 

Four to six weeks. Shane stared at her, the words not quite landing. That would take him through–

“The All-Star Game,” he said numbly. 

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Reeves said, and she sounded like she meant it. “I know that’s not what you want to hear. But your brain needs time to heal. This isn’t something you can push through.”

The press was going to have a field day with this… more than they already were. 

Hayden had stopped pacing. He stood frozen near the door, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. 

A nurse came in with a syringe, and Dr. Reeves explained that they were giving him something for the pain before reducing his shoulder. Shane barely heard her. He felt the pinch of the needle in his arm, felt the medication begin to spread through him, dulling the edges of everything. 

The reduction itself was quick and brutal. Dr. Reeves counted down - three, two, one - and then there was a sickening pop and a wave of pain so intense Shane’s vision whited out. He heard himself make a sound, something between a gasp and a cry, and then it was over. The pain didn’t disappear but it changed, becoming something more manageable. 

They fitted him with a sling, gave him prescriptions for pain medication and anti-inflammatories, printed out pages of instructions for concussion care and shoulder rehabilitation. Dr. Reeves went over everything twice, making sure both Shane and Hayden understood. 

“Someone needs to stay with you for the next 24 hours,” she said. “Wake you every few hours to check on you. If your symptoms worsen - if you start vomiting, if you have trouble staying awake, if your headache gets significantly worse - you come back immediately. Understood?” 

“Understood,” Hayden said when Shane didn’t respond. 

They discharged him with a folder full of paperwork and instructions to follow up with the team doctor in two days. Shane walked out of the hospital in a daze, his left arm immobilized in the sling, his head still pounding despite the medication. The late afternoon sun was too bright, making him squint against the glare. 

Hayden guided him to the car with a hand on his good shoulder, his touch careful, protective. Neither of them spoke during the drive to Shane’s apartment. What was there to say? The evidence was written in medical reports now, documented in x-rays and CT scans. Shane had been hurt badly enough to require the hospital. And when he recovered he would have to go back to the same rink, the same locker room, the same team that had put him there. 

The thought made his stomach turn, though he couldn’t tell if that was the concussion or something else entirely. 

Chapter 4: Radio Silence

Chapter Summary

Ilya's POV

Tampa Bay was a circus. 

 

Ilya had been to enough All-Star Games to know the routine by heart - the manufactured excitement, the skills competitions that meant nothing, the media obligations that felt more like punishment than anything else. Players showed up, smiled for the cameras, went through the motions, played an exhibition tournament, collected their appearance fees, and then went home. Professional theater, every year, and everyone knew their role without being told. 

 

Normally, Iya enjoyed All-Star weekend. He liked the spectacle of it. The cameras. The performances. The carefully manufactured glamor of the league pretending its players were untouchable celebrities instead of exhausted men being traded and broken apart behind the scenes every season. 

 

But this year, the entire thing felt grotesque. 

 

Not because anything was different than any of the other years, but because Shane was supposed to be here after the hell that he had been through recently with the media. Weeks had passed since the article had dropped and the hockey world still had not moved on. Ilya knew that because every time he opened his phone, somebody new was talking about it. Analysts. Reporters. Former players. Fans. Podcast hosts pretending to have nuanced conversations while circling the same invasive questions over and over again. The original article had long since evolved into something bigger and uglier than a single leak. The transcript had escaped containment almost immediately, broken apart into screenshots and clipped quotes that spread across social media and sports coverage like blood in the water. 

 

And throughout all of it, Shane had disappeared. He had started ignoring Ilya in a way that made him feel like Shane thought he was some kind of problem to file away and forget about. 

 

It pissed him off more than he wanted to admit. 

 

Ilya wasn’t the type to chase. If someone didn’t want to talk, fine - he had better things to do than beg for attention from anyone, let alone Shane Hollander. Especially not after the penthouse. He’d thought they were finally on the same page that night, that the thing that had been pulling taut between them for years had possibly snapped into something real. Then Shane panicked and bolted like Ilya had burned him. Disappeared. Showed up a couple weeks later with Rose Landry on his arm and played house until that article had dropped - that recording, that conversation, Shane’s voice laid bare over breakfast tables and in locker rooms from coast to coast. 

 

And then silence. Total silence. 

 

Ilya hadn’t expected Shane to be overly welcoming to his attempts at reaching out. Things hadn’t ended well after their last meeting. And at first he had tried to convince himself that Shane needed time, space. He understood the instinct, even if he didn’t like it - you went dark, you let the storm pass, you waited for the press to find something new to tear apart. Smart. Probably the right move. Shane had always been private to the point of suffocation sometimes, holding pieces of himself so tightly guarded that even small vulnerabilities made him visibly uncomfortable. 

 

But weeks had stretched into a month and Shane’s read receipts had gone off and the calls kept going to voicemail, and at some point the silence had stopped feeling like strategy and started feeling like something worse. Something deliberate. Something aimed specifically at him. 

 

But, Shane and Landry had broken up… Shane had confided in her that he was gay… and somewhere int he back of Ilya’s mind he had felt a flicker of hope in all this darkness. 

 

So yes. He had been looking forward to Tampa Bay. 

 

Now he stood in the hotel lobby with his bag over one shoulder, scanning the crowd of players filtering through the revolving doors - laughing, loose, already half-drunk on the promise of a weekend that didn’t count - and Shane Hollander was not among them. Ilya had checked the roster three times before leaving Boston. Shane’s name had still been on it. 

 

So where the hell was he?

 

Montreal had played in Boston two weeks ago and Ilya had been watching for him then too, expecting to see him in warmups, maybe catch him after the game for five minutes in some quiet hallway somewhere. But Shane hadn’t dressed. Hadn’t even been on the bench. The official line from Montreal’s communications team was family emergency, which could mean anything or nothing, and Ilya filed it away and told himself it made sense - Shane sitting out of a meaningless regular season game while the storm blew over. Sensible. Cautious. Boring. Very Shane. 

 

Except now he wasn’t here either. 

 

Ilya pulled out his phone and opened his messages. The thread with Shane was a graveyard - text after text sitting there delivered, or maybe not even that anymore, since Shane had turned off his read receipts at some point and now Ilya had no idea if any of them were getting through. 

 

Shane.

 

Please answer me.

 

I am worried.

 

He scrolled through the messages, the timestamps stretching back weeks, and felt something tighten in his chest that he didn’t want to examine too closely. 

 

He tried calling. Four rings and then voicemail - Shane’s voice, recorded months ago, lighter than Ilya remembered it being lately. 

 

“This is Shane. Leave a message.” 

 

Ilya hung up without speaking. What was the point…

 

He had only read the article once after it had come out, but the transcript still replayed in his head without permission. Certain lines lodge there harder than others. 

 

…no one would understand.

 

Every time Ilya had thought about that line, anger curled hotter beneath his skin. He would have understood. He could have been there for him. Had Shane not run away that day in Boston, maybe none of this would have happened. He knew that Shane had been scared; hell, he was terrified of this kind of scenario himself… with the politics of Russia in play there was more than just locker room banter and harassment to contend with. He wasn’t discounting how bad the locker room could be, however. 

 

The league’s reaction had proven that almost immediately. The Voyageurs organization had made a statement, something robotic and plain. Some players publicly offered vague support in careful media-trained language, but most stayed silent. The podcasters hid behind jokes or locker room culture commentary that barely disguised the contempt underneath it. Online discussions grew uglier every day, especially once the more explicit portions of the transcript had begun circulating independently from the article itself. 

 

Ilya made the mistake of reading those comments once. 

 

Only once. 

 

The humiliation attached to those quoted lines felt unbearable even secondhand. He couldn’t stop imagining Shane seeing them too. Could not stop imagining him trapped inside Montreal’s locker room while the entire hockey world dissected the most private conversation of his life. 

 

Shane hadn’t been wrong to be afraid. He hadn’t been paranoid. 

 

He had been right. 

 

Shane had always described the culture of the Montreal organization carefully, diplomatically, but Ilya had played against enough of those men over the years to understand the kind of environment that it could become when fear and masculinity and humiliation mixed together unchecked. Ilya had heard things from other players that had been traded from Montreal. He knew that coaches like Theriault were bigoted assholes. He knew players like Gilbert Comeau; men who treated vulnerability like a weakness and a weakness like a contamination. 

 

And Shane was trapped there while the entire league watched. 

 

A fresh wave of dread rolled through him as he absently glanced around the lobby again. 

 

Eventually, he would have to walk through this hotel. 

 

Ilya had imagined the moment over and over again during the flight to Tampa, but none of the versions in his head settled correctly. Part of him wanted to drag Shane somewhere private and refuse to let go until he was certain he was all right. He wanted to whisk him away from Montreal and wrap him up in Boston. Boston’s locker room wasn’t toxic. Boston was a team full of good men… a family that Ilya was proud to call his own. He was overcome with an overwhelming urge to protect Shane that he didn’t want to examine too closely. 

 

He was worried, that was all… worried that Shane had finally reached the edge of what he could carry alone. 

 

The article had not simply outed him. It had taken away control. Privacy. Safety. Every carefully maintained barrier that he knew Shane had spent years constructing around himself had been ripped apart publicly before he was ready. 

 

And then afterwards he’d vanished.

---

The first official event was a media availability session in one of the hotel’s  conference rooms, fluorescent lights and round tables and too many microphones. Ilya went through the motions the way he always did - answered questions about his season, deflected the contract negotiation questions with a practiced smile, posed for photos with whoever stuck a camera in his direction. Standard. His attention kept drifting to the door anyways, some stubborn part of him still waiting for Shane to walk through it. 

 

He never did. 

 

Afterward, Ilya found one of the league officials near the exit, a woman with a clipboard and an earpiece and the hollow eyes of someone who hadn’t slept properly in three days. He kept his voice casual, the way you did when you didn’t want the answer to matter. 

 

“Hollander,” he said. “Montreal. He running late, or–” 

 

She glanced at her clipboard, brow furrowing. “Hollander withdrew from the roster two weeks ago. Injury.” 

 

“What kind of injury?” 

 

“I don’t have those details,” She said, moving past him to the next player. 

 

Two weeks ago. Shane had been injured two weeks ago - right around the time Montreal had played in Boston - and Ilya had heard nothing beyond that vague family emergency line. He stood there for a moment after she walked away, turning that over. Injury could mean anything. A tweaked knee, a sore shoulder, something precautionary. Players sat out all the time. It didn’t have to mean anything. 

 

But it sat wrong and he knew it. 

 

He scanned the room until he found what he was looking for. Gilbert Comeau stood near the far wall, laughing too loud at something another player had said, dressed in the All-Star jersey that Shane should have been wearing. Looking comfortable. Looking like he belonged. 

 

Ilya’s hands curled slowly into fists at his sides. 

 

Comeau. Of all the people to show up in Shane’s place, it was Comeau. -  the same piece of shit who spent half his ice time running his mouth, who thought faggot was just a word you thew around because nobody was going to make you stop. Ilya had wanted to put him through the boards more than once over the years. You couldn’t fight every asshole in the league. There were too many of them and it cost you too much. But seeing him here, easy and grinning, in the spot Shane was supposed to occupy - it made Ilya’s blood go cold in a way that had nothing to do with the arena air conditioning. 

 

Something was wrong. Not possibly wrong. Wrong. 

 

If Shane had just been lying low, managing the fallout, he would still have been here. The All-Star Game was exactly the kind of controlled environment you used to reset a narrative - neutral ice, friendly press, a chance to look unbothered in front of the whole league. You didn’t skip it unless you had no choice. And you especially didn’t skip it and send Comeau in your place, of all people, unless something had gone badly sideways. 

 

Ilya turned and walked out of the conference room before he did something he’d regret. 

The skills competition that evening was a blur. Fastest skater, hardest shot, accuracy drill - Ilya went through all of it, hit his marks, finished first where it mattered. Of course he did. He could do these things in his sleep. But without Hollander there to at least make things interesting, to give him something to aim at, the whole exercise felt hollow in a way that was starting to irritate him. 

 

Afterward, a loose group of players gathered in one of the hotel bars, the kind of low-lit place that encouraged people to talk too much. Ilya found himself at a corner table with a handful of forwards he knew well enough, a beer in front of him that he wasn’t drinking, half-listening to a conversation he didn’t care about. 

 

“--heard Hollander’s going to be out for a while,” someone was saying. 

 

His attention sharpened immediately. 

 

It was Derrick Williams, a winger out of Dallas, leaning back in his chair with the relaxed confidence of someone who had never once been burdened by discretion. “Concussion, I think. Maybe worse than that, actually.” 

 

“Where’d you hear that?” the player across from him asked. 

 

Williams shrugged one shoulder. “Friend of a friend inside Montreal’s organization. Said it happened at practice.” 

 

Ilya set his beer down. “At practice?” 

 

Williams glanced his way, nodding.”Yeah. Nasty hit, from what I heard. Not the kind of thing that happens by accident.” 

 

The table went quiet. Even Williams seemed to understand he’d said something that landed differently than casual locker room gossip. 

 

Ilya kept his voice low. “What does that mean, not by accident.” 

 

Williams hesitated, actually hesitated, which for him was unusual. “Means someone on his own team put him in the hospital,” he said, quieter now. “And Theriault didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.” 

 

Nobody filled the silence that followed. 

 

Ilya didn’t say anything else. He excused himself not long after, went back up to his room, sat on the edge of the bed with his phone in his hands and called Shane again. Voicemail. He sent a text. 

 

I know something happened. Call me back.

 

The message was delivered. No response. 

 

He put his phone face-down on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling for a long time, going over what he knew, what he could prove, what the pieces added up to when you laid them next to each other. Shane was hurt. Badly enough to miss the All-Star Game. At practice, not in a game, which meant it happened on his own ice, with his own team’s equipment, under his own coach’s watch. And Theriault had done nothing. 

 

Ilya had known coaches like Theriault before. The kind who looked at a problem player and decided the easiest solution was to make the player go away.

---

The next day was the actual game. Ilya played his shifts, set up a goal in the second, and scored one himself in the third. The crowd went up each time. His teammates tapped his helmet and slapped his shin pads and everything looked exactly like it was supposed to look. It felt like nothing. 

Between the second and third periods, he found Marcus Wynn sitting alone near the far end of the dressing area - a veteran defenseman out of Carolina, the kind of guy who’d been in the league long enough to know where every body was buried. 

“Hollander,” Ilya said, keeping his voice low, positioning himself so no one else could hear. 

Wynn’s expression shifted in a way that told Ilya everything before he even opened his mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard some things.” 

“How bad?” 

Wynn exhaled slowly through his nose. “Bad. Concussion, dislocated shoulder, bruised ribs. Kid got worked over properly.” 

“By his own team.” 

It wasn’t a question. Wynn nodded anyway, slowly, like he was still deciding how much to say. “Theriault’s either letting it happen or actively looking away,” he said. “Word is management wants him gone but can’t find a clean way to move him without the whole thing blowing back on them. So instead they’re just making it unbearable and waiting to see what he does.” 

Ilya’s jaw tightened. He thought about the lobby the day before, Comeau in that jersey, grinning like he’d won something.

“Bastards,” he spat. 

“Yeah,” Wynn agreed, without any heat, just the flat acknowledgement of someone who had been in this league long enough to stop being surprised by it. 

The third period started before Ilya could say anything else. He skated through it and scored his goal and smiled for the cameras afterward and answered every question he was asked, and then went back to his hotel room and sat on the edge of the bed with his phone in his hands and opened the message thread again. 

All those texts from him, stretching back weeks… and nothing coming back. 

He typed slowly. 

Boston plays in Montreal next week. You better be there. We need to talk. 

He stared down at his for a second, then hit send before he could think himself out of it. 

Delivered. 

He set the phone down and leaned back against the headboard and looked at the ceiling. Tampa Bay was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a chance to get some kind of answer, to understand what had happened, to at least be in the same room as Shane for five minutes and figure out where they stood.

Instead he had rumors and secondhand information and the image of Comeau’s smug face burned somewhere behind his eyes. 

When the Bears went to Montreal, Shane had better be there. Because Ilya was done waiting.

---

The Bears’ charter landed in Montreal at nine in the morning, grey sky, wet tarmac, the particular kind of cold that got into your collar regardless of what you were wearing. 

Ilya had barely slept on the flight. He’d spent most of it with his head against the window and his phone in his hand, alternating between checking for messages that hadn’t come and trying to talk himself out of the tightness that had been sitting in his chest since Tampa. By the time the wheels touched down his jaw ached from clenching and he’d decided, at some point over the dark expanse of St. Lawrence, that he was done being reasonable about this. 

They reached the hotel downtown before ten. There was an optional morning skate at noon, but nothing to do until then, which gave Ilya two hours to change and sit in his room and do nothing, which he had approximately zero intention of doing. He unpacked the suit he’d need for the game, hung it up, and looked at his phone. 

10:47. 

It buzzed. 

He almost dropped it. 

You still want to talk?

Shane. Finally. After weeks of silence, four words and a question mark, like he was the one who got to decide whether this conversation happened. 

Ilya typed back before he’d even finished reading it.

Yes.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then: 

My apartment. 11:30. I’ll send you the address. 

Ilya stared at the screen for a moment. Shane’s apartment. In all the years they’d been doing this - what this was, whatever you called the thing they’d been orbiting without naming - they had always met on neutral ground. Hotels, Shane’s sex condo, the occasional bar in a city neither of them lived in. Safe. Deniable. The kind of thing that could be explained away by coincidence if it ever needed to be. Then he’d invited Shane to his penthouse, and that had gone spectacularly… But, Shane had never invited him somewhere that was actually his. 

The address came through. 

Ilya grabbed his jacket and left without responding.

---

The building was in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, on a quiet tree-lined street that still had patches of old snow packed against the curbs. Red brick, wrought-iron balconies, the kind of place that had probably been expensive for decades without ever looking like it was trying. Ilya found the entrance and sent a text.

I’m here. 

A long pause. Then the door buzzed open. 

He took the stairs two at a time, not because he was in a hurry - or maybe because he was, but he wasn’t going to examine that - and by the time he reached the top floor he had to make a conscious effort to slow down, to breathe, to stop himself from looking like he’d been going quietly out of his mind for the past few months. He knocked. 

The door opened, and Ilya stopped. 

Shane stood there in a faded Voyageurs t-shirt and sweatpants, his left arm strapped into a sling against his chest. His hair was longer than Ilya remembered, unstyled, and falling across his forehead like he hadn’t bothered with it in weeks. There was a bruise along his jaw - barely there, the sick yellow-green of something in the final stages of healing - but unmistakable once you knew where to look. He was holding himself carefully, the way you did when moving wrong would cost you. 

He looked terrible. He also looked, in spite of everything, like something Ilya had been trying not to think about for months, and that wasn’t a particularly useful thing to notice right now. 

“Close the door,” Shane said quietly. 

The apartment was smaller, clean, lived-in - hardwood floors, a navy couch, a kitchen visible through an open archway. A half-drunk mug of tea sat on the coffee table next to a folded blanket, and there was something about the smallness of that detail - the tea, the blanket, the particular stillness of someone who had been stuck inside for weeks with nowhere to be - that sat uncomfortably in Ilya’s chest. The place felt less like somewhere Shane lived and more like somewhere he’d been waiting. 

“You look like hell,” Ilya said. 

Shane’s mouth tugged sideways, not quite a smile. “Yeah… I’ve been told.” He moved toward the couch with the careful deliberateness of someone who had learned, over the past few weeks, exactly which movements cost him and exactly how much. He sat down slowly, shifting his weight onto his right side, and looked up at Ilya still standing near the door. “Are you going to sit, or are you just here to loom?” 

Ilya didn’t move. “Tell me what happened.” 

Something shifted in Shane’s expression. He looked away, down at the coffee table, at the mug. “You were asking around in Tampa. Wynn told me…” 

“I know what Wynn said. I want to hear it from you.” 

A pause. Shane’s right hand moved to rest on his thigh, fingers pressing flat against the fabric, and he was quiet for long enough that Ilya thought he was going to refuse - that the door was going to close again, the way it had been closing for months. Then Shane exhaled, long and slow, like something releasing. 

“It was practice,” he said. “Roughly three weeks ago.” His voice came out carefully at first, measured, the tone of someone choosing what to let through and what to keep back. “Comeau caught me on a breakout drill first. Late pass that wasn’t a pass - it was a shot, straight into my knee. He skated away like he hadn’t even noticed.” He paused. “Theriault didn’t stop practice.” 

Ilya said nothing. He crossed the room slowly and sat at the other end of the couch, close enough that he could see the tension in Shane’s jaw, the particular way he was holding himself together. 

“Then Couillard hit me in a corner battle.” Something changed in Shane’s voice as he kept going - the measured quality began to fray at the edges, not into anger but into something rawer than that, something that had been pressed down for three weeks under medication and isolation and Pike’s careful steadiness and had not, apparently, been fully dissolved. “Left his feet. Full speed, elbow first, into the jaw. My head hit the ice twice. Once with the helmet and once without, because the helmet came off on the way down.” he stopped. “I couldn’t–” He stopped again, jaw working. “I couldn’t get up right away. The room was spinning. I could taste blood. And I remember looking up at the lights, and Couillard was standing over me, and he said–” A short exhale through his nose, sharp and humorless. “Doesn’t matter what he said.” 

“It matters,” Ilya said quietly. 

Shane looked at him. There was something in his eyes that Ilya hadn’t seen there before - not quite embarrassment, not quite grief, something in between, something that came from having been hurt in a way you couldn’t hit back from. “He said that’s where I belonged. On my back.” A pause. “Comeau thought it was funny.” 

The cold thing in Ilya’s chest hardened into something specific and very focused. 

“And Theriault.” 

“Blew his whistle and told me to get off his ice.” Shane said it flatly, like a fact he’d already made peace with, but his right hand had curled slowly into a fist against his thigh. “He didn’t pull them. Didn’t say a word to either of them. Just - kept running the drill.” He was quiet for a moment. “Hayden got me off the ice. Dr. Fournier drove me to the hospital.” 

“And the shoulder?” 

Shane’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Comeau. He came in from my blind side and put me into the boards. Full speed. Glass rattled.” His voice went quieter. “The shoulder dislocated on impact. I didn’t actually realize that’s what had happened until the hospital.” 

Ilya looked at him steadily. “Concussion. Dislocated shoulder. Bruised ribs.” 

“And some cracked cartilage in the knee from the first hit, yeah.” A pause. “Four to six weeks, they said. I’m on week three.” 

“Your coach watched this happen.” 

“My coach organized the drills,” Shane said simply, and that was somehow worse than anything else he’d said, the flatness of it, the absence of surprise in his voice. He’d had three weeks to make peace with what that meant. “He can’t cut me without the league asking questions. So,” he lifted his right shoulder in a careful half-shrug. “This was the next best option.” 

The silence that followed was heavy and specific. Ilya sat with it for a moment, looking at Shane - at the sling, the bruise, the shadows under his eyes, the mug of tea on the coffee table like a small domestic flag of a person trying to take care of themselves in the absence of anyone making them. 

“Why did you not call me,” he said. 

Shane’s eyes came up to his face, and there it was - the thing Ilya had been watching for, the thing that had been behind all the deflection and the careful clinical recounting. Something raw and exhausted, underneath it, frightened. Not of Ilya. Frightened of what Ilya being here meant. 

“And say what.” His voice came out quieter than it had been, the defensive edge gone. “I panicked and ran out of your place months ago, and then I got outed to the entire league and Comeau put me in the hospital, and you want to know what I was supposed to say to you?” 

“Yes.” 

“I didn’t want you here,” Shane said, and then caught himself, and something moved across his face. “That’s not–” He stopped. Pressed his lips together. Started again. “I didn’t want you dragged into this. There’s a difference.” He looked away, toward the window, the grey afternoon light coming through the glass and making everything in the room look faded. “You know what they’d do with it. If someone saw you here, if it got out that you and I were - that we’d been–” He stopped. “You’d be the next story. And then there’s Russia… you’ve got everything to lose and I’ve got nothing left to protect, and I just–” He exhaled. “I couldn’t do that to you. I’m not going to do that to you.” 

Ilya looked at him for a long moment. The genuine fear underneath the words. The particular way Shane said I couldn’t do that to you, like there was a you that mattered to him beyond the abstract, like this was a feeling he’d sat with and turned over and arrived at a conclusion about, sometime in the last two months, alone in this apartment with his tea and his blanket and his cracked cartilage. 

“That is not your decision,” Ilya said. “You do not get to decide what is too much risk for me.” 

“Well, I decided it anyway.” The words came out with a tired finality, but Shane’s jaw was tight, and he still wasn’t looking at him, the set of his shoulders had gone rigid in the particular way it did when he was working hard at something. 

“You should have said something,” Ilya said, quieter now. “Weeks ago. You should have told me.” 

“Why?” Shane’s voice cracked slightly on the word - not dramatically, just at the edge of it, in the way voices did when something had been held too tightly for too long. “So you could come here and sit in my apartment and make it harder to—” he stopped himself, jaw working. 

“Harder to what,” Ilya said, very carefully. 

Shane finally looked at him. Directly at him, for the first time since Ilya had walked through the door, and what was in his face in that unguarded moment was enough that Ilya had to work to keep his own expression still. Not the careful blankness Shane usually wore when he was protecting himself. Something else. Something that looked a great deal like the thing Ilya had been carrying around since the penthouse,the thing he hadn’t known what to do with and still didn’t. 

“What would you have done, exactly?” Shane said, softly. “Flown to Montreal? Put Comeau through a wall?” 

“Yes,” Ilya said.

Shane’s mouth did the almost-smile again and this time it was sadder than before. “That’s not–that would’ve made everything worse, and you know it.” 

“Better than you sitting here alone,” Ilya held his gaze. “Better than you deciding for both of us.”

“I wasn’t completely alone.” A pause. Something in his voice softened. “Hayden’s been here. He’s had my back through all of it.” The corner of his mouth moved, something that was almost fond. “And my parents. My mom especially. She’s been - a lot.” He let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. “She’s been on the phone with a lawyer basically since the day it happened. She wants to sue the Voyageurs, sue Theriault personally, file a complaint with the league - she has a list. An actual list.” 

“Your mother sounds like reasonable women,” Ilya said. 

That got a real response - something that was almost a laugh, brief and reluctant, but real. “She’s - yeah. She means well. She’s furious on my behalf and I love her for it, but–” The almost-laugh faded. He looked down at his hand on his thigh, and was quiet for a moment. “I asked her to hold off. For now.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I don’t know what comes next.” Shane said it carefully, the way he said things he’d been turning over alone for a long time. “If I go public with what happened - the deliberate hits, Theriault, all of it - it becomes a league-wide story on top of the rest of the spectacle. And maybe that’s the right move eventually. Maybe she gets to make her calls and send her letters and I let her, eventually.” He paused. “But right now I don’t know if I’m going to be traded, or bought out, or what the next six months even look like. And I can’t - I don’t want to blow everything up before I know what I’m standing on. Does that make sense?” 

“Da.” Ilya said. “But it does not make it right.” 

Shane looked at him. “I know.” Quiet. Tired. “I know it’s not right. I’m just - I’m trying to survive it first. Figure out the rest after.” His expression flattened back into something more familiar. “The team wants me gone. Management, coaching staff, half the roster. They can’t waiver me without the league asking why and facing a lot of backlash, so they’re waiting for what I don’t know.” He lifted one shoulder. “Maybe they hope I’ll quit.” 

“You are not going to quit.”

It wasn’t a question. Shane knew that too. The corner of his mouth moved. “No. I’m not.” 

They looked at each other for a moment across the cushion between them. Ilya was aware of how close he was sitting, and of the specific effort he was making not to reach over and touch him - Shane’s arm, his shoulder, anything that wasn’t a fist on his thigh. 

“You have not been sleeping,” Ilya said. 

“Not well, no.” 

“Eating?” 

A pause. “I eat.” 

“That is not answer.” 

The corner of Shane’s mouth tugged again, and this time it was genuine - brief and reluctant, but real. “I eat enough. Hayden’s been bringing food. His wife keeps sending things over.” Something flickered across his face at that, something warm underneath the exhaustion, and then it was gone. “I’m fine, Ilya. I’m not - I’m managing.” 

“You are not fine.” 

“I know.” Simple. Quiet. The first thing Shane had said without any armor on it at all. He looked down at his hand, still fisted loosely against his thigh, and slowly uncurled his fingers. “I know I’m not fine. I just–” A breath. “I’ve been trying to be. There is a difference.” 

Ilya didn't say anything. He just sat there and let that land, and after a moment Shane looked up at him with an expression that was too open and too tired to be anything other than honest.

"Why are you here," Shane said. Not the sharp defensive version of that question, not a challenge. Just the actual question, underneath everything else. Why did you come. Why does it matter this much to you.

Ilya held his gaze. “You know why.” 

Shane looked away first. His jaw was tight again, and Ilya could see the effort it was taking — the deliberate putting-back-together of the walls he'd let down for thirty seconds. "You should go," he said quietly. "You have morning skate."

“I am not done.” 

"Ilya." Something in his voice when he said the name — the faint plea in it, the exhaustion. "Please. Go play your game. Come back after, if you want, and we'll — we'll actually talk. But right now I need you to go, because if you stay here much longer I'm going to say something I can't take back and I don't—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I'm not ready. Not yet. Not like this." He gestured vaguely at the sling, the apartment, himself, all of it.

Ilya stood. He looked down at Shane for a long moment — the exhaustion in his face, the careful way he was holding himself together, the mug of tea going cold on the table. He wanted to say something that would cut through all of it. The words wouldn't come.

"We will talk," Ilya said finally. Not a question. Not a concession.

"Yeah." Shane met his eyes, and the thing in his expression was still there, still raw and unburied. "We will."

Ilya nodded once, and turned toward the door.

“Ilya.” 

He stopped, his hand on the knob. 

"Thank you," Shane said, behind him. Low and quiet, like it cost him something. "For coming. I know I didn't — I know I made it hard." A pause. "Thank you anyway."

Ilya stood there for a moment with his hand on the doorknob and his heartbeat too loud in his ears.

“Do not thank me yet,” he said. 

He left before Shane could respond, pulling the door shut behind him. The hallway was cool and very still. Ilya stood there without moving for a moment, the way you stood in the aftermath of something that had shifted the ground under you without warning.

Shane had called him Ilya. Three times. Not Rozanov — not the easy distance of a surname, the professional remove they'd both used for years to make all of this deniable. Just Ilya, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like he hadn't thought about it, like the habit of keeping distance had finally just — worn through.

And then: I'm going to say something I can't take back. Said like a warning. Said like a door left an inch open.

Ilya let go of the doorknob and walked toward the stairs.

He had a game to play. He would play it. And then he was coming back.

Chapter 5: Make It Count

Chapter Summary

Ilya's POV

Morning skate was sharp. 

 

That was the only word for it. LeClaire ran them through their systems with the focused efficiency of a coach who had watched his team sleepwalk through the last road trip and had no intention of letting that carry into any more divisional games. Lines were crisp. Transitions were quick. Nobody was going through the motions. 

 

Ilya was not going through the motions. 

 

He was operating on about three hours of sleep and the particular kind of energy that came from having something to aim at, and it showed on the ice in a way that a few of his teammates clearly noticed. He was faster than he needed to be in a morning skate. Harder on the puck. When Carmichael drifted on a two-on-one drill, Ilya corrected him with a sharpness that made the winger’s eyebrows go up. 

 

“Okay,” Carmichael said. “We’re doing that kind of morning, I guess.” 

 

Nobody pushed back. They just matched the energy and got on with it. 

 

Afterward, in the visitors’ locker room - a smaller, blander space than Boston’s, the kind of functional indignity road teams were expected to accept without complaint - Ilya sat at his stall with a towel over his shoulders and his phone face-down on the bench beside him. The room was loud with the usual post-skate noise. Dubek and Feller were arguing about something. Connors had his headphones in. Hammersmith was doing the crossword on his phone, which he did before every game without exception, and would deny if asked. 

 

Cliff Marlow dropped onto the bench beside him with the easy familiarity of someone who had been sharing locker rooms with Ilya for years and had long since stopped asking permission before entering his personal space. He was already out of his gear, a towel around his neck, and he sat there for a moment without saying anything, which was unusual enough for Cliff that Ilya looked at him. 

 

“What?” 

 

“Nothing.” Cliff leaned back against the stall partition, arms crossed, studying the middle distance with the expression he wore when he was choosing his words. He was a big man - six-three, broad across the shoulders, the kind of defenseman who moved like a freight train and had a face that looked like it had absorbed its fair share of elbows over the years. He was also, inconveniently, one of the more perceptive people Ilya had ever shared a locker room with. “Morning skate was interesting.” 

 

“Morning skate was fine.” 

 

“Morning skate was you looking like you wanted to put someone through a way for ninety minutes,” Cliff said pleasantly. “Which would be fine, Roz, except we’ve got a game tonight and LeClaire would prefer you save it.” 

 

Ilya said nothing. He picked up his phone, looked at it without seeing it, put it back down. 

 

Cliff watched him do this. “You went somewhere this morning.” 

 

It wasn’t a question. Ilya glanced at him. 

 

“Before skate,” Cliff said. “You were gone for a couple hours. Victor saw you leave the hotel.” He paused. “Victor also noticed you’ve been about thirty percent more likely to take someone’s head off since that article dropped. About Hollander.” 

 

Ilya was quiet for a moment. Across the room, Dubek and Feller’s argument had escalated to the point where Connors had taken out one headphone to monitor developments. Nobody was paying attention to the far end of the bench. 

 

“Is not Victor’s business,” Ilya said. 

 

“Victor minds everyone’s business, that’s why we love him.” Cliff’s voice stayed easy, unhurried. “I’m not asking you to explain anything, Roz. I’m just telling you that some of us have eyes.” He paused. “And that whatever it is - whoever it is - it doesn’t change anything in here. You understand what I’m saying?” 

 

Ilya looked at him directly for the first time since he’d sat down. Cliff met his gaze with the same steady, uncomplicated expression he always wore - no judgment in it, no discomfort, nothing that required anything from Ilya in return. Just a statement of fact, offered and then left alone. 

 

“I understand,” Ilya said. 

 

Cliff nodded once, like that was settled. “Good.” He stretched his legs out in front of him, cracking his ankles. “So. You want to tell me what we’re doing tonight, or do I have to guess?” 

 

Ilya’s jaw shifted. He looked out at the rest of the room - at Carmichael retaping his stick, at St-Simon scrolling through his phone with his feet up, at Miranov and Sebbin reviewing something on a tablet in the corner. His team. Years of road trips and line rushes and wins and losses and the particular intimacy that came from spending more time with these men than with anyone else in his life. 

 

“Comeau and Couillard,” Ilya said, quietly enough that it stayed between them. “They are on Montreal’s roster tonight.” 

 

Cliff was still for a moment. Then: “Those the two that put Hollander in the hospital?” 

 

“Yes.” 

 

Cliff nodded slowly. Something in his expression settled into something more focused, a shift Ilya recognized - it was the same thing that happened to Cliff’s face before a game he’d decided to take personally. “Okay,” he said. “And what does that mean for tonight?” 

 

“It means we make it a long game for them,” Ilya said. “Every shift. Every zone. We do not let them breathe.” He paused. “Nothing that costs us. Nothing stupid. We play our game - we just make sure we are last thing they see before the whistle, yes?” 

 

Cliff considered this for approximately two seconds. “I can work with that.” He pushed himself up off the bench, rolling his shoulders. “I’ll have a word with Hammersmith and Miranov… and Feller - Feller’s been looking for a reason to be unpleasant to someone all road trip, this’ll make his night.” 

 

He said it entirely without heat, the calm logistics of a man organizing a task. Then he glanced back at Ilya, and for just a moment something else moved through his expression - something quieter, more personal. 

 

“Jane,” Cliff said. “He okay?” Just that. No elaboration. 

 

Ilya held his gaze and took a breath. Damn Marlow for being so perceptive. “Not yet,” he said at last. “But soon, yes.” 

 

Cliff nodded, like that was the right answer, and walked away to find Hammersmith.

---

LeClaire’s pre-game speech was tight and focused, the way it always was on the road against a divisional opponent. He went through their systems, the Montreal power play, the tendencies of their top line, the importance of limiting turnovers in the neutral zone. Standard. Ilya listened, absorbed it, filed it alongside the separate thing he was carrying into this game that had nothing to do with LeClaire’s whiteboard. 

 

When LeClaire was done, he looked around the room in the particular way he did before games he sensed required something beyond tactical. 

 

“This is a hostile building tonight,” he said. “Their crowd is going to be loud and they’re going to want a statement game after the month they’ve had. I don’t want us rattled. I want us focused and I want us physical.” His eyes moved through the room, landing briefly on Ilya. “Play our game. Make them play ours. That’s it.” 

 

He left them to it. 

 

The room settled into the familiar pre-game rhythm - music, the scratch of tape, the quiet rituals players performed and never discussed. Ilya sat with it for a moment, his eyes closed, the noise washing over him. 

 

He thought about Shane’s apartment. The tea going cold on the coffee table. The way Shane had said I’m going to say something I can’t take back like a door left an inch open. 

 

He thought about Couillard standing over him on the ice. That’s where you belong.

 

He opened his eyes. 

“Let us fuck Montreal tonight,” he said, to no one in particular and to all of them. 

---

The Bell Centre was loud. 

 

Even before puck drop, the building had the particular charged atmosphere of a crowd that had been carrying something heavy for weeks and had decided tonight was the night to put it down. They were loud for their team in the way crowds were loud when they were defending something, and the energy of it hit Ilya the moment the Bears came out of the tunnel for warmups - a wall of noise that was equal parts fervent support and the specific hostility reserved for visitors who had the audacity to show up in the middle of someone else’s crisis. 

 

Ilya had played in hostile buildings before. He had played in buildings that hated him. Montreal hated him genuinely, personally, by name, with the kind of creative dedication that only hockey crowds could sustain. It had never bothered him. He had always found it clarifying. 

 

Tonight it was clarifying in a different way. 

 

He went through his warmup routine without looking at the Montreal bench. He didn’t need to look. He knew who was over there. He kept his movements deliberate, unhurried, his expression neutral - the same face he wore in every building, the one that gave nothing away and was specifically designed to look like he was having a better time than anyone else in the arena. 

 

Across the ice, he was aware, at some point, of Comeau watching him. He’d expected it. The man had tried to socialize with Ilya at the All-Stars game, he probably bought into the whole rivalry schtick that the league had been pushing between him and Shane for all those years… like the majority of the hockey world did. He probably thought Ilya to be a kindred spirit in his hatred of Montreal’s captain. Ilya had ignored him then, like he would ignore him now. 

 

He took a shot on Sebbin - who was covering for a line change - and skated back to the circle, and let Comeau look. 

 

The puck dropped at seven-oh-two. 

 

By the end of the first period, Montreal knew something was different. 

 

It wasn’t anything you could call on. That was the point. The Bears were playing their game - technically sound, positionally disciplined, exactly what LeClaire asked for. But there was a weight to every contact that hadn’t been there in previous games, a willingness to finish every single check that went slightly beyond the usual competitive standard. Couillard got rubbed out along the boards in the first three minutes by Hammersmith, hard enough that the glass shook, entirely legal. Comeau found Miranov in his space every time he touched the puck in the neutral zone, a step too close and a second too long, the kind of persistent physical presence that wore on you by the third period even if no single moment was worth a penalty. 

 

The Montreal crowd didn’t like it. That was fine. 

 

Ilya was everywhere. He was in on the forecheck before the defenceman had settled the puck, he was on the half-wall with enough pressure that the outlet pass kept going to the wrong places, he was winning battles along the boards that he had no business winning based on positioning alone and was doing it though sheer refusal to yield an inch. He wasn’t playing angry - anger was imprecise, and imprecision cost you - but he was playing with cold, focused intensity that his linemates matched by the second shift without being asked. 

 

Carmichael scored at eleven forty-seven off the first, off a turnover that Ilya had forced in the Montreal zone. He didn’t celebrate extravagantly. He tapped Carmichale’s shin pads and went back to the bench, and looked at the ice with the particular flat expression that his teammates knew meant he wasn’t done yet. 

 

The second period was when it got interesting. 

 

Comeau, to his credit or his stupidity, was not the type to absorb punishment quietly. By the midpoint of the second he had started retaliating - a lite hit here, a cross-check buried in a scrum there, the small dirty work of a player trying to reassert himself without drawing a referee’s attention. His target of choice was Carmichael, which was a miscalculation, because Carmichael had three inches and thirty pounds on him and the confrontational instincts of someone who had grown up the youngest of four brothers in a household that resolved disagreements physically. 

 

The first time Comeau ran him, Carmichael got up and said something that made two nearby linesmen look over. 

 

The second time, Feller got there before Carmichael could respond, and the two of them had a conversation with Comeau in the corner that lasted approximately four seconds and ended with Comeau considerably less comfortable than he had been at the start of it. No penalties. Barely any contact, technically. Feller was good at that. 

 

Ilya watched from the bench with his arms resting on the boards. 

 

“Feller’s having a good night,” Cliff said, settling beside him. 

 

“Yes,” Ilya agreed. 

 

He went out on his next shift and found Couillard. 

 

Not immediately - he let the shift develop naturally, let the play move through the neutral zone, took his position in the offensive zone and worked the cycle the way he was supposed to. And then the puck went behind the net and Couillard came in to pressure, and Ilya turned into the contact instead of away from it. He absorbed it and held his ground and drove Couillard back two full steps into the boards, reversing the pressure with a leverage and force that was entirely within the rules and left Couillard looking, briefly, startled. 

 

Ilya looked at him then. Directly at him, for the first time all night. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He just held the look for exactly long enough, then turned and moved the puck to St-Simon cutting to the slow. 

 

St-Simon scored. His second of the season. 

 

The Bears’ bench went up. Ilya gave St-Simon a single firm tap on the back of the helmet and skated back for the faceoff, and did not look at Couillard again. 

 

The third period belonged to Boston. 

 

Montreal pushed - they had to, down two, home ice, a crowd that was getting increasingly vocal about its displeasure - and the Bears absorbed it the way LeClaire had built them to absorb pressure, disciplined and connected, no one trying to do too much individually. Ilya killed a penalty with Cliff, the two of them working the PK with the shorthand of players who had done it enough times that communication had become mostly instinctive - a glance, a shift of weight, a decision made and executed before it was spoken. 

 

With six minutes left, Comeau took a run at Miranov behind the play. 

 

The referee caught it. Two minutes, charging. Comeau went to the box looking furious, which Ilya found satisfying in the specific, quiet way of someone watching a thing resolve itself without his involvement. 

 

They scored on the power play. Ilya got the primary assist, a backhand feed to Carmichael in the slot that went in off the post. 3-0. The game was over, really - had been since the second period, if Ilya was honest - but they played the remaining six minutes the way LeClaire wanted them played, which was completely, without mercy, all the way to the final buzzer. 

 

The handshake line moved quickly, the way it always did after a game that had carried some heat to it - efficient, civil on the surface, the mutual acknowledgement of men who would be back in each other’s way again in three weeks. Ilya moved through it without incident, the usual words, the usual eye contact or deliberate lack thereof. 

 

When he reached Couillard, he stopped for just a fraction longer than the handshake required. Long enough for Couillard to know it was intentional. Then he moved on without a word. 

 

When he reached Comeau, he didn’t stop at all. 

 

He let the line carry him past and kept his face completely neutral, and felt Comeau’s eyes on his back as he skated away. That, more than the goals or the hits or any of the rest of it, felt like the right note to end on. 

---

The locker room afterward was good. Not loud - the Bears didn’t celebrate wins against divisional opponents like it was a party, LeClaire had trained that out of them - but warm, with the particular satisfied ease of a room that had done the job it set out to do. Carmichael was recounting his second-period altercation with Comeau to anyone who would listen, embellishing freely. Feller looked pleased with himself in the way he always did after games he’d played with an edge. Dubek had scored the third and was quietly glowing about it in the corner. 

 

Ilya sat at his stall and let the noise wash over him, already halfway somewhere else in his head. 

 

Cliff sat down beside him again, as he had before the game. He was a water bottle in one hand and the same unhurried expression he always wore in the aftermath of a win, like he was prepared to sit there all night if that’s what was required. 

 

“Good game,” Cliff said.

 

“Yes.” 

 

“Couillard and Comeau are going to be sore tomorrow.”

 

“Good,” Ilya said simply. 

 

Cliff was quiet for a moment. Around them the room moved - showers running, music up now that the game was done, the easy velocity of men in their element. “You going somewhere after?” Cliff asked. Neutral. Uninflected. The kind of question that wasn’t really asking about logistics. 

 

Ilya looked at him. “Yes.” 

 

Cliff nodded slowly. He took a drink from his water bottle, set it down. “Tell him–” He stopped, seemed to reconsider, then settled on: “Tell him that the team played well tonight.” 

 

It was not, technically, what he meant. They both knew that. Ilya held his gaze for a moment, and felt something loosen in his chest that he hadn’t realized was still tight. 

 

“I will tell him,” Ilya said. 

 

Cliff got up and went to find his gear, and didn’t look back, and that was the end of it. 

 

Ilya sat for another moment, alone at his stall, the noise of the room around him. Then he picked up his phone. 

 

He opened his messages with Shane and typed two words. 

 

We won.

 

He stared at it for a second, then added: 

 

I’m coming. 

 

He hit send, got up, and went to shower. He had somewhere to be. 

The arena exit closest to the visiting team’s lot was supposed to be staff only. 

 

Ilya had used it a dozen times over the years without incident - it let out into a narrow service corridor that ran alongside the loading dock, far enough from the main concourse that the post-game crowd had usually thinned by the time you reached the street. Efficient. Private. The kind of exit you learned about when you’d been in the league long enough to understand that the main doors were never actually about convenience. 

 

Tonight, someone had tipped someone off. 

 

There were two of them - a man with a recorder and a woman with a camera on her shoulder, both with the alert, slightly predatory posture of reporters who had been waiting long enough to be cold and were not going to waste the opportunity. They positioned themselves at the mouth of the corridor with the specific expertise of people who knew exactly how far they could stand from a restricted area without being removed. 

 

Ilya saw them before they saw him. He kept walking anyway. Stopping would have been worse. 

 

“Rozanov!” The man stepped forward, recorder extended. “Daniel Mercer, North American Hockey Report. Can I get a couple of minutes?” 

 

Mercer. Ilya recognized the name a half-second after he heard it - the byline on the original article The one that had printed the transcript. 

 

He stopped walking. 

 

It was probably not the smartest decision he ever made. He was aware of that even as he turned to face the man, was aware of the specific calculus of post-game media - say something, it’s a headline; say nothing, it’s also a headline - and found, standing in a service corridor outside the Bell Centre with his bag over his shoulder and Shane’s apartment fifteen minutes away, that he did not particularly care. 

 

“You have question,” Ilya said. “Ask it.” 

 

Mercer didn’t need a second invitation. “Tonight’s game - Boston came in looking very physical, very targeted. Some people watching would say it felt personal. Was that a message to Montreal?” 

 

“We played our game,” Ilya said. “Montreal made it easy.” 

 

“And you’d attribute that to–” 

 

“They are nothing without Hollander.” He said it simply, without heat, the way you stated a fact that didn’t require emphasis to be understood. “He is their best player. He is their captain. He is the reason that team has been competitive for years and everyone in that building tonight knows it. Without him, they are a team that Boston beats by three goals.” He paused. “Which is what happened.” 

 

Mercer’s expression sharpened with the particular focus of a reporter who had gotten more than he expected. “Speaking of Hollander - you’ve obviously seen the article. The recording. Given your history as rivals, how does his - situation - change things for you going forward?” 

 

Ilya looked at him steadily. The camera was on him. The recorder was on him. He was aware, somewhere in the back of his mind, of the exact way this moment could go wrong, the various versions of this conversation that ended somewhere he didn’t want to be. 

 

He also thought about Shane sitting alone in his apartment for three weeks. Shane, who had not chosen any of this. Who had not chosen the recording, or the transcript, or the timing, or of the headline, or any of the thousand things that had been stripped from him without his permission. 

 

No one would understand.

 

“My history with Hollander,” Ilya said, “has nothing to do with his situation.” His voice came out flat and precise, each word placed carefully. “What I think about is this - that article took something from him and it was not yours to take. Every person should decide when and how and who they say something private to. That was, umm, stolen from him.” He held Mercer’s gaze. “You ask how I feel about that? Angry. I feel angry it happened. I feel angry it was you who printed it.” Another pause. “That is how I feel.” 

 

Mercer blinked. To his credit, he recovered quickly. “Do you have any comment on the league’s response–” 

 

“No,” Ilya said. “I have no more comments.” 

 

He walked past them and out into the cold Montreal night, and did not look back.

---

Le Plateau-Mont-Royal was quiet at this hour. 

 

Ilya took a taxi rather than the team bus - he’d told Cliff he was going, which meant LeClaire would be told he’d gone ahead, which was the kind of communication that happened in the subtext of a functional team without anyone having to make a formal announcement. The city moved past the windows in streaks of amber and white, the streets narrowing as they left the arena district and moved into the older neighborhoods, the brick and iron of the residential blocks softening the edges of the night. 

 

He had his phone in his hand. 

 

Shane had replied to his texts. Two words, which for Shane, in the current state of things, felt like a volume. 

 

I know.

 

And then, a few minutes later:

 

I watched. 

 

Ilya stared at that second message for the rest of the ride. 

 

The building looked the same as it had that morning - same red brick, same wrought-iron, same patch of old snow against the curb. Ilya had been here eight hours ago and it felt like longer than that, the way days sometimes expanded around the things that mattered most in them. He texted from the entrance. 

 

I’m here. 

 

The door buzzed open immediately this time. No pause. 

 

He took the stairs at a normal pace. He had been in a hurry this morning and it had done nothing except make his heart pound harder at the top. Tonight he walked up slowly, one hand trailing the railing, and let himself think about what he was going to say - or more accurately, let himself stop pretending he didn’t know what he needed to say and had needed to say for considerably longer than tonight. He was done pretending. 

 

He knocked. 

 

The door opened before he’d finished. 

 

Shane was still in the same sweatpants, a different t-shirt - this one plain grey, no logo. The sling was still there. The bruise had faded another degree since this morning, that specific yellow-green now barely visible in the warm light spilling from the apartment behind him. He looked like someone who had spent the evening on the couch watching hockey and had been listening for a knock on the door for the last hour. 

 

He stepped back to let Ilya in without saying anything. 

 

The apartment was warmer than it had been this morning, lamplight instead of daylight, the television still on with the volume muted - the post-game coverage, Ilya registered, the talking heads dissecting a game they had just watched in real time. He caught glimpses of his own number on the screen before Shane reached over with his good arm and turned it off. 

 

“You talked to a reporter,” Shane said. His voice was careful. Neutral in the way that meant it was costing him something. 

 

“Yes.” 

 

“Outside the arena.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Shane looked at him. Something complicated was moving through his expression, something that hadn’t resolved itself into a single feeling yet. “YOu didn’t have to do that.” 

 

“I know.” 

 

“Ilya–” 

 

“He was the one,” Ilya said. “On the article. Mercer. He was outside… waiting.” He set his bag down by the door and straightened up, meeting Shane’s eyes. “I did not plan it… I am not sorry for it.” 

 

Shane looked at him for a long moment. Then he turned away and moved toward the couch, and Ilya followed, and they sat - the same configuration as this morning, the same cushion of space between them, except that the light was different now and something else was different too, something that had shifted in the hours between then and now that Ilya could feel but hadn’t named yet. 

 

“The game,” Shane said, after a moment. He was looking at the blank screen of the television. “You were - it was–” He stopped. Started again. “Hammersmith hit Couillard into the boards in the first minute and I actually said something out loud to an empty room.” 

 

“What did you say?” 

 

Something moved across Shane’s face that was not quite a smile and not quite not. “Something impolite.” 

 

“Good,” Ilya said. 

 

The silence that followed was different from the silences earlier in the day. Those had been full of things being held back. This one felt more like two people standing on either side of a door that was already open, trying to decide who was going to walk through it first. 

 

Ilya had been thinking about it for fifteen minutes in a taxi. He had been thinking about it, if he was being honest with himself - genuinely honest, which was harder than he usually allowed - for considerably longer than that. 

 

“I need to say something,” he said. 

 

Shane turned to look at him. His expression had gone careful again - not closed, just careful, the particular stillness of someone who was already listening very hard. 

 

“This morning,” Ilya said, “I told you I was here because I cared. You told me I shouldn’t.” He paused, organizing the words, which in English required more deliberate effort than it would have in Russian. “I have been thinking about this on the way here. About why I said it. About why it is true.” He looked at Shane directly. “It is not just because I care what happens to you. It is–” He stopped. Pushed through it. “It is because I have cared about what happens to you for a long time. Longer than I told myself I did. Longer than was convenient or smart or–” A pause. “There has been something between u s since before the penthouse. Since before any of it. And I have been–” He let out a breath through his nose. “I have been pretending this whole time that it was just - that it was not serious.” He held Shane’s gaze. “It was never just that. Not for me.” 

 

The apartment was very quiet. 

 

Shane was looking at him with an expression that Ilya had seen pieces of before - at the penthouse, in various arenas over the years, in the fraction of a second before Shane’s face did the thing where it closed back down - but never all at once, never without the closing-down following immediately after. He looked like something that had been braced for a long time and had just been allowed to stop. 

 

“I know it is complicated,” Ilya said. “I know - Russia, the laws there, if anyone found out–” He stopped, the familiar cold edge of that particular fear moving through him the way it always did when he let himself think about it clearly. “It is not a small thing. I am not pretending it is a small thing. But–” He paused. “I had a conversation today with someone I trust, and I thought about it for the whole game, and I–” He shook his head slightly. “I am tired of pretending. With you. In here.” He touched his chest briefly, unselfconsciously. “I am tired of calling it nothing when it is not nothing.” 

 

Shane was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that Ilya’s chest tightened with the specific discomfort of having said the true thing and having to wait to find out what it cost him. 

 

Then Shane said, quietly: “I know.” 

 

Ilya looked at him. 

 

“I know it’s not nothing.” Shane’s voice came out low and a little rough, the way it did when he was saying something he’d been carrying for a long time. “I’ve known for - I don’t know how long. A while.” He looked down at his hand, the one that wasn’t in the sling, resting open on his thigh now instead of fisted. “The penthouse - when I left, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to be there. You know that, right? It was because I wanted to be there too much and I didn’t know what to do with that and I panicked.” He exhaled. “I’ve been - I’ve spent a long time being very good at not knowing what to do with it and just - filing it away. Telling myself it was easier not to think about it.” A pause. “It stopped being easier somewhere along the way and I kept doing it anyway.” 

 

“Yes,” ILya said. “I know this feeling.” 

 

Shane looked at him, and there it was - that unguarded thing, fully present now, no armor over it. “I don’t know what this looks like,” he said. “I want to be honest with you about that. I don’t know what my future looks like right now - whether I’m still a Voyageur in three months, or in the Western Conference, or whether I’m anywhere. I can’t–” he stopped. “I can’t make promises about something when I don’t know what ground I’m standing on.” 

 

“I am not asking for promises,” Ilya said. “I am asking you to stop pretending it is nothing. That is all. We figure out the rest.” 

 

Shane looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, slowly, and something in his face settled into a quieter kind of openness, the kind that came after you’d stopped fighting something. 

 

“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. Okay.” 

 

ILya let out a breath he hadn’t entirely realized he was holding. 

 

They sat with that for a moment - the weight of it, the relief of it, the complicated tangle of what it meant practically that neither of them was quite ready to pull apart tonight. Ilya wanted nothing more than to gather Shane into his arms and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe anything but Ilya in, but his eyes drifted to Shane’s sling, the careful way he was holding himself, and the television dark and silent against the wall. 

 

“I have idea,” Ilya said. 

 

Shane’s expression shifted into something wary. “Why do I feel like I’m not going to like this?” 

 

“You will like it… eventually,” Ilya said with confidence. “Maybe not immediately.” 

 

“That’s not reassuring, Ilya.” 

 

“Request a trade,” Ilya said. “Come to Boston.” 

 

The wariness in Shane’s expression deepened considerably. “Ilya–” 

 

“Listen to me.” Ilya turned toward him slightly, elbows on his knees, the way he sat when he was serious about something. “You said yourself - management wants you gone. Theriault wants you gone. Half the roster is making it unbearable on purpose. You are not going to quit, you said this, I believe you. But you are also not going to sit in this apartment and let them keep doing this until you have no choice.” He held Shane’s gaze. “Boston’s front office - they are not Montreal. LeClaire is not Theriault. And the team–” He paused. “Shane. What you watched tonight - that was not just hockey. You understand that, yes?” 

 

Shane was quiet, his jaw slightly tight, something working behind his eyes. 

 

“The team knows,” Ilya said, carefully. “Not everything. But enough. Marlow - he talked to me today… He asked if Jane  was all right… if I was seeing him tonight. Before the game. He told me it does not change anything. That I have their support whatever it is.” He paused. “There was no judgment. No - nothing ugly. Just–” He searched for the word. “Solidarity? They played the way they played tonight because they are good men who understand what was done to you was wrong. That is what Boston would be. Not perfect. Not easy. But - safe. Safer, I think.” 

 

Shane was looking at him with an expression that was hard to read, something layered in it that Ilya thought was hope and was afraid to be. 

 

“You want me to ask to be traded… to your team,” Shane said slowly. 

 

“I want you to ask your agent to make contact with Boston front office, yes.” Ilya kept his voice even. “I want you to stop waiting for Montreal to decide your future and decide it yourself. And I want–” He stopped. “I want you in a locker room where people will have your back. Where what happened in Montreal cannot happen.” A pause. “Where I do not have to worry about you the way I have been worrying about you. Never again.” 

 

The apartment was quiet.

 

Shane let out a long, slow breath. “If I request a trade, it becomes a story. Everything I do right now becomes a story.” 

 

“Everything is already a story,” Ilya said. “At least this one you are choosing.” 

 

“Boston might not even want me, I come with a lot of heat… a lot of baggage.” 

 

Ilya gave him a look that was, he felt, fairly eloquent in its are you serious? “Boston wants to win. I think… I think they would give up half the roster to get you. You are second-best player in the league, remember?”  

 

Shane’s mouth tugged sideways despite himself. “Okay. Fair.” The almost-smile faded back into something more complicated. “I’d have to think about it. Talk to my agent. Talk to my parents - my mother is going to lose her mind, she’s been a Montreal fan since she was a girl… but she’s wanted me out of there since the day this happened, so that part with be–” He stopped, something shifting in his face. “It’s not a small thing, Ilya. Even if everything you’re saying is right.” 

 

“I know it is not small,” Ilya said. “I am not asking you to decide tonight. I am asking you to think about it. To not rule it out because you are trying to be - what is the word–” 

 

“Sensible?” 

 

“Stubborn,” Ilya said. “I was going to say stubborn.” 

 

That got a real response - a brief, genuine exhale of a laugh, quiet and tired and more itself than anything Shane had managed all evening. It changed his whole face for a moment, the way it always did, the way Ilya had noticed approximately three hundred times and never said out loud. 

 

“Okay,” Shane said. “I’ll think about it.” He looked at Ilya, and the something in his expression had shifted again - softer now, the earlier layered complexity resolving into something quieter and more direct. “For what it’s worth - what you said. To that reporter.” He paused. “Thank you.” 

 

“I meant it,” Ilya said. “All of it.” 

 

Shane held his gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded, and looked away toward the window, and Ilya could see the particular quality of his profile in the lamplight - the jaw, the bruise, the careful set of his shoulders that had been carrying too much for too long - and felt the thing in his chest that he had just finished pretending wasn’t there settle into something that felt very much like a decision already made. 

 

“It’s late,” Shane said, quietly. Not you should go. Just an observation. 

 

“Yes,” Ilya agreed, and did not move. 

 

Shane looked back at him. Something passed between them that didn’t need words. Then Shane shifted carefully, adjusting the sling, and leaned back against the arm of the couch with the deliberate movement of someone settling in rather than ending things. 

 

“Tell me something that isn’t about any of this,” Shane said. “Just - something else. Anything.” 

 

Ilya thought about it for a moment.

 

“Hammersmith does the crossword before every game,” He said “On his phone. He thinks nobody knows.” 

 

Shane’s mouth curved. “Does he finish it?” 

 

“Never,” Ilya said. “He gets stuck on the same kind of clue every time. The cultural ones. He does not know very much about films.” 

 

“That’s very sad.” 

 

“He is very good defenseman,” Ilya said. “He cannot have everything.” 

 

Shane laughed - a real one this time, small and quiet, nothing performed about it. It sat in the warm, lamplit air of the apartment and faded slowly, and the silence that followed it was the most comfortable one they’d managed all day. 

 

Outside, the city was quiet. Inside, neither of them moved. 

 

For tonight, that was enough. 

Chapter 6: The Choice Was Always His

Chapter Summary

Ilya's POV

Ilya’s father had died at the beginning of March. 

 

It was not unexpected and when the call came it was early on a Tuesday morning, and Ilya sat with it for a while before he told anyone. 

 

He and his father had not been particularly close, he loved him, but not in the same way he’d loved his mother. That was the plainest way to put it and the truest, and Ilya had made his peace with that over many years, the specific grief of a relationship that had never been what it should have been and was now finished without resolution. There was loss in it, he did not pretend there wasn’t. But there was also, underneath the loss, something that felt uncomfortably like the release of a tension he hadn’t fully realized he’d been carrying. 

 

His father had been the reason Russia still felt like an obligation. Not the country itself, which he carried in his accent and his habits and the particular way he thought in Russian when he was tired. But his father - his father had been the weight that kept Russian feeling like something he owed rather than something he chose, and now that weight was gone. 

 

He flew back for the funeral. He stayed for a week. He fought with his brother and gave him his apartment, and then he came back to Boston.

---

The Stanley Cup playoffs began in April, and the Bears drew Montreal in the first round. 

 

Ilya had known it was coming. The bracket had been set up for two weeks before the puck dropped in Game 1, and he had spent most of those weeks fielding questions from reporters who thought they were asking something subtle. How does it feel, facing your biggest rival? Will the regular season result factor into your mindset? Is there anything personal about this series for you?

 

He gave them nothing. He smiled the smile he had perfected over his years in the league - wide enough to satisfy, empty enough to reveal nothing - and said the things you said. Respect for the opponent. One game at a time. The playoffs are a different animal. 

 

Then he went back to his hotel room and called Shane. 

 

They had been doing that since March. Calling, texting, the occasional video call when schedules aligned, which was less often than either of them would have chosen. It wasn’t what Ilya would have called straightforward - nothing about their relationship had ever been straightforward, and they had both accepted that with the pragmatic resignation of two people who understood the complications and had decided to navigate them anyway. But it was something. It was, increasingly, the thing he looked forward to most at the end of a long day, which was information he kept mostly to himself. 

 

Shane was not playing in the playoffs. The team doctors had signed off on it, but when the question of returning had come up, both his physician and his agent had agreed that there was no medical justification for rushing back for a team that had spent four months making his life unbearable. Shane had not fought their recommendation. Ilya suspected that was the clearest possible signal of how badly things had gotten - Shane Hollander, who had played through things that would have kept most men on a trainer’s table for weeks, agreeing without argument that he was not going to suit up for Montreal’s playoff run. 

 

Montreal, as it turned out, did not have much of a playoff run to suit up for. 

 

They lost in their first round. 

 

To Boston. 

 

In four games. 

 

Ilya was not going to pretend he didn’t find that satisfying. He found it deeply, specifically satisfying, in a way that he did not share with the media but also did not particularly work to suppress. The Bears played their game - controlled, physical, relentless - and Montreal, without their captain and without the organizational cohesion that a captain provided, did not have an answer for any of it. Game 1 went to overtime and Boston won it on a Carmichael goal that Ilya set up from behind the net. Games 2, 3, and r were progressively less close. 

 

Shane watched every game. 

 

Ilya knew because the texts came in within minutes of every final buzzer - precise and pointed, the observations of someone who had been watching closely enough to have specific opinions about specific shifts. After Game 3 he sent: Feller’s have a season. After the sweep clincher: Couillard looked terrified every time you were on the ice. 

 

Good, he typed back. 

 

The divisional finals against New York went six games and then a seventh, and the seventh was the kind of game the would be talked about for years afterwards - back and forth, two lead changes, a period of overtime that seemed to go on longer than it had any right to before Scott Hunter, of all people, deflected a point shot past Boston’s goaltender with eleven minutes gone and ended it. 

 

Scott Hunter and New York went on to beat Colorado for the Cup. 

 

Ilya and Shane watched him lift the thing above his head, from Shane’s apartment in Montreal, and watched the way his face changed when the weight of it settled into his hands, and Ilya felt something complicated move through him - the grief of their loss, and beneath it, in spite of itself, something that was almost glad. Scott Hunter had been in the league longer than he and Shane had been and he’d never won the Cup, not once… he and Shane had each won in previous seasons (twice for Shane, but who was counting) and now Hunter was there with them. 

 

Hunter had earned it. Ilya could admit that, at least, with the particular grace of someone who respected the game enough to be honest about it when he was outplayed. The man as ancient by hockey standards - a dinosaur, genuinely, and Ilya reserved the right to call him that until the end of time - but he could still play, and tonight he had proven it, and the Cup was where it belonged even if Ilya would have preferred it to be somewhere else. 

 

“Next year,” Shane said to him. 

 

“Next year,” Ilya agreed. 

 

What happened next, Ilya had not been anticipating - though in retrospect he would come to feel that he should have seen it coming. The coverage of New York’s win showed the Cup being passed around, the players half-drunk off of the adrenaline and fully magnificent in the way championship teams were at the end of long seasons, and Hunter extended his hand toward the crowd - no, not the crowd, to someone coming down the stairs, someone climbing over the boards and following Hunter onto the ice, a man who was laughing and slightly unsteady on the icy surface - and then Hunter kissed him. 

 

Not briefly. Not ambiguously. The kind of kiss that was a statement, made in front of several million people and not a single remaining concern about the consequences. 

 

The broadcast went quiet for approximately three seconds. Then the noise from the crowd came through the speakers in a wave - cheering, Ilya registered, actual sustained cheering, and the camera stayed on them because the camera operator was either very brave or hadn’t gotten the memo that this was supposed to be complicated. 

 

Beside him on the couch, Shane had gone very still. 

 

Ilya watched the screen. Hunter had his arms around the man now, and was grinning at the camera with the unassailable confidence of a man who had just won the Stanley Cup and had therefore, perhaps, definitively recalibrated his sense of what he had left to lose. 

 

“The dinosaur?” Ilya said, after a moment. 

 

Shane made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Shut up.” 

 

“Old man,” Ilya continued. “He is ancient!” 

 

“Ilya.” 

 

“I am just saying!” 

 

Shane was quiet. On the screen, the broadcast had cut to a studio panel visibly recalibrating in real time - the careful professional scramble of people deciding how to frame something that had not been in the rundown. “They’re going to lose their minds,” Shane said quietly. “The league. The press.” 

 

“Some of them,” Ilya said. 

 

“A lot of them.” 

 

“And the others,” Ilya said, “are going to be fine.” 

 

Shane looked at him. Something in his expression working through something - the old familiar processing, the calculation of risk and consequences of what things meant, except that it looked different than it used to. Less like a door closing. More like a man standing at a window, looking at a view he hadn’t let himself look at directly before.

---

The trade was finalized in July. 

 

It had not been clean or fast or, in the end, particularly fair to Shane - but his agent was good at her job, and Shane’s mother was involved in the negotiations in a capacity that went considerably beyond moral support. Ilya suspected this because several of the specific terms had the fingerprints of a woman who had been building a case since January, and had been told to hold off by her son for months, and was not willing to let go of the opportunity now that it had finally arrived without extracting every single thing she could reasonably extract. 

 

The Voyageurs received a first-round pick, three rookies to clear cap space, and the public cover of framing the whole thing as a mutual restructuring - two parties going in different directions after a disappointing season. Boston agreed to absorb sixty percent of Shane’s contract immediately, with Montreal continuing to pay out forty percent of it, to give Boston a chance to clear up more cap space if Shane chooses to resign after five years. 

 

Montreal, in exchange, also agreed to quietly reassign Comeau and Couillard to their ECHL affiliate. No announcement. No fanfare. They simply ceased to appear on the active roster one week, and when reporters eventually noticed and asked, Montreal’s communications team cited performance reviews and organizational direction, and nobody pushed particularly hard because there was already more than enough happening in that organization to write about. 

 

Theriault was fired. Publicly, it was a restructuring - the organization moving in a new direction following a season that had failed to meet expectations. Privately, Ilya had heard enough through back channels to understand that the league had been made quietly aware of certain specifics, and that the conversation between the commissioner’s office and Montreal’s ownership had been direct enough to accelerate the timeline considerably, especially now that the NHL was trying to embrace their diverse players after Hunter’s display and the public support that it got. Unlike Shane’s humiliating outing, Hunter’s had made it out of sports media and to the general public, and social media was going wild. 

 

Hayden Pike was named the new captain of the Montreal Voyageurs the same week. 

 

Shane sent Ilya the photo - Pike in the dressing room, the C freshly stitched onto his jersey, looking like a man who had been handed something heavy and intended to carry it properly. Ilya looked at it for a moment, thinking about the practice rink in January, about Hayden hauling Shane off the ice and planting himself between Shane and the rest of that team with his gloves clenched in his fists. Shane had opened up more about what had happened that day, and for that Ilya was thankful. 

 

Good, Ilya replied back. 

 

Yeah, Shane replied. And then, after a pause: He’s going to be good for them. 

 

Yes, Ilya agreed. And you are going to be good for us.

 

Shane did not respond to that one for several minutes. Then: Working on it. 

 

The NDA was the part that sat uneasily with both of them. Shane had signed it because the alternative was a legal battle that would have consumed the next two years of his life and his career, and because the practical terms of the trade were favorable enough that his agent had advised taking it. He didn’t talk about it much. Ilya didn’t push. Some things you accepted because the alternative cost more than you could spend, and you found a way to make peace with that over time. The important thing - the only thing, really - was that Shane was out of Montreal. 

---

He reported to Boston’s training camp in September. 

 

Ilya had been there for that, had watched him walk into the practice facility with his bag over his shoulder and the careful composure of someone who had learned, over a very difficult year, exactly how to enter a room without showing how much it cost him. What happened next was not careful at all - Carmichael had spotted him from across the locker room and announced his arrival to the entire team with the volume and enthusiasm of someone who had been specifically told not to make a big deal of it and had interpreted that instruction creatively. Cliff had crossed the room and shaken his hand with the quiet deliberateness of a man communicating something that didn’t need to be said out loud. St-Simon had introduced himself in French, which made Shane’s whole face change as he excitedly responded in French, talking as if they were old friends catching up - leaving the rest of the room to look around feeling left out of the loop. 

 

Ilya had waited until the noise died down. Then he had walked over, unhurried, and stood in front of Shane in the middle of the locker room with twenty of their teammates going about their business around them - and if Marlow shot him a knowing look, he ignored it - and he had said: “Welcome to Boston, Hollander.” 

 

Shane had looked at him, and there was something in his face in that moment - relief, and something warmer than relief, and underneath both of those things the particular expression of someone who had arrived somewhere they had not let themselves believe they would get to. 

 

“Thanks,” Shane said. Quiet. Real. 

 

“Do not thank me yet,” Illya said. “Carmichael is going to be insufferable.” 

 

Shane laughed - the real one, unguarded, entirely itself - when Carmichael shouted a ‘Fuck you, Roz!’ and the rest of the locker room joined in.

 

He thought about the day the trade had been announced to the team. 

 

LeClaire had called the team together right before they went into the off season - which was unusual enough on its own that the room had gone quiet before he’d even said anything - and told them, with the particular economical delivery he used for information he knew would not require elaboration, that Shane Hollander had been traded to Boston and would be joining them for the training camp in September. 

 

The room had been silent for approximately one second. 

 

Then Carmichael had made a sound that was not quite a word - something between a shout and a noise of pure involuntary delight - and stood up from his stall like he’d been pulled upright by a string. “Shane Hollander,” he said, to no one in particular and all of them. “The Shane Hollander?!” 

 

“There is only one,” St-Simon confirmed, already grinning. 

 

“Holy shit,” Carmichael announced, apparently to the ceiling. “Holy shit - the power play alone–” 

 

“Carmichael,” LeClaire said. 

 

“Sorry, Coach.” He sat back down. Then immediately stood back up. “But the power play–” 

 

“Carmichael.” 

 

He sat down again, visibly vibrating. 

 

Dubek had turned to Feller with the expression of a man doing quiet arithmetic. “He’s won two Cups,” he said, in a tone of genuine reverence. “He’s only twenty-five.” 

 

“We know how old he is,” Feller said. 

 

“Two Cups,” Dubek repeated. “At twenty-five.” 

 

Hammersmith, who had not looked up from his phone during any of this, said: “His shot percentage last season was absurd, and he was out for the end of it.” A pause. “Also his faceoff numbers…” 

 

“Nobody asked you to do research,” Connors said. 

 

“I didn’t do research, it’s common knowledge,” Hammersmith said, still not looking up. “I know things.” 

 

Miranov had simply nodded slowly, the way he did when something confirmed a view he had already held for some time. “Good,” he said. “He is very good.” 

 

“He is extremely good,” St-Simon agreed. 

 

“We are going to win the Cup again!” Carmichael said, with the conviction of a man receiving a prophecy. “This is it! This is our year! With both Hollander and Roz! LeClarire, I’m telling you–” 

 

“Carmichael,” LeClaire said, for the third time, with the patience of a man who had coached professional athletes for twenty years and had long since made his peace with the fact that they were essentially no better than overgrown children. 

 

Carmichael sat down and he remained sitting for the whole ten minutes that LeClaire spent going through the post-season breakdown. He did, however, keep muttering variations of Shane Hollander under his breath at intervals, like he was still processing it.  

 

Marlow had found Ilya afterward, in the corridor outside the locker room, and fallen into step beside him with the unhurried ease he always had. They had walked for a moment without speaking when he finally, simply, said “Good,” in the way he said things that mattered. 

 

“Yes,” Ilya had agreed. 

 

Neither of them had needed to say anything else. 

 

Ilya smiled to himself at the memory, watching as Carmichael was now dramatically demonstrating something to Shane across the locker room with with hands - a shot, probably, replayed for an audience of one - and Shane tolerating it with the particular patient expression of someone who was already figuring out how this person worked and filing it away for future reference. 

 

He was going to fit here. 

 

He already did. 

---

The season began in October. 

 

Media day had the chaotic energy it always did - cameras everywhere, profile pieces, optimistic predictions, the careful navigation of questions about last year’s playoff run and what it meant for this one. Ilya moved through it with the practiced ease of someone who had been doing this for six years and knew exactly how much to give and exactly where to stop. 

 

He was in the middle of a question about his contract extension - two years, signed in the summer, keeping him in Boston for the foreseeable future - when a reporter asked him about Scott Hunter. 

 

“Hunter came out publicly after the Cup win and Shane Hollander is now your teammate,” she said. “There’s been a lot of conversation about what that means for the league going forward. What’s your take?” 

 

Ilya considered the question. He was aware of the camera. He was aware of the recorder. He was aware, in the way he had become increasingly aware, of the specific weight of what he said in rooms like this one and what it was worth. 

 

He thought about Marlow, in a locker room in Montreal back in March, saying it doesn’t change anything with the uncomplicated steadiness of a man who simply meant it. 

 

He thought about Shane, in the blue light of his living room in June, saying okay to himself like a door being unlocked from the inside. 

 

He thought about his father, and Russia, and the weight of things you carried when you believed you had no choice, and the way that weight changed when you understood the choice had been yours all along. 

 

“Hunter is dinosaur,” Ilya said, and let the room laugh, because the room always laughed at the Hunter jokes and some things were reliable. “Still playing, still winning things, annoying.” He paused. “But what he did - choosing to do it on his own terms, when he was ready, when he wanted - I think it was brave. I think it was right. I think we need more men like Hunter and Hollander, brave men. I think the league is better for it.” He held the reporter’s gaze. “That is my take.” 

 

She looked like she wanted to follow up. Ilya gave her a smile - the wide, carefully empty one that said that his answer was finished - and moved on. 

 

Later, at his stall, after the media had cleared out and the room had settled back into the comfortable noise of a team at the start of something, Cliff sat down beside him and was quiet for a moment in the particular way that meant he had something to say and was deciding how.

 

“Good answer,” he said finally. 

 

“It was honest,” Ilya said. 

 

“Yeah.” A pause. “Is there going to be a lot of honesty coming, Roz?” 

 

Ilya looked at him. Marlow was looking at the middle distance the way he did, the unhurried expression, nothing in it that demanded a response. 

 

“Yes,” Ilya said. 

 

He nodded - the single, satisfied nod - cracked his knuckles, and went to find his gear. 

 

Ilya sat for a moment in the warm noise of the room that had become his. Across the locker room, Shane was getting chirped by Carmichael about something - shot selection in a preseason game, and from what Ilya could hear, Carmichael apparently having opinions - and Shane was laughing, the real laugh, the unguarded one that changed his whole face and made his freckles on his nose crinkle in a way that drove Ilya wild. Ilya had seen that laugh in enough different contexts now that he knew exactly what it looked like and it was always going to be the best version of Shane’s face every single time without ever becoming less true. 

 

Ilya loved him. 

 

It landed with the quiet certainty of something that had always been true and had simply been waiting for him to stop arguing with it. Not a revelation - more like a door he had been leaning against for years finally opening, and finding that the room on the other side was exactly what he had known it would be and had been too afraid to walk into. He loved Shane Hollander. He had probably loved him for longer than he was willing to calculate honestly. He had called it rivalry and then fun and then complicated and then something, working  his way toward the word through every softer synonym he could find, and here it was anyway, sitting in his chest in the warm noise of a Boston locker room like it had never been anything else. 

 

He smiled to himself and then looked away before Shane could catch him. 

 

Ilya was twenty-five years old. He had won the Stanley Cup once in his career so far and Shane had won it twice. He had a penthouse in Boston and Shane had his cottage in Canada. He had a team that had his back in the way that actually mattered. His relationship with Shane was still finding its shape but was, increasingly, the thing that made everything else feel like it had solid ground underneath it. 

 

His father was gone. Russia was behind him. The choice, it turned out, had always been his. 

 

He had a season to play. He intended to play it.

 

And this season, he and Shane were going to win the Cup.  

Chapter 7: Still Standing

Chapter Summary

Shane's POV

The playoffs started without him. 

 

That was the strangest part, in the end - not the trade negotiations, not the NDA, not even the particular humiliation of having his departure from Montreal framed as a mutual restructuring by the same organization that had spent four months trying to break him. All of that had been anticipated in one form or another, processed and filed away in the careful methodical way Shane had learned to process things that hurt too much to look at directly. What he hadn’t anticipated was the specific feeling of sitting on his couch in Montreal in April, healthy enough to play and not playing, watching the brackets fill in on the television while his phone buzzed with messages from his agent and his mother and Hayden, and feeling - for the first time in longer than he could remember - something that was almost like relief. 

 

He hadn’t wanted to go back into that locker room. He hadn’t wanted to pull on that jersey again. His doctors had given him the medical cover to avoid both of those things, and his agent had made sure that cover was ironclad, and Shane had accepted it with a gratitude he didn’t examine too closely because examining it too closely would have required admitting how close to the edge he had actually gotten. 

 

So the playoffs started without him, and the Bears drew Montreal in the first round, and Shane had watched. 

 

He watched all four games. 

 

He had expected it to be harder than it was - watching his former team lose, watching players he had shared a locker room with for years, who he’d attended the weddings of, whose children he’d held, skate in the wrong direction on his television screen. He had braced for the ambivalence, the complicated grief of caring about men who had not, in the end, cared enough about him. But when the puck dropped on Game 1 and he saw Ilya on the ice in Boston’s colors and Montreal’s defensive zone collapsing around him, what Shane felt wasn’t complicated at all. 

 

He felt satisfied. 

 

The organizational rot went deep enough that Shane found he could not separate the institution from the individuals the way he might have wanted to. The players who had stayed silent while Comeau and Couillard went to work - who had looked away, who had skated back to position while Shane was on the ice - had made their choice as clearly as Theriault had made his. He had made his peace with that over three months of enforced stillness and unwanted clarity, and what was left on the other side of that peace was not warmth. 

 

Hayden was the exception. Hayden was always the exception. 

 

Shane had texted him before Game 1, which had felt necessary in the specific way that things felt necessary when you had been through something with someone that language didn’t quite cover. Good luck, he had written, which was not entirely what he meant but was close enough. Hayden had replied: Not sure I want it tonight. And Shane had understood completely, because Hayden was acting as Montreal’s captain while he was out and he was also Shane’s best friend, and those two facts were in direct conflict with each other for the duration of this series, and neither of them was going to pretend otherwise. 

 

He watched Ilya set up Carmichael’s overtime goal in Game 1 from the couch with his feet up and a beer going warm on the table beside him and felt the complicated knot in his chest loosen one more degree. After Game 3 he texted Ilya: Feller’s having a season. After the sweep: Couillard looked terrified every time you were on the ice. 

 

Ilya replied: Good. 

 

Shane looked at that word for a moment, sitting in the quiet of his apartment, and felt the corner of his mouth pull upward. 

 

Good, he agreed.

---

He and Ilya had watched the New York Admirals win the Cup together, after New York had knocked Boston out in the divisional finals, from his Montreal apartment. The television was on and the window open, and they sat with the particular easy quiet of two people who had gotten comfortable with each other’s silences without quite discussing when that had happened. Shane had been to Boston three times since March, which was more than the situation strictly required and fewer times than he would have chosen if the situation had been different. 

 

They were watching the Cup celebration for a team that had beaten Ilya’s and Ilya had wanted to watch. Shane found these days that he had a difficult time wanting things that Ilya didn’t want, which was information he kept carefully in his own head and hadn’t done anything with yet. 

 

The coverage cut to the ice, the players celebrating, the Cup making its rounds, and then Hunter was at the boards with his hand extended toward someone - not a fan, Shane registered, someone coming over the boards, someone who was laughing unsteady on the ice - and then Hunter kissed him. 

 

Shane stopped breathing for a moment. 

 

Not from surprise, exactly. Or not only from surprise. Something else happened in that moment, something that moved through him from the outside in, starting in his chest and radiating outward until it reached the tips of his fingers where they were resting on his knee. He watched the camera stay on them - watched the crowd noise come through the speakers, the actual cheering, sustained and real - and felt something crack open in him that had been sealed shut for a very long time. 

 

He had been outed. That was the word for what had happened to him, the plain accurate word that he had spent months circling without landing on because landing on it required accepting everything that came with it - the loss of control, the violation of it, the way the choice had been made for him before he’d been ready to make it himself. He had built his whole life around the careful management of what other people knew and when they knew it, and that had been taken from him in a single article, and what he had been left with was the exposure without the agency. The identity without the choice. 

 

Hunter had chosen.

 

Shane watched him grinning at the camera - his boyfriend under his arm, the whole world watching - and felt the distance between that and his own experience like a physical thing. Hunter had stood in a moment of maximum visibility and decided that this was the time, this was how, this was who he was going to be in front of everyone, and the crowd had cheered. 

 

Shane had not gotten to choose. 

 

But watching Hunter choose - watching the crowd react, watching the broadcast scramble to catch up with something that the people in that arena had already decided to accept - he felt something shift in the calculus he had been running since January. The math he had been doing in the back of his mind, the constant quiet calculation of risk and consequences and what was possible and what wasn’t, produced a different answer than it had been producing. Not because everything was different. But because Hunter had just stood in front of millions of people and demonstrated, in the most visible way imaginable, that the answer could be different. 

 

Beside him, he was distantly aware of Ilya saying something. The dinosaur? Shane made a sound that was almost a laugh. The commentary washed over him - old man, ancient - and he said Ilya's name and Ilya said I am just saying and somewhere under all of it Shane was still sitting with what he had just watched and what it meant and what it was doing to the architecture of the walls he had spent years of building and maintaining and was now, quietly, reconsidering. 

 

“They’re going to lose their minds,” he said. “The league. The press.” 

 

“Some of them,” Ilya said. 

 

“A lot of them.” 

 

“And the others are going to be fine.” 

 

Shane looked at him. Ilya was watching the screen, his expression neutral in the particular way that meant he was thinking about more than one thing at once. Shane looked at his profile - the jaw, the particular way he held himself - and thought about when they had been here in March, the two of them on the couch saying things they had been not-saying for years, and thought about how much had changed since then and how much hadn’t, and thought about Hunter on the ice with his boyfriend under his arm, and felt the word form somewhere in his chest before he was entirely ready for it. 

 

Okay, he thought, to himself, to the walls that were coming down whether he supervised the process or not Okay. 

 

He didn’t say it out loud. But thought it meant something that he thought it at all.

---

The trade was finalized in July, and Shane’s mother cried on the phone when his agent called with the terms, which she would later claim were tears of relief and which Shane strongly suspected also contained a significant quantity of vindication. She had been building toward this since January. She had been patient in a way that had clearly cost her something, and now the thing she had been patient for had arrived, and his mother was not a woman who experienced that kind of outcome quietly. 

 

“Montreal is paying forty percent of your contract,” she said, when she had composed herself. “That was my idea.” 

 

“I know, Mom.” 

 

“And the rookies. Three of them. That was also–” 

 

“I know,” Shane said, and he was laughing, actually laughing, in a way that still felt slightly unfamiliar after the months it had been. “You did good.” 

 

She made a sound that was extremely dignified. “I did excellent, sweetheart,” she said. “There’s a difference.” 

 

He called Hayden after.

 

That conversation was quieter and took longer and covered things that neither of them tried to summarize at the end of it. Hayden would be Montreal’s captain now and Shane would be leaving for Boston, and they were both aware that the geography of their friendship was about the change in ways that would require adjustment. But Hayden had said, at some point in the middle of it, that Shane was the best player he had ever played with and that whatever team got him was lucky, and that he expected to see him at his cottage in the off season, with Jackie and the kids. Shane had said yes, of course he said yes, and he had meant it. They would also see each other whenever they played each other as well. And that would have to be enough. 

 

He texted Ilya the photo of Hayden with the C on his jersey without a caption because there wasn’t anything he could say that covered it. Ilya sent back: Good. Shane replied: Yeah. He’s going to be good for them. Ilya wrote: Yes. And you are going to be good for us. 

 

Shane stared at the message for longer than was strictly necessary. Then he typed: Working on it.

 

He meant more than the hockey part, and he thought that Ilya probably knew that. 

---

Training camp in September was the first time Shane had walked into a locker room in nine months without knowing what he was going to find on the other side of the door. 

 

He stood outside the practice facility for a moment before going in - just a moment, just enough to take a breath and locate the version of himself that knew how to enter rooms calmly regardless of what they contained - and then he pushed the door open. 

 

What happened next was not what he had steeled himself for. 

 

Carmichael saw him first. Carmichael, apparently, had been waiting for him - or had at least been in a state of readiness that suggested he’d been thinking about this moment - and the sound he made when Shane walked in was involuntary and loud and startling enough that half the room looked up from what they were doing. “Shane Hollander,” Carmichael announced, to the room at large, spreading his arms wide like he was presenting Shane to an audience. “In the flesh. In our locker room. Someone tell me I’m not dreaming.” 

 

“You’re not dreaming,” St-Simon said, already crossing the room. He introduced himself in French, which Shane had not expected, and the relief of it - the uncomplicated delight of a language he didn’t think he’d have much opportunity to speak again being outside of Montreal - came out of nowhere. He responded in French without thinking, and St-Simon’s face broke into a grin, and they talked for thirty seconds like old friends while the rest of the room exchanged the expressions of men who had been excluded from a conversation and found it both baffling and charming.  

 

Marlow shook his hand. That was all - a handshake, direct and unhurried, the kind that communicated something without elaborating on it. Shane held his gaze and understood. 

 

And then Ilya walked over. 

 

He had waited, Shane noticed. Had stood back while the noise settled, unhurried, the same way he did everything - on his own timeline, at his own pace, with the particular ease of someone who had decided how this was going to go and was content to let it arrive. He stopped in front of Shane in the middle of the locker room and said: “Welcome to Boston, Hollander.” 

 

Shane looked at him. At the familiar face, the careful neutrality that wasn’t quite neutral if you knew where to look, the something in his eyes that had been there since March and had not gone anywhere. He thought about the apartment in Montreal, about what they had said to each other in the lamplight, about being tired of calling it nothing when it’s not nothing.

 

“Thanks,” Shane said. 

 

“Do not thank me yet,” Ilya said. “Carmichael is going to be insufferable.” 

 

From across the locker room, Carmichael shouted something that the rest of the team found funny enough to momentary dissolve into, and Shane laughed - the real one, the one that came from somewhere unguarded - and felt, for the first time in nine months, like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. 

---

The season began in October. 

 

Media day was loud and familiar and Shane moved through it with the muscle memory of someone who had been doing this since he was eighteen years old. He answered questions about the trade - excited for a fresh start, looking forward to contributing to this group - and about his health - fully recovered, ready to go - and deflected the more pointed questions about Montreal with the practiced ease of someone who had signed an NDA and knew exactly where its boundaries were. 

 

He was in the middle of a question about his linemates when a reporter near the back asked: “With Scott Hunter coming out after the Cup win, and you being the first openly gay active player in the league - how do you see your role in terms of visibility going forward?” 

 

Shane paused. 

 

He had been asked versions of this question before. He had been asked it in the aftermath of the article, when he had not been ready for it and he hadn’t any good answers, and had deflected badly enough that several outlets had written about his deflection. He had been asked it over the summer, more gently, by people who meant well and still didn’t quite understand that visibility and choice were not the same thing when the choice had been made for you. 

 

This time, the question landed differently. 

 

He thought about Hunter on the ice. He thought about the crowd cheering. He thought about his own okay, said to himself in the blue light of his living room, Ilya by his side. He thought about walking into this locker room in September and finding a room full of men who had already decided it didn’t change anything, and what it had felt like to discover that the world he had been afraid of had been waiting for him to arrive. 

 

“I didn’t get to choose how I came out,” Shane said. The room went very quiet. “I’m aware of that. I think about it.” He paused. “But, I’m here and I’m playing and I’m on a team that’s given me a chance to just - be a hockey player again, which is all I’ve ever actually wanted.” He looked at the reporter steadily. “If that means something to someone who needed to see it, then I’m glad. That’s enough for me right now.” 

 

The reporter nodded. Someone else asked a question about the power play and the room moved on, Shane let it move on, and he felt something settle in his chest that had been unsettled for a very long time. 

---

Later, in the locker room, after the media had cleared out and the room had gone back to normal, Hayden called. 

 

Shane stepped into the corridor to take it, leaning against the wall with the familiar sounds of the team behind him filtering through the door. Hayden’s voice was warm and a little rough in the way it got when he was feeling something he wasn’t going to over-explain. 

 

“Watched the media day coverage,” Hayden said. 

 

“Yeah?” 

 

“Yeah.” A pause. “You sounded good, Shane.” 

 

Shane looked at the ceiling of the corridor. “Felt good,” he said, finally, and was surprised to find he meant it without qualification. “How’s Montreal?”

 

“Getting there,” Hayden sighed. “It’s different. Better, I think. Slowly.” Another pause. “JJ says hi.” 

 

“Tell him hi back.” 

 

“I will.” A beat. “You happy over there?” 

 

Shane considered the question the way he had learned to consider things - honestly, without the reflexive deflection that had been his first language for most of his adult life. He thought about the locker room behind him. He thought about St-Simon’s French and Carmichael’s noise and Marlow’s handshake and Hammersmith’s crossword that nobody was supposed to know about. He thought about Ilya, somewhere on the other side of that door, and the specific feeling of things finally being in the right place after a very long time of them being so wrong.

 

“Yeah,” he said at last. “I am.” 

 

Hayden made a sound that was warm and satisfied and didn’t require elaboration. “Good,” he said. “That’s all I needed to know.” 

 

He went back into the locker room and found his stall and sat as the noise settled around him, comfortably. Across the room, at his own stall, was Ilya, phone in hand with a particularly contained expression that he wore when he was thinking about something he hadn’t decided to share yet. As Shane watched, something moved across his face - something quiet and private, there and then gone - and Ilya looked up and their eyes met across the room and held for a moment before Ilya looked away first. 

 

Shane watched him look away. 

 

He thought about nine months ago, sitting in his apartment in Montreal with his arm in a sling and the city grey outside the window, and Ilya walking through his door and sitting on the other end of his couch and refusing to leave until Shane had said the true things out loud. He thought about how Ilya had said he was tired about calling it nothing. He thought about every phone call since March, and the way Ilya had waited for him to walk into this locker room before crossing the room himself, because that was who Ilya was - the person who showed up and awaited and did not push and was simply, stubbornly, constantly there, regardless of whether Shane had given him any particular reason to be or not. 

 

Shane loved him. 

 

It arrived without fanfare, which felt right. Not a lightning strike, not a revelation - more like looking up from something you had been focused on for a long time and finding that the landscape had changed while you were paying attention to something else, and that the new version was better than the one you remembered, and that you had been moving toward it for longer than you knew. He loved Ilya Rozanov. He had probably loved him from the moment he met him behind that skating rink in Regina, inexplicably drawn to him in a way that he hadn’t experienced before. He’d loved him when he had panicked and run out of a Boston penthouse rather than admit it, and had spent the subsequent months calling it everything except what it was, and here it was anyway, sitting in his chest in a room that had become his, uncomplicated and enormous and entirely okay. 

 

He smiled at his skates. Then he looked up. 

 

Ilya was looking at him again,  had turned back, caught Shane’s eye again across the room, and was watching him with an expression Shane had been trying to properly decipher for months. Shane held his gaze. 

 

He was twenty-five years old. He had been outed against his will, had been run out of the only organization he had ever played for, had spent the better part of a year convinced that the life he actually wanted was one he didn’t get to have. He had come out the other side of it with a cottage in Canada and a locker room in Boston and a team that had decided, without being asked, that he was worth showing up for. 

 

And he had Ilya. 

 

That was still new enough to feel remarkable when he let himself look at it directly. Not the feeling itself - that had been there long enough that it had worn grooves in him, familiar and permanent - but the fact of being able to sit with it without immediately building a wall around it. The fact that it was real and acknowledged and going somewhere, even if that somewhere was still being figured out one day at a time. The fact that across this locker room was a man who had stood outside a service corridor at the Bell Centre and told a reporter exactly what he thought of an article that had stolen something from Shane, and had then shown up at his door afterward and waited, immovable, until Shane had finally stopped pretending. 

 

He had spent a long time being afraid of what love Ilya would cost him. 

 

He hadn’t ever stopped to figure out what it was going to give him… and he suspected it was going to be a lot. 

 

He had a season to play. He intended to play it. 

 

And this season, he and Ilya were going to win the Cup. 

Chapter 8: The Articles from the Fic

Chapter Notes

These are the articles that I envisioned that came out about Shane for this fic.

EXCLUSIVE: The Hidden Side of Shane Hollander 

By Daniel Mercer | North American Hockey Report | January 6, 2017

Montreal—A private video recording obtained by North American Hockey Report offers an unfiltered glimpse into the personal life and private reflections of Shane Hollander, one of the NHL’s most closely watched young stars and a cornerstone of the Montreal Voyageurs.

For six seasons, Hollander has been one of the NHL’s most carefully constructed public figures. He’s known as much for his discipline and media savvy as he is for his performance on the ice - a player who has, by all accounts worked meticulously to control his image and keep a carefully maintained distance between his public and private lives. The recording obtained paints a portrait of a young man navigating questions of identity that sit in direct contradiction to the image he has spent years projecting. 

The video, which appears to have been made without Hollander’s knowledge or consent, captures an extended private conversation between the captain and actress Rose Landry - a woman reported to be his romantic partner - in what appears to be a private dining setting. The exchange, informal in tone and candid in context, covers topics that Hollander has never addressed publicly, and based on the recording, has gone to considerable lengths to keep private. 

North American Hockey Report is not in a position to confirm the origin of the recording at this time. Multiple sources familiar with its circulation confirm the file has been in distribution among media contacts and league-adjacent personnel for approximately 24 hours prior to publication. Its authenticity has not been formally disputed. 

 

The NHL has not issued a statement. 

 

Hollander, 25, is currently in his sixth full season with the Voyageurs, after being drafted as the second overall pick in 2009, and has been widely regarded as one the league’s most promising offensive talents; a player whose personal brand has been built as much on his wholesome, all-Canadian image as on his considerable talent. He was previously selected for the upcoming All-Star Game, where he is expected to participate later this month. 

 

Whether that image survives what this recording contains is, at this point, an open question. 

 

The full transcript is reproduced below.

 

[TRANSCRIPT]

 

Landry: You’re so cute. Have I told you how cute you are? 

 

Hollander: No. I mean, maybe. 

 

Landry: Well, you are. Miles is extremely jealous. 

 

Hollander: Of me? 

 

Landry: No, of me. 

 

Hollander: Oh. Oh! [chuckling] 

 

Landry: Did you not notice that Miles is gay? 

 

Hollander: I guess I hadn’t really thought about it, so… 

 

Landry: Well, he is. And he’s low-key in love with you. 

 

Hollander: Oh. 

 

Landry: Does it surprise you that Miles is gay? 

 

Hollander: No. I mean of course not, no. 

 

Landry: Well, a lot of actors are. They’re just not all out. Are there any, like, gay hockey players? I mean, yes.

Obviously, there are, but are there any openly gay players? 

 

Hollander: Yeah, uh, no. I mean, yeah, there are probably gay players, or whatever, but none that have said it

publicly.

 

Landry: Huh. 

 

Hollander: What?

 

Landry: [sighing] Sorry, I don’t think I’m going about this the right way.

 

Hollander: Going about what? 

 

Landry: I really like you, Shane. 

 

Hollander: I like you too. 

 

Landry: But I have a feeling that… maybe I'm not doing it for you? 

 

Hollander: Yes, you are. 

 

Landry: I know you like talking to me. 

 

Hollander: Yeah.

 

Landry: Do you like kissing me?

 

Hollander: Sure.

 

Landry: Wow. 

 

Hollander: No. No, no, of course I do. Sorry. 

 

Landry: No, hey, don’t apologize. I just.. I have a feeling. And… and maybe I’m completely off base here, but I

don’t know, I feel like maybe you’d rather be kissing… Miles? Hey it’s… it’s really Ok. 

 

Hollander: It’s not. I do like you. I really do. I like talking with you. I like being with you. I like all of it. I know the

sex stuff is a problem, but… 

 

Landry: It’s not a problem. A problem is something you can fix. We’re more like a square peg in a round hole.

Ew. No. I’m sorry. Forget I said that. We’re just not meant to fit. And it’s really fine. I just don’t think

that we can keep trying. 

 

Hollander: I get it. I… I just, uh… I think, um… I think, uh… 

 

Landry: Hey, you don’t owe me any explanation. 

 

Hollander: I feel like I kind of do. 

 

Landry: You really don’t. Can I ask if you’ve ever been with another guy? 

 

Hollander: [nod]

 

Landry: Have you ever told anyone that before? 

 

Hollander: [head shake]

 

Landry: Was it different with a guy? 

 

Hollander: Of course.

 

Landry: Was it better? 

 

Hollander: Yeah, it was, uh… um… It was better.  The thing is, I… [chuckle] I kind of prefer being the hole rather

than the peg. 

 

[laughter] 

 

Landry: Wow! That is the best thing any gay boyfriend of mine has ever told me. 

 

Hollander: Oh, you’ve had other…

 

Landry: Oh, I was in theater school. Like 70% of my boyfriends have left me for other guys. 

 

Hollander: 70%?

 

Landry: Actually, 80% [chuckle] Yeah. 

 

Hollander: Wow. 

 

[chuckling] 

 

Landry: You should follow Miles back on Instagram. 

 

Hollander: No. I mean, not no, but I just need to sort some things out first. 

 

Landry: Of course. And I was kidding about Miles, but he totally would. Like, in a heartbeat. 

 

Hollander: You haven’t said anything to him, have you? 

 

Landry: No, definitely not. And I never will. But, can I ask you something? 

 

Hollander: Yeah, of course. 

 

Landry: Why haven’t you told anyone else? 

 

Hollander: I can’t… I mean it’s this sport… no one would understand. 

 

---

 

EXCLUSIVE: Rising Hockey Star Shane Hollander at Center of Locker Room Tensions Following Personal Revelations

By Daniel Mercer | North American Hockey Report | January 7, 2017

Montreal—At just 25, Shane Hollander has already cemented himself as one of the premier young talents in professional hockey. A cornerstone of the Montreal Voyageurs franchise and a perennial All-Star selection, Hollander’s on-ice performance has long been a bright spot for the organization.

But recent developments off the ice may be complicating that narrative. 

 

Multiple sources close to the Voyageurs organization have confirmed that Hollander was back at practice and was still the captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, despite the scandal surrounding him because of the leaked recording obtained by North American Hockey Report. In the recording, Hollander can be heard speaking candidly about his sexual orientation and bedroom preferences. 

 

Neither Hollander, nor his representatives, have responded to multiple requests for comment. 

 

The Voyageurs organization issued a brief statement late afternoon, the day after the story broke: 

“The Montreal Voyageurs are aware of the situation involving Shane Hollander. As an organization, we remain committed to fostering a professional environment focused on team performance and mutual respect. We will not be commenting further on private matters at this time.”

Head coach Coach Theriault declined to address the specifics of the report but acknowledged that “any off-ice situation that draws attention can become a distraction if it isn’t handled properly.”

Several current and former players, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a locker room environment that has grown increasingly tense in recent weeks.

“It’s a tough league,” one teammate said. “Guys expect focus. Anything that shifts attention away from the game—it gets noticed.”

Another source characterized the situation more bluntly: “Hockey rooms aren’t always the most open places. That’s just the reality.”

It remains unclear how widely Hollander’s personal disclosures were known within the organization prior to the emergence of the recording. However, at least one team-affiliated source indicated that “rumors had been circulating” before the situation became more widely discussed.

The NHL has made public efforts in recent years to promote inclusivity, including league-wide campaigns supporting LGBTQ+ players and fans. Still, no active player in the modern era has publicly come out during their career, leaving questions about how such a development might be received within the sport.

For Hollander, the timing is particularly notable. With the Tampa Bay All-Star Game approaching, he is expected to remain a central figure in league coverage—both for his performance and, now, for circumstances beyond the rink.

Whether this moment represents a turning point for the sport or simply another chapter in a complicated season remains to be seen.

For now, one thing is certain: the spotlight on Shane Hollander has never been brighter.