Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander & Joe | Shane Hollander's Figure Skater Friend, background Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Joe | Shane Hollander's Figure Skater Friend, Shane Hollander, David Hollander, OFC Joe's Mom, OFC Joe's sister, OF Joe's other sister, Yuna Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, ilya mainly Haunts The Narrative and mainly in ch 2, further character tags tbd

Additional Tags:

outsider pov, shane Hollander pre major juniors, and then Shane Hollander circa 2017 and on but seen through the eyes of Joe, coming in ch 2:, period typical figure skating bullshit, tags to be updated at that time, in this house we stan gabriella papadakis, but while no Actual Figure Skaters appear as characters proper in this fic and it's not figure skating RPF, your author was alive and paying attention to figure skating 2016-2022, and your author has a historicity fetish, this caveat will be updated

Language:

English

Series:

Part 5 of Series: "I Swear This Series Isn't ALL Outsider POV"

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-04 Words: 5,582 Chapters: 1/2

Showing up for your buddy: the Joe Airds story

Summary

Joe is Japan when the video goes viral, and at first he assumes it's some kind of weird prank. He's a bit disappointed, honestly; the Shane he's known since peewee hockey days isn't the kind of guy to pull a stunt like that.

[...]

He swipes through the pictures. Shane and Rozanov at their hockey camp. Shane and Rozanov at the press conference announcing their charity foundation thing. Shane and Rozanov at some press conference in matching jerseys - Joe thinks he vaguely remembers some big deal about the two of them playing on the same line for a one-off NHL event. Shane and Rozanov in a face-off on the ice, Rozanov smirking and, more unusual, Shane smiling widely. Huh.

Joe Airds thinks about Shane Hollander, and has to concede that he might have been the insensitive sports bro in this friendship.

Notes

This fic exists for two reasons:

1) I, in the liminal Xmas-early Jan period, watched the gay hockey show and when actual ray of sunshine Carter Vaugn said "I'm guessing your buddy is gay, right?" I glitched. In hindsight I do actually think it's a good narrative choice - probably net better than the book version, although the book version where Shane knew his buddy the speed skater was gay but no one else did had a different effect. Specifically, the book version confirms that Shane is someone that gay people might come out to. The TV version has to put the "other athlete: gay?" into the mouth of a different character, and it works well from a story perspective.
1.a) And yet. I was alive, and on the internet, and in figure skating fandom, 2016-2022. Pretty much the first thing that my pre-existing figure skating fan friends caught me ujp on was "oh you think figure skating is gay-friendly? NO". There were no out gay figure skaters for the 2014 Olympics. Johnny Weir (out, gay, recently retired) was with Team USA as a commentator, and it was a whole thing.

2) Heteronormativity in figure skating is very heteronormative, and I thought the funniest possible thing would be Joe, A Straight Figure Skater, explaining that to Shane (while we know that Shane is stuck in the gay torment nexus). More on that (and supporting citations) in ch 2.

In order to get to the amusing/enlightening Ice Sports Dramatic Irony moments, I invested in Young Joe and Younger Shane. Along the way I researched many things and ended up with a whole "TIMELINES" tab in OneNote starting from the Peewee!Shane here, continuing through everything currently published in this series and through the Pending Concepts.

See endnotes for comments/cites on this current chapter. See my test fic Free Dance for a) test characterisation and b) embedding choices that turn out not to work if you're not in Aus, so I won't be doing that in ch 2 of this fic.

Chapter 1

April 2021, Osaka

Joe is Japan when the video goes viral, and at first he assumes it's some kind of weird prank. He's a bit disappointed, honestly; the Shane he's known since peewee hockey days isn't the kind of guy to pull a stunt like that. Rozanov, maybe: Joe's from a hockey family, and he's heard enough about Rozanov's legendarily obnoxious personality. On the other hand, Joe had actually met the guy, last year, at a charity auction thing he'd been roped into as a good Ottawa boy. Shane hadn't been available - the Metros had been on the road that weekend - but he had sent a signed stick or jersey or something. The Rozanov who Joe had met there had been a different man to his on-ice persona: he'd seemed to be sincerely invested in the art therapy program for the children's hospital that they were auctioning off memorabilia to support. He'd brought with him the Cens' new rookie, some kid from Switzerland, and made sure to go around introducing him to every other contributing athlete there.

Given the time difference, and the fact that Joe has the team trophy to focus on, by the time he gets around to looking up Shane or Rozanov's social media to see what explanation they have for the stunt they've subjected poor Pike to, Shane and Rozanov have posted a statement. The same statement, clearly jointly written (or more likely, by Shane's mom - Mrs Hollander had been at that auction, too, and now that he thinks about it, had clearly been on good terms with Ilya Rozanov).

We know that our relationship will be difficult for a lot of people to accept and understand. We have never let our personal relationship interfere with our competitiveness on the ice, and we believe our career achievements show that very clearly. We've always kept personal and professional separate, and we hope our teams, our fans and the league can do the same.

Joe winces. He knows hockey well enough to know that is a big ask.

He swipes through the pictures. Shane and Rozanov at their hockey camp. Shane and Rozanov at the press conference announcing their charity foundation thing. Shane and Rozanov at some press conference in matching jerseys - Joe thinks he vaguely remembers some big deal about the two of them playing on the same line for a one-off NHL event. Shane and Rozanov in a face-off on the ice, Rozanov smirking and, more unusual, Shane smiling widely. Huh.

Joe Airds thinks about Shane Hollander, and has to concede that he might have been the insensitive sports bro in this friendship.

Autumn 2002, Ottawa

"Joe Airds, left wing. Shane Hollander, centre. Sean Martin, right wing." The peewee team that year had two Shanes and a Sean, to add to the chaos of three different Matts. Sean Martin and Matt Weaver had brothers on the side as well. Coach was dealing with this by addressing everyone with first and surname, at least until nicknames for the new kids settled in.

Shane Hollander was the new kid everyone had eyes on. He was small, yes. Joe had already heard someone asking if he was even eleven yet. He was fast. Joe had caught the some of the atom team training last year, because their training slot fell in between after-school open skate and his Dad's team practice. He and his sisters would go straight to the rink from school, then Dad would turn up, they'd get burgers for dinner, and Joe and his sisters would be plonked back into the stands with instructions to complete their homework.

Actual homework completion had not been not reliable. Alanna's attention would be fixed on the rink - on the atom league training finishing up, on Dad's team practice, anything. Molly would either be extremely diligent, or have her head in book. Joe mostly got some of his schoolwork done, but that didn't mean he didn't notice things. One thing he had noticed was that Mom "coached" a group of dads with hockey sticks very differently to how she coached his sisters' team and wildly different to the girls she coached as well. The other thing he had noticed was that the atom team had a kid who could skate laps around everyone else, and was alarmingly accurate in his goal-scoring. Better than Joe - well, wasn't not hard, lots of people were more accurate goal-shooters than Joe. Better than all of Joe's teammates that year, Joe was pretty sure.

Given Joe's poor goal-scoring record and his mediocre passing skills, he had not expected to be put on a line with Shane Hollander, a kid who clearly was only still skating locally because he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet. Give him even an extra inch of height, and he'd be whisked away early to a midget team.

"Shane Hollander is… little," Coach said, catching Joe and Sean at the end of practice. "You boys are second-year peewees, you know the checking can be a bit of an adjustment." Joe and Sean had nodded, equally blank. "The other teams are going to be targeting him." No surprise there; Joe's own mom had said as much. "Joe. You're fast. You're the tallest guy on the team. If you can't take the pass, get in there and keep the other side off him."

That was the early season pep talk. Joe didn't like it; he was fast but it was only useful as a support to someone better? Later, he will think of this as one of the key career turning points, but at the time, he only knew he didn't like hearing it laid out so clearly from their coach. He expected to hold it against Shane, but Shane was… little. Joe didn't hate running interference for him. He might have, if Shane had been as confident off the ice as he was on it. But Shane got a deer-in-headlights look on his face when the team were roughhousing after games, and he seemed to look to Joe. Joe, who wasn't good at stealing the puck or scoring goals with it once he had it. But Joe was one of the oldest and fastest guys on the team, and he could insert himself between Shane and an oncoming check. And he could nudge Shane along, make jokes that seemed to make him laugh, and deflect attention from him when some of the guys' teasing got too pointed.

As autumn turned into winter it became clear to everyone just how good Shane was. It didn't win him friends. Once he had the puck in his control, he was away, but he'd rarely pass it back. He was a sore loser - or, as Joe's mom put it, Shane took his own mistakes hard. If they won a game, but Shane had fumbled what should have been an easy goal, or worse, didn't score at all, he'd be silently glaring at his own gear as they packed up afterward.

Coach had them spending a lot of practice time on passing drills; not a big surprise there, they had done the same thing last year. What did surprise Joe was when he overheard Coach talking to Shane.

They'd not played their best, last weekend. Goalie was having an off day; Joe had fumbled multiple passes; Sean had made multiple hopeless shots on goal instead of passing the puck. Shane had scored their two goals, but he'd hogged the puck, too, skipping good opportunities to pass to Sean and powering ahead himself, faster than his wingers could keep up with him. He'd lost the puck and been checked harder than peewee rules really allowed, over and over.

"You'll be on a AAA side next year," Coach had been saying when Joe came within earshot, "no doubt about that, kid." Shane just stared awkwardly at a spot somewhere in front of his feet. "Here's the thing. You're still going to be one of the best on that team, once you've got a bit more height on you. Are you following me, Hollander?"

Shane had said, "Yes?" in a voice that sounded pretty clearly confused to Joe. Coach must have picked that up, too.

"It's a team sport, kid. I have a feeling it will be a long time before you end up on a line with guys who can really keep up with you. You won't get there if you play hockey like it's a one-man game. You've got to learn to work with the team you've got. Learn to pass. Let your linemates keep up with you."

Mulishly, Shane had said, "I score goals. I score more goals than any of them."

"And when you don't, you lose the puck."

"We lose the puck if I do pass," Shane pointed out. This was unfair to Sean, who was much less likely to fumble than Joe.

Coach had patted Shane on the shoulder. "The thing is, you're good. Now you've got to find a way to make it easy for other players to work with you. It'll make their game better, too."

Joe had been waiting for his mom to make it over from the other rink where she trained her older girls the same night as Joe had practice. He spotted her as coach patted Shane on the shoulder again and gave him a shove toward his gear bag: Joe's mom had come in while he was eavesdropping, and was talking seriously to Shane's mom.

Shane must have seen them too, because he came over to stand next to Joe. Joe wondered if he was going to complain about Coach, or ask if Joe had heard what Coach was saying.

Instead, Shane asked, "Your mom played hockey, like, seriously, didn't she?"

"In college, yeah," Joe said. "Like your Dad, right?"

"Yes. But college hockey is a bigger deal for the women, I think." Maybe. Alanna, at ten, had already declared she was going to go to college on a hockey scholarship, like Mom.

They left that conversation there, but perhaps Joe should have expected the follow-up after the next game. Shane came over to him, gear bag over his shoulder and with a expression of determination Joe normally associated with Shane staring down defencemen much larger and rougher than him.

"Doyouwanttohangoutafterschool," Shane said, in one rapid rush. Joe had to take a moment to figure out what he said, during which time Shane added, "Or like, on a weekend? My mom says she can pick you up or drive you home."

Shane wasn't even in high school. Sure, Joe had hung out with some of the older guys on the team last year, but that was mostly in groups. He hadn't really thought about Shane as a hanging-out friend. He wondered for a second what he and Shane would even do. If Shane had a Nintendo, he'd never joined in when the guys were comparing what games they had. Probably he had a TV, and watched movies?

Obviously he watched hockey. Maybe he still played kid games, like cops and robbers.

"The park near our place has iced-over the basketball courts," Shane added, and that sounded like the part of the invitation that he was most comfortable with. "Bring your skates, we've got plenty of sticks and pucks, we can go down there and mess around."

Somehow, when "mess around" turned out to be "run through passing drills", Joe wasn't surprised. He was a bit cheesed off, honestly. But Shane's Dad organised to be home from work early, and got his skates on with them. Shane's Dad had been Joe's coach for a year in Timbits, and Joe had really liked Coach Hollander, so he was less cheesed off with Shane than he could have been. Joe called him "Coach" about five minutes in, and then apologised.

"You're fine, Joe," he'd said. "It's been a while since anyone called me Coach. I think I miss it."

Drilling with Shane alone was weird. Joe had expected him to be more critical, and in a way he was, but he was also trying to show Joe how he did things. But Coach Hollander commented on Joe's strengths as well as his weaknesses - more than their peewee coach, that was for sure - and stepped in when Shane got frustrated at Joe not understanding.

"How come you stopped coaching kids?" Joe asked Coach Hollander, as they were packing up. "You're good at it."

Coach Hollander looked down at him and Joe felt like the smile on his face was praise, although he wasn't sure what for.

"I liked coaching Timbits," Coach Hollander said. "I did that before Shane was born, did you know?" Joe didn't. He didn't know why that was important, either, but he tried to look like he was thinking seriously about it. "But I didn't want to coach Shane."

"My mom coaches older girls," Joe told him. He found himself telling Coach Hollander some of the more serious things he thought about, when it came to his family and hockey. Shane was packing up the bag of pucks, within earshot, maybe listening, but that was fine. "She told me she's not sure what she'll do when my sisters get to that age."

Coach Hollander tilted his head, like he was interested in what Joe was saying.

"She, uh. She doesn't say this exactly but it's kind of obvious: one of my sisters is really good, and the other one… she's good, but maybe she just doesn't care as much?" More like me, Joe thought. That was not something he was willing to say to Coach Hollander, or his mom. He and Molly didn't even say it directly, although they were starting to develop inside jokes about some people in the family caring about hockey a bit too much.

"That would be tricky," Coach Hollander said.

"Yeah. But it's hard to find good coaches. For girls especially. There's not the same kind of selective teams, or not as many; so it depends on how good Alanna gets in the next couple of years."

Shane finished packing up the pucks and slung his gear bag over his shoulder. Joe did the same, and elbowed him.

"You got the wrong Airds as your winger, buddy."

"Huh," Shane said.

"You should meet Alanna, she's almost as fast as me and way more accurate."

February, 2003

The first thing Joe thought when he heard about "Spring Festival" was that it was still winter. The basketball court rinks were still frozen! It turned out that was Shane's mom's version Chinese New Year. Shane's mom was Japanese, or her parents were. Joe hadn't really thought about it before this, although obviously he'd noticed that Shane's mom was Asian.

"No, no lion dancing at our place," she'd said, when Joe asked. "It's much less of a big deal in Japan, but any excuse for a party, right?"

At this point in his life Joe knew the Hollanders well enough to know that Shane wasn't an "any excuse for a party" kind of guy, and to suspect that his parents weren't either.

The food wasn't all Japanese, which Joe was kind of relieved about but also a bit disappointed by. The party was pretty small - there was the Hollanders, and Joe's family, and a couple of adults who might be Shane's aunts and uncles or older cousins on his Dad's side. There were also a couple of women who might be Shane's mom's family, but maybe just friends, and one of them had two kids and a husband with her.

Joe tried, briefly, to figure out it, but got distracted by beating Shane and one of his possible-cousins at SuperMario. The possible-cousins had brought the game cartridge, but Shane did have a Nintendo 364. It turned out he mostly used it to play Wayne Gretzky 3D Hockey 98, but he did own the star wars podracer game Joe loved. The possible-cousins and Joe's sisters didn't, so that was off the table for this particular weekend gathering.

The dessert things Shane's mom made were pretty great.

"My mom made this kind for spring festival," Mrs Hollander explained to Joe's mom. "These days it's easy to get pre-made mochi from the supermarket, but I like an excuse to make her recipe." (Joe hadn't been clear about the word, at the time, but decades later, he's got favourite mochi options in Montréal, and has eaten some really fantastic mochi when he's been in Japan for competitions.)

Joe liked Shane's grandma's version. It was faintly pink, and made of rice, with a weird red filling. Later, he found out that was beans, which sounded gross but had tasted fine at the time.

There were also ones filled with ice cream, and most of the kids preferred those. Shane's mom had frozen and partly thawed some of hers, as well, and Shane seemed to like them that way but it seemed to Joe like a weird half-way between the special recipe and the ice cream version.

They ended up down at the outdoor rink, of course: Shane's Dad, Joe's mom, Shane, Joe, Molly and Alanna. The younger of the maybe-cousins, a girl of about eight who had figure skates, came with her mom, too. Eventually, after 2-on-2 got boring, Joe and Molly exchanged one of their increasingly common looks and took a break.

Molly joined the younger girl - Melissa, that was her name. Joe hung back to watch Shane and Alanna for a bit. At first, when he'd realised Shane was holding back with the girls, he didn't think anything of it. Shane wasn't as big as Joe, but he was bigger than both Molly and Alanna, and faster too. It was good that he didn't get up in their space - didn't use his weight, or the checking that he was learning, against the girls. That was how Joe treated his sisters, too. If a part of Joe's mind thought but Shane isn't learning to check anyone, he's too tiny, maybe he should practice checking Alanna, Joe recognised that as mean and more importantly not how he would want anyone, even tiny Shane, treating his sister.

One on one, though, Joe watched Shane and Alanna and realised it was a little bit more complicated than that. Probably watching how Coach Hollander talked to them gave him the clue. Shane was bigger than Alanna, and faster; in simple accuracy drills he was better than her, too. But one-on-one, Alanna could fake him out; she dangled the puck and he couldn't reliably predict her.

That was probably when Joe realised just how good Alanna was. Shane didn't have that problem with their teammates or their peewee opponents. Shane could fake Alanna out, mind you, if he had control of the puck, but he couldn't do it as easily as he could most guys in their league. Shane wasn't just holding back from using size or speed against Alanna: he was letting her use her strongest skillset and working on beating her at it.

Someone had come up beside him while he watched Shane and Alanna face off, over and over. Melissa's mom, whose name Joe couldn't remember.

"You play hockey?" she asked.

"Yeah." Joe shrugged. "Not as good as them, though."

"I don't think many people are," Melissa's mom said. "Your other sister says you're fast?"

"Pretty fast, yeah."

"Mellissa and Molly wanted to set up an obstacle course, and I'm timing. Join us?" Joe looked over, and sure enough, the girls were setting up something that looked like the six-cone agility drills he knew, but with a couple of pucks, two baseball caps, and two shoes instead of cones.

Joe smoked both Mellissa and Molly at speed 'weave in and out' drills, but Mellissa turned out to be another mini-Shane, with immediate commentary on his edgework. Melissa's mom clearly didn't know much about hockey, but she had suggestions and Joe tried them out anyway. He had a feeling it might be an improvement, but he'd need to work at it.

Mellissa tried to teach Molly bunny hops. Mellissa's mom came back up to stand next to Joe.

"Bunny hops are okay," she said, "at least, just for fun. But don't let your sister start seriously trying jumps without figure skates. The picks are on the toe for a reason. It's not safe, in hockey skates."

"Oh," Joe said. "Good to know."

"Did you try figure skating? Lots of kids do, early on."

"No," Joe told her, shaking his head. "We're a hockey family."

"Hmm," Melissa's mom said. "If you want a taste, we run an intro camp in late summer. Several intro camps, by age."

Joe turned to her and gave her the kind of look that got him told off by teachers. The "what the shit is this" look.

"You're fast," Melissa's mom went on. "Strong. Good agility. Very neat edgework, for someone your age." Joe considered the fact that she, and her eight year old kid, had just been critiquing his edgework. Well, he'd met the Hollanders. If Melissa's mom was family, or even a friend, it made sense. "There's always space for boys with those skills, in figure skating."

Melissa's mom's name was Yumiko Watanabe, which Joe learned because she actually pulled out a business card and gave it to him. She was a kid's figure skating coach, based at the same rink where his mom trained her teenage girls. The back of the card linked to a website, which advertised one-week intro camps at various age brackets in the late summer.

August, 2003

Joe thought, at the time, that he was striking out in a rebellious direction, declaring he wanted to enrol in intro figure skating camp. He even came up with vaguely hockey-plausible reasons: he wanted to improve his agility, his spatial awareness on the ice, et cetera.

By the end of the week, he was sold. It would mean kind of starting again, looking like an idiot on the ice again. That's what made his decision for him, really: he would prefer to start again, looking like an idiot, than keep slogging away being mediocre at hockey.

His parents were okay with it. Alanna was utterly baffled. Molly thought he was crazy for swapping hockey practice for early morning figure skating practice.

Coach Hollander volunteered to coach peewee girls that year, which meant Joe's mom didn't have to choose between doing it herself or keeping her mouth shut while someone worse than her did it.

"It's good for him, I think," Joe's Dad said, at some ungodly hour of the morning as he was driving Joe to the rink. "He said to me he'd thought about joining a rec league, but he had a knee replacement young because of damage from hockey." College, Joe remembers. Like his mom. "He said he had to drop out of college for a semester after his last concussion, and even after that his grades took a hit. Doesn't want to risk another one."

"In beer league?" Joe asked. He wasn't supposed to call it beer league, it was 'rec league', but he knew what all the grown-ups called it.

"Always a risk, bud," Dad said. "We're not trying to take each other out, not like the pros, but us goofballs who barely practice are a different kind of hazard on the ice."

Later that season, when his figure skating coaches would start nudging him toward working with girls - always someone younger, more skilled, so much more fragile than him - with a view to pair skating, Joe would think about his Dad's off-hand acceptance that not only might Dad get injured, he might injure other people.

Right now, though, Dad continued, "Besides, Coach Hollander is more like your mom than me. Can you imagine your mom playing rec league hockey with just anyone?" Joe imagined it for a split second and snorted derisively. Absolutely not. Mom could barely keep her shit together at the times when she got roped in to do skills sessions for Dad's beer league.

The memory of Coach Hollander telling him, on a frozen-over basketball court, "it's been a while since anyone called me Coach. I think I miss it" rose in Joe's mind as Dad parked outside the rink. He jumped out and grabbed his gear, as it dawned on him that his mom and Mrs Hollander might have been the playmakers behind all of this, going back to one awkward Shane invitation for Joe to hang out.

May, 2006

Shane Hollander approached Joe in the hallway at school. Joe expected something bland and school-related, but Shane was never predictable.

"How's figure skating?" Shane asked.

If one of the school hockey team asked him that, Joe would expect a follow-up slur, joke, maybe a threat of physical violence. But Shane wasn't old enough for the school team, even though he was playing in Midget AAA with guys three and four years older than him. The school hockey guys hated him almost as much as they looked down on Joe.

So logically, Shane wasn't giving him shit. Shane was asking a genuine question. But Shane's genuine question was so specific that Joe balked at answering it honestly.

"Great," he said. "Such a good way to meet girls, man, you ought to try it."

Shane blinked at him. "I meet plenty of girls at school," he said. Then, refocusing on Joe, he asked again, "You're making progress with your skating, though, right? Dad said you went to the big national… thing?"

Joe had, back in January. He was surprised the Hollanders talked about him, although he knew Coach Hollander and his mom kept in touch.

"Yeah," Joe agreed, warily. "I did okay, I think. It was pretty cool to meet skaters from all over the country."

"I'm looking forward to that, when I get to major juniors," Shane said. "There's only two teams in the national finals, but Canada enters three teams in the World Under-17 Challenge, so that should mean getting to play with different guys." He reined himself back in. "Anyway, that's a while away yet."

"Didn't I hear you got junior drafted already?" Joe asked. He'd heard plenty about it, it was kind of unavoidable news. Shane wouldn't be playing for Kingston next year, but he'd been drafted at the earliest opportunity.

"That's actually kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," Shane said, touching the back of his neck awkwardly. "Maggie, from the school paper? She wanted to interview me about that. I did it, but I told her if she was looking for promising athletes from our school she should really talk to you. I mean, you're competing on a national level!"

Joe wondered if Shane really had no idea how much less interest anyone at this school had in figure skating than they had in Shane, who had appeared in his first TV ad (playing pond hockey with his Dad (zoom in on the youth-size stick in Shane's hand and the matching branded stick in his Dad's) at age fourteen. Mind you, the interest Joe's classmates had in Shane was laced through with a vicious resentment that didn't come Joe's way, and he doubted Shane's own peers were kinder. For all Joe knew, Shane might genuinely wish the school paper profiled Joe instead.

He wasn't expecting Maggie to follow up with him, but she did, and if figure skating was a good way to meet girls (stressed, gossipy girls who trained at the same rink as you so you had to look her and all her friends in the eye after you broke up), "Shane Hollander sends one of the student newspaper girls your way" was a surprisingly better one. Maggie didn't know any of Joe's rink-mates or their drama, and he didn't know her theatre friends and their shenanigans. Eventually, even Maggie with her schedule of writing and performing got fed up with Joe being basically unavailable in peak figure skating season, but it was good while it lasted.

August, 2007

Coach Hollander had stepped back from the girls' teams last season - something about his work getting too intense - but he'd led a couple of workshops for Joe's Dad's beer league, while Joe's mom picked up a second girls' team. This coming season, though, Shane was starting in Kingston, and for reasons Joe didn't really understand (and he didn't really try to understand at the time) Shane's parents were temporarily moving there with him. Something about one of Coach's friends being a professor in Kingston needing a house-sitter for a year. There was a diabetic cat involved.

Joe was pretty sure this was some kind of momma's boy bullshit that he ought to be giving Shane shit for, but probably the guys in Kingston would do enough of that. He thought, too, about the rink-mates he never really got to know - mostly girls, but there had been a couple of guys as well - and who moved away from Ottawa as they turned thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Kids who it was hard to get to know, because they always had extra ice time booked; who had a parent at the side of the rink for every practice; who travelled all over north America and even to Europe to work with different coaches and choreographers in their summer vacations.

Most of those skaters he never heard of again, but the first year Joe was at Nationals one guy who was both younger and far ahead of Joe sought him out to chat. The next year it was multiple girls, and one of them had shaken off her parent/manager supervision long enough that Joe got to touch her tits in a corner. See, figure skating was a great way to meet girls! Shane's team had lost the national junior finals last season, and maybe they'd win it this coming season, but win or lose, that was 23 sweaty teenage guys, entirely separate from junior girl's hockey. The girl who let him touch her tits - no wait, she'd pulled him into a corner, she actively encouraged him to touch her tits - went to world juniors!

Joe realised he was reminiscing and being a weirdo at the Hollander's grill party, the one Coach Hollander had organised for the beer league guys because he was leaving. Here he was, just hanging around, not talking to anyone, getting a half-chub thinking about tits he touched months ago. And at about this point, Shane appeared, with a girl hanging off his arm and a couple more following like ducklings.

Obviously, Joe greeted Shane like they were great buddies. Shane slapped him on back and introduced him to the girls. One of them gave Joe her number, another one looked him up on MySpace a few days later, and before school went back he'd touched both of their tits. Thanks, Hollander. Or, as the hockey bros would say: ferda.

If Joe had his way, over the next couple of years the only hockey he would have heard about was, like, the Stanley Cup, and maybe Alanna. Not too much of Alanna, honestly. But his family was his family, and so he heard way more about hockey than he wanted. That included his Mom and Alanna keeping tabs on Shane, and what the media was saying about Shane.

Joe tuned out most of the praise, but the negatives he did kind of take in. Apparently, there was some kind of sense - and no one could really explain why, aside from just that he was a generational talent - that Hollander was selfish. Occasionally the term puck hog even cropped up. More often, some talking head was trying to insinuate - well, Joe couldn't really figure out what they were specifically alleging, but the vibe seemed to be that Hollander was too focused, too serious. That his conscientiousness in always crediting his team when asked about recent success was too stiff; that there were rumours he wasn't good in the room. It was common knowledge that Hollander was keeping up his grades, didn't party or muck around off the ice: someone clearly stupid had suggested that was a bad thing. It was all vague, mixed in with praise for his accuracy and playmaking (although weirdly, he'd slowed down, or not kept up with the speed of lesser players, and it was doing Joe's head in to hear Shane Hollander described as "powerful, but not graceful"). The general gist seemed to be that there were unsubstantiated rumours that Shane Hollander wouldn't recognise the spirit of ferda if it hit him in the face.

And that had Joe laughing, whereas his Mom and Alanna were mad. Fuck's sake. Hollander grew out of the puck hog mindset as soon as he had linemates even half as good as him. If Hollander had gone of his way to introduce Joe to girls at a backyard party years after they'd played together, he would be doing fine with his team now.

Many years - almost fourteen years - later it will dawn on Joe that Shane, at that party, might have been looking to Joe to distract girls from himself.

Damn. If teenage Shane had told Joe he was gay, teenage Joe would have embraced that opportunity and aimed to touch more tits. Hindsight Joe can't be sure that would have worked, and Shane hadn't asked him… but clueless teenage Joe had played his role. Hardly ally of the year material, but he hadn't fucked up, either. Hindsight Joe can live with that.