Rating:

Not Rated

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Character:

Shane Hollander's Figure Skater Friend

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Skating, Figure Skating, Figure Skater Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-17 Completed: 2026-03-30 Words: 50,031 Chapters: 5/5

anybody like you

Summary

"Hey, are parties just… like that, for you?" Shane asks. "Like the figure skating kickbacks were in Sochi?"

"What do you mean? Like what?" Joe asks.

"Like. I don't know. Fun?"

"Yeah? Do you go to a lot of bad parties?"

"I don't know." Shane stuffs some kale in his mouth.

"So yes."

It gets lonely at the top. In Sochi, unrivaled generational hockey talent Shane Hollander reconnects with his old skate training buddy, Joe.

Notes

• Listen… Shane Hollander's [Implied] Gay Childhood Friend is simply too good a plot device to pass up
• "But plonk, they show us Joe-Shane's-figure-skating-buddy, and he's just some white guy." I wrote 30k words before I rewatched and realized that they show him to us. So. Whoops
• Likewise, Shane's parents are at the Olympics bc I didn't recall that they "couldn't go"
• Areas where I relied on reseach over experience include: the HR books, figure skating, hockey, the Olympics, Canada & immigration to it, Canadian Asian diasporic experiences, and being Asian in general (I am white)
• Joe Ma, as a skater, is like if Evan Lysacek was not AS good. But still good! Rozanov is an unrealistic mix of Petr Gumennik, Adam Fa, Ilia Malinin, Yuzuru Hanyu, and (per reader contribution) Patrick Chan
• IRL, athletes who competed for country1 at any level in the past 3 years are ineligible to compete for country2 in the Olympics. I am ignoring that rule here
• Title from CRJ's Psychedelic Switch

Chapter 1

[ THREAD: Marc ❤️ ]

Joe:

Do you remember right when we first got together talking about how I used to know Shane Hollander

We did skate clinic together the last summer before I started seriously figure skating

Marc ❤️:

… yes

I also remember some other stuff about Shane Hollander coming up later

Joe:

And I TOLD you we were NEVER to discuss that again

I WILL tell people you made it up if it gets out

Marc ❤️:

Back to the vault it goes

Joe:

The IMPORTANT thing is

He just like? Messaged me to say good luck? At the Olympics?

[screenshot.jpg]

Marc ❤️:

What

Are you sure it's him?

Joe:

I think so!! It's the same number as before

Same message history and stuff

Someone could have stolen his phone I guess but I don't think I'm the first contact they'd look for

 

Marc ❤️:

That's so weird

Cool though

Do you think he's trying to smash

Joe:

No

Marc ❤️:

… I think he's trying to smash

Joe:

You think everyone's trying to smash

Marc ❤️:

Sometimes I'm even right

—

For Shane, the gay thing and the friends thing are directly related. More specifically, the “not having many friends” thing is because of the “just barely hanging onto hope that he’s not at all gay, not even a little tiny bit” thing.

Shane’s got a system for negotiating around the two in hockey:

• Set himself apart from teammates by being so good at and knowledgeable about the game that the org gives him the C

• Identify a nice, low-key guy on the team and silently ally with him in not keeping up with the loudmouths and partiers

• Cover the gaps with quiet confidence

The system isn’t perfect. Sometimes, the C goes to a better social engineer, leaving Shane closer to his teammates than he likes. A relaxed, quiet teammate can be hard to find, or can become otherwise under the wrong circumstances: a winger who started drinking way too much; a goalie who turned out to be crazy religious. If Shane genuinely likes the teammate he singles out, he has to be so, so careful not to get clingy.

Luckily, since he joined MLH, the system has held strong. The Metros gave him the C in his second year with the team. Hayden, Shane’s chosen quiet-and-nice teammate until trade or retirement do they part, is steady and friendly.

And the quiet confidence part works, even in situations where it straight up shouldn't. In Shane's rookie year, an MLH teammate point-blank asked if he had any friends. (Well, it was, “So do you even, like, hang out with anyone?” but the subtext of that question is basically text, and fuck you too, bud). Shane kept his hands at his sides, his shoulders back, his voice bored, and his eye contact strong. All he said was, “Yeah, I’m not really that social, man.” It was as good as admitting that he didn't hang out with people, right? But because Shane didn't act embarrassed about it, didn't show weakness, the guy backed way off.

No one likes a freak or a sadsack. Like, when Berkes and his girlfriend broke up, JJ helmed the Metros going out to get him moderately drunk. Shane's participation was non-optional, and for once, he didn't mind. Berkes was cut up. Everyone felt bad for him.

The Metros didn't get too wild that night. They just played darts and made sure to direct conversation away from Berkes' ex and how things went wrong and whether he should call her.

The next day, guys asked him different variations on, "Hey, Berkie, feeling better yet?"

Berkes said he was, even though he obviously wasn't. The Metros gave a collective sigh of relief; they'd done their due diligence, and could now go back to the real, material things in life (read: hockey) without looking someone's awkward loneliness in the eye.

Same as how some guys shift and spit compulsively when the Admirals play that video on the Jumbotron about Scott Hunter being a tragic, lonely orphan before hockey swooped in to save him. No one likes that. No one wants to think about it.

It's just like that with Shane, albeit on a smaller scale. He knows the impression he gives off. Guy who doesn't party and doesn't have his own family. Parents don't count; in hockey, family includes a woman who you can fuck. Who will help you out if you take too many hits and start to slip mentally at sixty, or fifty, or forty, depending on the position you play and the risks you took to get there.

But he's not lonely. He doesn't have the time to be lonely. To sit around wishing for, whatever, a girlfriend or a deeper personal connection with their defensive line or some shit. (And anyway, he's not at high risk for brain damage; it's the fighters you really have to look out for.) It's important for other players, teammates especially, to see that he doesn't feel a lack. Off the ice, he needs to stay unobtrusive and occasionally funny enough to assure onlookers that he's independent, not isolated. Self-assured. Comfortable.

The closer Shane gets to his teammates, the more chance that something goes sideways. That some weakness he hasn't pinpointed yet seeps through the cracks. So he just… doesn't get close. It's worked so far. Maybe one day, cracks will start to show through that people can see from further away.

Or, or - maybe he'll meet an exceptionally hot woman who's into pegging five-foot-eleven-on-a-good-day MLH players, and she'll fuck him so good his brain will rewire mostly right, and they'll buy a house and have babies, and his parents will love her, and she'll be good with the team, but not too good with the team. And since Shane's already imagining a best-case, moonshot scenario, his ideal, woman-shaped wife will be like, a lawyer or something and extremely committed to discretion, so no one ever, ever suspects that Shane gets drilled whenever he needs it.

Not that he needs it.

By the time Sochi rolls around, Shane hasn’t had to re-establish the system in years. He only has to be a team with these guys for a few weeks, which isn’t that long for someone to notice something off about him. But he doesn’t have the distance of the C, nor the inherent intimidation factor of being Shane Hollander - all of these guys are the best of the best.

He just has to hope that being on Team Canada at the Olympics is keeping the guys too busy to think about Shane and his (lack of a) personal life.

—

The Americans and Canadians have mingled a couple of times so far. It's an awkward reality of the Village that things are fucking cramped. Despite his time at Worlds and World Juniors showing him just how messy international competition can be, Shane had imagined all of the Canadian athletes housed in a single building to themselves; turns out they're mixed in with Americans and a few spillover Mexican athletes, a North American hodgepodge that seems unwise for international relations, but what does Shane know about those?

He's happy to run into Carter Vaughn and Scott Hunter here and there, especially. They got along during the All Star Game, exchanged some friendly talk at Worlds. No complaints on Shane's end.

That said? Fuck, he's glad he doesn't share a locker room with Vaughn.

Now, Vaughn's a solid winger with an opportune balance of youth and experience that makes him perfect for Team USA. He knows the game and he has the right attitude.

When Marshall (left wing, Canada) scoffed that both America and Canada could knock out Finland in their sleep, Vaughn called back, "You do you, but I didn't come to the Olympics to half-ass it." Shane nodded. If a player doesn't want to play, he can go work at a bank. Clear his spot on the team for someone hungry.

Vaughn added, lower, "Or for my mom to see me phone it in."

It got an actual laugh out of Shane, whose mom had wept a couple of silent tears of joy over doing one of those TV spots about parenting an Olympian. Shane is just glad she turned down the dishwasher detergent commercial that was offered to the two of them.

But Shane can like Vaughn and still notice his knack for saying things that are a new and special type of awkward.

Hockey players meet an up-and-coming Canadian women's bobsledding champion who even Shane thinks is (theoretically) hot? After she's gone, Vaughn remarks that bobsledding, skeleton, and luge put their athletes at high risk of terminal CTE with no organizational support, and he hopes he'll be able to connect with some of them about it during the Games.

Guys talk about playing FIFA? Vaughn says that seeing how Russia's handled the Olympics has turned him off of FIFA ahead of the 2018 World Cup, but he used to like it a lot.

Canada's goalie admits that his wife may have cursed Canadian hockey by pointing out a specific antique necklace she wants if they win gold? Vaughn congratulates him for choosing vintage over blood diamonds.

So when Shane says he wants to see his buddy Joe's short skate that night, he's barely even surprised that Vaughn tells him that his friend has balls of steel for being gay in Russia. Out loud. While they are also in Russia.

Like. How is Shane supposed to respond to that? What is Vaughn even looking for? Wow, Vaughny, I never would have guessed that about a man whose chosen profession has him twirling around in rhinestone-studded tights.

Does Vaughn just lack a brain-to-mouth filter? He's so upbeat that Shane can't imagine he wants to bring down anyone's mood. Maybe he's insecure about his intellect or something, wants to push back against the dumb hockey player perception and make people to see him as a serious person. Being Black could factor into that self-consciousness, maybe? Shane's encountered the inverse problem more than a few times, people assuming he's got a special affinity for math or whatever, and even that's obnoxious. (One coach in juniors chalked Shane's shots up to his advanced understanding of geometry.)

Plus, the qualities that get Shane called unsociable - focused, good hockey IQ, boring personal life - are reasons that other players get called solid, smart, steady. It's not lost on Shane that there's one pretty visible distinction between him and those other players.

If Vaughn's pushing back against a different (worse) set of stereotypes, Shane respects that.

But he doesn't think you're supposed to say - you can't assume someone's - just because of the sport you play. They play.

To say a male figure skater is gay… isn't that like assuming that all of the girl hockey players are lesbians? He sneaks a glance at a group of them together three tables over. Some of them are wearing makeup. One has a tattoo behind her ear. Is that a lesbian thing? He doesn't know. (For a brief, insane moment he thinks about vetting the women's hockey team for a wife who's into pegging. He's pretty sure most of them are, like, regular straight women - they all have long hair and stuff - but maybe there's a bi one who would bend him over and also play pick-up hockey with him.

That would be - amazing, actually.)

Okay, wait, refocus. It doesn't seem cool to just, like, say it out loud like that. The gay thing. Especially in Russia. Especially if you're just - speculating. If it was Vaughn saying it about himself, that would be different. (That would be really, really different, Shane thinks, and thinks no additional thoughts at all about the sight of Vaughn's abs in the All Star Game locker room.) But still, as Vaughn points out, it's dangerous here.

It's not that Shane didn't know that it was bad to be gay in Russia. He hadn't known it was such a big deal, maybe, but he plays MLH. He's not supposed to know about anything but hockey.

(Others' mistakes about his math skills aren't his problem.)

Maybe Vaughn says stuff like that more around Shane because Shane's not just another white guy. Vaughn and Hunter both singled Shane out at the All Star Game. Rounded him up for shots. Asked his opinion during their single practice, listened to Shane's take. Same thing they're doing here, he guesses, going out of their way to talk to him, to sit with him, to sit together at an event. Though it doesn't feel like singling out. More… including. In this way that's - he doesn't know. It's just different from what he's used to. It's cool of them to reach out.

If Shane had more guys like them in Montreal? Game changer.

—

Shane spends his life at ice rinks, so he's come across a couple of figure skating tournaments or showcases or whatever they are. They don't get much of an audience, even at a pro level. He's never seen the stands as populated for figure skating as they are at the Olympics.

"Do you know what he's gonna skate to?" Hunter asks. They're seated halfway up the arena. They got there just a couple of performances away from Joe's skate.

"Like his music?"

Hunter nods.

Shane shakes his head. He actually hasn't talked to Joe all that much in recent years, so he doesn't know anything about his routine. It's not like they're not friendly? It's just hard to keep up with athletes in other sports. And with athletes in his own sport. And, uh, with non-athletes. So, everyone.

He'd texted Joe for the first time in - he checks - oh, okay, literally years - when he saw that he was also headed to the Olympics. Hey, Shane!, he'd gotten back. Good to hear from you. I'm busy but psyched. You must be too. Hope we can catch up in Sochi (!)

He knows a brush-off when he sees one. But Shane likes that Joe is also too busy to try to, he doesn't know, call him or something. Joe is as dedicated to his sport as Shane is to his own. They saw eye-to-eye, that way, the summer that they met. Two kids with outsized ambitions, taking the whole thing just slightly more seriously than the other kids. They didn't have much in common, playing different sports and all, but Shane always felt like they really got each other. He liked Joe a lot. So he's going to support his friend.

"Maybe something classical," Shane says, belated. Hunter looks over at him. "For his song," Shane says. "Dramatic."

Shane turns out to be half right. Joe's song is dramatic, like Shane thought, though more like a film score than something classical. Maybe Hunter noticed and thought Shane didn't know Joe as well as he said he did. But, Shane reasons, he didn't say he knew him that well. Just that they were friends. So it's fine. He can get Joe's song wrong without seeming weird. There's nothing to be weird about, actually, so Shane is way overthinking this.

It's the Olympics. He's been dreaming of this his whole life. He's a little stressed out.

Shane is surprised to recognize some of Joe's old style in the program, just as far as the turn of an ankle or the tilt his head goes. His hair is shorter now, not as wavy.

There's this kid - this Finnish MLH player, right wing, a scorer, if not a strong one - in Ohio who used to figure skate. He can skate backwards for a crazy long time. He turns on a fucking dime. It's not evident, when you're playing him, that that stuff came from figure skating. Shane looked him up. Wanting to understand what the hell kind of training program created a player that light on his feet, and why they only ever made the one. It might be a gimmick, but it's a good fucking gimmick. Shane's almost jealous. If the guy stays in the League long enough, moving like that will probably screw him over. Make him injury-prone, or just a target. For now, while no one's used to him, it's an advantage. One that's fun for Shane to play against.

So even outside of Joe, Shane's got some respect for figure skating, the demand it places on its athletes, the unique skills it imparts.

He reviewed figure skating basics on his phone before they headed out. Scoring is complex. Rigid. Some of the rules seem pretty bullshit. Point is, Shane knows he doesn't know what he's looking at, but the things they keep saying - triple axel, triple loop - seem good?

Joe's fast and elegant on the ice. Confident. Well, he'd have to be. (Balls of fucking steel.)

When Joe comes off the ice, they show him on the big screen hugging first his coach, then his mom over the barrier, and presumably his dad, who Shane's never seen before. They look proud, like Shane's parents do at his games. Shane's glad. Joe should have that. Not everyone does. There are lots of bad hockey parents out there. Probably just as many bad figure skating parents.

Per his score, Joe skated well, coming within the projected range for bronze.

It doesn't feel like Vaughn and Hunter are mocking Joe when they clap and yell at the end of Joe's program. Not that Shane was worried about that. Not really.

Shane texts Joe congratulations. Vaughn urges him to add a picture. "We're supporting all North American athletes," he says, which is a little much, but at least he doesn't say "including Shane's gay friend" in the stands full of figure skating fans. We were the loud ones on the west side of the arena, Shane adds when he sends the picture.

They'd agreed to leave before the last male program, trying to beat the crowd if people leave all at once. When they go to stand, the group of middle-aged women in Team Canada gear a few seats away from Vaughn look at them like they're… Shane doesn't know. Throwing away their wallets? Making an obvious, pitiable mistake.

Vaughn leans over to them. "Hey, we don't know figure skating. Is something big coming up?" he asks.

One of them goes, "Oh my god, yes."

Another nods, lifts her hands in excitement. "Rozanov is - he's new, he's this whole thing. He's amazing. Definitely stay."

"He might not be at the top of his game right now," another one says, staring at the empty ice like she'll miss something. Her hair's back in a braid. She's in a severe turtleneck. Shane likes her. "His training was interrupted during, you know, all of it. He stumbled last month." She looks over to them and adds, "ISU," which doesn't actually clarify anything.

The women devolve into more figure skating jargon that goes way over Shane's head, but before the last gets back into it, she tosses out, "For sure, though, stick around. What a waste to miss him."

"Thanks," Vaughn says, so they stay.

In the minutes before the guy shows and they read his name, there's a hush in the crowd. In the brief pause after the announcer says, "From Canada," someone screams faintly in the stands below them, prematurely giddy. At "Ilya Rozanov," many of the visibly Canadian spectators cheer, as much as they had for anyone else, probably louder.

People repping other countries cheer, too. There's a Swedish group across the way that looks like they might collectively keel over.

A few Canadians are more stony. There's also, bizarrely, a handful of jeers scattered throughout, mostly from the very top of the arena, and one group lower down, Shane thinks. He exchanges a look with the other guys. Figure skating does not get rowdy. No one boos at figure skating.

Rozanov skates on. He's in the ubiquitous black trousers and an off-white shirt, loose, long-sleeved, laces instead of buttons, something a pirate would wear. Rhinestones scatter down the sleeves, ending in a solid band at each cuff. Shane thinks that rhinestones might be an actual part of the scoring metric.

On the big screen, Shane sees that he's got light brown hair, a strong jaw, and a frankly improbable mouth. His shirt billows in the sleeves and tapers in the waist. It makes his shoulders look impractically big for a figure skater's. Draws the eye to the angle of his throat in his opening pose. (Lots of these guys have swan necks, though. Like how hockey self-selects for guys with great asses.) (Not that Shane has noticed that. Obviously.)

"Shit, he's huge," Hunter says. He is. He's alone out there, but Shane thinks he's a full head taller than most of the other skaters.

Shane can immediately see a style to Rozanov's skating, but he doesn't know how you'd describe it to someone else. It's like… a lot of the skaters, Joe included, spend much of their routines skating backwards, like they're fleeing from something. As someone who also spends half his life on ice, Shane can guess that there's a technical reason for that. Something about momentum and the balance of the body. Maybe just using different muscle groups so you don't tire one out when you need it for a jump.

Rozanov, on the other hand, skates forwards just as often as he skates backwards. On the ice, he's the one in pursuit. It makes him look powerful. Powerful and arrogant.

Later, Shane will realize that a lot of Rozanov's style is lifted from Russian programs. At the time, he thinks it's uniquely Rozanov's own.

He cuts through the first half of his routine like butter, like it's nothing, twists and jumps like he's on springs. Does he smirk when the crowd gets loud, or is Shane imagining that? The live feed is all long shots, action, no close-ups. One landing following a triple axel (according to the announcers) looks wobbly to Shane, but it doesn't get much reaction, so it could have killed his score or be no big deal. Either way, he recovers immediately. Going by the crowd, which is becoming more tense by the minute, he's doing great. Or terrible?

He's definitely doing more than everyone else, judging by the graphic displayed on one of the screens. He's racking up points faster than anyone else did. Running the risk of tiring himself out early.

One of the women to their left murmurs something. Then, still softly, but loud enough for the three of them to hear, she goes, "Quad. He's going for a quad axel."

One of the others glances over at her, eyebrows up, alarmed. Another nods slowly, thoughtfully. Scattered in the stands, people start leaning forwards, and then - Rozanov does another jump. It looks the same as the rest of them to Shane, but people scream. A few of them stand up. The women next to them clutch at one anothers' arms. One grabs another's shoulder and shakes it.

"Perfect," one of them whispers, giddy.

Rozanov gives the audience another of whatever it is they're losing their minds over. At the second one, some people stand halfway out of their seats. The women next to them are holding each others' hands. Some guy below them in their section growls, "Hell yeah."

Rozanov ends his routine standing, an arm drawn over his face, powerful and unknown. When he drops his arm, he looks elated, breathing hard, perhaps smug.

Some guy meets him at the gate, a youngish coach, probably. He clasps Rozanov's hand and his elbow to shake, brings him in for the aggressively masculine type of congratulatory hug that Shane's seen team captains do on the ice after a Cup win.

Rozanov hauls the guy in for the briefest possible hug and kisses the side of his head, showy, like hockey players do, not meaningful, never anything. The guy looks briefly shocked before he schools himself into a winning smile.

The arbitrary number they announce is higher than all the other skaters', so Shane guesses he did well. Lots of people dressed in Team Canada gear - the kind they're selling to spectators - are hugging each other. Others in non-Canada gear look impressed in spite of themselves. Some of them are celebrating outright.

Shane spots one of the pockets of people who'd jeered earlier. They're silent. Mad about it.

Hunter indicates them with a head tilt. Shane and Vaughn both shrug back at him.

"That was cool," Vaughn says, lightly.

"It was -" Shane starts, but doesn't have a way to finish it that matches Vaughn's tone. "Uh-huh," he says instead.

"Yeah, glad we stayed," Hunter agrees.

Vaughn thanks the women for encouraging them to stick around.

"Oh, sure," the turtleneck one says, very Canadian. "You're not staying?"

They shake their heads. "Gotta get to bed, early day tomorrow," Vaughn says, eliding that that's because Team USA is playing Russia the next day.

"You saw the highlight, anyway," another woman says.

"Have a good Olympics," the first one says vaguely. She clearly could not give less of a shit about who they are.

Shane stays in his seat just a touch too long before following after them into the aisle.

—

(Shane doesn't remember meeting Joe, just that talking to him was immediately easy.

They trained together at a summer-long intensive skate clinic. Nothing like a summer camp. They were there to work hard and get better. To develop power, control, speed. There was an option to extend through the school year, two nights a week, as participants' schedules allowed. Shane hadn't thought he would stick with it that long.

He and Joe both cared, actually, about improving. Lots of kids wanted to be good at hockey or speed skating or whatever - there was even a swimmer in there, hoping to gain a lower body strength advantage - but not all of them wanted to do the work to get there. Some bitched about getting there before dawn. Faked a sore knee so their moms would take them home early. Took extra bathroom breaks to loiter around the other rink where some girls figure skated.

("What do they think will happen?" Joe mused.

Shane shook his head and said, "Some guys.")

The kids in the clinic were too old for words like sissy and too well-monitored for faggot, but gay was always a good standby, if guys put a mean enough spin on it.

Luckily, Shane had started figuring out how to deflect with humor around then.

"Hey, is that guy gay?" someone asked him, nodding towards Joe.

"What, Joe?" Shane asked. He'd taken to calling him that. Better than Joseph, which sounded oddly old and soft. Didn't seem like Joe minded.

"Yeah."

The joke came to Shane in a flash: "I'm not gonna ask him out for you, bud."

It worked. Two guys nearby chuckled. The guy blushed, went on the defensive. "Gross, dude. Is he, though?"

Shane shrugged. "I don't think so. His mom made him start figure skating." This was a lie. Shane eventually learned to taper down lying to absolute minimum so the bigger lies could hide in plain sight. It worked fine this time, though, helped along by the implication of a scary Asian mom, even though Joe's mom was nice enough. Shane thought that she liked him.

The guy raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "That would suck."

Shane shrugged and let it die out.

He mentioned to Joe later that Shane had dug him into a hole. Joe sighed. "Smart," he said. "Thanks."

That summer went by quickly. Shane and Joe both developed a lot, and even made it to as many of the clinic's school year training sessions as they could. Eventually, Shane's career took off and he couldn't fit in elective training like that. He thinks Joe stopped going to the clinic around the same time.

He doesn't remember them talking about not seeing each other anymore. It just happened, the same way they became friends.)

—

 

[ THREAD: Marc ❤️ ]

Joe:

Hollander actually showed up to my short program, along with a couple of other hockey guys??

[screenshot.jpg]

idk what to say about this

I'm genuinely touched, I think

we traded burner numbers but I didn't think we'd use them

Marc ❤️:

who's the hottie on the right

Joe:

Carter Vaughn. SO hot and also weirdly political (good kind) for an MLH player

Maybe he'll run for office one day idk

Marc ❤️:

invite him over

Joe:

… he DOES live in New York. close but not too close, ideally located for a hookup

I'll probably pass tho, he's a lot

Also. Hockey lol

 

—

Shane gets a thank-you text from Joe later, inviting him to stop by a kickback in someone's room that night. They're developing as the Olympics go on, these pockets where athletes who are done - or just confident, or too nervous to focus - hang out, letting loose away from the ones who need to keep their heads on straight.

I'm going to hide out until hockey's over, Shane sends back. But otherwise I would. He thinks he means it.

—

 

[ THREAD: Marc ❤️ ]

 

Marc ❤️:

So the fuckface just JAMS IT IN

The attending JUMPED

The patient was fine but it could have been so bad

Joe:

Jesus christ

Remind me to make sure all of my doctors have at least 40 years of experience

Marc ❤️:

… I've got some bad news about those ones too

Anyway what's tonight? if you don't hook up at least once I'm gonna be so sad

Joe:

Hanging out and not stepping foot outside lol

Also yes boss

Politics aside, ik this is their big tourism push, but it's RUSSIA so it's not like a tropical beach vacation

lol what if I texted Shane Hollander good luck with a picture of me and two randomly chosen figure skaters

Marc ❤️:

oh my god

Do it PLEASE

 

—

Shane doesn't have time to think about figure skating again until hockey's through. Until he's the dubiously proud owner of Olympic silver. Winner of most. Loser of the big one.

Second place. Just like the draft fiasco that he tries not to remember. At least he got to take a shot at Team USA. It's better than getting a firm thanks, but no thanks from first place itself.

—

For about half an hour, Shane wants to throw up about coming in second. He can feel it in his back teeth during the worst of the press crush after the game.

When press eases up, changes from assaulting to just overwhelming, he (unwillingly) starts to calm down.

His teammates seem about split down the middle. Some are psyched to have, you know, medaled at the Olympics. Shane sees that this is the correct viewpoint. The happiest one. Possibly the most productive, too: there's a fine line between discouraging complacency with second place and just discouraging yourself, period.

But he can't wrap his mind around it. When he's mad at himself, he thinks that looking on the bright side skirts the edge of stupidity. And he's mad at himself every time he loses.

Other players stonewall, like Shane. Some are visibly upset. Intermittently angry. Holding it together because no guy wants to embarrass himself in front of players he'll be competing against within two weeks. A big group is planning to go out and get plastered, having worked out ahead of time which clubs Team USA would hit up. Best to avoid any awkward moments.

Third right winger Marshall is one of the happy types, fighting a smile in the locker room when immediate press is finally done. Shane looks at him like what the fuck.

"Sorry, man," Marshall mutters. "Just - I'm gonna have a fucking Olympic medal. You know?"

And like. Yeah. Shane does. But he doesn't want to be all sweet about it.

"Better adjusted than me, pal," Shane says brusquely.

Marshall shrugs.

Shane's phone is full of messages from his parents, his mom recapping the game in real time, like Shane wasn't there on the ice. It's funny, actually. It's nice.

There's also a message from Joe: Your silver beats my bronze 😔 Rematch 2018?

Huh.

That's it, that's the - that's the thing. Joe always did seem like he was on Shane's wavelength. Talking to him, Shane used to feel a little more… normal, or something. Understood. Able to see things more clearly.

Because he's right: Shane's will have another chance.

From Joe, it doesn't sound so bad to get silver on his first try.

Reality is, Shane's young. Scott Hunter can have this gold.

Shane will take the next one. Or three.

—

 

[ THREAD: Quebec Skate Queers 🛼🏳️‍🌈 ]

 

Joe:

Uhhh kind of weird but Shane Hollander says he's going to walk over to the gym with us

Misty ❄️:

Who

 

Ilya 🧊:

hockey Shane Hollander

?

 

Jessie 🛼:

Huh

 

Tess 👜:

@ misty that's the hockey player who watched the men's short program

The one that the org was (over)excited about showing in the stands in the telecast?

 

Misty ❄️:

OH you mean the Japanese guy??

Sad I'm booked & can't meet him

 

Jesse 👯:

Misty… he's so famous that EVEN I know who he is

Canadian famous, at least

Though I have to admit the American next to him was cuter

The Black one. The white guy was fine. Like about as cute as Hollander

 

Joe:

Ty for this scientific ranking of star hockey players, Jesse

 

Jesse 👯:

You're welcome

Anyway. What hold do you have on this man

How do I also gain that type of hold on any man

 

Joe:

I mean idk if he'll show up!

And if he DOES, then I think it unfortunately has less to do with my wiles and more with just being a nice guy

 

Ilya 🧊:

HOCKEY Shane Hollander

???

 

Joe:

Yes Ilya hockey Shane Hollander

 

Ilya 🧊:

Someone is lying to you

 

—

In the days after the final game - the gold loss, the silver win - it's a strange mix of work and leisure. Shane has to do press, sitting in tall chairs besides teammates, answering questions with canned responses, the Rolex heavy on his arm.

He says a hard no to getting Olympic rings tattoos that night, but he gets roped into going out to some awful club in Sochi proper. Loud music, harsh drinks, low lighting shot with intermittent red strobe effects. It was hot and hazy. Apparently, smoking in nightclubs is legal in Russia.

(Some of his teammates broke out cigars from somewhere. Rolled their eyes at him when he said no. So you're just gonna sit there, Morrison yelled. Shane wasn't dancing. Didn't want to risk having to go off to a corner with some girl. C'mon, pal. Then something about a stick up Shane's ass. The old joke. Haha.

Internally, Shane sighed. Smirked and gestured for him to hand one over. Good man, Morrison yelled. Lit it for Shane, holding it in his own mouth before passing it to him. One of those it-would-be-gay-to-think-this-is-gay gestures that stand out to Shane when he's tired.

It was too hazy for anyone to notice that Shane was just holding it, not smoking. He smelled like smoke all fucking night anyway. Not that anyone got close enough to care.)

Despite the demand, Shane has surprising leeway. Probably because they only got silver, and no one's desperate to see those medals. He can sleep in the next day. He sees his parents. He fits in a workout.

Canadians in the Olympic Village have access to the gym between buildings eight and nine, which mostly house Canadian and American athletes. Right after the Opening Ceremonies, it was almost too busy to use, full of top-level athletes trying to keep up with disrupted routines and cope with stress through exertion. (The rumors about gym hookups have reached such a fever pitch that Shane's both deeply interested in and actively afraid of the locker room showers.)

"You're going to the gym?" Morrison (d-man) asks, disgusted. Most of the guys are hungover as shit. Shane stayed mostly sober last night, the medal enough of a high, and the loss still a damper.

"Best way to kill a hangover," Shane says. Doesn't hurt to build up the mythos.

Again, he lost Olympic gold yesterday. And then he had to go to a club. Let him have a little fun.

—

 

[ THREAD: Mom ]

 

Mom:

Please congratulate Shane on winning the silver medal for Canada!

And tell him I expect gold from both of you in Pyeongchang

It's so nice that you two are talking again :)

Joe:

Yes mama

He says thank you

[screenshot.jpg]

Mom:

He was always respectful and courteous

A good friend for you :)

 

—

According to Joe, Canadian figure skating has to travel in a pack to protect Ilya Rozanov from hostile Russian athletes.

It's unclear to Shane exactly why Russian athletes would have an issue with Rozanov. He declines to ask. Vaughn's Russia is not safe for folks like that comes to mind. Shane doesn't want to put Joe or anyone else in a position where they have to lie. Or put… things… in writing.

Joe could just be joking. He used to speak kind of colorfully.

Still: maybe he's not. Shane, who's never fought on MLH ice but at least knows what it looks like when someone's about to throw down, volunteers to come along.

It's a nice idea, he guesses. That figure skaters band together to help an odd man out.

MLH players might protect their own on the ice. If it helps foster a win. Off the ice, when players protect their own, they're usually doing it for not-so-great reasons. To defend against allegations; to deny that something happened.

Like, there are these rumors about what goes on in Cincinnati that can't be true. They're too crazy. But… they're so fucking weird, Shane doesn't know why anyone would make that stuff up. To make gay people look horrible, he guesses. Even though hockey already pretty much thinks gay people are bad. Or gross, at least. He doesn't... he doesn't know. He just doesn't know. And Cincinnati's banded together tight, not talking about any of it, except for their team captain and his buddies shit-talking the couple of callups who supposedly -

Look. Two guys who play for Cincinnati made it to Team Canada. Shane doesn't trust either of them.

Shane's sure bad stuff happens everywhere. No sport is perfect. But he likes the thought of figure skating working together to help someone in an actual tough spot. Shane wonders how they even learned to do that. Everyone says team sports are where you gain leadership skills.

—

He takes the stairs from his apartment to the first floor. He's not the only person to do that in the Village. Everyone in the building is an athletic overachiever. Also, the elevators suck.

He passes some skiers, gives them a bro nod (the men) or a brief, uninviting smile (the women). When he rounds onto the fifth floor, he hears the door open and close, someone else descending just behind him.

"Oh, hey," a woman says. He glances back. She's wiry, with short, swingy brown hair; he doesn't recognize her. "You're actually - are you heading to the gym, too?"

"… yeah," Shane says. Even in juniors, he was coached on not giving people his destination or point of origin, but she's probably not a stalker. Or if she is, she's so dedicated he has to hand it to her. "Are you - figure skating?"

She shakes her head and dashes to catch up to him. "Jessie. Jessie Mason. Speed skating. But I'm heading to the gym with figure skating. Un, everyone's going in a group, I'm not sure if you -"

"Yeah," he says. "Joe, um, Joseph Ma told me."

Joe had gone by Joseph when they started training together. Shane put him out of his misery and called him Joe. You could practically see the other kids they trained with relax once he had a regular guy's name. No one wanted to say Joseph. Joe was doable.

She blinks. "Awesome," she says, breaking into a warm smile. "It's cool that you're - is that… so, do you guys know each other outside of -" she gestures around them, at the bizarre building, like she's indicating international sporting practices as a whole.

They spend the rest of the walk down talking about childhood skating clinics. It's easy, so much more comfortable than it usually is when Shane meets a girl and has to figure out how to talk to her about her marketing job or whatever. (Like with the women's hockey team, he has the momentary thought, maybe if she's an athlete, too, that could make it different, that could be enough, maybe it's really not guys specifically, I just need to have something in common with people I -

It's not a bad line of thought. But he's increasingly suspected, over the past couple of years, that the commonality with someone that he really needs is… being guys. Ugh.)

About seven or eight people are loitering by the front door when they get there. Most of them are like gazelles in leggings and quarter zips, the men and women alike. Joe's in the middle of the group; he turns, blinks at Shane like Jessie did, and goes, "Shane, holy shit," blank for a moment, like Shane was going to wink out of existence between texting with him about it and actually showing up. "Uh, thanks for coming."

"Yeah," Shane says, inane.

"And with Jessie and Shane, that's probably a good number?" Joe says, voice raised, index finger circling the air in the universal gesture used to herd a pack of athletes. "Anybody else can catch up. Ilya, good?"

Rozanov, looming in basketball shorts and a Skate Canada tank - why is the Canadian national ice skating organization passing out tank tops? - is at the far side of the group. He gives a solemn thumbs up, and at this signal, the group pushes into the only-fairly-chilly Russian midday air.

The walk to the gym is short and unscenic. Rozanov gets pushed to the center of the group, or migrates there himself. It creates a buffer of skaters. Like they're actually worried about him getting hassled. He doesn't seem that worried? He's talking quietly with a girl who's much shorter than him, sort of leaning down to hear what she's saying, his body inclined like notice me, I'm charming. He points to something off to one side and looks down at her over his shoulder, eyes half-lidded. She says something back with a little smirk. He laughs.

In person, he might be taller than Shane. It's hard to tell with his curly hair giving him an extra inch or two. Skin dotted with flat brown moles, including one on his cheek like a dimple that gives Shane thoughts he shouldn't be having. Also, shoulders. Turns out his costume didn't exaggerate them at all.

And Shane fails not to notice that he's got the ass of someone who spends their life on skates.

(Jesus. Shut up, brain.)

Shane and Joe talk a little, and Jessie too. Mostly platitudes: it's great to see you, you looked strong out there. Easy.

The gym, on the inside, is as ugly as the barracks. Shane had, without realizing it, pictured big windows. The couple of gyms he went to at various stages in his teenage years were tall and airy, will view windows and walls of mirrors. This place is loud as shit, crowded, and semi-claustrophobic. Beige walls. Linoleum flooring. Big tarps featuring ugly trapezoidal Sochi 2014 art tacked up on the walls.

(The word trapezoidal is, for the record, about the limit of Shane's "advanced understanding of geometry.")

There's a moment of unspoken contact between the people he arrived with. Joe points to the ellipticals towards the back wall. Catches a few eyes, including Rozanov's. Rozanov up-nods at him and tilts his head to the bikes, right behind the ellipticals, the last row of machines. A blond girl gives him two thumbs up. "We can go anywhere else, too," she says softly, maybe a little slowly. Rozanov waves at her, like go on, you.

Shane opts for a bike, too. Low impact. Unlikely to cause injury. Good for post-tournament maintenance. Montreal would be pissed if he came back injured.

Jessie gives him a wave and goes to do leg presses. Like Joe, most of the other figure skaters opt for ellipticals.

And so Shane and Rozanov end up on bikes next to each other. In front of them, the figure skaters tackle forty five minute high-incline elliptical workouts with gaits ranging from a breezy lope (the blond girl) to a squared-forward, upper-body-heavy drag (Joe).

Shane thinks about Rozanov choosing an elliptical instead, and being on a bike behind him, and nearly falls off his own bike in real life.

Rozanov doesn't look at Shane, but he keeps pace with him, giving Shane a run for his money, pushing him further and further until they're both visibly sweating, out of breath, spent.

They stretch on the floor against the back wall when they're done. Rozanov silently offers Shane his water, watches Shane drink it. Both gasping for breath, still glistening, staring at each other.

The skaters are still pretending to ski, unaware that Shane is having a minor, half-chub-related crisis behind them.

Rozanov glances around at the gym, the spread of athletes. Then he looks back at Shane, eyes raking over him toes to tip. It raises Shane's hair, if there's a positive, do-it-again-please version of hair-raising.

Rozanov has a body like a model. Like a statue. Like he could take Shane in a fight. Looking at him is not the same as looking at Jessie.

Shane's (mostly) unmoved by cut MLH players, but cut MLH players have nasty facial hair and they don't eyefuck him in public. Or private. No man has ever eyefucked Shane, actually, he doesn't think. He'd remember it, if it always feels like this.

Is Rozanov messing with Shane? He has to be messing with Shane.

"Not here," Rozanov says softly. Or Shane thinks that's what he says. He's got an accent, heavy, something eastern European.

"What?" Shane asks.

Rozanov shakes his head. Repeats it to himself. Shane's almost certain it's not here.

"I don't -" Shane starts.

"Cool down," Rozanov says, cutting him off, and gestures to the treadmills.

—

Shane joins him, as does Joe. Rozanov picks a treadmill next to Jessie. Joe takes Rozanov's other side, leaving Shane next to Joe.

"So you're just like, completely beating yourself up over getting silver, huh?" Joe opens, with a smirk.

"Yep," Shane says. "You?"

Joe tilts a hand back and forth. "Wouldn't have killed me to turn my last double into a triple. Except maybe it would have, you never know. I'm not -" he gestures to Rozanov - "over here."

"Will you change your, um, routine? Skate? Between now and your next competition?" Shane asks, knowing the figure skaters have something coming up in a month. Seems like a crazy way to do it. Except that Shane has to go back to playing immediately after the Olympics, so whatever.

Joe explains the process of changing a program, how he has enough time to rechoreograph, but not enough time to do it well.

They just talk about stuff like that, technicals and training and how dumb the phrase knife shoes is. Their professional passions. Personal stuff doesn't come up. It's a much more… comfortable conversation than Shane usually gets into with someone he doesn't know well, or (as rarely as it happens) hasn't seen in a long time. It never turns to someone's girlfriend, someone's wife, someone's kids; never forces Shane to tread lightly over the fact that he doesn't have his own.

Shane also, for once, doesn't feel the need to avoid mentioning his parents.

With other hockey guys, Shane makes sure not to talk about them too much. Especially his mom. You're not supposed to be that attached to your parents once you're in MLH. Never mind that most players are attached. They all obscure it. Act like they were the ones to organize their kitchens or hire housekeepers for their town homes all on their own, between practice and games and training.

Shane's mom handles both mom stuff and manager stuff. He tries not to let it be too visible. On some level, she also knows it's not a great look; knows that the most visible Asian player's image is somewhat emasculated if he's constantly holding his mom's hand. She wants him to look self-directed and independent, too. His parents aren't, by any means, the most overbearing ones you see in MLH. They don't come to every game. Don't show up to postgame expecting time with him between media and the hotel. Don't try to meet his teammates. Sure, his mom manages him, but mostly behind the scenes at this point.

Sometimes, when they had half days or Shane's mom's worked after hours, Shane went to Joe's house after skating. Joe's mom was usually in the stands when they skated together. She must not have worked. She'd take them home and make them eggs and leave the two of them to hang out in the Ma family's den, a room with an ugly couch and a TV and a PlayStation. Joe had Final Fantasy games. Shane, who'd never played any game but Laich, was terrible at them.

That didn't matter. He liked how they looked. Liked watching Joe play.

So when Joe says, "My parents are here. I'm going to meet them at the beach later, just to see it. My mom says I have to make it to Pyeongchang because Sochi is - you know, not that braggable a destination?"

Shane laughs. "Mine is already working on a calendar for Pyeongchang, I think," he says, and knows Joe gets it.

—

(Driving Shane home one night the summer that Shane and Joe trained together, his mom had asked what he thought about the other kids. It was the year she'd tried to go back to work, before he entered juniors and she quit again to be his manager, basically. She wasn't there to get an impression for herself, so he knew she was relying on him to tell her honestly how things were going - which coaches were helpful, if he was learning from skating in a mixed group, if any of them were shitty in a way that distracted him. That kind of thing.

He'd said, honestly, that some of the other hockey players there weren't that invested in improving, like they thought skating was just something extra, something you worked on over the summer because it was like a vacation from the rest of hockey, rather than an essential skill.

"What about the other kids?"

"Like the athletes in other sports?"

"Yeah. Are you learning from any of them?"

Joe came to mind immediately. Shane was quiet for just a second, holding onto the idea of him. It seemed like a bigger decision to tell his mom about Joe than it should have been. "There's Joe. Joseph Ma."

The only figure skater in the clinic. And the only other Asian kid. Shane was faintly surprised to see him that first day. He was Chinese, both sides, with none of Shane's luck in the last name department.

(Shane wouldn't always think that way about his name. Necessarily. But shit, Joe was a lone figure skater trapped at a rink with a bunch of ice jock hooligans, mostly white. He stood out enough as it was. Guys hadn't gotten much better about Asian-sounding names since Shane was eight and Tommy Yoshida was getting shit from kids in peewee hockey.)

Shane's mom wanted to know what generation Joe was and stuff. She always asked things like that. Shane didn't know. He knew that Joe had the same accent as Shane and the other non-French Ottawans they skated with. He was about Shane's height. His hair was wavy; his eyes were dark brown. Joe's base layers were for figure skating, not hockey, so they fit different. Tighter.

Shane didn't tell his mom that part. He explained that Joe was hard-working, the same way Shane was. Not in the attitude-and-bluster way. They were both in the handful of kids who came to clinic early to get in more ice time. (He'd realize later that this was also about who had a mom who could take them early, but - yeah.)

"He's - different," he added, and immediately regretted it. There was no easy way to explain that part to his mom. He didn't fully understand it himself. Obviously, figure skating was an anomaly. It was also just Joe, though. One time, the assistant coach called on Joe to pick a song for them to skate to and he picked something from like, an opera, with lots of singing guys and flutes. It got looks at first. The last two guys had both picked that Chamillionaire song about stealing cars and mean-mugged throughout, impressed with themselves for knowing it.

But Joe's pick only started soft. Then it ramped up and up and up, ending in this huge thunderclap of noise that took everyone along with it. A few others (mostly speed skaters, one hockey player) yelled again, annoying enough that the assistant coach replayed it for them at the end of the day. A couple of guys pretended to sing along in fake Italian or Spanish or whatever it was, hamming it up. They weren't even really making fun of Joe. He'd done something weird, but he somehow pulled it off. Got away with it.

Shane thought the song was from a movie or something.

"Should we find the movie?" his mom asked.

Shane shook his head. He was hungry and sleepy, going through a late growth spurt again. He'd just fall asleep on the couch if he tried to stay up.

It was quiet for a minute. Then his mom said, "You like him, huh?"

Shane shrugged. "Yeah." He'd been mostly keeping his eyes closed against the light from the cars ahead of them, but he caught something in her voice. He didn't know what. Part of the mom sixth sense that told her when he wanted dessert even though he hadn't said it. "He's cool," he'd added, which felt less sincere than just yeah. A safer answer.

"I'll ask his mom if you can spend some time together the next time the trainers give you a half day," she said.

Shane did his best to sound nonchalant when he said, "Okay.")

—

Joe rounds people up about two hours after they get to the gym. It's a short workout for Shane. Short for the figure skaters too, he guesses.

On the walk back, the figure skaters gossip about other athletes they saw at the gym. Shane volunteers something about the Belgian skeleton sledder who was deadlifting a fuckton of weight.

"I saw that," a figure skater laughs. Shane didn't catch his name. "Was he trying to impress people or what?"

"Hell of a time to get a hernia," Joe mumbles.

"Nah, dude was jacked," Jessie says. "Like actually ripped, not for show. Could be his normal routine."

Shane and Rozanov walk side by side. They get all the way from the gym to the Canadian quarters without a word between them. Rozanov isn't the type of guy you just talk to. He's quiet. He looms. Given the accent, Shane suspects at least a mild language barrier.

Back in the building, everyone scatters. Shane, Rozanov, Joe, and another male figure skater are on the same floor. Joe gets to his room first, leaving just Shane, Rozanov, and this other guy. Shane's room is next.

In the spirit of international cooperation - national cooperation? Rozanov is Canadian, apparently - Shane takes a final stab at courtesy: "I liked your program. You were fast on the ice."

"You," Rozanov says slowly, thoughtfully. "You… have bad backhand."

"What?" Shane asks, incredulous.

In a decent imitation of a Canadian accent, Rozanov says "Bye," cutting Shane off and loping away.

"Oh my god," says the figure skater, staring at Shane with wide eyes. "Sorry. He's kidding, sort of, I swear. He's just like that. It was good of you to come today, is what he means?"

"Oh, uh. No problem," Shane says.

The guy shakes his head at Rozanov and heads off himself. "Enjoy the rest of the games. Maybe we'll see you around."

"Maybe," Shane offers.

—

 

[ THREAD: Quebec Skate Queers 🛼🏳️‍🌈 ]

 

Jesse 👯:

Not to put Ilya on blast but I'm putting Ilya on blast

 

Misty ❄️:

Oh no

 

Jesse 👯:

Walking back to our rooms with SHANE HOLLANDER

SHANE HOLLANDER tries to be a nice and normal human being, says something about Ilya's program

And Ilya TALKS SHIT

 

Tess 👜:

lmfao

 

Jesse 👯:

And LEAVES

 

Tess 👜:

LMFAO

 

Misty ❄️:

lsghelrghlerhglherglh

 

Ilya 🧊:

I did not talk shit

I said his backhand is weak

It is true

 

Misty ❄️:

True things can still be hurtful!

 

Jessie 🛼:

It literally is not he has an incredibly strong backhand are you talking about his wrister

Which is still incredibly strong

 

Ilya 🧊:

I said what I said

 

Joe:

Ilya NO

Why???????

 

Ilya 🧊:

He can take it

 

—

Joe messages Shane all appalled that Rozanov criticized his backhand, like that's the chirp that will finally undercut Shane's confidence, then invites him to meet up with some others that night: if you want to meet less salty Canadian skaters, we have another room party going on floor 3 starting in 2 hours, after ice dancing medals.

A lot of parties are happening all at once; they're starting to merge into one mass. The floor is packed, about half of the rooms thrown open. The hockey hangout starts a few doors down from one end of the hallway. Figure skating is roughly in the middle.

Shane doesn't have to slip away from hockey alone to join up with figure skating. For better or worse, hockey ends up coming along with him. After MLH games, the teams get the hell away from each other. Something weird that he hadn't foreseen about the Olympics is that even after the final game, Canadian and American hockey have to keep intermingling. They have to sleep in the same fucking building. So Americans pretend not to gloat and Shane - uh, Canadians - pretend not to lick their wounds. Some of them better than others. Vaughn and JJ are both pretty good at it, soaking up the bizarre, once-in-a-lifetime experience they've found themselves in.

JJ and Vaughn are friends, or friendly. When Shane sets out to mingle with the non-hockey masses, they kind of invite themselves along. Vaughn is super enthusiastic about (sigh) "cross-sport engagement as an opportunity for community organizing." JJ just likes a party.

Everyone's in their team gear. A sea of red and white (and blue that Shane pettily pretends not to see). The extra layers are a godsend since the fucking heat in the Olympic Village in Russia barely works.

Shane's wearing his fluffy pullover. He loves the fluffy pullover.

They lose Vaugn to a group of bobsledders spilling down the hallway outside of the room where Joe said the figure skaters would be. This makes sense; bobsledders tend to travel in packs, and pick up more people as they go on.

Just inside of the room, someone is holding court about how speed skating should be called long track speed skating. Shane can't tell if he's a speed skater or a short track speed skater or like, an alpine skier.

Further back, he sees Misty Arwadi, Canadian women's figure skating, wearing her silver medal. (Ballsy, given that her competition is also around.) Shane's mom loves her, the way she loves all Asian athletes in winter sports: a little just on principle, and much moreso if they win. Arwadi is watching something on her phone. Next to her is an American guy, white as most winter athletes are (see: Shane's mom's knee-jerk love of Asian people on ice and snow), who Shane thinks might be half of a pair skating team. Behind them, a full head taller than either, stands Ilya Rozanov.

Rozanov's in black joggers and his own fluffy pullover. It's fully open at his throat, where there's a glint of gold. The sleeves are pushed up to his forearms.

His hair is slicked back at the sides, but still curling. Did he travel to fucking Russia with hair gel? The figure skating women probably brought, like, hair straighteners, so maybe.

The pairs (Shane thinks) skater talking with Rozanov and Arwadi traces a line over the screen with one finger, explaining something, looking to them for comprehension. Rozanov nods. Arwadi frowns and shakes her head at both of them. They look like players reviewing tape.

Besides hockey games, Shane has never been around this many winter sports athletes at once. Not socially. And any MLH game necessarily pits him against half of the players in the room. Here, they're all on the same larger team. (Well. That's probably not how the people who lost to someone else in the room feel. But for Shane, at least, this is the least hostile group of athletes he's ever been in.)

It's also, by a long shot, the least he's ever stood out amongst ice sports athletes. Without looking around, he knows there are two other Asian people in the room - Arwadi, Joe - which brings the floor's total Asian quotient to about a third of what it is in the entire MLH. Shane's not doing a demographic survey, but yeah, tons of them look like they're not white. Like, maybe more than twenty people, even.

And some of these people (the male figure skaters, per Carter Vaughn) might be gay. Crazy.

—

 

[ THREAD: Misty ❄️]

Misty ❄️:

Did you invite hockey to the figure skating kickback??

Joe:

omg did J say that? I don't have like an in with them

I told him I invited Hollander but he's not gonna come

Hockey's hockey, I'm sure they're out like. Doing whatever straight guys do

Misty ❄️:

Are you sure bc he and a couple of his fellow hulks are approaching as I type this

 

—

Shane fights in alongside JJ and makes his way to Joe to congratulate him in person. When they reach him, Joe catches his eye, almost double-takes. "Shane, hey," he says. "You actually came by. Hi."

Shane offers a defensive half-hug. The Olympic Village is really huggy, especially once it starts drinking. "Hey, Joe," Shane says. "Or - Joseph? Which one -"

He shrugs. "Y'know, Joe mostly stuck, but whatever's good," he says. He squeezes Shane's shoulder, then drops his arm back to his side. Hug successfully executed and complete, Shane thinks.

"Don't do that with hockey players," JJ says, in that easy, immediate way he has with people. "We give the worst fucking nickames. Ask me how I know."

"How do you know?"

"They put va in front of my name in juniors," JJ says solemnly.

Joe makes a face. "Most people ended up shortening Joseph to Joe once I got tall?" he offers. He's a head shorter than Shane. "I tried to get Jos going in middle school. You can imagine how it worked out."

"So Joe you shall be, my man," JJ says.

"Much appreciated over vajoe," Joe says. "Hey, congratulations to both of you, seriously, I mean… holy shit, you know? You'll take the big one next time."

Shane shrugs. "Yeah, thank you. We both will. Um, congratulations again on your program, too. I liked all the jumps?"

For good measure, he officially introduces JJ, who's nice about it, congratulates Joe on bronze, says his program was cool.

"Thanks, man. Have you met Brianna?" Joe asks, and introduces the woman he's talking to, Brianna Wyman, who turns out to be the luge champion who the Canadian and American men's hockey teams were all excited about before Vaughn made it weird.

(Vaughn is still off with the sledders. Shane figures it's fifty-fifty on whether he's trying to sleep with them or unionize them.)

Confronted with Joe in person, next to another hockey player, Shane realizes that it's... maybe weird to be this excited about seeing someone he hasn't seen since he was thirteen. Anyone he hasn't seen since he was thirteen. (And also maybe they're not friends? Should he downgrade someone to acquaintance if they haven't seen each other for the better part of a decade?)

But it's only weird for a little bit. Then it's nice. Joe is friendly, knows a lot of people, introduces them all around.

(Should Shane have grown into that type of confidence? He hopes he's faking it better than he was at thirteen.)

The people Shane meets at Joe's urging range from huge hockey fans (a curler named Donaldson who just grabs Shane's hand and clutches it when he tries a for a handshake) to people who are friendly, but uninterested in him as a player (Misty Arwadi, who insists on a first-name basis, but breezily admits to not having watched a second of Olympic hockey), to people with no apparent interest at all (Rozanov, who nods at Shane and goes back to carefully following technical figure skating talk).

"So, wait, sorry, how did you meet, again?" JJ asks, gesturing between Shane and Joe with his beer. If Joe was the only figure skater here, and everyone else was a hockey player, the question that would worry Shane; would make him think JJ is speculating. Right now, it's like Shane's reflexes are dulled. Or lulled. The part of him that's always monitoring, looking for what might make the other players in the room suspicious, is sort of asleep.

It helps that JJ is the only other hockey player in the immediate vicinity. They're surrounded by figure skaters. Ice dancers. If anyone is outnumbered, the single odd man out, it might be JJ, not Shane. Just - if people were being categorized by their proximity to figure skating.

(Or, you know, by who does or does not have at-least-occasional homosexual tendencies, however ambiguous and hypothetical and unwelcome.)

"We trained together before I moved up to Montreal," Joe says, smiling at Shane. "When we were like, kids."

"Hang on, you're based in Montreal?" JJ asks.

"Yeah," Joe says.

"So do you guys get to see each other? Like, hang out?"

"I barely hang out," Shane says, and hopes Joe doesn't explain that they don't actually see each other.

JJ snorts, leans a little closer to Joe. "This bitch won't go anywhere unless you tell him it's important for team morale."

Joe laughs. "That seems right."

Shane feels embarrassed, even though that's stupid. Joe hasn't been snubbing him. Either of them could have reached out, so they're even. Plus figure skaters are busy, probably about as much as MLH players. Even if Joe seems to have established himself here socially just fine in whatever minimal time he's had.

"Not all of us can be dialed into Montreal nightlife," Shane tells JJ.

"Try to enjoy living in the greatest city in the world, eh?" JJ says with a friendly clasp-and-shake of Shane's traps. "Do figure skaters go out?" he asks Joe.

"Not the serious ones. I see other Montreal figure skaters less than I'd like," Joe admits. "We almost all go six to six every day. Ilya and I were rinkmates for a few months? That was sort of social. He went back to Ottawa after, though."

"That's… Rosanov?" JJ asks.

Joe huffs out a laugh. "Rozanov. God, that's so hockey player. No offense, Shane."

Shane shrugs. It is that. He feels uncomfortable using guys' first name until they tell him to. Strangers using his first name weirds him out.

"He did hockey for that thing," JJ says. "The video. That was cool." It's possible that the shots he did earlier are making him more friendly than normal.

"I don't know if he loved or hated that," Joe says thoughtfully.

"What was it?" Shane asks, behind the conversation by a good few steps.

JJ shakes his head. "You've really been off your phone this whole time?"

Shane protests, "It's a distraction -"

JJ explains over him, "The dumb, or, um, totally great and I liked it a lot shoot where we had to swap sports."

"Here," Joe says. He's pulled up the video. It features different Canadian athletes doing the wrong events for some promo, the type of thing Shane sometimes gets out of because he has higher-profile obligations. JJ and Teniers were apparently drafted into pretending to speed skate each other.

"They had alpine trying to curl and shit, and then -"

Rozanov, on ice facing an empty goal, not dressed like a hockey player, but holding a stick. There are four pucks in front of him. He makes a hesitant face, an I don't know about this, then rapid-fire taps them each into the goal, not slapshots, just smooth, quick, barely looking. He doesn't skate forward for each, just adjusts his arms. The shots are really fast for how far back he swings.

"Next?" he asks someone off-camera, heavily accented, with a touch of a sneer.

In the video, they do two more baby shooting drills, once with him taking passes from someone else, and once with targets.

He makes every shot and looks bored doing it.

"Huh," Shane says. "Could you do that?" he asks Joe. Maybe figure skaters just play hockey on the side a lot to improve their coordination, he doesn't know.

Joe shakes his head. "That's Ilya. He's just good at ice."

"I wonder if he played hockey but hurt a wrist or his head or something," Shane says, looking around for him, like he'll be able to see a lingering ulnar fracture on the guy.

JJ goes, "No, if a head injury was bad enough to quit hockey, he'd be crazy to switch to a sport without helmets."

"Maybe it's a Russian thing," Joe says.

JJ blinks. "He's Canadian, though?"

Joe sighs dramatically. "He got here - there - Canada, I mean - a couple of years ago. Bumped ahead of me in the ranks when he immigrated, but I can't even be mad at him, because he's such a good skater."

Seeing how impressed Shane is by this, he cracks a smile. "It helps that he basically swapped places with Charles Hall, who retired with a busted knee, so I didn't lose a rank. If I went down, I might have killed him."

"Oh, like how I'll kill you one day," another skater says, in a tone so friendly it sets half of the group howling.

Shane and JJ share a look: figure skaters are weird.

—

Shane excuses himself to the bathroom, making sure to say he'll be back. (He's not sure Joe believes him. JJ's migrated into a conversation with Donaldson and some American curlers, so he doesn't notice Shane leaving.)

Shane doesn't not drink, but he dislikes drinking in public (not worth the endless conversations about the flush reaction), he doesn't drink with his parents (not fun), and he wouldn't drink alone (pointless). So… he mostly doesn't drink.

(Well. Correction. He doesn't love drinking in public, but. If you're eighteen and your bed faced a Scott Hunter poster during your formative years? Then when Scott Hunter asks you to do shots, you say yes, sir.)

In his experience, when someone notices him not drinking, he ends up having to talk about the glow anyway. In Montreal, his team has gotten used to his ever-present ginger ale. Here, he's regressed to his Juniors-era strategy of filling a beer bottle (he thinks? it's in Russian) with water.

To pull this off, he needs to refill that water periodically. He's found that this, weirdly, doesn't raise any eyebrows. People just think he's… hydrating between drinks or something? Not drinking is a whole boring conversation, but this? Apparently uninteresting. People are so weird.

The bathroom sink is weird and small, but it's close by. It'll do. The water looks clear. He tries to studiously ignore all of the stuff about the supposed toxic waste contamination, or whatever it is, because what the fuck is he supposed to do? JJ's been sleeping with a shirt over his face like that's gonna stop the supposed black mold from getting to him. Shane tries to control only the controllables, and he's got no power over black mold or secretly contaminated water.

Two people are clearly going at it in one of the stalls. Girl and a guy, obviously, based on the sounds. Ugh.

He startles when someone at the sink violates fairly basic men's room protocol by turning fully to look at him while washing their hands.

It's Rozanov.

"Oh," Shane says. Then, "Shit." He splashed his sleeves.

Rozanov quirks an eyebrow at what he's doing.

"Canada thing?" he asks. His voice is low. He doesn't sound judgemental, exactly.

… okay, he sounds pretty judgemental.

"This?" Shane asks, about his sink operation. Like Rozanov would be asking about something else. "I don't think so. Just a… me thing."

"Strange," Rozanov says after a pause.

"I know, right?" Shane says.

Rozanov nods slowly. Doesn't say more. He turns off the tap and shakes his hands. The paper towel situation in the Village is dire.

Someone in the stall moans. Shane's ears go hot.

Rovanov makes eye contact with Shane in the mirror. It's piercing, and way too intense for what comes next: "Okay. English not good," he says brusquely, and leaves.

"Nice talking to… whatever," Shane calls after him, voice trailing off as the door swings shut.

Another moan. Shane flees.

—

 

[ THREAD: Quebec Skate Queers 🛼🏳️‍🌈 ]

 

Ilya 🧊:

Guess what I saw hockey Shane Hollander doing in the bathroom

 

Tess 👜:

Ooh with who

 

Jesse 👯:

… do you mean alone?

 

Ilya 🧊:

Not sex

Weirder

 

Joe:

Put us out of our misery

Wait sorry that means please tell us

 

Ilya 🧊:

He put water in beer bottle

 

Jesse 👯:

Okay?

 

Ilya 🧊:

No

Listen

He dump OUT beer

To put IN water

Is strange Canadian thing?

 

Tess 👜:

Like a prank?

 

Jessie 🛼:

Not a Canadian thing

Might be treason for us actually

 

Ilya 🧊:

Only one beer. Last? End? part of it

 

Misty ❄️:

Sorry wait I'm missing something, why do we care about this, is this a sinister thing I don't know about

 

Ilya 🧊:

Professional hockey player

Young

Looks like that

Should be snorting coke off tits

Not drink bathroom sink water at Olympics party

 

Joe:

Honestly?

Almost makes sense for him

When we were kids he would switch between gatorade and water because those gatorade sweat commercials scared him

 

Misty ❄️:

dlkfsldkhg that's kind of precious

 

Jesse 👯:

A Very Special Boy

 

Ilya 🧊:

I say strange and he say

"i know"

????

 

Joe:

I have no answers

 

—

When he makes his way back to Joe, JJ's off somewhere. Chatting with Joe and a bunch of ice skating strangers is more comfortable without him. No MLH players around to observe Shane, to evaluate his conduct, to judge.

Falling on an old standby, Shane asks people he meets if it was hard to get their gear out to Russia. Everyone wants to give their take on equipment, theirs and others': the Canadian speed skaters' suits were made by a tailor; everyone's heard about and feels bad for some poor Dutch figure skater who lost her skates in transit and only had three days to break in a new pair.

("Though why she didn't put them in her carry-on…" a female ice skater says.

"She was probably worried security would take them!" a skier says.

"She must fly for showcases and stuff," another skater argues. "How wouldn't she know?"

"Ilya pointed out that she might take the train everywhere in Europe? But -" Joe gives up, shaking his head - "some people are just inexplicable.")

Lots of them have different opinions about gear, so there are friendly shouting matches about blades and aerodynamicism. It's great. Just a big, circulating group of people who can talk ice with the best of them and have at least as many opinions on skate laces and insoles as Shane does.

—

Eventually, JJ loops back around to Shane and says that hockey is heading out. Shane nods.

"Hey," JJ yells, hands cupped over his mouth. The crowd quiets down a bit. "Leaving in five from the front doors if anyone wants to go out partying with men's hockey. Everyone's welcome." There's a cheer. Some people look excited. A group of curlers are ecstatic. Others, either waiting for their events and beholden to put on a front like they're focused, or… something, smile and wave him off.

"I'll probably stay," Joe says politely. Shane doesn't ask why he doesn't want to go clubbing in Sochi. For one thing, he doesn't want to go clubbing in Sochi. For another, Vaughn's words ring in his ears: Russia is not safe for folks like that.

Shane sighs and stands up. "It was great to talk to you," he tells Joe. It's not courtesy.

"Thanks," Joe says, adding, "Same. And thanks for hanging out with all of us," like Shane's some god come down from on high, like he's too good to hang out with curlers and triathletes, to hang out with anyone who doesn't play hockey.

Joe lives in Montreal and they've never once crossed paths.

"Try not to look so cut up about going out to party with the big shots," Joe says, smiling up at him.

"I'm pretty sure Brianna Wyman's a big shot," Shane says. She has two championship gold medals and now Olympic gold on top of it, at fully 19. Shane's not jealous. He's not.

"It's her world, we're just living in it," Joe agrees. He looks at Shane funnily. "Go," he says. "Have fun. Unless, like…?"

Shane should say yep, you too, and lope out of there. Instead, he lingers. "I just," he says, wanting to explain. He turns away from JJ (currently gesturing at four different people, maybe trying to convince girls to come), facing only Joe. "Clubs," he says, and makes a face. Joe is really expressive, so Shane thinks maybe it's okay to be more expressive than normal back at him.

Joe laughs. "So come back and hang out with the dorks if you get tired of it," he says.

"Yeah," Shane says. He takes one step away. Thinks about it.

He should just be happy he won silver. But he lost the fucking Olympic gold medal hockey game. He doesn't want to go out and party at an obnoxious club with a bunch of other sadsacks.

And he likes it here.

He turns back. "Actually. I might just - stay?"

Joe looks at him like he's nuts. "Awesome," he says.

JJ, who's tuned back in, sighs like he'd expected it. "You sure we can't tempt you out?"

"Yeah," Shane says. His hands feel sweaty.

"I'll let you know if we afterparty back here," JJ tells Shane. Then he leaves, just like that, like it's not weird, like it's fine, for Shane to stay behind. To be in different rooms.

—

After hockey leaves, the crowd thins out some. Most of the figure skaters stay. Some speed skaters.

Someone puts music on a speaker, club-type music, stuff Shane halfway knows from the generic pop music that gets pumped throughout arenas.

A curler suggests a drinking game, which is sort of counter to Shane's reasoning for staying behind.

(Except, god, at least there aren't any bottle girls here. That's the worst.)

People are gathering in a circle on the floor. "Shane?" Joe asks. "You in?"

Shane hesitates, knowing what comes next is the lightweight, diet, glow talk.

"I drink," says a voice just past Shane's left shoulder. Rozanov out of nowhere again, sitting down on the floor next to him.

"What?" Shane says, startled.

Rozanov isn't looking at him. "I drink," he tells Joe, "for him."

"Oh. Okay?" says the curler.

"Russian," Rozanov says, Shane guesses about himself.

"I - thanks?" Shane says, honestly unsure if this is a nice gesture or an insult to his masculinity. He knows which it would be with MLH players.

Rozanov shrugs. He's not looking at Shane. It's… weird. Is it weird? Shane looks at Joe, but as much as he still feels like they somehow just get each other, they haven't spent much time together. Shane can't guess what he's thinking.

Maybe because this isn't a big deal and Shane is overthinking it and Joe isn't thinking about it at all.

Shane sits down.

The game is something with rounds and a deck of cards. There's no real way to win. Some athletes hate that, but Shane thinks it's for the best. If there's a real winner, then he's going to play to win, and he's learned that people don't like playing drinking games with that guy.

It's king of like kings, if that also touched on like, Jenga: there's a physical component where sometimes you need to stretch to grab a card while keeping one or more limbs on the floor or touching other players.

Theresa Deangelo, female figure skater (no medal, heavy eye makeup, surprisingly perky given both of those facts), declares bonus points for backbends on the card-grabbing rounds. (Even though there are no points.) Stretching gets creative. When Shane puts an arm under one of his legs to get at a queen of hearts, people whoop. Someone goes, "You can't do that, you play hockey."

"Hockey players don't know about yoga?" Shane calls back, the gentlest possible shit-talking.

The whole thing is light like that. Each round, a subset of people sip their drinks. No one bitches anyone out for barely nipping whatever they've got. One girl is just drinking Powerade. It's a new experience for Shane. Maybe they're going easy on drinking because there are women there? In his experience of drinking games, girls have been there, but don't play the games alongside the guys. (If they do, they're usually classified as casual onetime fuck, not potential repeat/girlfriend.)

When it's Shane's turn to drink, Rozanov takes a longer sip, supposedly for the both of them. People end up cueing them both, apparently aware that Rozanov isn't tracking conversation that well: Ilya, Shane drinks. Ilya, you drink. Ilya, you drink for Shane. Shane would be uncomfortable being caught that unaware. Rozanov is relaxed, arms at his sides, legs sprawled out in front of him.

He's directly to Shane's left. If Shane turns to look at him, he'll be way too close for his own comfort, so he doesn't. Just senses the long line of Rozanov's neck in his periphery. Imagines that he feels Rozanov's body heat along his side.

A speed skater two spots over from Rozanov says something Shane doesn't catch. Rozanov says, "Russian. This? Like water," and raises the drink in his hand. A toast.

—

A song comes on that makes some girls shriek and get up to dance. Others follow them for the next few songs; Jessie Mason and another female speed skater unknown to Shane gesture Rozanov over. He waves them off at first.

Too late, Shane realizes it's probably because of him. He turns. "Are you still here because - I can drink," Shane says. "Plus Thompson" - the girl he'd noticed not-drinking earlier, a cross country skier with a hefty Newfoundland accent - "is drinking like, Powerade, I don't think she even mixed it with anything. It's fine."

Rozanov shakes his head, eyes narrowed. Maybe not understanding Shane over the noise? Shane gets up, gets his own drink, and shows it to Rozanov. There's a moment when Rozanov thinks Shane wants him to take it. Shane shoos him gently towards the dancing instead.

Rozanov's eyebrows knit together for a second. He looks at Shane carefully, waiting for him to take a pull.

Shane does. Swallows. It's weird to watch someone watch his throat. It's just - it's weird. "See?" Shane says. "I'm cool."

Rozanov's face clears. He rolls his shoulders back in an elaborate shrug.

"You did your duty for your fellow countryman," Jessie calls. "C'mon."

Rozanov tosses back something in Russian that Shane obviously doesn't catch. Winks. It doesn't look like either of the women he's talking to understand him, either, but they take it in stride.

(If Rozanov winked at Shane, he'd - well. Didn't matter. Rozanov wouldn't wink at Shane.)

As Rozanov stands, his hand glances against the middle of Shane's back.

Shane's trained to respond to posture corrections. Position pointers. Before he catches himself, he breathes back into Rozanov's hand. Feels it turn, almost like a caress.

—

The game keeps going, but they also watch the dance floor, which is half people jumping up and down and half people - mostly, but not all of them, figure skaters - actually dancing, better than Shane's maybe ever seen drunk people dance.

His face does get hot from his single beer. A couple of people notice, but the most it gets talked about is with Joe across the way, who gestures at his own face, then at Shane, and yells, "Twins!" Someone says they should take a picture; both of them give a firm no, and no one pushes it.

A big luge guy who's manning the speaker declares with grandiosity that a club remix of O Canada "shall play every hour upon the hour," and no one shouts him down. Actually, they sing along.

It's corny. And it's so much more fun than the usual night out at a club with the boys.

A song Shane's never heard starts up. Joe leaps to his feet, light on the ground like someone who jumps for a living can be. He makes a sound that Shane has never made in his life. (Shane's reminded of Vaughn pattering on: fucking brave for a dude to show up to a place like this and be like hey, here's me.) "Oh my god," he says. "We have to," he says, darting forward, reaching one hand out to Deangelo and the other out to… Shane.

He catches Shane's blank look. "… You don't know this song," he says. There's something like pity in his eyes. It's sort of unbearable.

"Oh, no, hey, it's okay! Ilya's still learning stuff too, you'll fit right in," says Deangelo. "Come on, we're missing it."

Shane stands up (taking Joe's hand, in a not weird way) (he thinks it would be more obviously weird if he didn't take his hand?) and follows them out to the floor.

—

In a fit of personal rebellion, Shane brings his drink to the dance floor. He'd normally never, thinking about cameras and his face and, most importantly, how his mom would quietly frown if pictures of him off the ice in less than perfect dignity came to light.

With silver under his belt, surrounded by all of these people who are teammates and strangers and not MLH players, it just doesn't feel, for this one night, like it matters all that much.

—

For the record, Shane just bounces in place on the dance floor, same as most of the, uh, non-figure-skater-looking guys there. Joe is about the same, except he jumps instead of bouncing. Sometimes he tells people to give him room first.

Shane would be embarrassed for him, but lots of the figure skaters are doing exactly that type of thing. There's more twirling than Shane sees on his average night out. Misty is dancing by herself, dramatic, luxurious, not sexual but still sexy, Shane thinks, probably, it's probably sexy, it's probably - some guys are watching, and it seems like she likes that, so Shane thinks it's sexy.

(Some guys are dancing a group of three or four, close together. With hockey players, it would be a joke. Shane doesn't think these ones are joking.)

Rozanov dances with an alpine skier Shane met earlier. She's a head shorter than him. There might - might - be a moment where Shane and Rozanov make eye contact. Shane looks away first.

The club remix of O Canada comes around again. Has another hour passed already? Normally, if there's drinking and dancing, time drags for Shane. Not right now. A snowboarder, Clayton Griswold, Shane thinks, starts doing one of those foot-forward intertribal dances Shane vaguely recognizes from elementary school culture days. Tapping the ball of his foot, then the whole foot, alternating and switching. Some people clear out of the way for him. People cheer. He smiles. Maybe smirks.

He's got great hair, Shane notices, and despairs.

A sledder off to the side waves her arms, steps into the clearing, and, making a thinking face, starts doing the same, halting, but recognizable. Someone yells "Go Sarah!" Griswold nods and claps for her, helping her out, encouraging her to move around with him. "That's all I ever learned," she calls, to both Griswold and the people watching. She's smiling hard, sheepish.

"Learn now," he says, waving a hand, head tilted back.

She keeps at it. Gets better at circling. There's a male ice dancer outside of the circle who's mimicking the motions, sort of marking them out, like you do before you try out a new play on the ice for real. Griswold singles him out, grabs his arm, pulls him in, too.

Some other people start trying it, some unspoken barrier broken. Joe's one of them. When he has the hang of it, he looks at Shane, tilting his head toward the clearing, like, c'mon, bud, get it together.

Deangelo takes another second to figure it out, but then she looks better at it than Joe does. "Here, it's," she says, and moves a foot, slow, off-beat, giving Shane time to follow along. It's not actually that hard, just that baby step part. Shane, again, remembers it from school, maybe an assembly or two.

Griswold, in the meantime, has started working in some hopping, and these quick spins that people holler about like he's scoring points. He always looks like he should fall over, but instead he stays perfectly steady, like he weighs less than his own body.

Oh, Shane thinks. This is a room at least half full of dancers.

Joe, still visibly in his cups, yells, "Hey. We should actually hang out when we get home."

"Yeah," Shane yells back. He won't count on it. He doesn't want to come on too strong. The stakes are higher here than he'd initially realized when he reached back out to Joe. He's the only inroad Shane has to whatever this is. To something he hadn't known was missing during every perfunctory team outing that the guys enjoyed and he smiled through.

If they saw this - he thinks, a brief flash, a precipice come and gone too fast to grab onto when the next song that comes on is a club remix of the Titanic theme, something that would never, ever happen in any club he's ever been brought to.

A girl nearby is yelling who can lift me? and Joe starts chanting Shane, Shane, a laugh in his voice - other people take it up - and Shane's being given the world's stupidest intro to figure skating pair lifts.

For the record? They're harder than they look, and they look hard.

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Shortest chapter, pls enjoy.

The next morning, Shane catches some of his hockey teammates at breakfast. They uniformly look like they're dying, except for the ones who still seem buzzed.

"How are you sitting upright?" Morrison asks Shane.

"I'm fine," Shane shrugs.

Some of the guys boo. "Shut up," JJ yells.

"No, I don't know," he laughs. "I didn't drink a lot."

"You fuckin' liar," one of them, Teniers, calls. "Speed skating said you were playing drinking games with that big skating party all night."

"Yeah," Shane shrugs, waving him off. "Sure." He doesn't say, but mostly, Rozanov drank for me.

—

Shane had heard that the Olympic Village gets wild. Partying, alcohol, some low-key drugs, tons of sex. Mostly, the partying sounded like regular international hockey competition shit, like something he'd have to get through, that he'd be glad to remember when he was much older, glad that he'd been a part of it a little, at least off to the side, watching, pretending to - yeah. Pretending.

He didn't think he'd have as much real fun as he had last night. Not just "I'll be glad I went" fun. He actually enjoyed himself at a full-on party, while the fun was happening. He's not sure how long it's been since that happened.

In a big group of strangers? He's not sure it's ever happened.

Last night was fun, he messages Joe. It doesn't seem like enough, so he adds: Figure skating knows how to party, and then: Thanks

Open invite and literally everyone was thrilled to see you, Joe writes back. Come back tonight, I think it'll be more of the same.

—

Shane hits the gym again, alone. Spin bike, body moving. Brain first emptying out, then letting back in the stuff that needs to be considered. Often, this is hockey: recent Metros games and the lessons he needs to take away from them.

Today, it's the night before. How easy it was to talk to everyone. Especially Joe, and the people Joe seems to be closest to. (Rozanov aside, at least.)

If Shane had ever been asked, What makes it easy to talk to someone? What makes you want to be around people?, he'd have measured it by hockey. The more someone knows about hockey, the less he has to explain about his life. Explaining his life means talking around holes that other people don't even see.

Ideally, someone knows a lot about hockey and isn't pushy. Won't ask him where a game went wrong. Or about trades he has no control over. Or what's going on with an injured player.

Jackie Pike is like that. She knows hockey, likes hockey. But an MLH player already lives in her house, so she doesn't need to pick Shane's brain. She's not trying to get anything from him. Plus, Shane's obligated, per bro rules, to think Jackie is objectively hot, but to subjectively feel nothing for her. Which is how he would feel about her no matter what.

(Not that he couldn't feel attracted to a woman. One day. Some time. Theoretically.)

No one's watching Shane talking to his friend's wife and thinking, what the fuck is with limp-dick Hollander, not even trying to eye this girl up?

While MLH players know hockey and won't ask stupid questions, Shane's not that relaxed when talking to them. Not that he's uncomfortable. He's just… very aware, with other hockey guys, that he needs to come off totally normal. And that most of them are looking for him - all other players, but maybe especially him, Asian and best new player in years - that's not ego, it's statistically true - to slip up. So Shane watches himself with them. Keeps his guard up. Does the kind of 3D chess thinking that enables him to talk to a probably-gay figure skater in front of JJ, stonewalling like nothing is up at all. Hockey players can smell blood, but they're not that smart. As long as Shane shows no weakness, he doesn't need to be uncomfortable talking to them.

Joe and his friends, on average, seem to have pretty minimal hockey knowledge. Low interest. But it's still easy to talk to them.

It helped that not that many hockey players were there. Shane only really had to monitor JJ. So he wasn't worried for Joe, or any of them.

If it was reversed, if it was just Joe wandering alone into the hockey kickback? Shane would have been self-conscious, way in the back of his mind, about the whole team seeing him talk to a probably-gay figure skater. But there's plausible deniability there, like talking to Jackie. Shane isn't expected to be attracted to Joe. (Which is perfect, because Shane's not attracted to Joe. Not even in a vague, lingering way that's mostly about the idea of a guy who's gay and Asian and a winter sports athlete.) So guys wouldn't immediately assume Shane was - whatever.

He still would have been… concerned. About if Joe would be okay. If he'd acted super gay, gayer than Joe really acts, guys would for sure assume that Shane had picked up a weird stalker. Team Canada probably wouldn't actually hurt him? No, they definitely wouldn't. Not that many of them, not that publicly.

But. Shane would worry anyway.

So maybe part of what Shane was feeling last night, what made it so easy, was relief. A break from thinking about how people (hockey players) were thinking about other people (Shane).

Another part is both more obvious and more confusing. It was like… the skaters just seemed to have more fun. Be more fun. Than the crowds of MLH players Shane usually has to spend time with. Even though Shane didn't have a sport - a whole life - in common with them.

He can't figure it out.

He doesn't know if he wants to.

—

After his workout, the day is all promotional crap and meeting up with his parents. His mom asks, half-heartedly, if he wants to go to lunch. "No," Shane says honestly.

Instead, they eat protein bars in the stands while watching curling, Denmark vs. Germany. It's nice. His dad pulls out his appalling store of curling knowledge. His mom thanks Shane for wearing his Rolex, in case they get put on the live feed.

"I still don't think it's a good idea to have it out like this," Shane says to her.

She sighs, sympathetic. "Easy way to keep the sponsors happy," she says. "It's an honor to be the face of a brand like that."

The face. "I don't think I'm the only face, mom," he says. "Would Rolex invest that deeply in someone whose teeth can get knocked out as a normal occupational hazard?"

"Well, but you're my favorite face," she says. "That's what I care about."

This is something she gives to him: working her ass off to make him a particular type of successful. With the Rolex thing, Shane gained irrefutable clout. At least to his mom's eyes, it's a type of class with hard proof behind it. If his career ended tomorrow, he would still be a former face of Rolex. If he ever had to sell the stupid, heavy watch for cash - or if it was dispossessed or whatever (his mom's first gen, but it's complicated, and sometimes she says stuff like some people lost everything if he admits to not liking the latest Reeboks he has to wear) - it wouldn't change the fact that he once wore a Rolex. Not many people could say that. Not even most people whose parents went to McGill. Definitely not most people who, like Shane, didn't go to college at all.

It's not that he values the Rolex thing in itself. It's that his mom hunted the deal down like wild game, she wanted it for him so badly.

"It still pulls my wrist hair," Shane bitches anyway.

"Take it in to get it resized. They said they'd be happy to do it for you," she reminds him. He's sure they would be. It would also make her happy, honestly warmly delighted, to hear that her son had the Rolex people do him a favor. He makes a mental note to get them to look at the band this summer. She's done so much for him. He can take care of what he's given.

In the meantime, when it matters to her, he slips on the watch. The twinge isn't so bad when he remembers how she'd told him about the first tentative talks with Rolex: smiling so hard it looked like it hurt.

—

 

[ THREAD: Unknown number ]

 

Unknown:

Joe fucking MA I got your number from Sarah Torres who got it from Theresa Deangelo because I need you to do me a solid

This is Travis Bledsoe btw

Snowboarding

Halfpipe

Gold medal winner for Canada, if that makes you want to do me a favor

 

Joe:

Please spit it out

 

Unknown:

I hear you have an in with SHANE fucking HOLLANDER

 

Joe:

I do????

 

Unknown:

Okay so MAYBE it's more that you're the closest thing I found to an in

I asked around everywhere and Brianna Wyman said she saw you talking to him and Dagenais last night

 

Joe:

I don't think I can get him to come to your birthday party, man

 

Unknown:

hahaha your so funny but look

I can't ask hockey directly for Shane Hollander's info because you know they're gonna want him for themselves but like

Don't you think that Canadian hero Shane fucking Hollander

Living fucking legend

Would want to play broom hockey tonight with some other Canadian heroes, including gold medal winner Travis Bledsoe, and also Brianna, and whoever else wants to play

 

Joe:

Oh you know what? He actually might

I really don't know him, but I'll pass it along

 

Unknown:

🙇🏻🙇🏻🙇🏻

 

—

The afternoon's press and promotion wears away the edges of the good will and energy Shane built up by spending time with his parents. He's glad when it's over. Relieved by the thirty minute reprieve between work and obligatory-if-not-mandatory hockey partying.

His teammates have battled through their hangovers and come out mostly intact. A group message goes out about meeting on the ground floor so they can venture into the city again. Shane doesn't have a good reason to opt out for a second day. On and off the ice, it's important for the team to cohere. (He'll never know if being "not sociable" is what cost him the spot in Boston.)

Some guys are off to a club. Others are headed to a Turkish bath. Shane doesn't get what that is, why it's in Russia, or why you'd ever want to go there. (Carefully does not think about how other guys aren't low-key stressed out by lounging around with a bunch of wet, naked men.)

Both are open invitations. Either will be glad to have Team Canada's leader in assists.

Not to be up his own ass about it, but once guys plays with Shane, they think he's hot shit. At least begrudgingly. Even if they don't particularly like him as a person, they want him as an asset: Shane Hollander, putting up numbers like it's his job (it is), pretty much unrivalled. He knows better than to talk to the press like that, but he's not ignorant of fact.

Playing against Shane? You hate him. Playing with Shane? He makes your life fucking easy.

Shane is mentally committed (resigned) to at least putting in an appearance with the clubbers. (Will it be weird that he's chosen the club, just to avoid the bath thing? He doesn't come off like a club guy. Does he have to do the bath thing? No. Right?)

But then: Joe messages him about motherfucking broom hockey.

Some fundamental part of Shane, maybe the one thing deeper than shame or fear (maybe the same thing that drove Shane to pro hockey despite his ever-lingering sexual crisis, actually) absolutely balks at missing out on playing the stupidest and greatest indoor pickup sport with Canada's finest winter athletes. He hasn't played broom hockey since he was in actual school.

"I think I'm staying here," Shane tells JJ. "Someone's doing broom hockey."

"Yeah, that makes sense for you," JJ says, nodding. "Uh. I'll root for you? You know, from far away, in a blissful saltwater soak."

"Thanks," Shane says, already thinking, okay, he'll have to compensate for the broom's angle against the carpet, but the bristles could be manipulated in interesting ways, like - can you trip someone with them? Is slashing possible? These are important questions. He intends to find answers.

—

By the time Shane gets there, teams have mostly been picked.

"Broom hockey?" Shane asks.

Bledsoe raises his arms and gives a deep victory shout.

They're split up, Shane on a team opposite Marshall, who opted against going out because he had an appointment later that night. (Shane knows he wants someone to ask. Shane is absolutely not the one.)

Each team has four brooms. "We raided eight supply closets," Bledsoe says proudly.

In the spirit of fairness, none of the professional hockey players present are allowed to hold a broom.

That's only Shane and Marshall. The entire women's hockey team is apparently playing its own blood-sport broom hockey tournament upstairs, invite only, which is how Bledsoe got the idea.

Shane doesn't mind playing defense just this once. He's generous like that.

Their goals are taped lines at either end of the hallway. No one in either one - nobody's willing to risk trampling a speed skater or something. For a puck, there's a balled up pair of Team USA socks, dubiously abandoned, clearly worn.

Overall, the game is played like soccer with occasional broomsticks and no refs. So, standard for broom hockey.

Some of the other skaters, including Joe and Rozanov, are watching from the sidelines. "You're not playing?" Shane asks. He's not really surprised about Joe. Rozanov is… maybe also not surprising. But Shane would be interested to see how he handles - himself.

"No contact sports," Joe says, like he's warding off a demon. "We're an enthusiastic, team-agnostic cheering section." He gestures to his own Team Canada scarf and Rozanov's fluffy pullover.

Rozanov nods sagely. "If injury, coach cry," he says.

"Fuck my coach," says Theresa Deangelo, turning a broom in her hand, learning its weight. "I'm gonna play Olympic broom hockey with Shane fucking Hollander."

They play to three points, a proof of concept round that gets a feel for the terrain. It's loud; it's stupid; they probably constitute a fire hazard; Shane is a terrible enforcer.

It's so much better than some awful club.

—

Just before they start a two out of three tournament, Marshall yells, "Wait, wait, wait. We probably have like, thirty sticks between just me and Shane." It's an exaggeration, but not by much; the sponsors were responsible for shipping, and they outdid themselves. "Should we just go get them, so we can all have one?"

"The sticks you played with when you medaled in the fucking Olympics?" Someone calls. "Yeah, that's acceptable, I guess."

"No, hang on, no," says Brianna Wyman. "You use them every day. Unfair advantage."

"We use the brooms," Shane says quickly. "Just us. Hockey players. Everyone else gets a stick."

Everyone agrees that this is fair. Shane doesn't give a shit about that. He just really wants to play with one of the brooms.

—

Round one: Marshall's team takes the head by a mountain of points that a lesser man than Shane would find embarrassing.

It turns out that slashing is a lot slower and obvious if you're using a broom. Also, it doesn't work that well. Bristles are soft. Whoops.

Round two: Shane's team pulls neck and neck with Marshall's.

"Great team effort," Shane calls. Bledsoe is surprisingly fast on his feet. Deangelo, who goes by Tessa, is contact-shy, but makes a solid, point-critical pass to a skier Shane hasn't met. And Shane is, you know, himself.

Round three: Shane's team squeaks out an ugly victory.

In the cheering section, Joe and a bunch of the other figure skaters and ice dancers scream. It's high-pitched. Rozanov whoops and claps. Maybe that's what gay people would sound like at a hockey game.

—

 

[ THREAD: Quebec Skate Queers 🛼🏳️‍🌈 ]

 

Jessie 🛼:

In case any of you were wondering, women's broom hockey final score is USA 4, CAN 3, Misty… 1? 2?

 

Misty ❄️:

Depends on what you're counting 🤔

 

Jesse 👯:

… now ik you don't care about hockey, Misty, but surely that math is off somehow

 

Ilya 🧊:

🥇

 

Misty ❄️:

What? USA scored 4 times, Canada scored 3

And I scored 1 or 1.5 times 🙂

 

Jesse 👯:

DURING the game??

 

Tess 👜:

Was it… in the penalty box lol

 

Joe:

Queen. Legend

Jessie, you're also a queen. But not as much of a legend in this specific way

 

Jessie 🛼:

I would prefer to be a knight of the realm

 

Joe:

We dub thee etc etc ⚔️

 

Jessie 🛼:

Tyvm

 

—

After, Joe waves Shane over to another drinking game setting up. "Ilya will drink for you again, if you want," he says. Rozanov glances up from his phone. Gives a perfunctory nod. Marshall wandered off to his appointment at some point, so Shane doesn't have to stop Rozanov. It's just - he doesn't get it.

Shane mouths to Joe, Why?

"Chivalry, I guess?" Joe whispers, with a shake of his head and a shrug.

Chivalry. The word slots into Shane's brain somewhere, alongside Rozanov's hand on his back yesterday.

Rozanov is almost definitely taller than him.

—

First, they drink, playing a brutal Never Have I Ever that's almost entirely ice sport related. Digs get specific. Joe's "never have I ever stumbled a double axel while performing to a Disney song" gets three different ice dancers to drink. Tessa's "never have I ever considered a late-career move to speed skating just to stop hearing my fucking program music in my sleep" gets four people, including one speed skater.

Then people dance, hotter and sweatier than the previous night. Shane recognizes a little more of the music, stuff that was new to him last night.

At some point, Shane slips the Rolex off of his wrist and puts it in the inner zip pocket of his fluffy pullover. His mom hates it when he carries the watch around instead of wearing it, but she's not there, is she?

("What's the point of having it if you're just going to take it off? And if you want to lose it, taking it off is a great first step," she fretted at Shane earlier that day.

"Mom, it has to come off sometime," he said. "Am I supposed to sleep in it?")

Briefly, Rozanov and Brianna Wyman disappear. They come back a little more disheveled. Shane hopes it was for sex and not drugs. Wyman's a little young, but she's like, the queen of the Canadian chunk of the Village. She has the confidence to match. If even one of the male Canadian male figure skaters isn't gay, it has to be Rozanov, who flirts with girls like he's breathing. They'd make a good pair.

Shane's never encountered so many supposedly untestable, undetectable pills as he has in the Village. As a rule, he stays away from that stuff. The drugs themselves don't interest him, and he can't fathom how it's worth the risk of testing positive. Figure skaters have a championship in the upcoming month, so Rozanov is also probably also playing it safe. Maybe. Right?

(Shane tries and fails to imagine Wyman naked. In the process, he has a stray thought about Rozanov taking off his shirt for her that nearly knocks him off his feet.)

Misty Arwadi and Jessie Mason come by once people are dancing. "How was women's broom hockey?" Joe asks them.

"Killer," Jessie yells. "USA beat us, though."

Misty waves a hand. "Got what I went there for," she says, and makes a compact Spider Man web-throwing gesture with one hand.

Mason mumbles, "Penalty box."

Joe snorts.

Shane doesn't get it, but he doesn't want to mark himself out by asking.

Anyway. Dance floor. Demonstrating some in-progress choreography, Joe stubs his toe on one of the beds so hard that there's an audible pop. He makes a noise like a train whistle before swearing, to his credit, like a hockey player.

A lively ten-person debate about RICE follows. Bledsoe makes a compelling argument for heat. Wyman puts in a vote for argan (what the fuck). An ice dancing pair pulls hard for actual, honest-to-god RICE.

"MEAT," Shane tells them, aghast.

"Protection, elevation, compression," Clayton Griswold counters.

"Do we even know if it's soft tissue or hard tissue, though?" Tessa asks doubtfully.

Misty eventually proclaims, like a judge laying down a sentence, that "Heat might help you heal, but in this, healing is secondary. The prime objective is hiding the bruise from your coach. For that, only ice will do."

Patting Joe on the head, Rozanov leaves again. He comes back maybe ten minutes later with four ice packs and a bag of hard candy, all different colors, Cyrillic on the wrappers. Where the fuck did he get cold ice packs? Does someone have a mini fridge?

The ice and a piece of candy - "Aw, lemon's my favorite" - go to Joe.

Rozanov shoves some more candy into his own pocket, then graciously hands out the rest. He's working on a piece already, a deep glint of red in his mouth. His pullover is pushed up to his elbows. Visible vasculature.

Shane, in a real fit of daring, accepts a piece from him. Orange, he thinks. Not bad.

When a female halfpipe snowboarder accepts one from Rozanov, he winks at her.

Joe recovers, or at least figures out how to put most of his weight on the other foot, in time to snag another drink and commandeer the music for a carefully crafted playlist of, as he puts it, half straight party hip hop and half baby's first figure skating program songs.

Shane would expect that to clear a room, but credit where credit's due. At least for this crowd (if few others), it works really fucking well. It kicks off with Yeah!, touches on the Lion King soundtrack, loops back to Rihanna, and moves to something even Shane knows is from the Nutcracker.

(Rozanov briefly makes a face like he's experiencing a computer glitch at that one, but then he gives in and takes some guy's hand - one of the ice dancers, Shane's pretty sure he's married to the woman he skates with - and lazily spins him around. Shane firmly stops looking.)

Misty swings by and yells, "Wait, wait, you have to play that tattoo song, do you have it -"

"- on my Russia playlist?" Joe finishes for her. "Am I fucking new? It's in here twice, bitch."

Joe might be in the rarified group of people who Shane enjoys just as much, if not more, after they tip over into actually drunk.

"What about the gay Tarzan one?" Tessa asks through a mouthful of hard candy.

"Oh. Oh, fuck, I'm an idiot," Joe says, like he forgot an important slide for his presentation at his bank job. "Fuck. Shit. What's that one called."

"You'll Be In My Heart," Jessie says.

Joe hums like maybe, but Tessa shakes her head. "No, it's… the other one."

Some guy - an ice dancer, Shane thinks - mumbles the words Broadway cast recording, which gets him banished across the room for some reason.

"Shit, what is it, it's the one about like, you know, feelings?" Tessa says.

"Strangers Like Me?" Shane asks, because, like. C'mon. He wouldn't have called it a gay song. But if a song from Tarzan was going to be gay, it would definitely be that one, right? It would have to be. With all of the words, and stuff. He's not sure he actually saw that movie, maybe at the dentist's, but even he - yeah. It had been on the radio a lot, and he was always in the car with his mom when he was a kid.

Tessa snaps her fingers and points to him.

"Thank you, Shane, Jesus," Joe mumbles, still looking at his playlist. "Rookie fucking mistake on my part. Here, okay, it's - three songs from now, go hydrate, kids."

Next up is the Titanic theme, like last night. Also like last night, Shane quickly gets drafted (alongside Jessie, who does have crazy lower body strength) into faking his way through ice dancing lifts with another female figure skater and a speed skater he hasn't met. Joe doesn't even need to suggest him this time.

As Jessie pulls him away, Joe moves like he's gonna grab Shane's sleeve, then stops short. Shane - wouldn't really mind. If Joe actually snagged him. It would be fine.

"What?" Shane asks.

Joe's got this look in his eyes that you get with drunk dudes who want to suddenly and insincerely declare that they really love you/our team/this fucking game, man. Shane braces himself.

With the tipsy certitude of a top-performing athlete, Joe goes, "You're gonna crush it, Shane, trust me."

"With the lifts? I didn't give a great showing yesterday," Shane says, laughing. He's relieved. The I fucking love you boys thing is usually his cue to get a guy water and a ride home.

"Sure. Yes. Any of it," Joe says. "All of it." At Shane's blank look, he goes, "Don't worry about it. They're waiting! Go go go."

Shane lets himself be led away.

—

Later, an ice dancer named Jesse - the same guy who walked back from the gym with Shane and Rozanov - swans through with a pink bedspread, having swapped his blue one with his partner's. "She couldn't look at it for another second. For good reason," Jesse says. About half the room emphatically agrees.

This is how Shane learns that the beds are, whatever, themed. Gendered. He's so glad he didn't ask where the pink one came from before he worked it out. He should have seen one of those by now, should've ended up in a girl's room, but he just, he doesn't want to, he just wants to keep doing this.

Not for one second does Shane think, wow, I wish I was in a Turkish bath, talking about incorporating rope workouts into my regimen.

—

Way after that, past his bedtime and feeling it, Shane ends up stranded, an island alone, surrounded by female hockey players.

Parties migrate. Shane's been careful not to glue too closely to anyone's side, Joe most of all. Clingy is weird. Weird and bad.

(Anyway, he had to get out of range eventually. A few drinks in himself, he noticed Rozanov's hair anew. Specifically, that two stray curls were escaping the gel at Rozanov's temples. Shane really, really wanted everyone to shut up so he could stare at this fascinating process in peace. Since that wasn't an option, he carefully detached himself from the crowd.)

He goes along with the drift, and suddenly: women's hockey.

They're mostly Canadian, but a handful of US players are there, and a surprising number of German players. He gradually realizes - mostly due to some pretty close dancing - that the non-Canadians are there for reasons. Established relationship reasons, he guesses, on the US players' parts. Otherwise, American women's hockey players are next-level masochistic, hooking up with international rivals like that.

"What are you doing here?" Canada's second line left winger asks him.

"I don't know," Shane yells back honestly. She thinks this is hysterical.

He dodges some selfie requests. (Glow, pictures, mom. Though he's pretty sure he's mostly sober by now. Back to his regularly scheduled freckles.) He gets roped into recording voice messages for several nephews, a couple of sons, two nieces, a daughter. The players are almost all super apologetic about it, like it's hard for him to say good luck this season, Brayden. Crush it in finals, Hannah. They're just voice messages. He doesn't even have to make sure he's smiling right.

He must rack up a lot of points doing that, because right before he heads back to his apartment for the night, two of the players (Sarah Leblanc, goal - seems correct, in hindsight - and Jenny Lee, right wing) ask him to go to bed with them.

"What?" he asks, sure he heard wrong. Other people are right there. The offer wasn't even quiet.

Lee says, "We already worked out the kinks with the small bed."

This woman was showing people pictures of her kids earlier.

Shane can't tell if this is an "it's okay to cheat as long as you're out of the province" thing, like lots of MLH guys have with their wives and girlfriends, or if Leblanc is also the mom of those kids, or… a secret third thing that's also none of his business.

"You're joking," he tries.

"Dead serious," Leblanc pipes up.

He shakes his head. "What do you even need me for?" he says, sort of marveling, tongue loose from his three drinks.

"I'm sure we'd think of something," Lee says.

Leblanc goes, "I was hoping for some, you know, tool work on your part."

"What," Shane says.

"You know. Your cock," Lee says helpfully. "The thing neither of us have?"

"Oh," Shane says. There's a small, unpleasant pit in his stomach. "Oh, yeah, I could do that. Sure?"

Lee laughs. "I think I prefer my partners more excited than sure," she says.

She's beautiful. She's Asian. She loves hockey. Why doesn't he want to fuck her?

… ah. She reminds him of his mom. (That's totally 100% of the reason why the idea of saying yes and going through with it makes his chest feel bad, makes his neck itch, like he need to run out of the room, or the building.)

(His high school girlfriend must have reminded him of his mom, too.)

"Um. I think no, then. But thank you?" His ears and cheeks are hot. He puts his hand in his pocket. He doesn't take out the Rolex, but he feels the outline, hard edges and smooth face, weighing him down just that little bit more.

The more forward one gives an exaggerated sigh. "Had to shoot our shot."

The other one's smiling. "Thanks for hearing us out. Lesbians, like, love you, do you know that?"

"Really?" he asks, thrown. Caught up in the idea that some of them look at him and see some undefined thing in common, or… whatever it is that makes lesbians like you. "You're… both great players?" he says, and they crack up, so he thinks he did something right, probably.

Shane looks at them and thinks: Okay. Okay, this is it. Game time.

If he's ever going to find a girl who's into pegging, this is the exact moment that it's going to happen, this is the pinnacle of opportunity, and he would be a fucking idiot not to seize the chance. To at least say, actually, do either of you top - yeah, he knows some basic fucking vernacular, that's not weird, okay - and would you be interested in showing me the ropes, at least some finger stuff, maybe it'll fix everything in me that's broken, sometimes it feels so good that I really think it will.

In a rush of stupid confidence, or fear at losing out on his one single shot at a halfway normal life, he leans forward and says, "Okay. So. I'm actually. Like. If pegging was on the table I'd be - yeah. Up for that," he says. Quiet confidence, shoulders back. Hockey players smell blood. Maybe even female ones.

Leblanc and Lee blink at each other. "Well, it's not what we were looking for," Leblanc says, apologetic, like she's turning down a carpentry bid.

Shane figures that's the end of it - he's not gonna beg to fuck them - but Leblanc is scanning the crowd with the expression of a playmaker. "How about… Sammy? Dark braids, blue water bottle?"

Shane's brain is blank. "She seems nice?" he says.

So Leblanc goes and gets Sammy.

"She does this," Lee says. "She likes making sure everyone has a good time."

"Okay," Shane says. "That's. Weird, but okay?"

"I know," Lee says. The so-in-love look on her face makes Shane feel a little heartsick for no one in particular.

Sammy is nice. Bouncy. There's a glint in her eye that suggests that Leblanc already told her something, which isn't discreet at all, but Shane wasn't either, so okay. Okay! Here they are.

Lee and Leblanc leave them alone with a finger wave and a "Have fun" that Shane tries not to find intimidating.

He and Sammy talk about the Olympics for about five minutes and then she goes, "So, do you want to come back to my room? I can kick the girls out."

"Oh, um," Shane says. "Actually, I think mine's already empty, if you want." Which - what the fuck is he doing, offering for the guys to walk in on - whatever this would be?

Luckily, that doesn't fly. Sammy tilts her head. Like she's talking about unfortunate weather, she says, "I think it's smarter to kick my friends out for an hour than to go back to a room three MLH players share."

What a mood setter. "Okay," Shane says. He's been saying it a lot.

"Great," Sammy says. She whips out her phone and texts people.

"Are you, um, I know I like, told Lee and Leblanc, but that just sort of happened? I - I don't know if everyone needs to know, um, specifics," he says weakly.

"Yeah," she says. "Just doing my due diligence not to get murdered. You were never in a sorority, huh?"

"What?" he says.

She shakes her head. "C'mon," she says, and leads him out of the crowd and back to her room, which her roommates have already vacated.

They make out on her bed, which is fine, sure, he likes it. It's good. It's better when she plays with his ass, shoves a hand down the back of his pants and squeezes like she means it. He gasps, involuntary.

She seems to like it - "Like that," she says - so he doesn't feel that horribly ashamed about it.

"So I don't have any, like, toys with me," she says. "Obviously. So, fingers?"

"Uh huh," he says.

"Also, actually? You have to eat me out first."

It's fair. Giving head is mildly gross, but he's done it before. He gets through it. He likes a physical challenge with clear goals and direct feedback. He sees how it would turn some people on. When the topic comes up with hockey players, they act like it's the end of the fucking world if a girl wants you to do it. Shane's not like that about it.

After, she asks what's more comfortable for him, and his mind goes immediately to the toys, as she calls them, locked in his nightstand, and how he very, very rarely will let himself put one in his mouth, and how it feels awesome to do that, way less why am I here and what do I do with my hands than eating a girl out has ever felt.

"- like, on your back or hands and knees, or -?" she's asking him.

Oh. "Um, so I - haven't really actually -" and it tumbles out, that this is mostly theoretical for him, but he's confident that the physiological response is there.

He'd expected this to be a turnoff. Instead, her eyes are half-lidded when she mumbles, "Oh my god. So I'll be deflowering Canada's greatest hockey player, that's whatever. As long as we're being candid: I want to see your ass while I do this." She inhales and holds her breath for a beat. "Like, I really want to look at your ass."

"Great," he says, thrilled not to make the call. So much of sex is having to make calls and wishing the girl would just fucking contribute to the project.

So she puts him on his front, pulls out packets of lube (he has questions, does not want answers), and puts her fingers in his ass.

He'd been worried that this would be like when he has sex with women normally, and he needs to concentrate to keep things going. (Because he's anxious. For just. General reasons?)

He does need to concentrate, but only on staying fucking quiet. These walls are like paper and he's Shane Hollander. He doesn't want it to get around that some girl had him fucking - moaning and drooling into her stupid hot pink bedspread. Jesus. Fuck.

"You're really good at that," he says after.

"Thanks," she says, perky. "You think you can eat me out again?"

He does. There's no way at that point in the encounter to say no. And it's the nicest sex he's had in his life. He wants to keep it that way.

In fact, this is basically his best case scenario. She's nice, and she plays hockey, and she has some hands on her.

And yet: right before Shane came, he thought helplessly about Ilya Rozanov giving him a reacharound.

If it was Rozanov fingering him, Shane doesn't think his mind would drift to Sammy.

So that's. Kind of damning.

"I'm gonna head back," Sammy says, after she gets another two or three in. "You want my number? If you're ever killing time in Vancouver?"

They trade information just to do it, kiss again a little, and go their separate ways: Sammy back to partying with her teammates like she didn't just drill Shane into her shitty mattress, Shane back to his room to try (and fail) to process the fact that his greatest hope for normality, a hockey playing girl who pegs, is apparently not going to fully cut it for him.

He enters the stairway and runs straight into several of his teammates, hair wet from their Turkish bath. Baths? Still unclear.

"How was it?" Shane asks gamely.

"How was it," Morrison parrots back. Shoves him playfully. "You fucking dog, don't pretend you didn't just leave a girl's room." The floors are mostly gender segregated. Also, Shane's hair probably looks like shit.

"Who sucked your dick, buddy?" Bolduc (left d-man, a better player when he's on home ice) asks, massaging his shoulders. "Tell us all about it."

Guys get extra touchy with each other after someone gets laid. Shane's never figured that out. When Hayden told him that he and Jackie were trying for a third kid, Shane didn't want to run his knuckles down Hayden's neck or sling an arm around his waist.

Shane shrugs. Refuses to say more. Lets his hair and the late hour speak for themselves.

Quiet confidence really does cover a lot of gaps.

He's tapped out. Night's not that young anymore, and his ugly comforter is waiting for him. He goes to bed.

—

The next day, the Games are over.

 

Chapter 3

Back in Canada, Shane can't leave his condo without getting mobbed. Even Montrealers who don't watch hockey suddenly know him.

So he spends his minimal downtime at home. Favors indoor workouts, eats meals at home. Ideal, honestly.

And more time indoors means more time for, uh, other stuff. Like remembering Ilya Rozanov's delts and his arrogant expression in way too much detail.

Shane's been interested in guys before. (See: Vaughn's abs, the hellish two days Shane spent considering JJ's playoff scruff before he before he resorted to drastic measures.) (Drastic measures are when Shane lets himself watch gay porn.)

But the only other time Shane couldn't get someone out of his head like this was when he was a kid, doing skate clinic with Joe.

Even then, it wasn't exactly the same, because… well, because it wasn't all in Shane's head; he and Joe were trading handjobs from like, the third week of the clinic.

That's not a big deal. Guys trash talk about that type of thing all the time, tossing it at opposing players who stick close to their defense partners. You two shower together, too? Explore each others' bodies during a sleepover?

Shane has to figure that works as a jab because it's true for more people than just him.

For a long time, Shane thought - hoped - that he might like girls as much. More. Or even just… occasionally. He only needs to be attracted to one and he could be set for life. Some guys have gay exceptions, right? None he knows personally, but that wouldn't be a known phrase if it wasn't a thing. Shane could have a straight exception. Probably. Maybe.

So he's tried to ignore the other thing. The gay thing. He's given up on hoping it will go away, but ignoring it is functionally the same as it going away. Basically. It used to be, anyway.

Going down a deep rabbit hole of Rozanov figure skating videos? Does not count as ignoring the gay thing. At least not in the way that (and eventual locations where - couch, bed) Shane does it.

—

The three available recordings of Rozanov's figure skating programs pre-Canada are mostly lower res, not many cuts, poor sound quality, Russian announcers. They're set to instrumental music that doesn't resonate for Shane. They make Rozanov look older than he was. He's stiff, firm-footed.

Shane starts to see that part of this is the Russian approach, a style you must need to emulate to make it that far within your own country. Like how you couldn't make it in Russian hockey in the eighties without a strong tactical bent. Shane reads more hockey books than is, he realizes, strictly normal; he knows a lot of the players who defected had a hard time adjusting to the less considered North American style of play, nevermind to Canada or the U.S. as a whole. Maybe Rozanov - well, who knows.

Shane had a press obligation during the men's free skate in Sochi. He watches it from his couch, using his laptop. He makes himself check out Joe's first. Kidding himself. When it's over, he drinks in Rozanov's. Feeling vaguely sleazy. Like he usually does when he settles in to watch the things he watches on his laptop.

Rozanov starts with an arm draped over his face. Black pants, black skates. Shirt with a high neck and long sleeves. Asymmetrical hem. It's black with streaks of red, almost feathered looking, with something sparkly sewn throughout to make it shine. The red makes it look like he's bleeding. It's dramatic, ridiculous. Par for the course in men's figure skating costumes, Shane's gathered.

The back of the shirt is - the back is. It has that weird tan mesh that girl figure skaters' outfits have, covering a deep - deep - triangle, like a v-neck, but a v-back, and way deeper than any v-neck Shane's seen. He can see more of Rozanov's moles through it. Shane never thought he cared about moles, the same way he doesn't care about his freckles. (Actually, that's a lie. He has complicated feelings about the freckles. They make him read more white for some people. Sometimes that's useful. Sometimes it's a bummer.)

It turns out that Shane thinks moles on other people - guys - figure skating guys - are really interesting, and maybe someone should invent clearer mesh so he can see these ones better.

Okay, okay, stop thinking about the shirt. Rozanov's music for this one is quieter than his short program music choice. Wistful piano unfolding over light strings. (No lyrics - apparently a rule change took place to allow lyrics immediately after Sochi, which the figure skaters Shane talked to there were fucking ecstatic about.)

Where Rozanov's short program was assertive, powerful, his free skate is - different. Sort of. It's difficult for Shane to tell how different, because he doesn't know a lot about figure skating. He does the same axels and stuff from the short program. Two quad flips, one quad lutz. Shane only knows about them because the announcers call them out.

Outside of those marks, Shane can only bring what he knows from hockey to the table. Rozanov's knees are softer than Shane's have ever been. All smooth motion, control, maintaining momentum and releasing it with intention. And the way he moves his body is different. He bends a lot, hitting moves that Shane didn't see in his short program. Spins especially. He does a couple of those long ones that force the body into a teardrop shape, holding one leg above his head. Forget falling; Shane would bust a fucking vertebra or four if he tried to do that. Rozanov's back must be crazy flexible.

The announcers talk around the style, using words like like duality and versatility. But Shane's pretty sure that they're really saying that Rozanov is figure skating like - um - well, he's not doing it like a girl, in the sense that it doesn't make him look, at all, like a girl. But. The impression is really different from the one made in his short program. There, he was in pursuit, rigid. In his free skate, he's in flight, yielding.

Rozanov had medaled silver in Sochi. Shane didn't even know that. All of the videos of his programs have titles like Ilya Rozanov's INCREDIBLE Silver Medal Stunner! The videos that autoplay after have thumbnails of his face, grinning, stony, whatever, or stills of his body, three quarter profile, moving through a turn.

They're titled shit like "I'll Score Above 280 At Worlds" Says Ilya Rozanov, Anatomy of Ilya Rozanov's Quads, Ilya Rozanov Planning Quints????, and Ilya Rozanov Cute Accent Moments.

And, in one case, JUST ILYA ROZANOV WINKING FOR TWO MINUTES. Jesus. For someone who didn't even get gold, the guy's a phenom.

Then again, Shane's a phenom, has been for a while, and he didn't get gold, either. He's still secretly kind of pissy about it. Maybe he always will be. But - if Shane and Rozanov both have Olympic silver, then at least on Olympic ice?

Shane's an even match for him.

—

Deep thoughts about fame and legacy and all that shit aside, Shane jerks off to Rozanov's figure skating program a couple of times.

(Yes, Shane knows that's embarrassing, weird, almost creepy. He's always been - different. In a couple of ways. And really, really specifically good at paying attention to how people move on skates. He doesn't get horny about hockey, obviously. It's hockey. But it kind of makes sense to Shane that this would happen at some point. Take the ice, Shane's bodily awareness of it, remove all of the hockey players and everything they stand for, add this objectively good-looking guy who's incredible on ice and has nothing to do with Shane's real life and looked at Shane, for one second, almost like he saw him and wanted -

Yeah, Shane's a fucking freak. Go ahead and laugh.)

He feels guilty afterwards, obviously. Figures it counts as using up his gay porn allowance for the month.

He used to assign himself some time viewing girl-on-girl stuff to compensate for every time he watched gay porn. Thought of it as carefully maintaining his apparent (unfortunate) bisexuality. Making sure that his interest in women didn't wither away due to neglect. Or, more honestly, hoping to establish a full-on Pavlovian association between naked girls and erections.

He's slowly given up on that over the past couple of years. It never did much good. It might even have hurt, since the guys in gay porn are usually loving it and the women in girl-on-girl porn are… just kind of there?

Now, Shane just limits his exposure to gay porn. Metes it out carefully, so he doesn't fry his brain. It's good this way. It's better.

Anyway, he doesn't actually need the figure skating footage to jerk off. He has his own slobbering imagination, a mental snapshot of Rozanov's forearms, and the memory of Sammy's fingers driving in, in, in, gentle and mean at the same time.

There are a lot of permutations to work through. What if it was Rozanov fucking Shane instead of Sammy? What if Rozanov fucked Sammy and let Shane watch the long, lean, muscular line of his body hitching into hers? Wait, wait, holy shit, what if Shane and Rozanov hooked up in the fabled Sochi gym showers -

The actual consequences of getting caught wouldn't turn Shane on at all -

But if it's only pretend -

The idea of Rozanov approaching him, kissing him under hot water with unrealistically good water pressure -

Wet, touching -

And once Shane got brave enough to palm Rozanov's cock, Rozanov would decide Shane was ready, just choose for him, turn him around and brace him against the wall, tell him to jerk himself off while Rozanov rutted against Shane's ass like an animal, grunting -

Fuck -

There's a lot of material to work with, there. Shane might never need gay porn again.

—

Shane does the interviews he has to do, the press stuff, whatever his agent and his mom and PR and advertisers say to do. It's the busiest he's ever been outside of playoffs or the week last summer when they crammed in every obligatory Olympics promotional shoot alongside training and conditioning and regular off-season endorsement stuff. The Rolex leaves broken hairs all over his wrist, curly and gross looking. A makeup artist for a Reebok shoot frowns at them and trims them down without asking. Shane appreciates it. Doesn't stop the watch from pulling the remaining ones out, though.

The figure skating World Championships come at the end of March. It's in Japan, so timing's not great, and routines are the same as at Sochi, mostly. Still, Shane's interested. He figures out how to watch Joe's programs a day or so after the fact, in a hotel room while Hayden showers.

Joe skated well, though not as well as he did at the Olympics. His Olympic bronze was, Joe even said at the time, helped along by a couple of other figure skaters performing worse than expected. He called the highlight of his career a blip, added that it was more than he could have expected. His voice light and grateful, no apparent false modesty. Wild.

(Shane finds Rozanov's programs, too. Watches them guiltily, but not guiltily enough to stop.)

Looking strong out there, bud, Shane sends to him. I still can't tell the moves apart, but the announcers made it sound like whatever you were doing with your arms was really cool

Joe sends back a string of emojis that mostly make sense; Shane hopes that ⛸️ 🌟 💪🏼 ♥️ means he's having fun.

Then, half a day later: a picture of Joe and Misty, somewhere in Japan, cups in hand near an elevated bridge, what the marketing people always call a moment. Misty says hi btw

It occurs to Shane to look at the other scores. Wait holy shit did she medal again?? Tell her congratulations, he sends back.

She says you're too kind comes back to him.

Shane considers replying with a thumbs up emoji for too long. Decides against it. JJ says it's better to leave people wanting more.

But he thinks maybe. If they talk again. And if Joe messages him first, that time. Then maybe he'll take a chance and ask if Joe wants to hang out.

—

 

[ THREAD: Quebec Skate Queers 🛼🏳️‍🌈 ]

 

Joe:

Okay since stars are aligning and we've confirmed TWO free evenings when Misty, Jessie, AND Ilya are in town for SM

Poll: do I invite Shane Hollander to olympics tattoos or is that like inviting Beyonce to your class pizza party?

Ilya is a maybe in case he's tired from English all day, so he does not get to vote

 

Jessie 🛼:

👍

 

Misty ❄️:

Yes! He was cute, I liked him

Smol

 

Joe:

I think he's like six two

 

Misty ❄️:

Smol in spirit 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

Ilya 🧊:

HOCKEY Shane Hollander????

 

Joe:

Yes Ilya hockey shane hollander

 

Tess 👜:

Yes to shane

 

Jesse 👯:

Yeah he was bizarrely nice

He didn't even get mad when Ilya said he was BAD AT HOCKEY

 

Ilya 🧊:

So why are you mad with me?????

 

—

Shane leaves Joe's next message (Want to come with a group of us to get Olympics tattoos in the Plateau? followed by a date) unread for a few hours.

Shane knows this maneuver from middle school; if someone suggests a time when you're obviously busy, it's not a real invitation. Finally, he sends back, Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I have a game, but thanks for inviting me. Have fun

Joe sends back, Wait shit sorry I should have realized. Hang on

Shane hangs on. This is not how the maneuver usually goes.

Joe sends, Okay any chance the 12th works? Some of the others are only here for a week for Skate Montreal

Shane's never heard of that, but he can put it together from context. He replies, Evening on the 12th? After 8? I don't land til 7

Sold, meet at Mont-Royal station? Joe asks.

Are tattoo places even open at night? Shane sends back.

Joe goes, Yeah? Gotta cater to the drunk crowd

Then, because Shane and Joe are just on the same wavelength sometimes: I'll call ahead though

—

 

[ THREAD: Marc ❤️ ]

 

Joe:

Shane Hollander wants to eat lunch with me

pls advise

[screenshot.jpg]

 

Marc ❤️:

Okay he HAS to be trying to smash

 

Joe:

I think he might just? Want to be friends?

 

Marc ❤️:

So go be friends

Like jokes aside, that's cool and you should have lunch with him

 

Joe:

I guess!

 

Marc ❤️:

You asked him to get olympics tattoos with your pals, right?

 

Joe:

What is it like to have a memory like yours

 

Marc ❤️:

Sometimes it's a curse

 

Joe:

Yeah I invited him but that's like. Olympics aftercare idk. Not one on one friend time

 

Marc ❤️:

"Olympics aftercare"

You're so fucking funny

 

Joe:

Thank you for noticing

idk

It was a real invite but I thought he'd say no

But then: yes

 

Marc ❤️:

You said you liked talking to him in Sochi

He was cool, right?

 

Joe:

Yeah it was like talking with a baby Misty, if Misty was really really butch or something. And into hockey. And a lot quieter

Correction: it was not much like talking to Misty

But it was good

 

Marc ❤️:

So i think just hang out with him and don't overthink it

 

Joe:

I guesssss

 

Marc ❤️:

Is this bringing up your masc athlete bro-related issues?

 

Joe:

I have no masc athlete bro related issues. I AM an athlete bro and mascs are a necessary part of the ecosystem

 

Marc ❤️:

You keep telling yourself that, babe

But like you were such a bitch to Sarah's boyfriend just because he played baseball

 

Joe:

And was I wrong to be a bitch to him??

 

Marc ❤️:

No but we did not KNOW that at the TIME

And you yourself say you were on full alert when Ilya showed up, just bc he's buff or whatever

 

Joe:

Buff AND Russian AND tall

Triple threat

 

Marc ❤️:

Not helping your case

So maybe SLIGHT trust issues stemming from a legitimate childhood bullying issue

No, legitimate feels like an understatement, sorry. Severe and prolonged?

I can see how that would make you leery of shane hollander (!)

 

Joe:

I'm NOT it's just WEIRD

Shane never bullied me. He would come to my house and take off his shoes without asking and watch me play FFXII after my mom made us eggs

 

Marc ❤️:

That's the cutest thing i've ever heard

Wait

Waitttt

I came over to play Skyrim for like our third date

That's STILL YOUR MOVE with boys

 

Joe:

Shut UP no one will be putting any moves on Shane Hollander

Really like

That is not the vibe

I don't know if he's looking for that from anyone

Is my theory

 

Marc ❤️:

Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Gotcha

That's tough actually

Like for him

 

Joe:

We are not talking about this any more, I said nothing, I don't know what you mean

 

Marc ❤️:

(are you SURE tho) (that he's not trying to smash)

 

Joe:

What, have I asked butchmasc living hockey god shane hollander if he wants to fuck? No, weirdly it slipped my mind to do that

 

Marc ❤️:

His loss

 

—

Bolstered by the fact that they have future plans, and cautious about complacency (on the ice, in life), Shane makes time to see Joe about a week later, in an hour-ish gap between practice and a reshoot for a drink he hates.

He slips into the stands of the facility's biggest rink. If he keeps his hood up until he sits down, he looks like an asshole, but he can pass through without people recognizing him.

He has to wear the Rolex for his next gig, so that's on too, pinching slightly as per usual. If it got stolen from his glove box, his mom would lose her mind about the headline.

(Walking around flashing a luxury watch at figure skaters is also an iffy look. Not that anyone's asking Shane. But he's not going to stay home because he has to babysit a watch, fuck.)

A few other skaters are on the ice with Joe, all their age or younger. No one from the Olympics. Watching them from the stands, Shane wonders if the youngest one should be in school. Then he feels stupid. And old. He wasn't in school at that age, either.

When Joe makes it to Shane, he explains, "I get it to myself in the mornings and two evenings a week. Three, while I was still preparing for Championships. Afternoons are a mixed bag."

"Isn't it hard to focus?"

"Yep," Joe says. "Good practice, though. During tournaments, if you get ice time at all, you're bound to end up practicing two or three to a rink."

Shane tries to imagine his practice with a second team on the rink. Fails. "That must be crazy focus training."

"One way to look at it."

The two of them don't go anywhere. They both have strict meal plans - Joe even more so than Shane, maybe - so they just eat what they brought with them.

It's… different. A relief. During the runup to playoffs, Shane's eating habits tend to separate him from other people. Even lots of other hockey players. He won't really drink during playoffs. He doesn't mainline wings or whatever when they're out after a game. He's never been tempted to break his meal plan for - gag - beer cheese.

With Joe, who's doing a gluten-free high fiber complete foods situation, the food thing isn't a barrier. It groups them together. Shane doesn't have to choose between his own priorities and getting along with others.

"What's your deal?" Joe asks Shane, pointing at Shane's food.

"It's macrobiotic-based," Shane says.

Joe tilts his head like he's trying to remember something. "Isn't that the Buddhist one that's a little, um. I mean."

Shane ducks his head. "Uh, completely nuts and fake the more you dig into it? Yeah," he admits.

"Is it working for you?" Joe asks gamely.

Shane nods. Hesitates, then adds, "Honestly, it's… it sounds scientific, so no one asks more questions, and I can get away with like, no dairy, mostly plant based."

Joe nods like this makes sense to him. Maybe it does. "Are you still kind of lactose intolerant?"

Shane makes a so-so motion. "Also just not real into cheese?" It's okay if it's melted and warm. Cold cheese is usually a no from him. And liquid cheese products are simply not to be borne.

Joe asks, "Do people also ask you - I get this all the time - like, what happens if you eat dairy?"

"Yes," Shane says. "What the fuck is that? What do they want me to say?"

"And then they're grossed out if you're ever just like. I'll shit myself, bud. What did you think happens?"

Shane laughs. "Maybe it's like the gluten thing. They want proof that you're not faking something for attention, or… something."

Joe considers. "Okay, I like that. I've thought it might just be a racist thing, really low key."

Shane blinks. "How d'you figure?"

"You know. Tell me about your exotic guts."

"Oh." He thinks about it. "Can't say it's not that."

Joe shrugs. "So, plant-based macrobiotic means no meat, too, right?"

Shane nods. He doesn't need to explain more. He wants to, anyway. "I mean, some, just not a lot. Low variety. I don't always like eating it. The way it… chews."

"Oh, yeah," Joe says. "I sort of remember that. You didn't grow out of it, huh."

"Guess not." Ground chuck? Fine. A steak? With those little fascia fibers? He can power through. Drumsticks on the bone? Fucking kill him.

Joe shrugs. "As long as you're getting enough food. You should see how some of the girls eat. Figure skaters, I mean. I don't know how they do it."

"Do they get a different plan, or -"

Joe blinks at him. "We don't get assigned nutritionists or anything, we just work with whoever, or handle it ourselves."

"Oh," Shane says. He silently contemplates this for a while.

They both have to chew their completely okay-tasting par-boiled kale the 200 times it takes to get it soft enough to swallow, so their conversation keeps an even pace. Usually, when Shane eats on-plan with others, he can't talk as much as they can. He's always considered this mostly a feature, not a bug. With Joe, he finds more to say.

"This is way easier than it usually is for me to socialize," Joe muses, echoing his thoughts. "Come down to the big ice building to sit on a hard bench and eat food you brought from home is a hard sell, but it's so much more career compatible than getting coffee with someone. Or" - he makes a face - "smoothies."

"They're an efficiency food," Shane agrees, hand over his mouth to hide his kale teeth. "Why would I go out of my way to get one that's all artisanal with algae and stuff?"

Joe nods. "That just makes it expensive, it doesn't -"

"Mean it's on the diet plan," Shane finishes.

"Or that it tastes good," Joe adds, diligently shoveling sweet potato chunks into his mouth three at a time.

They should trade recipes and stuff, Shane thinks. In Sochi, Misty talked about these macro-paleo things she bakes that looked, in the picture she showed him, like birdseed. She swore they tasted like cookies; she said she'd bring him one next time they saw each other. He wonders if they'll actually see each other again. She's already 23. She might not (probably won't?) qualify for the next Olympics.

"Oh, I think I got away with that bruised toe," Joe says. "From the second night you came and hung out? My trainer still hasn't noticed, and it's alllllmost back to a normal color."

"Awesome," Shane says, once he swallows his mouthful of kale. He means it. A deep toe bruise like that would be a minor annoyance for him, but he doesn't have to use his feet the way Joe does. For someone who does triple axels, it's a disaster.

"Worth it," Joe reflects. "So fun."

"Yeah," Shane says in agreement. Without really meaning to say it, he asks, "Hey, are parties just… like that, for you? Like they were in Sochi?"

Joe hums. Chews his sweet potato. "I mean, not that big? And usually the people at them aren't all competing in the Olympics? And also I barely go to them because -" he waves a hand - "figure skating?"

"Oh. Yeah." The Rolex shifts on Shane's wrist with another bite, probably taking a hair with it.

"What do you mean? Like what?" Joe asks after a pause.

"Like. I don't know. Fun?"

"Yeah? Do you go to a lot of bad parties?"

"I don't know." He stuffs some kale in his mouth.

"So yes."

Shane shrugs. Swallows. "They're usually at someone's house and there's a game on. And there are nights where the guys go out to clubs, but it's not… no one's teaching anyone to do jumps, or whatever." He feels the explanation falling short. "And either way, everyone there is a hockey player. Or sleeping with one."

"God, that sounds boring."

"I think I'm just boring," Shane says. "Or… I thought I was boring."

"Well, nothing wrong with boring if you like it," Joe backtracks.

Shane shakes his head. "I've never - I like hockey. A lot." He takes a second to mute the version of his mom who lives in his head before he admits, "Everything that comes along with it… comes along with it."

"So, wait, men's hockey must have gone out the night of the last game, right? What did you guys do?"

"A club," Shane says. "It was -" he shrugs again. "You know. Champagne. Shots. And there were some… girls."

"Was that fun?"

Shane shrugs again, looking out at the ice. "Sure."

"Oh. Ohhhhhh," says Joe, a little wide eyed, like it's gossip.

Shane feels himself color. Waves to banish any mistaken scandal, an imaginary cloud of cocaine and strippers. "Not like - just… Russian girls, I don't know. They spoke some English. If you get a group of professional athletes together in a club like that, girls just sort of - appear? And there's -" ugh - "bottle girls, and… stuff."

"You sound so enthused," Joe says.

"The bottle girls are the worst part," Shane admits.

"Like they're bitches, or…?" Joe asks, looking down at his food.

Shane shakes his head. "No, like, it's awkward, I don't know. It's not them. It's just - you know they're paid to be there, and they know you have money, and they're flirting with guys who smell like liquor and lost three front teeth in a fight, and it's like… it's… sleazy. Sometimes."

"You make them sound tragic," Joe says.

"They seem happy. Mostly. It's just - yeah, awkward."

Joe tilts his head to one side and back. "So no crazy club conquests for Shane Hollander?" he asks.

Shane waits for the wave of hackles-up alarm he gets when someone tries to probe into his (lack of a) sex life. It doesn't come. He shakes his head, mouth occupied with a forkful of amaranth. Leaving it al dente is better for his glycemic index goals, but it's also, literally, tougher to get through.

"What about the Village?"

Shane can't tell him about Sammy. Or anyone else, ever. It would actually kill him. He would honestly literally die. But he can offer a modified version of the truth. An anecdote that's not the whole truth. Something that skirts around the edges of Shane's actual Village experience.

Probably Lee and Leblanc wouldn't even care if people knew that they'd put themselves out there, since they'd really put themselves out there. And Joe is - well, he might be gay. Is probably gay. So it's safer to say this to him than to a hockey player, at least.

After Shane finally swallows, he says, "No. But the last night, two women's hockey players did ask me to… you know. Together."

Joe chokes on more sweet potato. "Oh my god. Did you - did you?"

"No," Shane says quickly. He leaves out the rest of it.

"Huh. Which players?"

"Just… two of them," Shane says, uncomfortable. "It doesn't matter."

Joe sort of chortles through his food before he finishes chewing. "I mean, good for them shooting their shot. I hope they found somebody. Was it super uncomfortable?"

Shane shakes his head. "They weren't desperate about it. Just." He says something stupid: "I mean, would you?"

Joe chews slowly, looking down at his food. "Well," he says.

Shane doesn't look over at him.

"I don't know… if I… would bring anything to the table?" Joe says.

"That's what I said!" Shane exclaims. He turns his palms up, a searching shrug. He's glad to be talking to Joe again. They get each other.

"Seriously?" Joe looks impressed. Appalled? He's laughing, so it's not bad appalled, more like when Hayden catches Shane Irish goodbyeing an event. (Nevermind that Hayden, husband and father, isn't big into wild nights out either.)

"Yeah, I mean, I don't… what would they need me for?" Shane says. He still can't picture it.

"I can't imagine." Joe sips his water.

"How about you? In the Village?" Shane asks, gamely wading into unknown territory. It's not that he's never met gay people. But they've never been friends. He's never asked about their sex lives. (Even when he's really wanted to, as with a particular trainer at a gym he went to when he was like, sixteen.)

"I… have a boyfriend. Like an exclusive thing?" Joe says it quickly, warily. Getting it out of the way in case something bad is coming. He glances at Shane, then away.

Shane feels a little like he's been slapped, with the exclusive part, like Shane was, what, going to hit on Joe? He thought… they got each other. He hopes Joe hasn't been uncomfortable, that Shane hasn't unthinkingly gotten clingy. "Okay," he says. He swallows. "I didn't - that's - okay?"

"Is it?" Joe asks, sort of rhetorical. He's pretending to track one of the skaters on her path across the rink.

Shane knows that trick. He invented that trick. "Yes? I don't know?"

Joe sighs. "Buddy," he says. Not in the aggro hockey player way. He turns to Shane with pitying eyes, like when Shane didn't know the music that was playing, that first night they hung out in the Village.

Shane takes a first bite of his cold tempeh. Shovels in some amaranth alongside it. Squares his jaw. With his mouth full, he asks, "What's his name?"

"My boyfriend's name?"

Shane nods.

"Marc." At Shane's gesture, he hesitantly adds, "We've been together for… shit, over a year, closer to two? He's a medical resident, he has less time off than I do, so he couldn't come to the Olympics. Also, Russia, you know?"

Shane hums. Swallows. Vaughn wasn't wrong to call Joe brave. "How'd you meet?" Look at Shane, pulling out the usual script he used when a guy wanted to tell him about his girlfriend. This is just like that. Normal. Except that Shane's actually interested, for once. And not that worried that Joe will lobby back questions about girls Shane should be dating.

Joe glances to the side. "Friends."

"Cool," Shane says. "This isn't - that's not a problem for me? Is that what you thought?" He tries to meet Joe's eyes.

"You're an MLH player."

Shane shrugged. "Yeah."

Joe's voice goes fake-prissy, quiet, discreet, even though no one else is around. He looks at his fingernails. Almost making a joke of it. "And it seemed wise to let you know I'm a taken man, whatever party favors I did when I was thirteen aside."

Shane lets out a shocked laugh. Drops his fork. His face blooms with heat; he's probably pink up to his ears, like he's drunk off his ass. "Don't bring it up, oh my god."

"What? It's not like it means - whatever." Joe waves a hand.

(It means something - had meant something - to Shane, sort of.

The day that Joe picked the music at their skate clinic, when they were taking off their skates, Shane said, "That was cool. The song."

"Right?" Joe said, grinning, one of his skates up on the bench. It was different than Shane's, obviously. Slim, arched. Sharper-looking. "Great acoustics in here."

Joe's dark hair was wavy and ever so slightly sun-streaked, even though he spent all of his time indoors, like anyone who takes an ice sport seriously. It was just long enough to fall in his eyes when he bent over to unlace his skates. Knowing nothing about acoustics, Shane said, "Yeah," just to fill the space, to distract from the feeling in his stomach.

He vividly remembers touching Joe, being touched in turn, weeks later. Thinking okay, think about girls now. now? now. Failing to get his mind off of Joe's hand, his hair.

One time, Joe asked what he thought about when they did it, and Shane panic-blurted, "Nothing!"

So maybe, for Shane, it had been a little bit of a crush.)

"Also, ship's sailed, as far as anyone knowing I've ever touched a dick," Joe adds, incredulous. "Marc and I sleep in the same bed and everything."

Shane's brain catches up. "Wait, you live together?" Shane feels bad. He should know that, right? A normal guy who's not being weird would know that his friend lives with someone.

Joe waves a hand. "No way. His hours are awful. I need my beauty sleep."

Shane nods. "Some of the guys on the team have different bedrooms so they can sleep off away games without their wives waking them up."

"Maybe one day, if he gets crazy doctor money and we manage to buy a two bed wherever he ends up getting placed."

"You never know," says Shane, who owns his four bedroom Montreal condo outright, recently invested in the adjoining unit, and is set to start building a lake house this year, permits allowing.

There's a quiet beat before Joe speaks up again. "I thought - well, whatever." He shrugs. "Maybe MLH is more progressive than I thought."

"It is not," Shane says immediately.

"Ah." A nod. "And how is that going for you?" Joe asks.

"I'm like, the best in the league? So it's fine."

Joe tilts his head back and fixes Shane with a look. With a slight smile, he says, "So humble."

"Not bragging if it's true."

"Pretty sure it's still bragging."

Shane chews, swallows. "Agree to disagree."

Joe picks up some kale. "So how does that follow? You're the best in the league so the MLH being… whatever… is cool?"

"Oh. No, I mean. I don't like that it's like that. It's just… it's fine for me as long as I'm winning. It's not a problem."

"What's not a problem?" Joe asks.

"You know," Shane says.

Joe shrugs. Shakes his head. It faintly reminds Shane of Rozanov.

"Like, guys can talk shit about -" Shane gestures to his own face - "but then they lose, so it doesn't matter."

"Jesus. Every game?" 

"I'm on a nine game win streak right now."

"I meant - they say that stuff every game?"

"Oh. Not every game." He waves his hand, trying to soften the statement. The stupid watch pricks at his wrist again. "Enough to - whatever. Make their point."

"Are there, like… people who hear that and should be calling them out?" Joe puts his food down to swig some of his water. 

"Like refs?"

"Whoever's supposed to do that, I don't know." He picks his chopsticks back up. They're chrome, shinier than Shane's stainless steel travel fork. (Shane goes through phases where he defaults to chopsticks when he's alone at home. Out and about, he'll always go for a fork, self-conscious, an ingrained habit, trying not to be The One Asian Guy on the team, to just be Some Guy.) 

Shane thinks about it. "I'm sure if it came to - there are instances where things get moved up the chain. Players talked to privately, that kind of thing." Of course, you'll get a reputation if you press for it yourself. Last time he heard of anyone getting even a bullshit apology out of another team was when a player in Vancouver (Costa, right wing, American) said in an interview that those two brothers in Portland (Kuzel & Kuzel, first line right wing and third line center, Czech) shared the first line Kuzel's wife and didn't know which one had fathered the recently-arrived baby Kuzel.

Shane continues, "But shit-talking's part of the game. And at least for me, they're not usually talking about my actual, you know, face, it's just - I get more small dick comments than the average player. And other stuff… of that nature." Fag, princess, cocksucker, bitch, et cetera. "So you couldn't really prove that they're being racist assholes."

"But they are," Joe says with a flat look.

"Oh, yeah, obviously," Shane says. He's slow to anger, not naive.

Joe's got a pinched expression. "Is your team - do the people you actually work with do that? Or is it always the competition?"

"Oh, no," Shane assures him. "Just opposing players. The team wins because of me. They're not going to fuck with me." In the horrifically competitive proving ground of juniors hockey, he's reasonably sure his teammates made shitty little remarks to one another about him more often than the once or twice a day that he heard. Now, if they ever do, they're a lot quieter about it. Gotta have some professionalism, after all.

"Wow. Okay. What about - like - if someone was gay?" Joe says through a bite of cucumber salad.

The answer's immediate, automatic: "Well, they wouldn't. Be gay."

Joe laughs. "Like they'd just stop?"

"Yeah. Uh, no. I mean, yeah, there are probably gay players, or whatever. But none that are, like - making themselves targets." He forces himself not to change his body language too much, to keep his tone the same.

"What would happen to a player who did?" Joe asks.

Shane shrugs. "If people knew a guy was gay? He wouldn't get that far. He wouldn't get through, like, juniors. Players aside, coaches would hear and they'd just stop scouting him." He scrapes up another mouthful. "If he knew what was good for him, he'd drop out before it became an issue." Switch to ice dancing. Or get an econ degree.

Shane's life. Fuck.

Joe makes a noise. "That sucks."

Shane swallows more amaranth. "Yeah. It's not - it's not a good part of the sport, I guess."

"Can you even be friends with queer people?" Joe sounds fascinated.

"Uh. Can you be more specific?" Shane says, thrown by the shift from a hypothetical some guy to a specific you.

Joe says, "Like, all queer people, gay people and also bi people and trans people and stuff." A pause. "And people who are asexual, like, they might want a relationship, but not want the sex part?" He says the last part a little more slowly, like Shane couldn't put that together with context - he speaks two languages - and like he doesn't have the internet.

Shane had been requesting specificity on the friendship part, but whatever. "Oh. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe their agent or the organization's PR would care. They might like it, actually? Halfway like it? It's hard to tell with them. Players wouldn't. Most of them. I think. But like. A lot of players don't even like the union, so. Fuck 'em." Not that the union's great. But its biggest flaw is that the League can blame all sorts of shit on it. Guys eat up that bullshit with a spoon. Especially the Americans.

Joe frowns.

"Not all of them," Shane says, self-correcting. "Carter Vaughn is cool. And Pike, he's on my team, he's a nice guy. Probably Scott Hunter." Hunter's at least gotten used to the way that Vaughn is. "Um. Maybe JJ Boiziau. Probably." He's big into night life. Restaurants, clubs. If you live in Montreal for a few years, like Shane has, you're bound to notice that there's, Shane doesn't know, market crossover between gay people and the house scene.

"Wow, four whole guys," Joe says, dry as a bone.

"Probably more. I haven't asked around."

"No shit, I wouldn't," Joe agrees.

Shane nods awkwardly. He takes an extra-big mouthful so he doesn't have to talk for a while.

"So not the nicest crowd for everyone," Joe sums up.

"No." Shane swallows. "Isn't figure skating also, like, at the top level, sort of…"

"A little? Not as bad as gymnastics. I think people get that confused, sometimes."

Shane nods, pretending he knows shit about gymnastics.

Joe continues, "It's fine in Canada. Other countries are obviously a mixed bag, so you need to be careful at international competitions."

"What's careful?" Shane asks.

Joe shrugs. "Don't hook up, don't look, no apps, butch it up for the judges. Depends on a lot of things."

Shane nods. Makes sense. Familiar, honestly.

Around another mouthful of sweet potato, Joe says, "But yeah, Canada's fine. Though, I mean, even Canadian skaters, if they do a big public coming out thing - which isn't, you know, no one has to do that, people can just live their lives, it's no one's business - it's always right around retirement, when skaters aren't concerned about how it might color the judges' perceptions."

"That seems hard," Shane says. "Hockey's not objective -" that's why they have refs, and team captains like Shane to interface with them - "but it's not totally up to a third party to decide whether or not someone scored."

"It can be so annoying," Joe says. "But sometimes it's fun, honestly. Playing with judges' expectations. Misty's so good at that."

"Is it crazy to just like, be friendly with someone with that many medals?" Shane asks.

"Yeah, but she's so great you kind of forget," Joe admits.

"That's good," Shane says absently. He watches one of the skaters make a full loop before realizing he should say something. Shit. "So it's, uh, a friendly environment? Figure skating?" Shane asks.

Joe waves. "Always exceptions to the rule, but yeah. And even if they were terrible, it's a solo sport. I don't depend on a partner, or any teammates. There's no one to, like, bully me, day to day. When solo skaters have to skate around other people, like practicing at a tournament, we're not worried someone's going to get full-on harassed, or jumped, or something." He considers it more. "No, I take that back. Ilya, maybe, he might be?"

"Oh," Shane says.

"Just, the Russian thing, I mean," Joe adds quickly. "The immigration thing." He adds, "Maybe also the… you know, ridiculous cockiness thing he sometimes does. But mostly the Russian thing."

Lots of questions there. Shane goes for the most immediate one. "Wait, do people here hassle him? Like, Canadians?"

Joe shakes his head. Pauses. "You know what? If they did, he wouldn't mention it. But I don't think so. It's the Russian nationals he has to keep an eye out for at events."

"They're mad he's competing for Canada?"

"Yeah, it was a big deal."

"How'd he… how does that work?"

"Who knows? After Charles blew up his knee, it looked like Canadian men's figure skating was headed for a poor showing at Sochi. Like, I'm good. But I'm not gold medal good." He casually finishes his bite, shrugging, like the idea of not being gold medal good isn't making his bones hurt. Figure skaters are something else. "I wasn't expecting bronze, right? So we were looking at no medals for men's figure skating in Russia. I'd guess Skate Canada pulled strings to avoid that. I'm not going to ask him, like, why are you in this country, and how did you do it so fast."

Shane nods. People ask his mom for her immigration bildungsroman when she's just like, out at the grocery store.

("How did that guy even know you weren't born here?" Shane asked her once, when he was still a kid.

"He didn't," his mom said dryly.)

He relates this to Joe, who nods in agreement.

"Yeah, his reasons for leaving are his own. The PR stuff they put out was all about him wanting a different skating style. Which, to his credit, he's done beautifully. So I'm sure that's actually part of it. There was probably - other stuff, too? Like. I know he didn't leave… with Russia's agreement. Apart from the Olympics, I don't think he can go back."

"Scary," Shane says absently. "They still do that kind of thing in MLH, too, sometimes. Guys skipping out on KLH - um, like, Russian MLH - contracts to come and play here. They're allowed to go back to Russia for national team stuff, then come back here. The most famous ones, at least. But I get the sense that their families are sort of… held accountable. In their absence."

"And by accountable, you mean -"

"- they're leverage, kind of, yeah," Shane says, wincing. No one talks about it, but everyone kind of knows there's… pressure. Like, MLH players on the Russian national team - guys who skipped out like that, especially - their families don't come visit them in North America soon, or all at once. Someone always has to stay behind. Out of reach.

That pressure would be different for a lone figure skater, without the clout of an MLH contract. Less income, less visibility. Less safety. All of the treason, none of the resulting MLH glory to buy back good will. No wonder the figure skaters thought Russian athletes might give Rozanov a hard time.

Joe takes a slow sip of his water. "That's interesting," he says. He's lost in thought for a beat. "I didn't know that." In a lighter tone, he says, "It was nice hanging out with him at the Games. I think he's coming out of his shell some." He slides a look over at Shane, eyebrow raised. "Maybe same for you?"

"Same for me - the shell part?" Shane clarifies, already preparing a bland, noncommittal opinion on Rozanov, if that's what Joe had meant.

"Yeah, you seemed like you were, I don't know, mixing it up a little."

Shane nods. "I usually don't have that much fun at team outings. Or… anywhere, except the rink. Not that - I know it's the Olympics, it's different from anything else. And it's not that I'm going to start…" he trails off.

"Start what?"

"I don't know, actually."

Joe laughs and makes a go on gesture.

Shane shrugs. "I liked hanging out with you guys. I don't want to shut that down."

"Good," Joe says. It's a good for you, right answer.

—

 

[ THREAD: Marc ❤️ ]

 

Joe:

Siiiiigh okay Shane was nice and it was fun talking to him and I want to do it again

I told him about you and he didn't assault me even a little bit

istg if you say anything about hooking up with him while I am trying to share my actual thoughts and feelings with you

 

Marc ❤️:

That's great!!!! I'm really glad, in a not horny way

Please tell me more. I am sexlessly interested

 

Joe:

He asked if I hooked up at the Olympics (made sense in context, I brought it up first) and I said I was in an Exclusive Homosexual Relationship

Not strictly true but like, I didn't want to make it worse

 

Marc ❤️:

See, when you say things like "make it worse," you realize that I want to use up my one (1) family emergency card to bail, find you at the rink, and wrap you in blankets and feed you soup

 

Joe:

I'm fine!!! It was fine. I had fun

 

Marc ❤️:

Good

How did he seem about it?

The gay thing lol

 

Joe:

He was really normal and I was being weirder than him

If I'm honest

I told him we met through friends?? Like what for?? Hockey players definitely know about apps???

 

Marc ❤️:

Aw babe

I'm sure you're equally socially maladjusted athletic childhood prodigies

 

—

Shane does his best not to jerk it to thoughts of guys - of Ilya Rozanov, in particular - for the next couple of weeks. He mostly succeeds.

It helps that he has away games. Nothing less horny than a hotel room shared with Hayden Pike. (If the weather's nice and it's not curfew yet, Hayden sometimes kicks Shane out of the room so Hayden can jerk off. Shane would die before he did the same thing. Anyway, the shower's right there for anyone who wants to masturbate like a civilized person, rather than leave evidence for some poor employee to clean up. The only saving grace is that he leaves solid tips for the cleaners, but Shane had to guilt him into doing that at first.)

When Shane's effort does fail, he's at home. The memory of hooking with Sammy has stopped cutting it for him. Shame. He'd hoped that it would plant a seed.

Instead, he imagines bodies. Movement. Mostly - all - male. Is frustrated by the imagined sight of Rozanov's strong forearms. The candy between his teeth, painting the inside of his mouth a lurid red, fuck. Come on, think about something else -

Vaughn's abs come to mind.

Oh, fuck, no. Shane forcibly redirects his thoughts back to Rozanov.

There are worse things than jerking off to a male figure skater he'll probably never see again. Way, way worse things. Another player. Ugh.

Safer to think about Rozanov than about someone who plays MLH. This is risk mitigation. The sensible choice. The correct one - to again imagine the showers, Rozanov just jerking off for him this time, directing Shane to do the same with just a flick of his eyes. Shane doing it. Rozanov stepping close. Getting a hand on Shane's neck. The hand sliding down to Shane's shoulder and pushing him down. Mumbling good at how easy Shane goes to his knees.

In Shane's head, he's good at sucking cock, but Rozanov is better.

—

 

[ THREAD: Ilya 🧊 ]

Joe:

Shane will be coming to tattoos btw

 

Ilya 🧊:

Wow, I suddenly can go also

Chapter 4

"Okay, we can go straight there, or we can drink and then go," Joe tells the assembled athletes outside of the Mont-Royal Metro station. Most of them took the train. Shane drove. He hasn't taken public transport since he was a really new rookie. "They said it would probably only take like half of the appointment block to get us all done."

It's five people besides Shane, all of whom he'd met in Sochi. Tessa Deangelo (figure skater) lives in Montreal, which Shane hadn't realized at Sochi. Misty Arwadi (figure skater), Jessie Thornton (speed skater, referred to by the group as Girl Jessie in order to distinguish her from), Jesse MacKay (ice dancer, otherwise known as Boy Jesse), and Ilya Rozanov (figure skater) (oh god) are in Montreal for an outreach… exhibition… thing, though they all live in Ottawa, where Skate Canada is headquartered.

Shane's wearing a hat with his hood up. He figures it might buy twenty minutes in public before someone spots him. Things have died down a bit.

When he showed up, they all blinked at him like they were surprised he exists in real life. He's gotten increasingly used to that during his time with the Metros. They're cool, though. Calm.

"You're not supposed to get tattoos after drinking," Girl Jesse says. "They don't turn out as good."

Joe sighs. "What if we were young and beautiful and living in the moment for fucking once, though?" he asks.

Tessa points at Joe. "That," she says.

"What about before?" Shane asks. "Does it help to at least get them done sober?" And as a side benefit, it means his face will be normal in the pictures of them getting tattoos - he's not stupid, some of these people are going to post about their night out with Shane Hollander.

"No idea. I like it," says Girl Jessie, and so it becomes the plan.

The shop's nice. Soft music and artful lighting in the waiting area. They're also pretty professional. Shane really only has to sign one employee's water bottle and another one's shirt and an iPad. They even have their own Sharpies in a bunch of colors. He picks blue. Not the Metros' shade, but close enough.

"Would you sign my ribs?" one of the employees asks. "I have this blank spot I've been dying to fill in."

Ugh. Shane hates autographing people for tattoos. What if his hand slips and it looks like shit on them forever?

"I wouldn't trust Shane on tattoo design," Joe calls out. "He almost failed art class."

He's just making shit up. A long tradition between him and Shane, covering for each other like that.

It works. The employee says sorry, Shane says all good and signs a shirt the guy can give to his boss, everyone's happy, Shane isn't responsible for permanently disfiguring some guy's chest. A relief.

Shane prods the employees to get the others to sign some shit, too. "What, no one's got a niece in figure skating lessons?" does the trick. Misty is a big fucking deal, okay?

So in the end, almost all of the skaters gamely autographs another shirt and some paper.

Girl Jessie, opting out of autographs on the principle that "speed skaters seek neither fortune nor fame," goes under the needle first. She gets her tattoo on her bicep. "Killer for roller derby," she says, which Shane thinks is probably a joke. Maybe. She's wearing mechanic's suit, almost, tight, with short sleeves. It does look like something Shane would imagine a roller derby person wearing. If he'd ever bothered to imagine that. Roller derby's not like, real, though. He doesn't think.

While she's in the chair, Girl Jessie and Joe talk with Rozanov about something speed skating-related that sounds so technical Shane can't keep hold on a word of it.

It's not just Girl Jessie who's dressed like… Shane doesn't know, like she actually thought about it. Under their coats, all of the skaters look kind of individual. Hockey players, minus some of the Europeans, Shane guesses, are usually in a uniform sea of dark pants, plain or team t-shirts, Canada Goose, and sneakers. Other than Joe, Shane's only seen this crowd in Team Canada gear, so he thought of them the same way. Apparently not. Maybe Shane should have expected that, since they're not all hockey playing dudes. But apart from Sochi, it's been a long time since Shane was in a group of people that weren't all hockey playing dudes.

Like, Tessa's in a bunch of layers, including one of those tight tank top dress things and winter boots with a heel (seems insane, but okay). It's mostly stuff WAGs wear, but Shane has this feeling that she wouldn't fit in with them. Maybe it's her hair - it's sort of… orange blonde in a way even Shane can tell is dyed, coming in dark at the very top. Laines' wife gets something done to her hair once a week.

Tessa and Misty, whose white fuzzy sweater is probably the single most girl figure skater article of clothing Shane's ever seen, both choose ankle tattoos. (Misty didn't get a tattoo for her first, so she does two on one ankle.) Seems ballsy for people who have to wear skates the next morning. He says as much to Tessa when she catches him looking at her foot. (Yikes.)

"Hidden by skates," she explains. "So the judges can't have opinions about it."

"Can… the judges actually have opinions about that?" Shane asks.

"Unfortunately," Tessa says, waving a hand.

Shane blinks. "Wait, but like. Do you mean at… industry events? Or - that can't factor into competitions, right?"

"No, it can," Tessa says. "Everything does. It's all up to the judges."

"But your actual scoring?" Shane presses.

Tessa and Misty nod in unison.

"But that seems. I mean," Shane says. He remembers to stop before he actively insults their sport.

"It's the dumbest shit," says Tessa, who apparently will insult her own sport for him. "It used to be worse, though. They'd detract for the wrong lipstick and stuff."

"What's the wrong lipstick?" Shane asks, incredulous. It might be a little rude.

Thankfully, it turns out that Misty and Tessa also find the concept pretty absurd, so they fill time explaining the ins and outs of the more qualitative aspects of scoring in women's figure skating.

When Boy Jesse gets back from the chair, he shows off the result for everyone. His tattoo is on his forearm, just below the inside of his elbow. He got it done in color. It looks good, Shane guesses, based on what little he knows of tattoos. The circles are the same size and shape and everything. Boy Jesse unrolls his shirtsleeve over it, rethinks it, and rolls it back up. The shirt is off-white satin, unbuttoned over a normal white t-shirt. Seems right for an ice dancer.

Boy Jesse contributes that his ice dance partner once took a hit (in points) (Shane's mind went to contact sports for a second) for wearing multicolored laces with white skates. "Those bitches," he says of the judges. "Modest, dignified, and appropriate can suck it. But, hey, she kept her spirits up. She might get permission to wear leggings next year."

After him, Joe goes, and then it's it's Shane's turn. He gets his in black on his shoulder blade. It's one of three positions approved by Rolex and Speedo. Rolex helpfully provided a mockup of the tattoo in the center of his left shoulder blade. When shows the mockup to Misty, Misty hums. "Honey, no," she says. "Not in the center like that. You need to plan for the next Olympics at least, right?"

Can't argue with that. If Shane's real with himself, he's hoping to make it to four of them. (And some part of Shane likes the idea of failing to follow the exact letter of Rolex's law, here.) He asks the tattoo artist to put it higher up.

The needle hurts more than Shane had expected. (He doesn't know what he'd expected.)

In his line of vision, Rozanov - next after Shane - stands in front of a chair, like he's too energetic to sit down, half-heartedly flipping through a binder of designs. He's in track pants that seem too lightweight for the weather, brown leather boots, a t-shirt, and a zip-up hoodie. There's a glint of gold at his throat. It's the cool-down clothing of a professional figure skater who came straight from the rink, nothing eye-catching, nothing remarkable, but Shane finds himself committing the exact blue of the hoodie to memory.

Joe and Misty are chatting off to Rozanov's side, but he's not engaged with them.

As Shane tears up from the sting of the needle, Rozanov drops the pretense and just… watches.

Maybe he's nervous, Shane thinks, the back of his neck prickling. But Rozanov has tattoos already. Doesn't he? He seems like someone who would. So he wouldn't be nervous. He just… wants to see Shane get marked up forever. For some reason. Some totally unknowable reason.

Shane swallows. Rozanov's gaze tracks it.

Out of self-preservation, Shane closes his eyes. It's better and worse. Less unnerving. More vulnerable.

The deep sting in his shoulder connects to the prickle on the back of Shane's neck and runs up his scalp. It leaves him breathless.

When they let him up off the chair, he's glad he has to carry his coat away with him.

Rozanov comes forward, raising a hand to show he's next. He's good with gestures that avoid words, something you get in a lot of European hockey players. Shane's never known if gestures are a European thing or if they just adopt them in Canada to supplement their English.

Shane takes the chair that Rozanov was blocking earlier, during Shane's tattoo. The one to Joe's right. It's lower than the tattoo chair, so Shane needs to angle up slightly to see Rozanov, who peels off his hoodie and rucks up the tank top (it's a tank top) underneath with the nonchalance of an athlete.

His arms, fully on display, are just - they don't make sense. Shane compares them to Boy Jesse's arms, to Joe's. They're way bigger.

Rozanov gets his tattoo on his ribs. Right before he closes his eyes and lets them have at it, he smirks at Shane.

Fuck. Think about something else. "Why do you think he's so built?" Shane asks Joe.

Joe blinks at him. He's in denim, a soft looking black cardigan, and a toque that's falling towards the back of his head.

"Uh, Rozanov," Shane clarifies.

Belatedly, he realizes that this is one of those things that he should only say to another hockey player. Taking stock of a guy's physique because you're thinking about training regimens and supplements and your own lats? That's normal in hockey. It would be weird to think it was weird. It would be gay to think it was gay.

With a gay figure skater, it probably doesn't come off the same.

Shane wants to melt into the floor. "Just because… figure skating doesn't usually make you bulk up like that?"

There's a pause. "I think he's just big," says Joe, dry as a fucking bone.

Shane should not look over to the chair again.

He shouldn't. He really should not.

He's doing it. Fuck.

Joe sighs and picks up the abandoned binder of tattoo designs. "Okay, tiger," he says, waving it in front of Shane's face, mercifully breaking off his view of the chair. "You and Misty need to help me choose another one."

"Wait, what are we doing?" Misty asks, taking a picture of Tessa and Girl Jesse and Boy Jesse talking in their own chairs nearby.

Joe says brightly, "Another tattoo! I'm getting another one. And you and Shane need to help me choose, so let's put our heads together and down and carefully look through all of these. Shane, do you think Tribal or, um, Spiritual Geometric?"

"… No?" Shane says.

"Yeah, jesus," Misty says. "If you're determined to do something stupid, let's see Barbed Wire."

"Go big or go home," Joe says, nodding.

Shane has no idea if he's joking or not.

—

Joe lets them talk him out of a barbed wire knuckle tattoo and is seriously considering the merits of a cartoon dolphin ("Do you like dolphins?" Shane asks, and Joe says, "Yeah, they're gay," which begs a lot of questions Shane doesn't feel like asking right now) when Rozanov's tattoo, the last of the bunch, finishes.

Shane's paid them up and tipped already. The person handling transactions seemed confused about what he was trying to do, but Shane thinks he has this one right. As the team captain, he'd try to sneak off to the counter and pay if he was out with teammates getting Metros tattoos. And those guys must make way more than like, Girl Jessie. The others protest in that way that's really a thank you, anyway.

—

The bar was Shane's pick, sort of, but it turns out Tessa knows it already.

He'd mentioned to Joe that he'd retreat if they got buried under a crush of Metros fans. It's been known to happen, especially in the first half of the year. Common courtesy to let someone know if you might cause an incident and bail halfway through the night.

Joe asked if there were any good - well, he said safer, but Shane got what he meant - places. Shane nutted up and asked JJ, who flipped out and texted him a list of like fifteen places, then immediately followed up with Know what, I'll just tell Jérôme to reserve a spot, and a single address.

Tessa directs them there, a couple of blocks away. The place is eclectic, bordering on kitschy. Warm orange light. Some tall plants off to the side, overseen by a big, vintage-looking fake parrot. Spanish-language music playing. Not too loud. Leather booths and a couple of tables. A wide doorway on the side opposite the bar gives way to a second room where some a few people are dancing, mostly in couples. It's a little grungier - softer? - than Shane's usual night out experience, but glass and steel interiors don't thrill Shane, anyway.

There's an employee kind of hanging around the front when they arrive; she clearly knows who Shane is, but takes them to a booth and leaves them alone.

In one corner, there's a pinball machine. Shane really wants to play it. He won't. He knows better than to get locked in like that with new people around. Mostly. Plus, he'd be visible to most of the room.

Instead, the whole group spends most of the time there just hanging out this back booth, talking.

(He'd meant it when he told Joe he'd bow out if it got crazy, but it isn't even necessary. No one bothers Shane the entire time they're there. Not even Jérôme, whoever that is. Shane's on the side of the booth facing the wall, away from the rest of the room. He still figures he'll need to sign shit or something, but it just… doesn't happen.

It takes him a while to work out that no one in the bar gives a shit about sports, at least at the moment. The TVs are all playing music videos, not games. Is this a sustainable way to run a business? Shane doesn't know. It doesn't look like they're doing too badly. For a Wednesday night, at any rate.)

The whole night is… Shane doesn't have a map for the conversation, right? When a hockey team is shooting the breeze, or talking shit, there are a lot of internal dynamics in play: who's friendly, who's not, how respectable and respectful everyone's pretending to be, how much any of them care to hear about a low-performing new defenseman's kids versus the kids of a veteran center who's playing well. It's complex, managing conversation in a group of coworkers who absolutely need to get along and sometimes don't, and who have a hierarchy, spoken and unspoken. Shane knows those undercurrents.

This group doesn't have any of that going on. They're colleagues, not coworkers. None one defers to Shane because he puts up points or sidelines Tessa because she hasn't medaled. Plus, some of the skaters will compete against each other in the future, but like… based on how comfortable they all seem… Shane gathers that that feels different if facing off doesn't include even a remote possibility of physical combat.

And once more, Shane feels like he's just… not that weird, to these people.

They're all in what Joe calls cool down training, so only Rozanov, Tessa, and Jesse drink; sticking with ginger ale (which Rozanov brought back from the bar for Shane without asking - Shane wonders about it, but misses his opportunity to ask) doesn't make Shane stand out.

Between Shane, Misty, and Joe, the group is almost half Asian. Shane thinks that the majority of them are gay, or something like it. Misty's mentioned ex-girlfriends. Girl Jessie… well, compared to the WAGs Shane's somewhat used to by now, she looks like she knows her way around a screwdriver. Boy Jesse's an ice dancer with a pink velvet smartwatch band. (The color wouldn't be Shane's first choice, but it probably doesn't snag on Boy Jesse's wrist hair at all.)

It's not that Shane has more in common with these skaters than he does with the average MLH player. But. Outside of hockey itself, he almost does have more in common with them?

Joe pokes some of his hair back underneath his still-artfully-slouched toque. "What're you thinking about?" he asks Shane.

Shane says, "How long it took to get your hat to sit like that."

"Fuck you, too," Joe goes, friendly, not missing a beat. "At least I cared enough to try." He eyes Shane's athletic wear like it personally offends him.

Misty smiles at them, her head resting on one fist. "Montrealers and their winterwear," she says.

"Oh, miss winter whites over here has critique?" Joe asks.

"What's wrong with winter whites?" Misty asks. She catches Shane's eye. "What?"

"I wasn't saying anything," Shane says.

"C'mon," she wheedles.

"Just. If you slip in mud, they won't be white anymore?"

She hums. Stage whispers, "You may not know this, but I'm a professional figure skater. I don't fall. Unlike some people."

"Shut up, bitch," Joe says, with a playful wave. A guy calling a girl bitch startles Shane for a second, but it's definitely bitch like how JJ says it to Shane, not the regular way. "It was practice. Before the little exhibition yesterday," Joe explains to Shane.

Misty says, "I know, it's just. The look on the faces of those seven year olds who passed you were priceless."

"I'm graceful and serene," Joe sniffs.

"You are," Misty agrees, shifting back into sincerity with disarming speed.

Boy Jesse and Girl Jessie, who apparently only met in person for the first time at the Olympics, bond over being from BC, and over each having a sworn rival in their respective sports.

"Professional jealousy? I wouldn't know what that's like," says Tessa, with an exaggerated innocent voice and wide eyes, tipping her head towards Misty.

"Me neither," the multi-medal-winning Misty says, giving her a toothy, shit-eating grin.

It's a type of shit-talking that would get an eye roll from hockey players. The skaters, instead, think it's fucking hilarious. Jesse bows to Misty, his hands flat and facing out, like prayer.

"Try immigrating to new country that need star skater," Rozanov tells Tessa from across the table. "Everyone feel too sorry for you to hate you out loud."

Tessa hums, pretending to think about it.

"Russia beautiful this time of year," Rozanov lilts, smirking.

"If we're talking relocation, move to the Bahamas or something," Joe says. "You could be in charge of the whole program."

Tessa nods thoughtfully. "You know, I have been meaning to get some offshore accounts set up, to hold all of the money that I make in my highly lucrative figure skating career."

In hockey, it's poor taste to acknowledge that retirement is coming, awkward when some players are way closer to it than others. The skaters, on the other hand, talk openly about the fact that their careers won't be lifelong. Misty wants to coach; Joe jokes-but-not-really about being a househusband; Tessa says she's interested in coaching, but also finance.

Shane must make a face at that, because she asks him, "What, is that weird?"

He tells her honestly that he admires anyone who can wrap their mind around like, hedge funds and stuff.

She laughs and thanks him. There's no flirtation in it.

Then the music changes and Tessa goes, "Oh, oh, Ilya, dance with me, c'mon, just this song, I almost did an exhibition skate to it but my coach said no -"

Rozanov, with a particular raised eyebrow that Shane's coming to suspect means he's flirting, downs his drink in one go before gamely getting up and following her to the sparsely populated dance floor. They casually start doing something that looks, to Shane's best guess, like a tango. While they're not as in sync as some of the other couples, their movement is loose, fluid. Comfortable. Close at the hips, if not actually touching. When they turn, they stay connected through Tessa's hand at the back of Rozanov's neck. So. Maybe they're -

"They're not a thing," Misty comments casually, like she can read Shane's fucking mind. "For what it's worth."

Shane nods. Pretends he hadn't thought about it.

"When will a man bachata with me like that," grumbles Boy Jesse. Shane's not clear if that's the name of the dance or (per Boy Jesse's frankly horny tone) something more horizontal. "Or, I mean. I'd be better at it. But still."

"What happened to the guy you mentioned in the chat a couple of months ago? Teodore?" Girl Jessie says, eyebrows raised, Shirley Temple straw in her mouth.

"Oh my god," Boy Jesse says. "Done. Over. He didn't tip his rideshare drivers and I swear he only changed his sheets every three or four months."

Girl Jessie makes a face at the same time that Shane makes a noise.

"Agreed, exactly," Boy Jesse says, pointing at both of them. "Romance is dead. Casual only from here out. Also, as long as I'm making new rules? No more closeted guys. It's so corny. Like, they're doing their thing, no shame, but trying to actually date them? No."

Misty pats his hand. "Stay strong, buddy." By way of a change of subject - familiar from various Metros' efforts to cut off Comeau's endless complaints about girls on dating apps - she says, "I'm glad he came out with us." Then, to Shane: "Ilya. He's not always super social."

"It's the language issue," Girl Jessie tells her. "I think he's self-conscious about it. He's gotten better, though."

Joe nods.

"It's hard. Nice that he's letting his guard down," Misty says lightly.

"He could use it," Girl Jessie says, wry. Shane has the sense that Rozanov and her are a close-ish, so she's probably not trying to get them to shit-talk him.

Boy Jesse hums. "Cards on the table, he can be a bitch. But he's hot and also funny sometimes, so he gets a pass."

"I guess he warmed up more during the games," Joe says loudly, loud enough that Shane remembers to stop watching Rozanov and Tessa dance - her legs long and thin, everything Shane should want, and Rozanov's strong shoulders, his big hands on her waist - and turn safely back to the table.

"You know how cagey he can be," Joe added. He glances Shane's way. "He didn't agree to come until he knew exactly who else was going to be there."

—

Joe does go back to the tattoo place for the dolphin at the end of the night. He makes Rozanov and Girl Jessie each hold one of his hands. "An ankle tattoo hurts, but not that much," Girl Jessie says.

"I'm baby," Joe insists. "Also, look at your strong-ass hands, you'll deal."

"Doesn't Shane have stronger hands?" Boy Jesse asks. "Like, if we're ranking each other on an anime hands basis?"

Rozanov scoffs and insists once more, against all statistical evidence to the contrary, "No. Weak backhand."

"That's not literal, when people say it," Shane says. "They mean it's weak in terms of pass and shot success, not that my hands are physically weak."

"No," Rozanov says, shaking his head. Softly condescending, he says, "Not hand weak. Wrist. Forearm."

"My wrists aren't weak."

Rozanov shoots out his other arm, the one not currently held by Joe, who's tearing up. "Look, share. Match?"

"Compare," Misty calls over.

"Compare," Rozanov repeats.

Despite himself, Shane holds his arm out.

Rozanov's wrist might be thicker, but not by much. Shane argues, "That doesn't prove anything, and anyway, it's the same -"

"Ilya, what was even the point of dragging you over here," Joe whimpers.

Rozanov hums, ignoring him. "Half of fish is on you," he tells Joe. His voice is quiet and warm. Consoling, not brusque.

Shane looks at Girl Jessie. "Don't get me involved in this," she says. "You can't do push up contests in here. I don't think."

"That would be correct," the tattoo artist says, infinitely patient, but also like, quiet down, children, so they do.

—

When the group parts ways, Misty grabs Shane's wrist, like a slightly formal goodbye, and sleight-of-hand slips him something wrapped in cellophane. She winks. "I only had enough for you, don't make them jealous." It's two of her no-bake granola cookie things.

"Thanks," Shane says, disproportionately touched.

"You're welcome," she says. "Get home safe!"

—

 

[ THREAD: Ilya 🧊 ]

 

Joe:

Listen I respect that you're a shit stirrer

But please don't mess with Shane's head

He's SOMEHOW a nice guy and I think he needs a place to just like, exist

Without you fucking with him

Ilya if you don't answer me I WILL call and make you talk on the phone

I don't like putting this in writing anyway

 

Ilya 🧊:

Sorry busy looking up if "shit stirrer" is really disgusting word for "man who likes anal sex"

 

Joe:

ILYA.

 

Ilya 🧊:

Why worried???

What you think I do?

 

Joe:

Don't act dumb

You negged him the day you met him (I KNOW you know that word)

You were eye fucking him when he got his tattoo

When I got my second one, I made you hold my hand to keep you apart

And instead you did the LET'S COMPARE HANDS FLIRTING THING

 

Ilya 🧊:

Okay little bit

I am human

 

Joe:

Someone in a high stress situation needs support

Not a onetime hookup that puts them in fucking crisis because YOU wanted to get your dick wet

If you try ANYTHING, there's a real chance he will run away forever

 

Ilya 🧊:

He play with scarier men than me every day

 

Joe:

Exactly??? His sport is terrifying???

We talked about it a little bit and it sounds just like. So stressful and bad

So DO NOT scare him off

 

Ilya 🧊:

… you are jealous? You want him for you

 

Joe:

Jesus. No

I don't know ANYONE from before I was 18

It turns out it's nice! I'd like to keep that going! So please don't screw it up for me

 

Ilya 🧊:

I also not see old friends, but I not say you can't fuck Marc

 

Joe:

That makes no sense

You KNOW that makes no sense

Just say you won't fuck with him and I'll leave you alone

It's not that hard

 

Ilya 🧊:

Fine. I leave hockey Shane Hollander alone

Like delicate statue

Who is six feet tall and could bench press you

 

Joe:

THANK you

… okay I lied about leaving you alone actually. One of the little girls at my rink has a mom who carries an actual dog in her purse. Do you want to see pictures

 

Ilya 🧊:

SHOW

 

—

Misty's cookies are actually pretty tasty. Aggressively nutty, which Shane would expect for cookies covered in sunflower seeds. The centers are soft and chewy, not super sweet in themselves, but they contrast well with the salt on the outsides. This green tint around the edges that made Shane leery turns out to be pistachio.

Your average hockey player might make some overdone joke about how they're not a nanaimo bar, the kind of thing you hear every time athletes start arguing about protein bars. Shane gets tired of thinking about what an average hockey player would or would not like. These taste good. He likes them.

He asks Joe to thank Misty for him; Misty, through Joe, sends Yay! along with the recipe. (It does, in fact, look like it pretty much falls in line with Shane's diet stuff; the sweeteners are banana and brown rice syrup.)

Joe includes Misty's contact, like Shane and Misty might need to talk again for whatever reason. It's a nice thought.

—

"Oh, shit," Hayden says, when he notices Shane's tattoo in the locker room a week later. (Shane's loyalty to layers has its benefits.) "You did it! I thought you weren't going to."

"Why wouldn't I?" Shane asks.

"You didn't get it in Sochi," Hayden points out.

"Yeah, I didn't want to get tetanus."

"Mean! Bolduc's turned out great. He said that Felix the scary tattoo artist was very nice."

Shane looks at him.

"Maybe not that nice, if scary is in his name," Hayden admits.

"I'm okay to have missed him. Tattoos look worse if you get them when you've been drinking." Shane says this like he knew it in Sochi, which definitely wasn't the case, but whatever.

"You could've let me know. I would have kept you company," Hayden says, putting on a horrible scrunched expression. "I missed out on seeing you make this face in the chair."

It is, incidentally, an expression Shane remembers from a kid mocking him on the playground in a racist way when he was seven or something. He imagines guilting Hayden about it, just to mess with him. He probably wouldn't melt down.

Instead, Shane says, "Someone probably put up pictures, if you want to dig around."

"Pictures?"

And see, here is where Shane being (when he's being honest) (which is rarely) (even in his own head) a Kinsey 6 (what, he can't know what that is? Like twelve-year-old Shane never got up the courage to type am I gay? into a search engine?) gets in Shane's way. He doesn't realize where Hayden's mind will go when he says, "On the tattoo place's account? Or Misty Arwadi took some. I went with her and some other people."

Hayden's blank for a second. Then he says, "Arwadi? Like the figure skater?"

"Yeah, we all got them."

Hayden echoes, "Misty Arwadi and some other people."

It's not really a question, so Shane doesn't respond.

"Shane, did you make friends?"

"I guess," Shane says, trying to sound bored.

"Outside-of-work friends!"

"They're colleagues, I think? They're also professional athletes," Shane says. "Are you a professional athlete if you don't make money doing it?"

"I think it's professional if it's a full-time job," Hayden says thoughtfully.

"So yes," Shane says.

"So Misty," Hayden says.

Ah, shit.

—

The hotel the team stays at in Nashville has a couple of angled mirrors in the bathroom. Shane catches sight of the tattoo in them, stops, and angles himself to see it better. It looks good. In the sense that it's healing well. It also just - looks good. On him. He thinks.

He doesn't think he'll get more. That would just detract from the Olympics one. Ones, in the future, assuming his whole career's not derailed by a terrible hit in the next few years or something.

Plus, his mom's not so into tattoos, from a cultural or branding perspective.

But this one has something to it.

He tilts his head, catches his own eyes in the mirror. Remembers the sting of the needle. Tries to imagine what he looked like getting it done.

What Rozanov saw, when he was in the chair.

What made him stare at Shane like that? Like something else was happening to him?

Shane sighs to himself and slips into the shower. Wraps his fingers around his half-chub. Gets hard fast, playing with himself under the spray, imagining - weird shit. Kind of depraved shit. Rozanov slinking forward while Shane was in the chair. Tipping Shane's head up. Kissing him, as the needle digs into Shane's skin, over and over and over. One continuous buzz, from Shane's spine to his scalp. Oh, fuck, Rozanov pulling Shane's hair.

(Where is the tattoo artist in this? Is Rozanov the person holding the needle, marking him up? Shane doesn't know.)

Shane would have to stay so, so still. Even if they kissed. Even if Rozanov threaded his hand into Shane's hair and tugged. Even if - if Rozanov's other hand traced down Shane's body. Found his cock, the hard-on Shane got from Rozanov watching him tear up, a thing that happened in real life, a thing that there's a non-zero chance Rozanov figured out - fuck - Shane would have to stay so still if Rozanov played with his cock. Stroking it through Shane's clothes, or exposing it. (Which of those is more humiliating? Why does Shane want the more humiliating one?)

If Shane's hips threatened to jump, would Rozanov correct him? Hold him down? Or just tell Shane that he needs to be careful if he doesn't want it to look like shit? Maybe he wouldn't even help Shane come, since it might fuck up the tattoo. Blueball him while he's still under the needle. Fuck, that would hurt so bad -

Shane comes with his jaw clenched and his breath caught in his throat. Quietly, even with all of that going on in his head. Cleans up and clears out instead of waiting for a second wind.

Really, he reflects as he's falling asleep, he's a more courteous road roommate than anyone realizes. He hopes they never do.

—

Later that week, Hayden suggests that Shane invite "his new friends" to watch a game at his place in a couple of weeks. He's so politely insistent about it - "So what if they live in Ottawa? You could cover their flights out!" - that Shane's forced to pull out the big guns and say, "I think… the point of getting to know them is that it's nice to hang out with other people who sort of… look like me?"

Hayden's blinks at him.

Shane stares back. "You know."

It takes another beat for him Hayden to get it.

Well-meaning but underexposed lefty (ish?) that he is, he falls all over himself to be supportive. It's kind of nice. Very unnecessary.

What Shane told Hayden… it isn't untrue. That's a contributing factor. Also a contributing factor: not wanting "his new friends" (they are his new friends, but ugh, embarrassing) to think he's even cornier than he is. Watching a hockey game with people who talk hockey throughout it in low monotones doesn't seem like a great time for a group of people who like to dance even when they're sober, and don't regularly devolve into 25 minute analyses of Miami's performance in the past week.

And… Shane pretends a little bit less, with Joe and the others. He wants to keep that.

He wants to see where it could lead him.

—

 

[ THREAD: Misty ❄️, Shane 🥗 ]

 

Shane 🥗:

Okay sorry if this is weird but a teammate saw the pictures from the tattoo place. I said it was nice to hang out with Asian people

And now

In an attempt to validate my lived experience (his words)

 

Joe:

uh oh

 

Shane 🥗:

He says that if "cultural common ground is important" to me, I should date you, misty

 

 

Joe:

hm. hmm.

 

Shane 🥗:

He's a nice guy

We're friends

But

I really want to ask him what cultural common ground he thinks Japanese and Javanese people have

 

Misty ❄️:

SCREAM

Every time!!!!!!!!!! Shane if I had a dollar for every time someone thought the V in Javanese was a typo?? My dad could stop paying my rent

To say nothing of the number of times someone's tried to introduce me to a nice Asian boy when my (Asian or otherwise!) girlfriend was right. There. In front of them

Tell this guy to get in line behind my uncle who's always trying to get me to date some guy from his mosque

 

Joe:

lmao

 

Shane 🥗:

🫡

 

—

Shane only looks at the pictures because Hayden, when he finds them, acts like they're Shane's graduation photos or something.

(Hayden and Jackie met at this church neither of them go to anymore. Jackie mentioned it once and Shane looked it up on a hunch. It's the kind of place that has mission trips to poor countries full of brown people. To Shane's mind, poor people need money more than they need random white Christians showing up to build half a school and record youtube videos. But what the fuck does he know?

Hayden and Jackie "weren't super involved" with the church, and now they have nothing to do with it. Shane doesn't think they ever went on those trips.

But he's wondered, once or twice: if Shane was a hundred percent white, would Hayden still act like Shane needs pumping up like that? Like Shane is a nervous eighteen year old?

Admittedly, Hayden's two or three years older than Shane, and the actual elder brother of two siblings. Maybe he'd slot Shane into that role no matter what.

It's just something Shane wonders, sometimes.)

Shane's only in the background of Misty's pictures, turned to the side, untagged, not that noticeable except that people notice everything online. He's talking to Tessa and Girl Jessie. He thinks it was taken when Girl Jessie was showing them pictures of her skate guard collection, how she's never thrown out a pair. She's got them displayed in her parents' garage, tacked to the wall in an array from smallest to biggest, where she started to where she is now. She had some pictures. The smallest were white or pink. Then they went colorful, neon. Then more sedate again as she got serious about competitions. Like a visual representation of where she's been, where she's going.

"When we moved to Ottawa for my career, my mom was like, are you sure you want to move these with us? and I was like, mom, yes. And I was right, right? I knew it would look cool one day, all laid out like this, because I knew I was gonna keep going."

Shane's always known where he was going, too.

In the picture, under the red-pink accent lighting of the shop's front area, he somehow doesn't look like the person he always thought he would be when he got to MLH. But they look coherent, the group of them, Shane included. Like people with something in common. People who all, conceivably, might know how to have some fun.

—

 

[ THREAD: Quebec Skate Queers 🛼🏳️‍🌈 ]

 

Jesse 👯:

So… question

Should Shane Hollander be in here?

Like if I have an important zamboni meme to share with the class

Do I make a new group chat with Shane

Or do I add him to this group chat

Is it clear what I'm asking here

 

Tess 👜:

Have to admit I have wondered!!!

I feel like

Just vibes alone

Add him, right?

 

Jesse 👯:

There ARE vibes yes like they're very subtle but if you're LOOKING

 

Joe:

Everyone stop talking right now

I'm serious

I don't think it's appropriate to speculate in general or IN WRITING

Best case scenario you could still accidentally send that speculation TO HIM

Like I know I'm A Lot when it comes to this type of thing but. Since his job is what it is, I think there are MUCH WORSE CASE scenarios to consider

 

Jessie 🛼:

Yeah I love to be 👀 and everything but there are guys on every hockey team whose whole role is just to beat the shit out of people

And the guys who gravitate towards that position are exactly who you think they are

 

Jesse 👯:

Well, when you put it like that

It's a lot less fun for me to gossip

Which is very rude of you

 

Joe:

🤷🏻

 

Ilya 🧊:

He too slow on skates to be in this chat anyway

 

Jessie 🛼:

Ilya he's SO FAST

For a hockey player lol

 

Misty ❄️:

Yeah we can just make a new group chat!

Jesse pls come up with something better than Ska-Quebec-ters

 

Jesse 👯:

Girl what the fuck is that

 

Misty ❄️:

ESL, bitch!!!

You're lucky it's not just a keysmash

 

Jesse 👯:

Lol you do love those

 

—

 

[ THREAD: ⚜️ 🛼 French Skate Freaks 🛼 ⚜️ ]

 

Jesse 👯:

Hello new chat

Important document to share

[image.jpg]

 

Jessie 🛼:

💀

 

Ilya 🧊:

💀

 

Misty ❄️:

dlkshgelg

 

Joe:

Ty for this timely memo

 

Shane 🥗:

lol

 

Tess 👜:

💀💀

 

—

"Who you talking to?" Hayden asks Shane, whose shoulders jolt.

"No one," Shane says, putting his phone face down with his shit in Buffalo's visitor locker room.

"Careful, someone might think you're not one hundred percent focused on crushing these guys' callup goalie," Hayden says.

Shane stares at him, aghast.

"Oh, no, I'm jerking you around, c'mon," Hayden says. "I'm sure you're not letting any distractions get the best of you."

"There are no distractions," Shane says, dead-eyeing him. He resists the urge to blink for a few seconds longer than normal. Makes people think he's locked the fuck in, freaks them out a little.

JJ chuckles. "Easy, buddy," he says. "I don't think anyone can call us distracted this late in the season."

"Fucking right," Shane says.

"But you could be a little unfocused," Hayden says easily. "If you wanted to be. It's Buffalo."

"You take that back right the fuck now," Shane tells him, right before the clock runs out and they have to hit the ice. Probably for the best.

Chapter 5

Chapter Notes

- Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this story! I'm relatively offline, so hearing from you means a lot. Love learning what parts did or didn't work for you, what questions you might have, etc. I try to respond to every comment.
- Maybe I'll write a short follow-up story at a later date. This one is now complete.
- @ podficcers, I added a blanket statement (+ caveats) to my profile. Ty for kindly reaching out & for your patience.
- Allow me to be corny for a minute: if you've been waiting for a sign to reach out to an old friend, please consider this your sign. A while ago, I reconnected with a pal from a full decade ago. (My script was, roughly, "Hi, so-and-so, if this is still the place to reach you! I saw [a thing] that made me think of you. How are you??") It was shockingly comfortable and easy, like no time had passed at all. I'm so glad that we're back in each others' lives. This could be you!

[ THREAD: Marc ❤️ ]

 

Marc ❤️:

Tired

 

Joe:

Yes?

 

Marc ❤️:

Tireddddddd

 

Joe:

What can I do, babe

 

Marc ❤️:

… nudes

Just one

Please

I will compromise. Nips only

PLEASE. I'm dying here

 

Joe:

Calm down

[image.jpg]

 

Marc ❤️:

That's the stuff

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Jesus I haven't seen you in SO long

I'm gonna implode if I spend 10 more minutes around med students

 

Joe:

Don't you have… 16 more hours on your shift

 

Marc ❤️:

Yes. Why am I doing this

 

Joe:

You love knocking children out

 

Marc ❤️:

Oh my god

 

Joe:

You dream of it at night

 

Marc ❤️:

Don't say it like THAT

I told you that in confidence

 

Joe:

And I'll never tell anyone! I'm great at secrets

 

Marc ❤️:

Let me live

 

Joe:

No

 

Marc ❤️:

I am here to pursue my dream of a fulfilling career. Love medicine

 

Joe:

And knocking children out

 

Marc ❤️:

And knocking children out for LIFE SAVING OPERATIONS

 

Joe:

Sure

 

Marc ❤️:

Patients are fine. Nurses great. Doctors? Nightmare, but they've earned it. Med students? Never again

Also they KEEP BEING heterosexual

It's killing me

 

Joe:

Looks like you have 3 12 hour breaks in the next few weeks

And one of them is during the second Skate Montreal week so the Ottawans will be here again

 

Marc ❤️:

Wait why are there two

 

Joe:

Bc SC is still capitalizing on the Olympics

Now that WC are over, we have to do whatever they want

Esp w the new challenger series coming in oct

While everyone's here, want to balance out the med students by going out with some undereducated queers?

 

Marc ❤️:

Desperately

Tho I would say you're less undereducated and more like

Specifically educated

Really specifically

 

Joe:

You're very kind

 

Marc ❤️:

I try

 

Joe:

I'll even invite Shane, looks like he might be in town

So you'll have something to brag to your attending about

 

Marc ❤️:

Oh, for me, you will continue your association with childhood bestie and national hero

Please do invite him, she would die

 

Joe:

Bestie is a stretch. But you'll like him

 

Marc ❤️:

He literally named you, bro

 

Joe:

Oh my god. Don't call me bro unless it's a roleplay thing

 

Marc ❤️:

You're SURE he's not looking?

Because I am open to sharing this dick and/or yours with said national hero

Out of the goodness of my heart

For Canada

 

Joe:

Not sure of anything. But definitely not looking for me lol

 

Marc ❤️:

Like I've said… his loss

 

—

Shane parks (he's not going to drink) near the same bar as before to meet Joe and his boyfriend and the others again.

(It didn't sound like the skaters minded hitting up the same spot twice. And JJ claimed that Jérôme was happy to be host of the Metros captain's secret hangout spot.)

Rozanov climbs out of a rideshare at nearly the same time.

"You came," Shane says inanely. He's gathered that Rozanov playing nice isn't a given. "Wait, where are the others?"

"Train," Rozanov says. Shane's only guessing that he means the mode of transportation, not the thing skaters spend most of their time doing. "I am… in other hotel. Different hotel." He names the cross streets, the French only giving him a touch of trouble. American tourists would do worse.

Normal small talk would require Shane to ask why he's staying somewhere else, but with Rozanov's English the way it is, it doesn't seem fair to ask questions just to take up space. He just nods.

"This your car?" Rozanov asks, coming to stand next to it, hands in his pockets.

"Yeah."

"Is Jeep?"

"No, it's British."

Rozanov closes his eyes and shakes his head, inhaling audibly, like Shane just told him about a family tragedy. "Is boring."

"It is not." Shane doesn't think, anyway. It's not like he chose it to be exciting? "What's wrong with it?"

"British-made Jeep? In bad color?" Rozanov asks.

"It's just normal black," Shane protests.

"Exactly," Rozanov says. "You are big hockey player? Rich, famous? And you get black car."

"What color is it supposed to be?"

"Green," Rozanov says immediately. "Light."

"You want me to get a mint green car? Like - pastel?"

Rozanov squints, shakes his head. "Like lights… store… sign. Like signs."

Shane thinks for a second, then asks, "Neon? You think I should get a neon green car?"

"Yes."

"That's crazy."

"And this boring," Rozanov says, gesturing to the hood of Shane's perfectly respectable car. "So boring." He sighs heavily, a terrible, disappointed sound. "Come, we go in, fun."

Shane follows him in.

—

Joe's boyfriend is nice. Good handshake, which makes sense for a doctor. And objectively handsome, in a washed out, hasn't-slept-much-lately way, which makes sense for Joe's boyfriend. Marc is Black, with mid-tone skin three or four shades darker than JJ's.

He's got a squared off jaw, clean-shaven, plus super short hair, less than you get from a two guard, though that's as much as Shane knows about haircuts.

Shane was expecting someone taller than Joe. Marc's a couple inches shorter. He's a lifelong Montrealer, Shane learns. There's a French spin on his S sounds that makes Joe look smug.

Marc is a casual Metros fan, but his father is a Cens loyalist. "I'm so sorry," Shane says, because he knows his lines. It gets a laugh.

It doesn't feel weird to hang out with Marc and Joe together. Even though they're gay, and Shane should be - it's not - he's comfortable with Hayden and Jackie, right? But with teammates he's not as close to, when he meets their girlfriends or wives, it's like being shown a house in another city. Another country. Nice enough, but not applicable to Shane's own life. Not liveable.

Meeting Marc, seeing him and Joe together? It's like someone finally got around to at least showing Shane a condo in his neighborhood. As though Shane is on the inside.

—

Hockey comes up more with Marc than it has with the skaters.

"So, wait, I think about nothing but medicine, and sleep, and then every once in a while I remember figure skating exists," Marc says. His thumb strokes down Joe's neck. Joe preens a little. "I'm totally out of the MLH loop. Are you headed into playoffs soon? Do you get to like, live a life, or is it just head down, only hockey?"

Talking to hockey players, Shane breathes a sigh of relief when topics shift away from the hockey-adjacent (partying and pussy, wives and kids, how Joe Rogan episodes are the perfect length for short workouts) back to real hockey.

With the skaters, Shane's never done hockey talk. They have other shit to talk about. Interesting shit. Their careers. The weirdest visualization excercises they've done with a sports psych. Boy Jesse's dream reality show, which is basically Dancing With The Stars but on ice and gayer and also a dating show that follows the Bake-Off format, somehow? (It would never get off the ground, but he makes a compelling case about the technical challenges.)

While Shane's still perversely enjoying the overall absence of hockey from his time with the skaters, he doesn't mind Marc's question. It's not how do you feel about Montreal's chances?, it's do we have something in common? Is your job insanely demanding like mine?

"Yes, and… more the second one," Shane admits. "Won't be done til June."

"Oh, June," Tessa says. She tips her drink in his direction. "You think you're taking it?"

Shane shrugs. "All the way? We'll have to see. We're going far." With press, he's humble. With the public… if he was just talking to die-hard Metros fans, he'd claim the Metros are going to win. People like to hear it, and no one calls you on bullshitting if you're way at the top. Not even when you lose.

Here, he's dropping both pretenses.

Rozanov eyes him like he said something funny.

"We will," Shane says to him. "That's not a question."

Girl Jessie, an avowed Clarks fan, says, "Or Vancouver will. Nutcrackers nation."

"Fuck Vancouver," Shane says automatically.

Girl Jessie snickers into her drink, a reddish microbrew thing that half of the table took a sip of because the color was appealing. (Like last time they were here, Rozanov - biggest hands - and Tessa - interested in the bartender - hit up the bar for the group. Rozanov brought back a ginger ale for Shane again. Shane had the presence of mind, this time, to ask him why. "You like it last time," Rozanov shrugged. "You want other?" Shane said no, thanked him. Days later, Shane will realize that you like it last time doesn't explain why Rozanov got it for Shane in the first place.)

"Wait, this is the wrong thing to focus on, but - there's an MLH team called the Nutcrackers?" Misty asks.

"No," Shane says.

"Yes," Rozanov answers at the same time.

"Okay, sometimes you just make shit up because it's funny, so I'm gonna go with Shane on this one," Misty tells Rozanov.

Rozanov presses a hand to his chest. Widens his eyes. "Not true. I also lie if - easy. Um. Convenient?"

"Not helping," Misty says.

"No, I lie only… little bit. Tessa is big liar," Rozanov says. "Biggest one here. Lie like game."

Tessa grins. "Game recognize game," she says.

Boy Jesse turns to Shane. "Tessa was my pretend girlfriend for a couple of months. It was very nice of her, and also unleashed a disturbing predilection for mild fraud."

"Benign fraud," Tessa says. "Acting, basically."

"Entry level scam artistry," Boy Jesse says. "For a good cause. It's a long story."

"Oh," Shane says. He glances at Joe, who catches his eye and nods slightly, like it's fine, this is normal. A relief.

"And not one we have time to get into right now," Girl Jessie says. "As the foremost present authority on Vancouver -"

("Hey," Boy Jesse says -)

"- I can tell you that both things are true. The official team name is the Vancouver Clarks. But it's named after Clark's nutcracker."

"Oh, yeah, and we all know what that is," Misty says, with an expression that says the opposite.

"It's a native bird," Shane says. No one gives him that blank who cares, that's not relevant face, so he adds, "They're corvids. Same family as crows. And jackdaws." At the same time, Joe holds his phone out to Misty; he's already pulled up a picture of one to show to her.

Marc lights up a little, looking from Shane to Joe and back. "Wait, Shane, are you also into birds?"

"What?" Shane asks, caught off guard. "Not really? Why?"

"Just, you're a bird guy," Marc says, indicating Joe. "So I wondered if you two talked about birds back in the day."

"Maybe a little," Joe says. "But I didn't get that into them until a few years ago."

"Aw. It would have been cute if you were qu - dorking out about birds together," Marc says.

"Well, there was that rough-legged hawk that perched at the end of your block," Shane says to Joe. "When we trained together. We talked about that."

Joe goes, "Oh, shit, you're right, that was that year. That one came back a bunch of times."

"Other years?" Shane asks. "Nesting there?"

"Nah, but it was there most of the summer," Joe says. "I saw it a couple of times after school started back up, even."

"Huh," Shane says.

"But, so - you're not into birds," Marc says to Shane, a skeptical eyebrow up, teasing.

"I'm not not interested in birds," Shane says. "Rough-legged hawks are unusual in Ottawa. They're not city birds."

"It must have been because the park is right there," Marc says.

Makes sense to Shane. "Good sightlines for small prey."

Marc looks between Joe and Shane, then to Rozanov. They catch each others' eyes. Marc, holding two fingers up, pulls the wide-eyed frown Jackie makes when the baby does something new and cute. Rozanov raises his eyebrows. Nods into his drink. Shane thinks they're talking about getting another round, but then neither of get up. Joe ignores all of it, so Shane follows suit.

Joe goes, "But wait, sorry, Jessie - Girl Jessie - what about the Clarks?"

Girl Jessie powers on, "So some fans -"

("Or people who hate Vancouver," Shane pitches in.)

"- call Vancouver the Nutcrackers -"

Rozanov has the twisted mouth of someone trying not to laugh. "So scary, this - nut cracking Canadian bird team," he murmurs.

Shane looks down to hide his smile. When Vancouver scores at home, the arena plays this absolute cacophony of Clark's nutcracker calls. It'll startle your spine out of your body if you're in the zone and forget to brace for it. But any edge that gives them is worn away by their cute, fat bird logo. It looks like it wears a nightcap to bed and sings in its sleep.

"- but the Clarks is more correct," Girl Jessie finishes valiantly.

"Wow," Misty says, eyebrows raised. She tells Girl Jessie and Boy Jesse, "Good for you all for, uh, owning that name, I guess."

"Don't implicate me in this," Boy Jesse says. "I'm only the group's secondary authority on Vancouver, apparently."

"You left at sixteen, I left at eighteen, you do the math," Girl Jessie says.

"Wow," Boy Jesse says, widening his eyes, exaggerating how upset he is. Joking, not lying. It's nice how expressive he is. The average pro hockey player mostly telegraphs emotions ranging from whatever, man to fuck off to yelling my jokes makes them funnier. Of course, sometimes those aren't the actual things they're feeling. Whatever, man might layer over my dog is dying or I will kill anyone who tries to talk to me about the power play. The skaters' moods are, generally, way easier to understand and predict.

"Okay, I have to admit that I don't know who's a Cup contender," Marc says. "I'm that behind. Is Vancouver good now?"

Girl Jessie makes a seesawing hand motion. "The team's a leader in the division." A little generous, but Shane will allow her this delusion. "On a player-to-player level, no one can hold a candle to you, Shane," she adds, jokingly loyal.

Shane shrugs and offers back, "Anderson has Olympic gold now. The closest thing I have is like, 2011 Rookie of the Year," Shane says. "Which is basically meaningless."

Shane's stats speak for themselves. But most people don't care about those. There's no need to insult her team's biggest player. Not off the ice, anyway.

"Anderson sad," Rozanov announces.

"He's is doing pretty well for himself, I think," Girl Jessie says, amused.

Rozanov tells Shane, "Your backhand weak -"

"Fuck off," Shane says, knee-jerk.

"- but Anderson… bad flip shot but always do it."

Shane snorts. Anderson does keep at it with the flip shot. Shane's never personally felt the need to insult him even on the ice. With the flip shot thing, he kind of does it to himself.

Rozanov adds, "Also slow."

"Anderson's not slow," Girl Jessie says. "Not really."

"… you are speed skater," Rozanov says. He taps his temple and points to her loosely, hand open, confused face: of all people, you think he's not slow?

"Compared to the average MLH player -"

"Compare to -" Rozanov says, and waves a hand at Shane.

"Yeah, but Shane doesn't count."

"Why don't I count?" Shane asks, bemused.

Girl Jessie makes a gesture suggesting the answer is self-evident.

"Sports without a linear rank are so confusing," Misty comments. "If you can't agree who's best and who's an underdog, how do you know who you want to win?"

"You pick a team?" Boy Jesse says.

"Teams." She wrinkles her nose. "Can I just be a Shane Hollander fan? Do you have individual fans, or are they all Metros fans?"

Girl Jessie laughs. "There are definitely Shane Hollander fans," she assures Misty. "Like he just said, he was rookie of the year."

"And that's… good, I'm guessing?" Misty asks.

People who barely remember that hockey exists in their day-to-day often bullshit about knowing the sport when they meet Shane. Trying to make the most out of the experience by impressing him, or something. They'll tell him about an absolutely nonexistent connection to the sport: their dad loved watching Vetrov in goal, or they have a cousin who was drafted into the AHL, or was going to before he tore his rotator cuff.

Shane gets through these wastes of time and enegy on autopilot by now. I like Vetrov too. Oh, nice, that's a good team. Yeah, injuries like that are hard to come back from. I've been lucky.

Misty's got zero interest in hockey and zero insecurity about it. If everyone could be so normal about things, Shane would save at least twenty minutes a week.

"It means you're the best," Girl Jessie says. "Top of the class, often first in the draft, all that."

Shane, maybe too comfortable, grimaces.

Joe smirks. "What, you're all humble about it?"

Shane shakes his head. "I wasn't first pick."

Girl Jessie tilts her head.

Marc's face is screwed up. "Huh," he says. "Are you - like, crazy question - sure? Because I kind of think I remember it being you."

"Wasn't me." Shane sips his ginger ale, trying to give conversation a chance to move forward. No one picks it up, so he adds, "You remember me in the picture, right? The one they circulate around with the top three draft picks? I'm in it. But I wasn't in the middle."

Several people blink at him. Rozanov tips his head. It's hard for Shane to tell how much of the conversation Rozanov is tracking at any point, but he's been watching Shane talk with narrowed eyes.

"It's like the Mandela effect thing," Shane explains. "An MLH version. Lots of people remember me going first -" it's talked about on Reddit and shit, apparently, and once, a guy at a press scrum even asked Shane something about going first - "but I didn't. Look it up."

Tessa pulls up his Wikipedia page. "Oh, yeah," she says. "Second overall."

"But you were like. The standout," Girl Jessie says. "Who - did someone go before you and then get horribly injured or something? What team had the first pick that year?"

"Boston," Shane says. "They got Korogyi."

(Draft plans are supposedly secret, but they're not really, not for the first round. If you're being drafted top five or six, your agent hears "a rumor" directly from the office a day or two before. It's a cheap gambit to pump up the player - let them think the org's so excited about them that they couldn't help saying something early.

In Shane's case, Boston didn't reach out to Shane's agent to stroke Shane's ego. They got in touch to unofficially notify the concerned parties that they were, after much careful thought, declining the opportunity to have Shane aboard.

"Can they do that?" Shane asked when his agent broke the news to him and his mom. Stupidly, since Boston could pick whoever they wanted. Even a guy who was quantifiably not on Shane's level.

"Those bastards," his mom said to his agent. She said it a lot at the start of that conversation. By the end of it, she was recentered, focused on Montreal, shoulders squared. "I mean, talk about a legacy franchise," she said, a tight smile on her face.

She'd been steeling herself to become a Raiders fan for a long time. It had seemed inevitable that Shane would be in Boston.

The switch to the Metros - her childhood team, the one she was planning on turning traitor against the day her kid got signed to their longtime rivals - was maybe more of a mindfuck for her than it was for Shane.

Anyway, there's still the picture. Shane holding up a Metros jersey and two fingers, stone-faced, to the left of Korogyi (who stuck his fucking tongue out, for some reason?) and Woods, who went third overall to the Drillers.

Korogyi was immediately sent down for a development year. Made it to the show, put up modest points. Didn't make it onto Team USA for Sochi. Maybe next time, pal.)

"Huh," Marc says. "Don't remember that at all."

"So they got you second overall," Girl Jessie says. "Montreal."

"Yeah," Shane says. He makes brief eye contact with Misty. "Boston was looking for someone with a more aggressive style of play. Montreal was more open to someone - less aggressive."

"Jesus, what a steal," Girl Jessie murmurs.

Misty narrows her eyes. "Are you less aggressive?"

He shrugs. "Not much of a fighter. And everyone's less aggressive than someone, right?"

Not to say that Shane, eighteen and hungry to prove himself and really fucking good at hockey, couldn't have been trained up in whatever style Boston needed. Or just been picked up and then traded off as soon as possible, like a real estate asset appreciating in value. Instead of getting turned down in favor of a white guy who went to the fucking farm team.

(Korogyi's supposedly cool. Crazy relaxed guy off the ice, Shane heard from an old teammate. Shane still kind of hates him.)

It's possible Shane's more bitter about this than he remembered, because he adds, "So it must… be… true."

Misty widens her eyes, leans forward, settles back. Lips firmly shut, like I'm not saying anything. The type of eye contact you make with a teammate behind your coach's back when the coach says, for the fiftieth time, you gotta leave it all on the ice. "Let's kill them," she says, conversational.

Tessa and Boy Jesse both nod seriously, like this is only sensible.

Shane shrugs. Feels his mouth quirk. "I didn't say it."

"Boston's fuckin' loss," Marc says, shaking his head. Shane's not sure if Korogyi's lack of traction makes Shane the winner (he beats Korogyi for points scored on MLH ice, for sure) or the loser (he beat Korogyi, but Korogyi still has Shane's spot). He tips his drink towards Marc about it anyway.

—

"It's cool that more of you guys are all hanging out together," Marc says at one point later that night. "I don't get to be around, day to day." He makes a cutesy sad face at Joe. "I feel bad leaving you alone all the time."

"Yeah, but if you weren't at the hospital making hard currency, it would just be me leaving you alone for the rink. Anyway, I'm not alone. I have my coach. And… my coach," Joe says.

Marc sticks his tongue out at him.

Joe waves him off. "Stop. No, I don't know." He looks to the table at large. "I mean, you guys get this, right? I'm never sitting at home without stuff to do." He concedes to Marc, "But it's hard to be social, yeah. There aren't a ton of chances to make friends with other skaters."

Girl Jessie muses, "Yeah, when Ilya first added me to the group chat, I was like, be cool, don't be too much, don't come on too strong."

"Yes," Boy Jesse agrees, pointing at her.

Misty nods, tilting her head, thinking about it. "It's not like we're coworkers, right? We all work on the same kinds of projects, but we never actually work together. Well, except for pairs. Ice dance."

"Yeah, but that's still just one other person," Boy Jesse says. "And half of us are in sports relationship therapy by the time we retire."

Shane tries to do, like, a listening nod. He doesn't know how to - he didn't - he's not like them. He's around his teammates all day. But he does know that it's hard. He gets that.

Tessa, waving her hands, goes, "Okay, so I think about this all the time, because like, I'm still living the same life I was living at fourteen. I can only take a couple of classes a semester. I'm not involved in campus life or whatever. I live with my mom and dad, I don't grocery shop, I don't pay for gas. And I might keep doing it until I retire. It's worth it, but it's -" she holds her hands up in a circle - "small."

Misty makes a sound, points to her. "Yes, totally, the school thing?"

Marc says, "Yeah, that seems isolating. Plenty of people live with their parents, but they have classmates and coworkers."

"School," Joe says, making a face. "But on the other hand. Maybe homeschooling makes you a little weird?"

"You're not weird, babe," Marc says dutifully.

(A little touch of pressure in Shane's chest, for no reason.)

"It can make you dumb, though," Boy Jesse laughs. "At least in my case. I love my mom, but she's not a teacher? She was a dancer. I was only homeschooled for one year, when we moved to Detroit so we could train with Keynes, and I never learned long division."

Tessa shrugs. "I mean, I never figured out long division, either. But I hear what you're saying. Wait, Ilya, did you do regular school? Or homeschool?"

Rozanov shakes his head. "Is Russia. Different. My school is - was - for athletics. I had two, three close friend. Few others. Played hockey first -" Shane does his best not to pick up his head like meerkats do - "so more friends. Less when -" a hand wave - "made figure skater."

Misty mouths made to herself.

"You played hockey?" Shane asks, already regretting it. It's not going to help him out to know details.

"When… early. Young." Rozanov shrugs one shoulder. He looks profoundly bored. It doesn't invite further questions. He adds, "Some skaters house together - housed? -" he gets a nod from Misty - "but very… competitive."

Boy Jesse gives him a look. "What's new?"

Rozanov shakes his head. "Worse if you live with them." His gaze is distant for a minute. "Here, sex easier, probably. Men, women, anyone. Friends still hard. English suck."

Men, women, anyone. Jesus.

"Aw, we're special," Misty says.

Rozanov smirks and gently, so gently, chucks her under the chin. His knuckles brush her throat. Shane swallows reflexively.

"Is it better if you play a team sport? Or pairs?" Joe asks Shane and Boy Jesse.

Boy Jesse shrugs. "Socially? Definitely. But college was also better socially, so it's hard to separate out the two. Shane, were you one of those players who went from college to the big leagues, or -?"

Normally, trying to explain the hockey thing, and the related I didn't really go to high school thing, to someone outside of hockey is awkward. Everyone here is also a high-level athlete, though, so Shane has as much to learn from them as they do from him. It's not unbalanced like it usually is.

Shane shakes his head. "I was done with real school at… thirteen?" he guesses. "Fourteen? I went mostly hybrid when I got serious about hockey, which is like, partial homeschooling. I missed a lot of the school year. My mom made me learn long division, though."

"Asian mom homeschooling," Misty murmurs, hushed. "Ancestors protect us. My mom just hired tutors."

"It wasn't that bad," Shane says. He hadn't cared, was just happy he was able to focus on the stuff that mattered. "Was your mom… like, tough?" he asks Joe.

Joe shakes his head. "No, are you kidding? Getting pulled out of school was a lifesaver, I was dying in there."

Marc ruffles his hair.

"Shane, you were around other players as a kid, though, right?" Tessa asks. "Was it a friendly crowd? Or was it like when your parents declare war on another girl's parents because her costume is also magenta, so then no one will talk to you and you have to sit alone at competitions for a year?"

Everyone looks at her.

"Not that that happened to me," she says, and takes a sip of her drink.

"The second one, sometimes," Shane admits. "My mom was… yeah. I mean. I made… I did okay… but I didn't make friends friends? It could be social, I just, um. Wasn't so focused on that part."

"So not great," Tessa guesses.

Shane nods. "When they drafted me, a lot of the talk was about how I wasn't the most sociable player," Shane admits. "Their words."

Not sociable could mean a lot of things. In his case, he thinks it mostly meant that that he didn't voluntarily drink enough to black out or throw up. That he went along with hazing, acted the part, but wouldn't escalate. That he wasn't invited along for anything really dicey. (He's grateful - he never had to choose whether or not to speak up about something.)

And that he noped out of literal circle jerk soggy waffle bullshit whenever it seemed halfway optional.

He still doesn't get how the fuck that made its way up to a national TV network, reinterpreted as a polite not the most sociable. Probably, some reporter asked around, and one of the guys who took offense at Shane not getting his dick out on command told them he was an antisocial little bitch.

("You need to make sure you put your face forward with your teammates," his mom said after that commentary went around. "Getting personal can be part of being professional." And on and on.

Shane gave her the full "Okay, I understand" stonewall on that one. He wasn't about to tell her - whatever.

She's married to his dad. His dad played hockey at McGill and absolutely knows about that shit. Did that shit. So either his dad never told her, and Shane isn't gonna rock the boat, or she knows, and she wants Shane to, like, go along with it.

It's not that Shane hasn't. He just faked a cold once or twice, when he thought he saw it coming and didn't want another fucking repeat. And then when he got older, he'd just flat-out say he was going to bed. If they didn't like it, they could go cry to some reporter about how Shane Hollander isn't any fun. Then they could go work in a bank.)

"Because teenage hockey players suuuuuuck," Girl Jesse says. "No offense. Some of my cousins went to that boarding school that churns out little hockey psychopaths. You know the one?"

Shane shakes his head. It's not the type of thing he should say, but the opening's too good: "You'll have to be way more specific."

Everyone cracks up.

—

At the end of the night (11:30 p.m., which Joe calls "1 a.m. in figure skating time"), most of the Ottawan skaters take the train back to their hotel.

"You're getting a rideshare?" Joe asks Rozanov, checking in. Right, because Rozanov's in a different hotel.

Joe does that. Checking in, that kind of thing. He's nice. All of the skaters are. Shane's never hung out with people who say text us when you get home and mean it. That's more of a girl thing, right? Maybe it figures, that gay guys would do it, too. (Well. Rozanov's not gay, given the Brianna Wyman of it all. And his men, women, anyone comment. Is it Shane's business? Does it have shit to do with him? No, except that Rozanov is almost a friend, and there's too much that Shane wants to know about him.)

"Hollander is drive me," Rozanov tells Joe, not bothering to look up from his phone. Rozanov seemed to have a grasp on words ending in -ing earlier in the night, like it's hard for him to stay consistent if he's tired. Or comfortable.

"Oh. Sure," Shane says, and doesn't feel any particular way about it. It's sensible. They're both off in a different direction from the others.

Though Rozanov's hotel isn't that close to Shane's place. And for all Rozanov knows, Shane lives nowhere near Rozanov's hotel. And Rozanov never mentioned this plan to Shane.

Other than those things, it makes sense. Besides, Shane's not clear if Rozanov knows how to get around. If you'd dropped Shane alone in the middle of Sochi, there was no way he would have found the Village again.

"Hm. Are you sure? About that?" Joe asks Rozanov. His eyes catch Rozanov's for a second. Fix on him.

Rozanov sits upright slowly, casually, unrolling his height like a scroll. "Yes," he says.

"All right," Joe says, in the tone that Hayden uses when Mitty, who's lactose intolerant, orders beer cheese.

Shane doesn't know if he's the gross dip or the lactose-intolerant guy in this scenario. He's not sure which is worse.

—

 

[ THREAD: Ilya 🧊 ]

 

Joe:

Be safe!

Because. You know. It's icy out there and stuff

And TRY being nice. I know you can do it

Don't. Do anything. I wouldn't do. Okay?

O K A Y ? ? ?

 

Ilya 🧊:

Do not tell me what to do mom

I would be so fucking nice

So

Nice

 

Joe:

Jesus

Listen I will seriously fucking kill you

 

Ilya 🧊:

Calm down

Hockey Shane Hollander is better than talking english with lyft driver

I will not do anything

 

Joe:

Do not!!

 

Ilya 🧊:

I WON'T mom

 

Joe:

Good.

 

—

Rozanov makes a sad sound as he gets into Shane's car. "British-made," he whispers mournfully. He shakes his head at the center console's (admittedly outdated) LCD screen.

Without talking to Rozanov - Montreal's late night traffic demands attention - Shane fights his way out of his parking spot and starts driving in roughly the direction of home.

At that point, Rozanov gently, casually puts his hand on Shane's thigh.

Shane swallows. "What are you doing," he says.

Rozanov looks over. "No?" he asks. He sounds curious.

"I didn't - you can't do that," Shane says. But he's weak from companionship, and from the weight of Rozanov's hand, and the line of Rozanov's throat in his periphery.

"Why?" There's a low laugh in Rozanov's voice. Light. Mocking.

"Because I'm not that good a driver."

Rozanov scoffs. Says something in Russian. "So where?"

Shane is rapidly losing control of the situation. "I don't - I don't know what you're -"

A heavy sigh, like Shane's being boring again. "Bring me to boring house, Hollander."

"I don't have a boring house."

"What, you live in car?" Rozanov says, unimpressed.

"I have a condo. It's not boring. It's nice."

Rozanov's hand is still a hot weight on his leg. At a stoplight, Shane looks down, remembering Rozanov's wrist against his own at the tattoo place, his strong hands on Tessa's tiny waist at the bar. His hand doesn't look big, laid over Shane's leg. It looks - right. Proportional.

Rozanov makes a smug sound and moves his hand towards Shane's inner thigh.

Shane's throat is dry. "Did Joe tell you?" he asks. He doesn't want that to be true.

"Joe?" Rozanov says, brow furrowed. "I touch and you bring up Joe. Tell - ah. Ah." He looks impressed. And still amused. "Joe to you is…"

"A friend."

"Only friend."

"Yes."

Rozanov peers at him suspiciously. "Not sex friend?"

"No," Shane says.

"… he can be sex friend," Rozanov says kindly, like Shane didn't speak. He gives Shane's thigh a little pat. "I share."

Some hot thing rolls over in Shane's stomach. Share. Like Shane is a toy. "No," Shane says, partly to Rozanov, partly to himself.

A pause. Rozanov moves his fingers back and forth three times, slow, petting. "But you did. Or you want."

"No," Shane swallows. "Not really. We were kids. I don't know." His ears are hot. Probably bright red. Heart pounding.

"Oh." Rozanov's hand stops moving. "Boring."

"Okay, I'm boring, fine," Shane says. Lies.

"Hm?" Rozanov asks. He sort of… caresses, pressing down. It's gentle. It's not enough.

Shane's leg moves a bare centimeter towards Rozanov of its own accord.

Rozanov makes a soft sound with his tongue, between a chuckle and a training clicker. He squeezes.

"Oh my god," says Shane. "Wait. No. Stop."

Rozanov actually lifts his hand up, overing well above Shane's thigh. "Wait? Or stop?"

"Just. wait."

"Okay. I wait." He's smug. His hand comes back down, heavy again. "Take me to house."

Oh, fuck. "It's a condo," Shane repeats weakly.

Rozanov sighs. "Condo," he acquiesces. "We go."

Shane, who's long been told he's great at taking direction, changes course for his place.

—

He tells Rozanov to stay below the view line. Photographers took to lurking outside of his building right after the Olympics. They haven't come back in weeks, but he can never be too careful.

Reclining his seat all the way back, Rozanov grumbles something in Russian. All Shane catches is, he thinks, Canada.

Shane's heart stays in his throat, stupidly, until he parks in his spot in his garage. This is so stupid. He's being so stupid. Rozanov doesn't have nearly as much to lose as Shane does. He could tell anyone: not just Shane Hollander let a girl put fingers up there once, but Shane Hollander will let men do worse.

If he exposed Shane publicly enough, Rozanov could probably get Shane labeled such a distraction that Shane would get taken off the ice. Phased out as quietly as possible. Traded to the Cens. Sent down to the AHL. (Shane can imagine the jokes like he's heard them already. Players would say that he should get traded to the Cincinnati affiliate. Haven't you heard about that guy who - ? Well, yeah, I'm not saying it's true, I'm just saying, if it was, it wouldn't be a problem for Hollander, he'd probably beg to get called up there.)

Why would Rozanov do that, though? He's got publicity already. If he wanted money, it would be better to just blackmail Shane. A sick little side gig.

These thoughts don't stop Shane. Don't make him turn around. The risk makes him sick, but the possibility of reward makes him stupid. Makes him brave.

Rozanov sits up and undoes his seat belt at the same time that Shane does. His hand shoots out and threads through Shane's belt loop. Tugs on it. He leans in slightly.

"Here?" he says. He sounds pleased about it.

"Oh my god, no," Shane says. "They have cameras in here and stuff." Also the LED lights set into the ceiling make him feel like he's in a horror movie, but he doesn't know how to get that across the language barrier without accidentally threatening the guy who's currently groping his hip.

Rozanov lets him go like he's throwing something away. "No fun," Rozanov says. He sighs theatrically. "Fine. We go up."

So they do.

Rozanov stands a body's width away from him in the elevator. Shane isn't disappointed by that. he's not.

It's not a social building by any means, but someone could still see them there together; most of the other residents have to know who Shane is, if not Rozanov. And the elevators have cameras. They wouldn't capture much. Rozanov has his phone out. He's facing away from Shane. He looks bored.

In person… Shane being seen with another Olympian wouldn't be news. Would it? It could be. But it wouldn't -

"I can hear your brain, Hollander," Rozanov says, flat, low.

Shane pulls out his own phone and looks blankly at the lock screen.

They don't see anyone in the elevator, or the hallway, and then they're inside Shane's place, and Rozanov is pulling Shane's hand off of the doorknob, shutting the door, and pushing Shane back against it.

It occurs to Shane very belatedly, hysterically, that this could be an elaborate setup for a - a gay bashing scenario, but then he drops that idea, because Rozanov's chest is pressed entirely against Shane's. His hand is framing Shane's jaw. His tongue is behind Shane's teeth.

It feels new, even though Shane's kissed girls a lot, like, basically every time when it seemed like he had to. Done everything else with girls for the same reason, Sammy excepted.

(Though even Sammy had this element of have to, because when the fuck else was Shane going to ask for that? When would he ever again hit that exact combination of opportunity and bravery and stupidity?)

Kissing never worked for Shane like this before. He's got one hand on Rozanov's shoulder and the other on the side of his neck without having to figure out the right way to touch and then goading himself into actually doing it. It just happens, it just works. Same way he knows how to move in other settings, how to use his body on ice or in a gym. No guessing. No forcing it.

Shane angles Rozanov to one side, guiding him with the hand on his neck. Nuzzling - it's too sweet a word, but it's true - towards Rozanov, into him.

Sucking Ilya Rozanov's tongue into his mouth? Is definitely not ignoring the gay thing.

Shane… is forgetting why he tries to ignore the gay thing.

Rozanov pulls back. Breathes for a second. Looks him in the eye, then drops his gaze to Shane's mouth.

"Off," he says, and sheds his parka. "You also, off."

Shane does't need to be told twice. "You off," he says. A pathetic attempt to balance out his own eagerness with something flinty. Rozanov doesn't dignify it with a response.

Somehow, Rozanov also gets Shane's shirts off, the button down and the close base layer he wears everywhere in winter. Shane folds them and puts them on his entryway bench, which will be annoying to retrieve later, but it seems rude to make Rozanov wait while he goes to the laundry room.

Speaking of rude. He glares at Rozanov's feet until Rozanov sighs and removes his boots alongside Shane's. Unlacing, he makes the face a player makes when a trainer insists they stretch out more before skating - you're not wrong, but let's fucking go already.

That's the limit on Rozanov's patience. He gets Shane backed up the door again immediately.

Shane's left knee raises without his permission when Rozanov presses their hips together. Rozanov hums and slides a hand under that thigh, all the way to Shane's ass. Hitches Shane's leg up up up until Shane's foot is against the back of Rozanov's thigh. Shane's body creating a new, hollow shape that it's never had before. A crook that welcomes Rozanov in.

Rozanov says something in Russian. It has the bitten-off sound of swearing.

They're both already pretty much hard, Rozanov grinding into him, Shane meeting him where he's at, mindless. Rozanov kisses Shane, then touches his mouth.

And if his fingers are on Shane's lips, Shane's going to do the only obvious thing and open up, take them inside, flat on his tongue.

"Hey," Rozanov says, huskier. "What you want?"

Shane's never gotten why some people are so horny about Québécois accents, but he may be developing a Russian accent problem in real time. "Oh my god," he mumbles around Rozanov's fingers, because he's a twenty-three-year-old virgin-at-least-for-gay-stuff, and making him say any part of what he wants is the meanest possible thing Rozanov can do.

Rozanov is watching his face intently. It doesn't seem like being mean to Shane is a huge problem for him. That makes Shane's stomach burn. "Come on," Rozanov says, leaning forward, pulling his fingers away.

The sound Shane makes is soft, but that doesn't spare him much dignity.

Rozanov nips at Shane's lower lip. "What if I say… I will not touch until you tell me?"

"That would make you an asshole," Shane says, bringing him in closer with the leg, which undercuts his statement.

"Right. I do easy. I let you suck my cock first, or I suck you?"

"… first one," Shane says, voice low in his own ears. "Yeah. First."

Rozanov smirks. tightens his hand on Shane's ass, which makes Shane inhale sharply. "Bed?" Rozanov says.

Shane makes as though to part from Rozanov, but Rozanov isn't having it. "I carry," he says. "Bed. Or chair fine. Couch. Floor, table -"

"Shut up," Shane says, forgetting where his bedroom is for .02 seconds. "Aren't you supposed to be bad at English?" he asks him. Instead of responding to Shane's dumb comment, Rozanov just… grabs him and takes him there.

This involves more deliberate ass groping than before. Shane has to wrap his legs around Rozanov's waist, his whole core pressed against Rozanov's. Shane's not a small guy, and Rozanov still carries him the whole way, coming to stand at the foot of the bed and drop Shane on top of it.

"Did your mom buy these," he asks, nodding at the pillows.

"I hired a designer," Shane says. And now he remakes the bed like that every day. He never remembers which day of the week his house cleaner comes by, and if he doesn't make the bed, she strips the sheets. Which sometimes get lube on them. He'd really prefer she not know that much about him.

"Do you think there are enough?"

"Asshole," Shane observes.

"You like it," Rozanov tells him.

He's not wrong. To distract him from that, Shane tugs him down, for more, again. They kiss for a while, tongues slick and teasing, before Rozanov goes, "Wait. No. You had - request."

"What?" Shane asks. His voice sounds strange in his ears, breathless.

"Request, Hollander. You said you wanted my cock in your mouth."

"No, I didn't, man," Shane says.

Rozanov grabs the back of his neck. Not harsh, but firm, like a coach would in juniors, or earlier. "Shane Hollander," he says. "Call me this, man, in bed, I go. Outside? Whatever. In bed? You my father? No hockey shit."

Shane blinks. "Wait, is that a joke about daddy stuff, or do Russian dads call their kids man?"

Rozanov thins his lips. "Yes."

Shane looks at him.

"Both, whatever. Say my name." He gives Shane's nape a little shake and Shane's head goes empty.

"Ilya," he says. "Rozanov?"

"Accent terrible. We work on it," Rozanov - Ilya - tells him. "Anyway, you say you want cock."

"Not like that, I didn't," Shane protests.

Ilya rolls his eyes, a player about to call a ref's technicality bullshit. He tugs Shane back up, sits on the bed himself. "Take your pants off," he says. "I want to see you."

Shane's got them halfway down his thighs before Ilya's done talking. He's not shy about his body. Shy about his mind, the ideas it contains, the way his body reacts to those things, sure. But the actual outer shell of his body? He's a professional athlete, in his prime, with no back acne (Koch), bad tattoos (Comeau), or weird nipple (Wilson). He looks great.

Ilya watches him place his pants on the dresser. Looks him up and down. It's sexual, but also - something feels like Ilya's laughing at him.

"What?" Shane says.

"Nothing," Ilya says. He looks pointedly to Shane's socked feet and back. "Just. I like that porn, too."

"Fuck off," Shane chokes out.

"No, really, is hot, the - what is name - socks and jocks?" He leans back. Elbows on the bed, knees spread apart. Grinning. Cocky, knowing.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Shane lies anyway.

Voice low, staring Shane down, Ilya says, "Then come here. I show you some stuff."

Shane doesn't even try to resist the pull towards the foot of the bed.

Ilya pokes Shane's shoulder and prods at the back of Shane's knee with a foot. Directing him like a trainer, which Shane is programmed to respond to without second-guessing it. Shane ends up shirtless on the floor, kneeling, looking up while Ilya unbuttons his shirt, annoyingly slowly. He's not wearing an undershirt. There's sparse fuzz on his chest.

Then, lower, there's -

Shane tries to look bored.

Ilya smirks back. Unbuttons his shirt slowly. Not a corny tease, just like he has time. When it's undone, hanging off his shoulders - Olympics tattoo visible - Shane thinks he'll keep going, but he just. Doesn't.

"Are you done?" Shane asks.

"Yes," Ilya says. He spreads his legs wider. A challenge.

Oh. Fuck.

Shane's drooling already, like not really, but a little, there's sort of a touch of it there, just behind his molars, and that's before he gets out Ilya's cock.

Shane lives a lot of his life in rooms with naked guys, compared to the average person, so he's spent about the past decade telling himself don't look at it, do not look at it, do not.

It's second nature to keep his eyes all the way up or on the floor. Almost a point of pride. Shane might be gay - might - but he's not a fucking cock looker.

Except - now that he's allowed - he's looking at Ilya's. It's nice. It's mostly hard. Maybe on the larger side? Except that Shane might just want it to be on the larger side, might think it would be hot if Ilya was big, if he was a lot to take. Hot in his hand, heavy, intact like Shane, softer than -

"Okay?" Ilya asks. As if Shane is a pussy. As if Shane is scared.

Shane's not a pussy. He goes for it, fast, forcing himself down. Trying to prove himself before Ilya's doubt can get into his head.

Instead, he chokes immediately. Audibly. Too excited. Too eager to execute on the play.

Ilya pulls him off.

"I do so much," Ilya says, shaking his head. "Hardest working immigrant in Canada."

He puts a thumb to Shane's lower lip; Shane, face fucking burning, lets his mouth fall open, and he presses the thumb to Shane's tongue.

"Rest is detail," Ilya says.

He helps Shane out a little and gets a hand on himself. Feeds his cock to Shane slower. More controlled, since Shane can't be trusted to keep a consistent pace. Yet.

Maybe Shane would - should - be embarrassed by his own enthusiasm, but he's always been good at learning with his body. Accepting input and tuning out ego. Focusing on the constructive part of constructive criticism. Also, he's distracted by the dick in his mouth.

It's… so the taste is, actually, well, the thing is, the taste is - it's not bad.

Set aside the fact that for some fucking reason, circle-jerk-and-then-someone-has-to-eat-it becomes most guys' favorite game for a few months somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen. And that the dudes-joking-around, we're-all-in-this-together humiliation bonding of it (alongside the implicit "faggots, be very afraid" of it all) left a bigger scar on Shane's psyche than he wants to think about.

Shane was never even the one who had to eat it. (Well, except for this one time when everyone had to, but that wasn't so bad, since he didn't have to go first. Like, it was disgusting, but he wasn't freaking out.) It made him gag to just watch someone do it, every time. Which was a good thing. He didn't look gay, he just looked like a pussy.

(No, okay, Shane's well aware that if he'd gagged too much, that would also be gay.

He'd never be able explain why it works that way. It just does. Guys who threw tantrums about things like that put targets on their backs. Faded out of juniors early on. They might not have actually been gay gay, Shane doesn't know. There was just an understanding that they weren't made out of the right material.

But it's okay. It's fine. None of that matters. The important thing is that Shane only gagged a little, quietly. Guys laughed at him, but it was good-natured. Sympathetic, even. No sneers, no jeering. He got away with it.)

In an unrelated way, Shane has worried for a long time that the taste of cock would be terrible, has tasted his own come and thought, okay, not my favorite, what if I make it all the way to retirement and like? Date guys, I guess? And then I hate the taste, I don't think they let you be gay if you hate the taste -

But he doesn't. Hate the taste. What a fucking relief.

"Nice. You like," Ilya says.

Okay, that's another way to put it, and Shane would think about it more if his head wasn't fully fucking empty of anything but Ilya's cock and the comforting rhythm of his hand and the pointers Ilya gives him: "no teeth" - "well, small teeth, you learn" - "is okay?" - "hand, here, this, this, good."

Ilya pulls him off before he comes, hissing, red-faced, replacing his cock with his thumb. It feels too small now. "I stop - ah, finish inside -" he rubs his thumb on Shane's tongue - "or you jerk me off?" he asks.

Finish inside. Fuck.

People mostly don't like swallowing it, right? It's gross. It's demeaning. It makes it hard to breathe.

You're supposed to want, Shane's gathered from the guys he spends all his time around, the girls who blow you to swallow. (Not that Shane's ever given a shit either way, but. There are extenuating circumstances there, Shane guesses.) But you also don't like those girls that much. You're supposed to think that the rare girl who swallows smoothly, well-practiced, is kind of a whore. Then again, a girl who tries but coughs is embarrassing herself. And a girl who spits is a prude. Unless she's your wife. Then she's classy.

Now, a guy who blows guys? Is a cocksucker no matter what.

Shane's shit out of luck there. No version of this was ever going to be okay.

And if it makes no difference to other people… Shane wants to be the exceptional type of cocksucker. The practiced one, who's put in the work. The one who makes it look easy. Who's memorable.

He might not nail it tonight. But you only get better through practice.

He fucks his face on Ilya's thumb for a couple of strokes; Ilya gets the message and puts his cock back where it belongs. It's fast after that. Right at the end, he gives a few desperate half-thrusts, shallow, promising more, promising meaner.

It turns out if Shane's keyed up enough, he really doesn't mind the taste.

Ilya pulls him off and up again, onto the bed with him, and puts his thumb back in Shane's mouth. Pushes it open, looks at his tongue, which is probably - maybe - gross - with Ilya's come - fuck.

"Good," Ilya says.

Shane is so hard it's embarrassing.

Ilya murmurs something in Russian. He pulls on Shane's lower lip like he's checking his gums.

Shane makes an offended noise, but Ilya shushes him, dismissive, withdrawing his thumb and closing Shane's mouth for him. Their lips meet; Ilya's slips his tongue behind Shane's teeth, then sucks gently on Shane's tongue.

Shane can still taste Ilya, so Ilya must taste himself. That's - that's really fucking gay. Lots of hockey players bluster about how they won't kiss their girls, their fucking wives, after blowjobs. How gross it is to taste yourself on a girl's tongue. (Shane's always felt a little like… come on. Grow the fuck up. If Shane can get through sex with girls, other guys will survive a little post-blowjob tongue action.)

Now that Shane's had a guy clean himself out of Shane's mouth? He can say sincerely that those guys' girlfriends are missing out. Maybe the guys themselves are, too.

The blackmail thing comes to mind again. After this, Ilya could tell people: Shane Hollander kisses men with their come in his mouth, makes stupid noises while he does it, wants to feel them on his tongue again so bad it makes his hands shake.

The thought isn't enough to stop Shane from wanting this.

Ilya moves a thigh between Shane's legs, works Shane's pants down beneath his balls. Doesn't even bother jerking Shane off, just gives him something to sit on and lets him hump his leg. Lays a heavy hand on the scruff of Shane's neck, sending prickles up and down Shane's scalp, his shoulders.

"Can you -" Shane says, and covers that hand with his own. Clumsily directs Ilya to tug - to pull -

He does it gently. Hums, curiosity in the sound.

Shane tips his head forward so the tug gets harder. Meaner. Makes his hips jump, rabbity, stupid. There are the worst noises coming out of Shane's mouth.

Ilya hums again. Tightens his hold.

"Fuck," Shane says, "shit," and comes.

—

"Not smoke, hm?" asks Ilya, eyes roving over Shane's chest. They're both undressed, still in Shane's bed.

Ilya's leg is touching Shane's. He can feel the edge of athletic tape along Ilya's calf.

There's a big, mean bruise along Ilya's hip, obviously from an ice fall, that makes Shane's mouth water.

"No," Shane says. "I don't. If you mean - where you can do it? Outside, I guess. But smoking is really bad for you."

Deadly sarcastic, Ilya murmurs, "Oh my god, no, I am shock."

Shane's mouth twists into a smile despite him. "It's… that way," he says, pointing vaguely in the direction of the door to the balcony.

Ilya makes a tired sound. Waves a hand. "They make me quit," he says. "Also Canadian cigarettes -" he finishes in Russian. At Shane's look, he makes a whatever sound and half-heartedly grabs for his pants, still on the floor.

"Can you wear those home, or are they -" Shane says.

"Was not leave now," Ilya says. "Unless you want," he adds, as though thinking of an unlikely edge case.

"No," Shane says. "Give me… 30 minutes? I can go again."

Ilya makes an assenting noise.

Something is creeping into Shane's mostly emptied-out mind. A gray fog, something to be wary of. What is it, what's - oh.

"How did you. Um. How did you -" Shane clears his throat. Tries for a joke, kind of: "Do you just make a pass at every hockey player you meet, or… ?"

A pause. Ilya tilts his head thoughtfully. Nods.

Okay. Phew. So it wasn't that - "It wasn't me. Something I did," Shane says. Can't quite bring himself to ask.

"Mm," Ilya prevaricates.

"Fuck," Shane mumbles to himself.

Ilya snorts. "Is fine. You -" Russian - "in gym."

Shane stares at him. "I work out gay?"

"If is work out to -" he looks Shane up and down, under eyelashes, so heated that Shane's first instinct is to be embarrassed for Ilya, not himself.

"I did not do that," Shane asserts.

Ilya shrugs. "No. More look at neck. You neck man?"

Is that really a thing? Ilya clearly knows more about being gay than Shane does. "No," Shane says. "… Is that a bad thing? To be a neck guy?"

"Is your business, Hollander," Ilya says. Not a reassuring answer.

"… Well, I didn't look at you like that," Shane mumbles.

"Is fine," Ilya says. "Dumb, dangerous, but nice."

"Sorry," Shane says. He scrubs a hand over his face, which is hot. Gotta be red.

"Fine," Ilya says again. Shane risks a glance; he's staring at Shane's dumb cheeks. "Not as…" he wave a hand - "as loud as when meet Carter Vaughn and he ask me about Russia first thing. Glad you are Canadian neighbor, he say. Nice guy, but no… quiet, secret way."

Holy shit. "He's so awkward, right?"

Ilya makes an emphatic gesture with one hand. "Thank you," Ilya says. "Girls say he so cute, and I say yes, but he tell you it bad for coaches to - what is word, grab, touch -"

"Like grope?" Shane asks. "Harassment?"

Ilya nods. "Cute, but he tell you it bad for coaches to harass women before he fuck you."

Shane laughs. Is that bad? Maybe. Vaughn would, though. "Did you notice that, like, it's always nice at the end? Like he said he was happy for you? When I said I was going to catch Joe's program, he said Joe was probably gay, and it was brave for him to come to Sochi. We were out in public, around a ton of different athletes. I guess he said it quietly, but still. What the fuck is that?"

Ilya hums. "Is there word in English for man who try to give you cake he cut with bare hands?"

"No," Shane laughs again. "Is there one in Russian?"

Ilya shakes his head. "Should be."

"He's a good guy," Shane says, feeling guilty.

It gets a nod from Ilya, then a snicker. "But would stop before sex to do - do - land acknowledgement."

Shane has to cover his face with his hands for a second.

There's this thing that happens to Shane. More so when he was younger. Where if a certain type of guy - really good at stuff, or interesting, or just hard not to look at - makes a good quip, Shane is at risk of laughing so stupidly. High and quick. Like, giggling.

Actually, the dumb laugh almost happened to him recently, when he and Joe got lunch and Joe brought up what they used to do together. Before that, it might not have happened in - two years? More?

It was okay with Joe, though. They get each other. Shane's guard was down. And Joe wouldn't have said it if he didn't want a reaction.

Shane's normally good at pushing the laugh down, cutting it short, stifling it. He thought he got a handle on it a long time ago. Right now, it's like his grip is loose.

Ilya can definitely hear the laugh in Shane's throat, no way around that. He might see it moving through Shane's shoulders, too. God, Shane doesn't want Ilya to think Shane's secretly like this, like he's some pathetic - you know - someone pathetic - who laughs too hard at jokes because he wants - things. Because he likes whoever said them.

Fuck. Okay. Shane breathes out slowly. Tries to cut himself some slack. He just came. He's having. Like. Less thoughts than usual. The laugh caught him off guard, is all.

And it was a pretty good joke.

"You know land acknowledgements?" he asks when he's recovered.

"I am Canadian, baby," Ilya says, looking way too pleased with himself. (Shane does his best not to fall off the bed, or ask him to say it again.) "Article, tense, impossible. All day with coach, say only skate. Grammar hard. Boring. But. I know land acknowledgement. Timbits. Still not know Canadian Tire. Not tires store, but buy tires there… if buy tires, and tire in name, is tires store."

"It's not just a tire store," Shane says, automatic.

"Strange," Ilya says. "Hey. Turn over."

Shane does - is that stupid? - and Ilya touches, oh, the rings tattoo.

"Looks good," Ilya says, smoothing a hand over it.

"Thanks," Shane says.

Ilya licks it.

"Hey," Shane says, but it comes out breathy, like he likes it, wants more. "Um, that's - don't leave marks."

"I am not new," Ilya says. Shane can hear the eye roll in his voice. "You think I- " something Russian - "in Russia?"

"Sorry," Shane says. It's confusing to be reminded of Ilya's situation while Ilya is trailing a hand from his shoulder blade to the small of his back. "What - um, what's, like. The deal there, anyway?"

"… in Russia?" Ilya asks, incredulous. "You want talk geopolitic. Now."

"No, like, your - moving here," Shane says. He winces hearing it come out.

Ilya nods slowly. "I see. You have kink for refugee visa."

"I do not, asshole," Shane tells him. He winces again. Not a great look, to call refugees assholes, he doesn't think. "Wait, I mean - fuck."

"God, Hollander, is not even fun," Ilya groans.

"Sorry," Shane mumbles.

Ilya sighs loudly. "Did not want to be in Russia. Came here. Russia mad, but Olympics was -" a momentary pause, like he's looking for the word - "final time I go, so not problem. Boring, not big… drama." He flicks Shane's back. "This horrible sex talk, Shane Hollander."  

The ire of an authoritarian government files under big drama for Shane, as a rule, but okay. "Sorry," he says again, sheepish. Disappointed, too. There's no chance for Shane to ask about the important things in Ilya's past, like how long he played hockey.

That said, if Ilya wanted to distract Shane, he succeeded. Shane's mostly thinking about the flick to his back - the resulting sting - a hot instant that vanished, that he wouldn't mind having again - as he turns to look at Ilya.

Ilya mouths Canadians to himself, slowly, face tipped up to the ceiling. He sighs heavily. Pushes Shane back down. "I need fucking cigarette. How do you fuck if nothing to put in mouth after, lay around, look hot? Maybe I just smoke weed. ISU love that."

Jesus. Sounds like a great way to risk whatever visa situation Ilya has going on. Shane starts, "You really shouldn't -"

Ilya shushes him. His thumb hits the cleft of Shane's ass. Strokes him there. "Shut up."

"You shut up." A last gasp of defiance before Shane loses his mind.

A hum. Another stroke. "You use this thing? Ever?"

"For hockey," Shane says. He turns away, towards the bed, so Ilya can't see his face.

"Cute," Ilya says flatly, like he's not amused. That… doesn't not do it for Shane. His hand slides down, kneading his glute, flirting with exposing Shane.

Inhaling, Shane presses back.

"Muscle memory, huh?" Ilya asks.

"Shut up, don't fucking stereotype me," Shane mumbles. He hears the slight petulance in his own voice, dumb and more flirtatious than he wanted.

Yeah, he knows the fucking - Asian bottom stereotype, whatever. How could he not? When he resorts to drastic measures, he can't get away from footage of rail-thin Asian guys getting bent in half. Finding ASIAN TWINK GETS RAMMED is easy. ASIAN MUSCLE DADDY GETS RAMMED is tougher to sift around for. Something along the lines of ASIAN MUSCLE DADDY GETS RAMMED BY OTHER ASIAN MUSCLE DADDY? There are like three decent videos out there, period. He's got their titles memorized.

At least - that's how rare that type of thing is in the free stuff. Shane's either too smart or too much of a pussy to pay for it. Hasn't yet figured out which it is.

Look. It's whatever. Shane doesn't get down on himself for being quiet. (Not that he even is quiet. He just uses his fucking inside voice.) Or for staying out of fights. (Very normal for a high-skill center, statistically. But apparently no one cares about data, or using basic observational skills.) He's not fulfilling Asian stereotypes, the bottom one included; if other people fill them in around him (passive, dispassionate, submissive, whatever), that's their problem. He holds it against them, not himself.

Tries to, anyway.

But with Ilya, Shane doesn't really think he's being stereotyped. Not that Ilya won't, in the future, refer to Shane's advanced understanding of geometry or whatever the fuck. Shane just doesn't see it happening at this moment. Like, Shane didn't try to hide that he wanted to get on his knees. What would be the fucking point? And it would be easy for Ilya to extrapolate from there: if Shane likes it going in his mouth, maybe he'd like it going other places, too.

There's this hot feeling Shane's chest. It's - not unpleasant. At all. Because… maybe Ilya didn't even have to think about it.

Maybe, based on how this has gone so far, Ilya can tell that Shane would do that. That he likes it, or the idea of it. Bottoming. And - some of the stuff that sometimes goes along with it. Taking direction. Being good. Mind over matter. (It hurt when Sammy got him up to three fingers. But he breathed through it and concentrated on releasing those muscle groups, and then it was fucking great.) A little bit of - uh - like, a little bit. Of pain. (See: Sammy.) (Oh, fuck, and the tattoo place.) (And maybe Shane's job. Not that hockey's ever been a sex thing for Shane.)

Maybe Shane is - obvious.

The idea shouldn't turn him on so much.

(What if Ilya could tell when they got tattoos? Or in Sochi, when he drank for Shane without asking? Or at the gym? What if - normally Shane's worst fear - the first time Ilya laid eyes on Shane, he saw right the fuck through him?

Sure, Shane actually doesn't think there's something wrong with - with bottoming, but he'd still die if anyone in hockey knew or suspected. So why is it so hot to think that Ilya would just - know?)

Ilya's fingers tease, brush inward, glance closer and closer to Shane's asshole.

Shane exhales shakily.

"So yes," Ilya says. "You use."

"Fine, yes, okay?" Shane says. He hasn't forgotten - can't forget - the sensation of someone else's fingers in his ass, driving into him with a merciless finesse. And yet he's really, really not thinking about Sammy at the moment.

He's not hard - not not hard, but not fully hard - but Ilya says, "Now," and flips Shane onto his back. For a mean few seconds, he makes Shane make eye contact, silent, searching for something. Eyes down to Shane's mouth and back up once, twice. Then a hand in Shane's hair, a deep kiss, open-mouthed, gross, hot.

It makes some part of Shane wish he had a mirror in his bedroom. But he's good at ignoring that part of himself. The one that wants to look. To see.

"I not fuck you now, Hollander," Ilya whispers, almost a rasp. Shane hears the promise in it. Feels it in his throat, his spine. Not now could mean later.

Instead, Ilya blows him. "Pull hair easy - no, soft? Nice," he says, after he licks Shane's cock. "Let me hear," which makes Shane determined to be silent, though his efforts rapidly fail.

He gently cups Shane's balls for half a second. Shane stiffens. He can't help it - there's an implicit threat there, if not an intended one, and Shane kind of likes that, in a sick, stomach-churning way. Fortunately or unfortunately, Ilya's not a mind reader. He lets go, his hand drifting downward, forgotten alongside the wet heat of his mouth, the suction Shane didn't quite get right and wants to try for again.

"I know," Ilya pulls off to murmur, when Shane gets loud. His mouth slips back over Shane's cock, easy and good, like it belongs there. Then he swipes fingers over Shane's hole.

Shane's leg comes up so automatically, way too eager, begging for basically the worst thing he can want, the best thing Ilya can give him. He thinks he makes a sound. Fuck, he must make a sound. Nothing's holding him down, but he feels pinned between Ilya's hands, his mouth. Ilya gives him some rough thrusts with the flat of his fingers, nothing inside at all, just dry pressure and the mild filth of it, the intimacy. It turns out that's all Shane needs to go off hard, helpless. Hips jerking down into Ilya's flat palm like there's something more there.

The implication that Ilya might ever? The way he's spreading Shane open?

Shane would take it over Sammy's fingers any day of the week.

Ilya doesn't let go of Shane's ass right away, sitting up, looking at Shane spread for him, spread on him. He jerks himself off. Shane tries, halfheartedly, to help; Ilya tells him, "Stay," and stops him from straightening out his leg, so Shane lets Ilya Rozanov put his tongue in Shane's mouth and his come on Shane's stomach. While Shane just lies there. Taking it.

—

"Hey, Hollander," Rozanov says later, back in Shane's perfectly respectable car, wearing his own shirt and a pair of Shane's sweats. "Good game."

"Shut the fuck up," Shane says, ears hot.

Rozanov snickers.

There's a minute of silence. Shane turns left when the navigation tells him to. Rozanov admitted that he has no idea how to get around without it.

"Was fun," Rozanov says.

"Yeah," Shane says, nodding too many times. He comes up with absolutely nothing else to say (outside of an almost certainly unwelcome onslaught of tell me about hockey - did you like it? were you good? what position? how far did you get? what teams did you follow? did you think about going pro? did you ever consider coming here?) until he's idling in front of Rozanov's hotel: a big, flavorless luxury block like all the others in the area. Rozanov says, "That one," with no particular relief or regret in his voice.

At the end of Shane's rare dates with girls - not that this was a date, he knows that, he's not pathetic - he flounders, trying to find something to say that sounds borderline friendly, human, warmer than you seem fine but I never want to see you again. Something that will, ideally let him get away with not fucking them (please, fuck, the sex gets worse every year) while vaguely suggesting he'd maybe want to fuck them at a later date. Then oops, turns out that he's too busy to see her again. Shane Hollander, the Metros' first line center, a star athlete, highly dedicated, so many obligations, can't make time for dating, just forgets to follow up on his personal life, et cetera, et cetera. Hating the bullshit but loving the relief, the reprieve.

For about the first time in Shane's life, he's having the opposite problem. Tamping down the urge to ask if Rozanov wants to - well, Shane doesn't know. There's not a lot he's equipped to offer. Just the same thing over again. And he shouldn't. He really shouldn't.

He settles for, "I'm glad you came out tonight. And before. To get tattoos."

Rozanov looks blankly at him for a second, then nods. "Yes." He doesn't undo his seatbelt. His eyes trace Shane's face.

"They said you don't usually do stuff with them," Shane says. "The others."

"No," Rozanov says. "I went when I hear hockey player with -" something in Russian "- going."

Shane's mouth drops open slightly. He swallows. "So maybe you'll come out again, some time?" he says.

Rozanov shrugs. "Or stay in. If you want."

The language barrier is a little awkward; it takes Shane a second to put it together. "Oh," he says. His face goes hot. He looks down, kind of hating himself, hating how quickly he starts thinking through the same bullshit he does with girls, scared and running. I'm so busy, I just don't think it's in the cards. He feels like he owes Rozanov more than that. "Okay. That, um. Maybe?"

"Maybe," Rozanov echoes.

Shane swallows. "It's just, um. It's not…" How does he even begin to explain?

Rozanov rolls his eyes. "I am not new," he says, repeating himself from before, when his hand was on Shane's back.

"I mean. I liked it," Shane says, an obvious understatement, digging a hole Rozanov didn't ask him to dig.

Rozanov raises his eyebrows briefly. "I know."

Shane's cheeks are still hot. "Shut up," he says.

Rozanov sighs. Like Shane's being tiresome.

"But I shouldn't be - I shouldn't," Shane says. It would be such a bad idea, to keep doing this. To let himself keep doing this. This is riskier than asking a girl who lives in Vancouver to finger him at the Olympics. This is something Shane can't put in a box. Not if it keeps happening, not if Rozanov is going to keep looking like that and being in the group chat and living only two hours away, in the city where Shane grew up

Rozanov nods, expressionless.

An upsetting thought strikes Shane. "But you - you won't stop hanging out with them, right? You should definitely still come out. When the others ask you to go somewhere," he says tentatively. "Don't disappear on them."

"… because you want to see me," Rozanov adds, his accent too unfamiliar to give anything away to Shane. He looks at Shane like he's trying to figure him out.

"So you can see them. Everyone." It seems just - obviously important, that Rozanov should be there, should keep being a part of things. The figure skaters walked him to the gym like he was a fucked up rookie. Or not even that. Like he was a drunk girl, and they were on her side: careful, concerned. They like him.

Rozanov spreads his legs. Shane tracks it helplessly, aware that Rozanov will notice, will see him. "Fine," he says. "I go out. I even answer dumb text about -" he waves a hand - "beads on skate laces."

A weird wash of relief. "Okay," Shane says. The others had been talking about the beads thing earlier in the day, a debate Shane didn't understand and had nothing to contribute to. He was still kind of curious about Rozanov's take on it. 

Rozanov adds thoughtfully, "And I do not touch you. Like you are delicate statue. Or… scared girl."

"Asshole," Shane says, no heat, a reflex.

"You really want this?" Rozanov asks him, doubt plain in his voice, a skeptical look on his face. "You want me to not touch?"

"I -" Shane says. And stops. Can't quite get out yeah, or definitely, or just please. He wants a lot of things he shouldn't have. "Yes?" he tries, finally. It comes out squeaky, stupid. No conviction in it.

Rozanov hums. Nods like he understands something. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Is fine." Rozanov shrugs. "I do what you want." He's facing out the front window again. Is he - smirking, slightly? No. Probably not. Or if he is, it's because he's bored by the conversation. Sick of Shane's shit.

Shane is sick of Shane's shit.

Shane ekes out, "Okay, then that's - good."

"Good," Rozanov says, a little mocking. He shakes his head. "Okay. Good night, Shane Hollander." He gets out of the car.

"Night," Shane says.

Behind, headlights loom in the distance. Ice time is coming early the next day for both of them.

Rozanov tips his chin at Shane. Closes the door and starts forward. Approaches his hotel. Goes inside. He doesn't turn around to wave at any of these points, apparently not yet Canadian enough to have that ingrained instinct for a five-part farewell.

"Night," Shane says softly when Rozanov is out of sight. He shakes his head at himself, though it wasn't that bad, that embarrassing. All things considered.

He drives to the end of the street and turns. Heads back to his condo alone, like always.

In Shane's periphery, his phone lights up with a couple of notifications: one from Joe, three - oh, four, now - from the skating group chat. The messages will be something bright to look at once he's ready for bed. Good thoughts to focus on before he falls asleep.

His chest feels a little heavy, but there's no pinch at his wrist. He left the watch at home.

—

 

[ THREAD: Shane 🥗 ]

 

Joe:

I assume you'll be busy with playoffs from here out

Want to have lunch in like june?

 

Shane 🥗:

Yeah, 20th?

 

Joe:

Perf

Hope I don't see you before then

🤞🏼🧧✨🍀

 

Shane 🥗:

🙏🏼 🙏🏼 🙏🏼