Rating:

General Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

Gen

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

OMC (Metros Equipment Manager), Shane Hollander, Dale | Ottawa Centaurs's Equipment Manager (Game Changers), Ilya Rozanov, Luca Haas

Additional Tags:

outsider pov, shane hollander's jockstrap of Theseus, hockey superstitions and rituals, small magics, mentions of Gentle Walks With The Swiss

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-02 Words: 5,495 Chapters: 1/1

In which Shane Hollander has the favour of the Honorable Siblinghood of Equipment Managers (or at least, the South-Eastern Canada regional meeting thereof)

Summary

The best players, Stefan's mentor had told him, are like racehorses: highly strung, and easily spooked. Hollander was the best of the best. And his career - the challenge of working with him and his particular routines - had elevated Stefan's standing in the Honorable Siblinghood, so it was as much professional debt as favouritism that had Stefan taking a particular interest in Hollander, by the time he came out to the locker room. Stefan expected to be working with him until one or other of them retired. [...]
If, after that, Hollander's skate laces were replaced before they started to wear thin, and if the new laces passed through the hands of at least two fully-sworn Senior or Very Senior Equipment Managers before they met his skates, that was within Stefan's discretion. He never even spoke of it, directly, to his team.

Notes

This owes some kind of debt to Sidney Crosby and Laura Stacey's respectively decrepit protective garments. No, I don't know what came over me. (Yes, I do know: I finished the sequel to Everything You Know, and it's 20k+ and took me months so it warrants a slow beta... out of frustration I knocked out something goofy to post At Once.)

Yes the title includes "favour" and "Honorable", one with and one without a u. That is because I use UK/Aus spellings but the actual society is North American. Similarly I would describe Shane as playing centre, and playing at the Bell Center. I contain multitides.

As Equipment Manager, Stefan ought not to have had favourites among players. Players came, players went: you did your best for all of them, of course, but one of the sacred roles of the Equipment Manager was to send players on to the next team. You packed their gear, you shipped it on with any special notes, and you received and laid out the gear for the next inbound guy. Getting attached to any one player made it hard to see the bigger picture.

The year Shane Hollander came out the locker room in Montreal was the same year that Stefan was sworn in as Very Senior Equipment Manager, on the recommendation of his peers and with the assent of the council of the Honorable Siblinghood of Equipment Managers. He and Dale were sworn in together, the nomination being based not only on their respective experience but the work they'd done jointly in setting up a benevolent fund to provide support for the partners and children of equipment managers who were unable to work due to illness or misadventure. Dale's team, the Centaurs, were reliably at the bottom of the league, but while there were many reasons for that, the quality of equipment maintenance and organisation was not one of them.

Granted, Stefan was specially commended for his work in preservation and restoration of protective gear, which Dale was not. But that was because Stefan had been working for the Metros since Hollander's rookie year, and Stefan - perhaps because he was new, or perhaps because he really was a dab hand at sewing - had been lumped with the task of darning Hollander's lucky jockstrap. That thing had by now had its elastic replaced, is protective cup replaced, and every piece of it darned - even the pouch replaced, while retaining the then-current waistband, elastic, and straps. Perhaps Stefan's name will go down in history when that jock hangs in the Equipment Manager's Gallery of Fame.

One wasn’t not supposed to have favourites, but Stefan had been tending Hollander's gear since he was a rookie; and Hollander wasn't going anywhere. Other than shipping some of his gear to the All Stars the years he was called up for that, or the occasional Team Canada tournament, Stefan didn't expect to ever need to hand Hollander over to anyone else's supervision. And for all that he was particular - more finicky and superstitious about his gear than any goalie - Hollander trusted Stefan and his team to do their jobs. At first, he'd been apologetic: self-conscious about the inconvenience of the way he wanted his sticks stored, or his preference for repairing rather than replacing gear. When he realised that the equipment team weren't angry if he pointed out something missed - a poorly-sharpened blade, a frayed skate lace - but just as keen as he was to remedy and refine, he'd relaxed around them.

When other players pulled pranks - emptied his stall and hid the gear, stuck tape on his skate blades, all that sort of thing - the young Hollander had borne it stoically, neither pushing back nor playing along. Stefan had worried for him; worried that that was the worst option of all. Stefan had also realised that worse, for Hollander, were accidental mishaps: accidentally running out of tape; the lucky jockstrap's garter straps snapping before a game; one pair of skates giving up the ghost before he'd worn the next pair in enough to fully trust them.

The best players, Stefan's mentor had told him, are like racehorses: highly strung, and easily spooked. Hollander was the best of the best. And his career - the challenge of working with him and his particular routines - had elevated Stefan's standing in the Honorable Siblinghood, so it was as much professional debt as favouritism that had Stefan taking a particular interest in Hollander, by the time he came out to the locker room. Stefan expected to be working with him until one or other of them retired.

Nobody made any particular point of informing the equipment team when Hollander came out. From what Stefan gathered, after the fact, Hollander and his agent told the GM, and then Hollander told the team, and then Hollander told the head coach. Things filtered down to the rest of the staff (and, eventually, out from the Metros to other teams. The next regional meeting of the Honorable Siblinghood, Stefan found himself fielding questions he neither could answer nor would if he could. On the other hand, the Very Senior Equipment Manager who worked for the Étoiles de Montréal reached out and said to get in touch if she could help at all. Stefan wasn’t sure what a gay hockey equipment crisis might constitute, but from the haunted look in her eyes, he'd know it when he saw it).

The first change Stefan noticed was that Hollander simultaneously became more vigilant of his routines (and protective of his space, cautious of who touched his gear - which could be superstition or could be apprehensive of pranks or sabotage, or perhaps both), but more apologetic with it. When the new staff member got the lacing on his practice skates wrong, Hollander re-laced them himself, and didn't raise it with her or with Stefan. On game days when he felt like something was off and came to ask for his skates to be re-sharpened at intermission, he apologised.

Stepan and his team saw other changes, too; they saw a lot of the team, both in and out of the locker room.

If, after that, Hollander's skate laces were replaced before they started to wear thin, and if the new laces passed through the hands of at least two fully-sworn Senior or Very Senior Equipment Managers before they met his skates, that was within Stefan's discretion. He never even spoke of it, directly, to his team.

The thread he used to darn Hollander's lucky jock had never been just any thread, but from the time Hollander came out, Stefan took extra care to use the lucky needles, too, and the felicitous fabric glue if needed. When Hollander's game-day satchel (which wasn't team equipment) lost a buckle, Stefan replaced it - and the counterpart, too, so that they'd match. He couldn't quite get away with replacing them with iron for protection, but he reinforced the replacements as best he could.

Hollander's game-day suit jacket developed a hole in one pocket during a road trip, and after hearing him grumble about it to Pike, Stefan sorted it out. He sewed protective wards into the darn. If he found a glass… item for presumably sexual purposes when checking the other pockets, well. Glass had a number of protective properties, as well as associations with truth and preservation of energy. Stefan figured glass would do well by Hollander.

Stefan regretted that logic, a year or so later, when the video showing Hollander and Rozanov went viral. Reflected in a mirror and through a window. Properties of truth, indeed. Stefan should have been adding wards for privacy and boundary-protection. Instead he'd mended Pike's gloves with thread spelled for clear-sightedness and openness in friendship, like some kind of chump.

He wondered if his counterpart on the Étoiles would have warned him, if he'd reached out to her. Then he wondered where she even was now, with the league disbanded.

The remainder of the Metros season did not go well for Hollander, and no amount of precise blade-sharpening, gear-mending, or preventative maintenance could stave off what was coming. The day Hollander tripped, his blades were inspected by no less than three sworn members of the Honorable Siblinghood, and oiled with the premium oil. The day before, although Hollander wiped them dry himself, Stefan had wiped the blades again with a microfibre cloth that he had personally charmed against impurities and damage before storing them for the boots to be checked in the morning.

If Stefan didn't know any better - if he didn't know that there was no way this could possibly be good for Hollander - he'd say that Hollander's skate revolted at the last, refused to stand alongside the Metros and against this man who evidently loved Hollander more than he loved his own country. That couldn't have been it; it had to be one of those unfortunate co-incidences. Or, his hindsight said, there was the fact that Hollander hadn't come to get his blades re-sharpened in the intermission. He didn't do that every break, but had he been asking Stefan's team to do that less, lately? He'd been apologising more, certainly. If there was something slightly off, or if there wasn't but just knowing his blades had been re-sharpened might have given him peace of mind… did Hollander not bother them, that night, and suffer for it?

Of course, the team suffered too, if that was so, but it was worse for Hollander. Stefan heard what got said when the guys came off the ice. Even so, when Hollander cleared out his stall, the same way he did every year, Stefan expected to see him again in the fall, along with the jockstrap of Theseus and the questionably-loyal skates. If Stefan spent some of his summer break working on protective thread and new charmed microfibre cloths, that wasn't favouritism. He'd use it for the good of the team; and what was good for Hollander was good for the team.

Hollander signed with Ottawa a few weeks before his wedding. Stefan's professional world re-arranged itself without warning him.

Before turning his mind to next season, Stefan had to figure out a wedding present. There was no point sending skate maintenance equipment - anything Hollander and Rozanov needed for their recreational skates they could either afford, or Dale's team would do for them in their down time.

After some consideration, Stefan realised he knew Hollander's size in hockey gloves, and could extrapolate from there. He didn't know Rozanov's, but he knew who would.

"Wedding present," he explained to Dale.

"Hmm," Dale said. "Good quality leather gloves," he said. "Stylish, but not so fashionable they go out of date easily. Matching, of course."

"Of course."

"A nice, simple present," Dale agreed.

"Well, I might give them a once-over with leather conditioner," Stefan said. "In fact, I might throw in some of the premium stuff."

"Thoughtful of you," said Dale. And then he pointed out that, while Stefan was far better with fabric and thread than he, Dale was known among the Honorable Siblinghood for his knack with waterproofing, leather conditioning, and the like. Perhaps they might combine forces and gift-giving goodwill?

If, while he was on the phone with Dale, he happened to tell his friend some of the key points of Hollander's routines and rituals, or if he mentioned that Dale might find the repairs and the preservation techniques used on Hollander's gear to be rather unique… well. He was already on the phone, talking shop with his friend.

The day he walked in to the locker room - his locker room, the Centaurs locker room that, by the end of the regular season in April, felt more like home to him than Boston ever had - with Shane at his side was not, in fact, the happiest day of Ilya's life. He'd had so many unthinkably happy days in the past few years that this might not even crack the top ten, but it felt like it should.

They were early - of course they were. Ilya resigned himself to a life of unfashionable earliness with Shane. Granted, they were either only about ten minutes early - the Censplex was already bustling with staff, rookies, prospects, and whoever else it was that makes the first few days of training camp go 'round - or somewhere between two days and a week early. A player of Shane's standing didn't need to turn up on the first day of training camp. It wasn't even obligatory for Ilya as captain to be here. But given he no longer had to choose between time with Shane and time with his team, Ilya had been perfectly happy to tell Boodram and Chouinard he'd handle any Captain-ing the first week required.

Most of the prospects were assigned to the second locker room, so the room Ilya and Shane walked into was almost empty, and some of the stalls hadn't even been set up yet. Ilya only managed to register that Shane's name was over the stall to the left of the one he was accustomed to using, before Luca Haas was bouncing up to them.

"Ilya - I mean Roz - Cap!" He said, words tumbling over each other. His accent was thicker; he'd been home for the summer.

"Haas, good to see you," Ilya said, clapping the kid on the shoulder.

Haas turned, wide-eyed, to Shane. Ilya couldn't resist.

"Haas, this is Hollander - Shane Hollander. He's joining the Cens this year. Coach recommended I introduce you two, since you'll probably be on a line together."

Shane, the delightful menace that he was, stuck out a hand in an impressive imitation of his younger self, and said, "Pleased to meet you. You're an interesting player to watch." (Not awesome, Ilya noted, smugly.)

Haas flushed bright red, managed to shake Shane's hand, and say, "Um. You too?"

Ilya should have predicted that Shane would see his play and run with it.

"Rozanov, thanks for showing me around. I'm sure Haas can point out my stall, I wouldn't want to keep you."

"It's, uh, there," Haas said, pointing. "Right next to Cap." He looked like his head was boiling; the top of it might pop off any minute, allowing his brains to evaporate into steam.

"Oh, thanks," Shane said, and turned in the direction Haas was pointing.

"Good to have you on the team," Ilya told Shane, clapping him on the shoulder. "Apologies in advance for the stink of my socks. This is hazing, you know. New guy must suffer exposure to captain's sock-stink."

Shane broke before Haas could expire, smacking Ilya in the shoulder. "I think I'm acclimatised to your stinky socks by now, Rozanov."

"Yes, yes, is in marriage vow, is it not? In life, in death, in stinky hockey gear?"

"Gott sei Dank," Haas spluttered. "Were you two funning me?"

"We were," Shane said, earnest, at the same time as Ilya said,

"Wow, Haas, when did you get back? Are we the first people you've spoken to in English for months?"

"Yesterday," Haas said. "And no. But excuse me please if my English is not so good when you are - are making me think we pretend you did not get married!"

"It was too good an opportunity," Ilya told him, not particularly regretful. While Haas was doing his best to keep up the indignant face, Ilya looped an arm around him and gave him a noogie. "So, Shane, this is Luca Haas, who is looking forward to not being the baby of the team anymore. Luca, this is my husband Shane."

Haas wriggled out of Ilya's grip, looking, if possible, even more overwhelmed. "Hi," he said, and to Ilya's delight he stuck out his hand a second time and Shane shook it a second time. "Sorry I wasn't at your wedding, I… I really would have liked to be, but I was camping with Scouts, and then there were national team training clinics…"

"You're a Boy Scout - you were a Boy Scout?" Shane asked, looking surprised. He was also dodging the fact that people wanted to have been at their wedding; Shane had still barely got his head around the number of people who actually showed up.

"Yeah," Haas said, rubbing the back of his neck. "My sisters more than me, because of hockey. I would not have joined the - is it Rovers here? The grown-up Scouts - if my sisters were not doing it, but it's good - hiking and camping in the summer, sometimes we join up with a group from Germany or Italy." As if he suddenly remembered who he was talking to, he added, "I don't do, like, three-day hikes with sparse rations, only things that are compatible with off-season conditioning, of course."

"That's good if you can do both," Shane said, nodding seriously. "Spending time outdoors is one of my favourite things about summer." Yeah, Ilya thought. Spending time outdoors; getting into a pitched battle with Ilya trying to capsize each other's kayaks; sex on the dock… healthy summer pastimes.

"I had to give up skiing and snowboarding when I got serious about hockey," Luca was saying, "so it's really nice to enjoy the mountains in summer. Not just the Scouts - my family go to my great-uncle's chalet for a week, about fifteen of us, and we spend the week cooking and hiking - gentle walks with our grandparents, of course, but there are some more interesting trails around that mom and my sisters and cousins and I like to do."

Right, that was enough sickeningly wholesome bonding, Ilya thought. As if a nation of boring Canadians wasn't bad enough, the Swiss were hiking with their great-uncles and fifty-seven relatives.

"I think it's all off-ice stuff today," Ilya said, clapping both Shane and Luca on the shoulders, "but it looks like they've put out jerseys or sweaters or something, so we should get in uniform like the good little boy scouts we are."

"Right, yes, sorry!" Haas was already in a red Cens sweater, and Ilya and Shane turned to their stalls to find they'd been assigned black and red, respectively. Ilya dropped his bag into his stall, and then realised Shane was standing, one hand to his mouth, staring at his stall.

It looked like a hockey player's stall, to Ilya. Unlike the prospects in the second locker room, Shane hadn't come in today with all his gear: he had walked away from Montreal with skates and shoulder pads and all the rest of it in his bag, but they'd dropped all that off a few weeks ago when management called them both in - Shane to do the health care substitute decision paperwork, and Ilya to re-do his (it turned out that getting married automatically voided your previous version: who knew?).

"Shane? Is everything okay?" Ilya asked, voice low.

Shane just pointed to the overhead shelves. It's - oh, okay. The shin pads weren't together to the right of Shane's skates, the way the equipment team usually stored them; they were shelved in order, left pad, left skate, right pad, right skate. There was a bottle of baby powder tucked away on the left side - not unusual, plenty of guys put baby powder in their skates, but Ilya had seen Shane pack that in his practice bag this morning. Someone knew both what brand Shane used, and where in his stall he kept it.

Before Ilya could finish cataloguing the tiny things Shane must have noticed at once, Dale's voice broke in.

"Morning, Rozanov," Dale said, easily. "Mr Hollander, I was hoping to catch you." He had Shane's shoulder-pads and chest plate in his arms. "I looked these over and made a couple of repairs, but I think we might need to heat and re-shape some of the core structure. If you get a chance today, come and find me and I'll have you try them on and make some notes."

"Mr Robins," Shane said, sounding a little overwhelmed. "I didn't expect… not so early in…"

"Call me Dale," Dale said, easily. "And firstly, it's my job. Secondly, do you think I could look Stefan in the eye if I did anything less?"

Shane seemed to choke up, so Ilya stepped in. "Dale, good to see you. And thank you - you and Stefan, I'm guessing? - for the gift and your well-wishes. It… we really appreciate it." He laid a hand on Shane's shoulder, not really sure how to articulate what that meant.

Gloves were a bit of a weird wedding gift - in summer, no less - but Shane and Ilya had everything they could need in terms of traditional wedding gift items. Ilya felt a little guilty for not inviting Dale or any staff other than Wiebe and Harris, while Shane hadn't even thought of inviting any of the Metros support team. But the package had been left on their living room coffee table after the wedding (Ilya still had no clue which Centaur had dropped it off - if it was Pike, he'd never have managed to keep his mouth shut, and Dagenais would have handed it to Shane in person and ruined another moment with awkward apologies), with a card signed not only by Dale and Stefan, but the equipment staff of both teams.

Dale smiled, like he arranged wedding gifts for controversial gay weddings regularly, and held out a hand to each of them, so that they ended up with their hands pressed together between Dale's in a sort of three-person handshake, while Dale congratulated them and asked after their honeymoon and their skating camps in the same breath.

"I didn't know you and Stefan were close," Shane said, perhaps to stem the tide of Dale's questions.

"Ah, yeah." Dale's face softened a little at the mention of his - colleague? Friend? "We go way back, played in Juniors together. We always said we'd make it to the big show together, and, well, I guess we did."

"Love that for you," Ilya said.

"You talked to Stefan?" Shane asked Dale, looking first at his pads in Dales hands, and then at the very particularly-organised shelf above his stall.

"Like I said, we're friends." Dale moved to hang up the gear he was carrying. "Besides, if you'd been traded instead of a free agent, Stefan would've sent your gear on with special instructions." He tweaked something about the way the chest plate hung. "I suppose Stefan could've left me to figure out the history of these things and bungle the first few repair jobs, but that would be…" Dale looked like the mere idea was distasteful to him. "Unprofessional. Against the spirit of the game."

Ilya thinks of the media clutching pearls at the thought that Hollander and Rozanov might have talked strategy at any point in the past decade, or discussed concerns as captains, or known each other's injuries. Meanwhile, apparently, equipment managers were bound by a bro-code of mutual assistance. Good, he thought. Good for players, especially the kind of guys who got moved around a lot.

"You probably ought to get going," Dale said. "I passed Coach on his way up to the conference room as I came in here."

"Right, yes," Ilya said, grabbing his assigned sweater. Shane had shrugged into his, and while they'd been talking to Dale, Haas had disappeared, along with a couple of the younger guys from last year who'd come into the locker room at the last minute.

"I'm pretty sure you two aren't going to be required for every minute of today's programming," Dale said. "When you're checking your skates, come and find me; Hollander, I've done your blades at half an inch, but I want to look over them with you and get a feel for how you look at them."

Ilya headed up to the conference room, Shane at his side. They were the last people into the room, which broke out first with greetings from the guys who'd been on the team last year and then a general hullabaloo of cheers. He looked across the room to Wiebe and the GM, who were both smiling and seemed unbothered by either Ilya and Shane's lateness or the disruption in the room. Yeah, he thought: they were in good hands. Ilya had been in good hands already, but now Shane was in good hands too; they were in good hands together. They were going to fucking crush this season.

The first time he found Hollander's lucky jock in the trash can, Dale thought it might have been Hollander himself who tossed it out. It wasn't the only jock the guy had - he had multiple for training, and he hadn't worn the jockstrap of Theseus (that's what Stefan called it - Dale had had to get him to explain the reference) for his pre-season appearances, or the home opener. Maybe he'd just moved on.

Dale swiped it out of the trash can, and put it aside to speak to Hollander about the next day.

"If you're ditching gear," he said, having pulled Hollander aside, "pass it over to us. Stuff like the cup inside, we can send to the right recycling place." This was only vaguely true: gear in decent condition the Centaurs did send to a program that provides pre-loved kit for teenagers somewhere. Hollander's jockstrap of Theseus, Dale would probably keep aside for a season (in case Hollander's luck went south and he started wishing he hadn't got rid of it), and then it would be off to the Honorable Siblinghood's Gallery of Fame.

"Oh," Hollander said. "I didn't - I'm not sure what happened there, I didn't mean to chuck that out." He picked up the jock from Dale's work bench, and turned to go. "And I'd have brought kit to you rather than tossing it in the trash, the Metros had something similar with recycling."

That put Dale's spidey-senses on alert, so he kept an eye on the jockstrap of Theseus. It remained undisturbed and Dale's team packed it up with Hollander's kit for the first away game of the season. It didn't get worn, and Dale found it in the trash when they packed the locker room up.

Just to be sure, Dale hung it back in its designated spot in the next locker room. He tried to stick around and see if he could catch anyone chirping Hollander for his objectively decrepit jock, but there was just two of his team on the trip and he had too much to do.

The jockstrap of Theseus was undisturbed that day, but was back in the trash after practice at the next stop. Dale rescued it, and faced his obligations.

The problem was, if this was going on, it seemed Hollander hadn't told Rozanov that someone was fucking with him. Rozanov would want to know, sure, but if Hollander hadn't told his husband, should Dale really be interfering there? On the other hand, Rozanov was the captain, and this as an equipment problem as well as a hazing situation. Dale gathered his wits and his tact, and asked Rozanov for a word.

"I don't mean to interfere with player business," Dale said, watching Rozanov's face. "I know pranks are part of the team bonding thing, I pulled my fair share of them as a kid."

Rozanov nodded, frowning. "Pranks, fine. But if the boys are making more work for your team, that's not on. I'm sorry I didn't notice earlier."

Ah, there's an angle Dale hadn't thought of. "It might just be that they don't realise," he said. "Some players kit is just kit, right? Latest model, changes every year. Guys like Hayes or Hollander, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work to keep their kit exactly the way they need it."

"Someone's been messing with goalie gear?" Rozanov asked, and then his face went stony. "Oh. Tell me."

"Hollander's jock," Dale said. "The lucky one. Someone keeps tossing it in the trash."

"Lucky jock," Rozanov repeated, face still blank. So he didn't know. Dale really hated that he was the one telling Rozanov this. Damnit. If it was any other player. If it was Haas, say, Dale would've figured out his superstition and done exactly as Stefan had done when Hollander was younger, and if he figured out the team was fucking the kid around, he'd have felt bad about bringing Rozanov's attention to the rookie's quirks but known Rozanov would be understanding. But this wasn't just Dale filling in Hollander's captain about a problem; he was apparently telling Rozanov things he didn't already know about his husband, and that felt wrong.

"My job is to make sure every player has what he needs to play well," Dale said, as professionally as he could. "Same for Stefan in Montreal. Plenty of guys have equipment superstitions. Hollander's chest pad is the one from 2015, I think, and the shoulder pads from 2017; they've been refurbished in-house, and we'll keep them going until someone releases a new line that he's happy with. Doesn't matter to us if it's habit or superstition or genuine performance concerns: if he feels like he plays better with it, we'll keep it going."

Rozanov just stared at him.

"Anyway," Dale went on. "Whoever's pranking Hollander probably doesn't know that the lucky jock is basically one-of-a-kind, or that it could really throw him off his game." He sighed. "Sorry to do this to you, given it's Hollander, but… you're the Captain."

Rozanov's face broke into a grin, which he tried to hide behind one hand. "How old?" he asked.

"Uh, well, that's sort of a philosophical question," Dale pointed out. "If every part of a jockstrap has been replaced since it was first worn, is it still the same jockstrap?"

Rozanov took a moment to process that and then cracked up laughing, bent almost in two. Dale wasn't sure what to make of that. It didn't seem like the reaction of a man who'd just learned that someone was hazing his best new player who was also his husband.

There was a knock at the door, immediately followed by, "Ilya there you are - oh, I see how it is, having fun with the equipment team without me."

Hollander entered the away-team equipment room, and Rozanov straightened up.

"Hollander, Dale has an important philosophical question," Rozanov said, smirking at his husband. "If every part of a jockstrap has been replaced since it was first worn, is it still the same jockstrap?"

Dale's stomach twisted. Rozanov joked with everyone, and Dale had no reason to think he'd be cruel to his own husband, but the point of talking to Rozanov as captain was to put a stop to people giving Hollander shit, not give anyone more ammunition.

"Of course it is," Hollander answered. "If I re-shingle my cottage roof, it's still my roof."

"Hmm, okay. I also have important question," Rozanov went on. "How old is your horrible haunted jockstrap?"

"Twelve years," Hollander answered, promptly. Dale could see Rozanov doing the math in his head.

"Not since rookie season, then?"

"Winter before," Hollander said, and for some reason that set Rozanov off laughing again.

"Hollander," Dale said, feeling like someone had get a grip on this conversation. "I'm sorry, this is awkward, but I think someone has been trying to prank you. That's what I asked Rozanov in here to talk about: three times now, I've found your jockstrap in the locker room trash."

"Oh,' Hollander said, looking taken aback. "I only knew about the one."

Rozanov straightened up made an effort to stop cackling. "Dale, my apologies, this was me."

"What?" Hollander and Dale say at once.

"I did not know it was lucky jockstrap of Theseus!" Rozanov said. "I just thought, oh, is like Hollander's hoodies with the holes in the cuffs, and he forgot to throw it out when he got new ones. So I toss it out! And then next day it is back."

"So you… snuck it in the trash again?" Hollander asked, narrowing his eyes. Well now Dale felt really uncomfortable.

"And the next day it is back!" Rozanov crowed, apparently deeply amused. "I thought we were… what is that book Arthur likes? Grandpa's shoes?"

Apparently that meant something to Hollander, who smiled and shook his head. "Grandpa's slippers," he corrected. "You thought we were… you'd be Grandma in this equation?"

Dale was lost, but Hollander and Rozanov seemed to be having fun.

"Yes! Except in this story, Grandpa has an in-house shoe repair and rescue team, and Grandma is an idiot," Rozanov concluded. "Dale, thank you for telling me," he said, more seriously. "I didn't know the history of the jockstrap of Theseus. This is a work of art, it must never be thrown in the trash." He had no idea how right he was about that, Dale thought.

Dale was a father, as well as a Very Senior Equipment Manager. He couldn't help looking from Hollander to Rozanov, checking for anything to worry about.

"Well, boys," he said. "You know where to find me if you need me. I meant what I said about it being our job to make sure every player has what he needs to focus on the ice."

"Thanks," Hollander said, looking awkward, and Rozanov echoed him. They slung arms around each other, and Dale could hear them in the hallway, debating whether Rozanov could write a children's book. The last thing Dale caught before they were out of earshot was Hollander saying,

"Fuck no! Ilya, if you ask Haas to illustrate something called Hollander's Jockstrap, he'll explode from embarrassment on the spot! Then I'll be stuck with Dillon on my right wing, you can't do that to me!"