Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov (mentioned), Journalists - Character

Additional Tags:

Shane Hollander-centric, Shane's performance diet, restricted eating, Disordered Eating, Not super intense but kind of implied, discussion of Shane's super intense performance diet being bad for his health, Journalists, Press and Tabloids, Ottawa Centaurs Player Shane Hollander, Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Bashing (Game Changers), Fuck the Metros!!!!, Made-up Legalese, Go off bestie, Shane can have a little Causing Problems, as a treat, Ilya will be proud, no beta we die like the Metros cup chances without Shane

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of going off on journalists, Part 1 of HR surprises/reveals, Part 2 of ways the Metros traumatized Shane

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-24 Words: 2,299 Chapters: 1/1

The "Get Out Of Jail Free" Clause

Summary

In Monopoly, a "get out of jail free" card is a card that, as the name implies, lets the player get out of jail without paying for it. When you have that card, you don't have to play it immediately. You just hold onto it in case it's ever needed.

The Montreal Metros had a rule in their contracts nobody really followed. It was stupid so everyone broke it, and it was just kind of an open secret. They'd never FIRE you for breaking it, so who cared?

Well, a Shane Hollander who knew he was already doing something a lot worse that he couldn't legally be fired for and didn't want to give them a different excuse. That's who cared.

Or: A post-game press conference gets very honest in a way that reflects a hell of a lot worse on his old team than it does on Shane.

Notes

ayo first HR fic let's goooo

A note on the "disordered eating" tag: this does not have Shane with an eating disorder, per se. It has him knowing that his diet plan isn't good for his health but choosing to follow it anyway so he's not breaking his contract, which is its own special little kind of tragic. Luckily that's in the past at the time this fic starts! As always, take care of yourself and read with care.

Enjoy!!!!

Shane should have known better than to expect things to go well. 

He’d survived his first game as a Centaur against Montreal without a former teammate breaking one of his bones. There had been no brawl, no one had even dropped gloves, and he’d only been called three derogatory names (to his face), none of which were even technically slurs! So clearly as he sat down in the media room for post-game press, alone because he’d been the only one asked for specifically and didn’t want to delay anyone else’s hard-earned shower just so he could have an emotional-support-teammate with him, he should have expected that his luck was about to run out. 

In Montreal, he knew the journalists he was most likely to encounter after a game. He knew faces, names, and publications, and he knew the kinds of questions they were likely to ask. He tried not to play favorites too often or too obviously, but it was nice that at the end of painful games where it was becoming increasingly obvious that his “teammates” would rather lose the game than pass to their gay captain and a few polite words about finding the back of the net weren’t going to cut it, he could count on a few softball questions about Rose’s latest movie or any other woman he’d been photographed within ten feet of that week. 

(Or when it had been far too long since he’d seen his boyfriend and the ever-shortening phone calls between them weren’t enough for him anymore, when he was one more snide microaggression from running away, contract be damned, and not stopping until he’d reached Ottawa and could wrap himself in Ilya’s arms again, throwing himself into a bed that would smell like Ilya and pulling him over himself like the world’s most sarcastic Russian weighted blanket, it was nice that he could call on the reporters who would ask him the usual “what went well for the team this game, what didn’t, how are you feeling about your playoff chances after this one?”)

(When both were true, when the games were shit and long-distance was shit and everything was shit, well. He was just shit out of luck, then.) 

But in Ottawa, he didn’t have that information to fall back on, at least not yet, so when a sharply-dressed woman he hadn’t spoken with before drew his eye, he had no way of knowing any better than to call on her. 

“Good evening, Mr. Hollander. Michelle Timm of Puck This. Are you concerned about a potential lawsuit or other repercussions, now that it’s become obvious that you were sabotaging your former team throughout your final season there?”

Even the soft snap of camera shutters paused for a moment before resuming again, more frantically than before. Shane froze his face, not willing to give them the satisfaction of a flinch. 

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

She smiled, but not very kindly. 

“Of course. I asked, now that it’s become obvious that you were sabotaging the Montreal Metros’ performance during your career there, are you worried about a potential lawsuit or any other form of consequences for your actions?” 

He took a steadying breath. 

“I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.” 

“It’s fairly straightforward.”

“You’re accusing me of cheating.”

“I wouldn’t call it an accusation. Just a statement of fact.”

“Obviously not. Every time I’ve stepped foot on the ice, I’ve given it my all, no matter whose colors I was playing in, and I think my record proves that.”

She tilted her head like she already knew she’d won.

“Let’s talk about that record, then.” She glanced down at the tablet in her hand, tapping the screen. “Compared to last season, as of this game, your average points per game has increased by 0.12. Your goals per game has increased by .04. Your average shift time has increased by nearly ten seconds, and your average skating and shooting speed have increased as well. These changes are consistent in both home and away games, so clearly, there’s not just something in the air in Ottawa. That kind of improvement doesn’t just happen overnight. You’re playing an entirely different, and much better, game for the Centaurs than you ever did for the Metros. You can’t be surprised that people have noticed.”

Other journalists were taking notes like they hadn’t noticed the change until it was pointed out but would all be writing their thinkpieces tonight as if they’d been counting each improved second all along. Shane could have laughed. That’s what this was about? At least it was something easily disproven. True, he hadn’t been planning on talking about this issue yet (if ever), but honestly, it could have been worse. At least Ilya would be happy. He had some very strong opinions on the topic, and the conversation where they’d aired the whole thing out had been one of the hardest they’d had since Shane’s trade. 

He took a sip from his water bottle while he got his words in order and adjusted his mic. 

“I am playing much better these days, yeah. My stamina has improved. My speed, too. I think my reflexes as well. But you’re wrong about the reason. I’m not playing better now that I’m not sabotaging my team. I’m playing better now that my team isn’t sabotaging me.” 

Michelle didn’t seem angry to have been told she was wrong, and why would she? She was being handed the scoop of her career on a silver platter. This would probably be the most hits her shitty hockey gossip blog had ever seen before and ever would again.

“That’s a serious accusation, Mr. Hollander.”

“What did you say? It’s not an accusation, it’s a fact?” 

The room seemed to hold its breath. Shane let them sit in that silence for a moment. If they were uncomfortable, that was fine with him.

“I’m playing better because I’m much healthier. As an athlete, your body is like a machine. It can only run if you give it fuel, and in Montreal, I wasn’t allowed to do that.” 

“You’re saying Montreal… wouldn’t let you eat?”

Her skepticism was clear.

“I am, yeah. I’m sure you’re familiar with my performance diet. It’s pretty famous. I’ve talked about it in interviews. I’ve been made fun of for it pretty publicly, too. It was one of my former teammates’ favorite things to complain about, one of the reasons I wasn’t any fun. I wouldn’t go to McDonalds with them, or drink with them, because that wasn’t approved by my meal plan.”

“You can’t seriously expect us to believe abstaining from having a beer with your teammates after a game is what kept you from reaching your scoring potential.”

Shane leaned forward slightly, laying his arms on the table. 

“No, I expect you to believe that several years of consistently maintaining a diet of between 80 and 85% of the recommended caloric intake for someone my size with my level of physical activity kept me from reaching my scoring potential. Undernourishment will do that to any athlete. Luckily, it’s fixable, as we’re seeing now.” 

“Then if you were consciously starving yourself in a way that you knew impacted your skills, you were sabotaging Montreal.”

“Montreal was the one making me do it. 'Full-time adherence to the official performance diet prescribed by the team nutritionist' was literally in the contract that I signed.” 

“But it wasn’t in any of your teammates’ contracts?”

“It was, yeah, but they didn’t follow it.”

“But you chose to.”

“It wasn’t much of a choice. Have you ever heard the saying ‘don’t break the law when you’re breaking the law’? Or ‘one crime at a time’?”

“For the sake of clarity, let’s assume that I haven’t.” 

The rest of the press may as well have not been there. This conversation had been going on entirely too long, but no one was fighting for their turn to ask a question. It seemed nothing they’d wanted to ask was as important as they could tell this conversation was going to be. Shane hoped his agent would forgive him. She would, probably. This was far from the worst headline he’d ever made. 

“It’s like, if your car registration is expired and you drive it anyway, you follow the speed limit so you don’t get pulled over. You only commit one crime at a time because the more crimes you’re committing, the less likely you are to get away with any of them. I was committing a big enough crime as it was, I didn’t need to give them any other reason to penalize me.” 

“You’re implying you were violating some other part of your contract?”

Ha. She wished. That’d be a hell of a thing to say with this many cameras pointed at him. 

“No, Ms. Timm. My crime was being gay.” 

She was clearly thrown off, but recovered admirably. 

“And you think being gay was against your contract?”

Shane snorted slightly. Obviously not, but clearly it had been a punishable offense, or he wouldn’t be sitting there wearing red and black. 

“My lawyer and my agent knew I was gay before my team did, just so we could cover all my bases, and they called my diet requirements a ‘get out of jail free’ clause. The biggest example in the last decade or so, do you remember that player in Buffalo who slept with the coach’s wife and bragged about it in the locker room then got fired a week later? He was fired for being photographed wearing socks with a visible logo on them for a brand that wasn’t one the team or player had a brand deal with. No one gives a shit about that sort of thing, really, but the socks weren’t the point. The point was that they wanted him gone, so there was something tiny and stupid in his contract they could use to get rid of him whenever they wanted. I wasn’t sleeping with my coach’s wife, but honestly, I think he would have preferred that, as long as I kept winning cups.”

A few laughs. Good. Maybe that meant he wasn’t tanking his respectful, good-for-press reputation too badly. At least not yet. What he was about to say was much worse.

“From the beginning until the moment it happened, Ilya and I both knew we were constantly at risk of being outed. If that happened, the Metros organization couldn’t legally fire me for being gay. But if I were being photographed out with the team, blatantly breaking my meal plan every night? They could definitely fire me for breach of contract. One official statement about how disappointed they were that they’d hand-picked me from the draft and given me all their support and I repaid them by, I don’t know, refusing to take my health seriously and put in the effort demanded by such a high-level position, or something like that. No one else follows the meal plan, but I’m the captain, so they can blame me for setting a bad example, get rid of me, and my reputation would be blown but theirs would be just fine. So, yeah. The meal plans are restrictive and unhelpful at best and everyone on the team knows it, so everyone breaks that clause and no one bothers to be quiet about it, so the organization can get out of any contract with any player any time they want to. I spent my whole career in Montreal following a contract I knew was bad for my health so they couldn’t fire me for the crime of daring to love my husband.” 

Aaaand, mic drop. He gave it about an hour before he had emails from his agent, his mother, his lawyer, probably the Metros lawyers as well, and a couple dozen journalists begging for follow up interviews. 

“Following that, do you currently have any intention of filing a lawsuit or taking any other action against the Metros?”

Damn, this woman could pivot. He wouldn’t have grounds for that, though. He’d willingly signed the contract and never tried to make changes to that clause. But still, might as well make them sweat a bit.

“No comment.” 

“And do you have any similar ‘get out of jail free’ clauses, related to diet or not, in your current contract with the Centaurs?”

No. He’d done enough living in the shadow of a clause like that, and now that he was a rich grown adult professional athlete and not a teenager getting in over his head, he had much better lawyers. 

He caught the eye of the Centaurs media team member standing at the back of the room. She twirled her finger in a circular motion. Time to wrap it up. 

“Per policy, I am not able to disclose the content of a live contract. Now, I apologize for not taking more questions, but that’s all for this evening.” 

He stood up, then paused for just another second. 

“Thank you all for your time. I have to get home. Ilya’s making dinner tonight.” 

He didn’t wink. They may have hyphenated their names in their personal lives, but professionally, he wasn’t enough of a Rozanov to pull that off just yet. 

Ignoring the excited chatter rising behind him, Shane turned and walked out the door. He hadn’t been lying. Ilya had a new recipe he wanted to try, and Shane was excited for it. He couldn’t wait to get home and wrap his arms around his husband’s waist from behind in the kitchen and home and life that they shared, getting in his way as Ilya tried to serve the food, complaining at him for every scrap he dropped to Anya at their feet. 

He was hungry, but he wasn’t starving anymore.