Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter, Kip Grady/Shane Hollander/Scott Hunter/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Farah Jalali, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady

Additional Tags:

Angst, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hand Jobs, Anal Sex, Anal Fisting, Blow Jobs, Panic Attacks, Anxiety, Road Trips, Press and Tabloids, Hazing, Racism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Friend Hayden Pike, but like its nuanced its complex, Butt Plugs, Double Penetration, Concussions, Airplane Crashes, Injury, Head Injury, Coma, Vomiting

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of two weddings and a scandal

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-02 Updated: 2026-10-17 Words: 87,089 Chapters: 10/11

and we all fall down

Summary

The truth was, yeah, Shane married Ilya, but he’d married hockey first. He married hockey the second he signed his rookie contract with the Metros, and his courtship began long, long before. And his marriage to hockey wasn’t like his marriage to Ilya. Hockey wouldn’t ever love him back. Ilya wasn’t going to chew Shane up and spit him out at some nebulous point after he turned thirty and before he turned forty, his joints busted and his mouth full of dentures and his brain fucked to hell and back. And that marriage—his first marriage—had always come before his second, illicit shotgun wedding.

It wasn’t ideal, maybe, but that was just how things were. Hell, it was probably the same for Ilya, too. The fuck was Shane supposed to do about it? Nothing, nothing, nothing. He liked his life just the way it was. He didn’t want to do anything different. He still doesn’t. And that’s the worst, most shameful part of it all: at the end of the day, some part of Shane will always wish he could wind back time like adjusting a watch; erase that Instagram post before it ever hit the internet and go back to the life they’d had before; the life that was slowly killing them both.

Notes

the beautiful cover art is by mockspeed, who is so cool and wise and talented and generous ❤️

Chapter 1: may (part 1)

Shane holds it together right up until they cross the border into Canada. And it’s so fucking stupid, but he can’t help it—one minute he’s flying up highway 416, riding so high he thinks he’ll never come down, and the next he recognizes a billboard for Tim Hortons, the funny one that says Cream Boston, and the trees start to look familiar, and he thinks to himself oh, we’re almost home, and that’s it. The beautiful dream has faded, and the real world has barged in, and all Shane can think about is how many sponsorships his stupid, impulsive Instagram post will cost him.

His fingers itch. He needs to check his phone—his agent probably blew up his inbox and his voicemail, and Coach probably did the same, and Shane doesn’t want to think about what the team group chat looks like right now, but he can’t make himself stop. He wonders how many different ways he’d been called a faggot in the hours he’s been stuck behind the wheel driving home.

In the back, his parents are talking about dinner; arguing over takeout versus making something quick and dirty with the groceries they had at home. Dad really wants to stop for pizza, Mom wants to make spaghetti, and neither of those things fit his diet, but Shane can’t bring himself to care. Shane is stuck remembering the moments in the locker room, after the final game of last season, where JJ had made a terrible joke about that stupid metrosexual trend from the early 2000s—crazy, no, how there was a whole trend called metrosexual and it was about men using moisturizer instead of women wanting to fuck the Montreal Metros, do you think they would still call me metrosexual if they saw my Jergens—and Comeau had, inexplicably, replied enough of that faggot shit, Boiziau.  

“My vote is for pizza,” Ilya says, from the passenger seat, and looks over at Shane with a shit-eating grin on his face. Probably expecting to start their usual dance, where Ilya suggests a food that doesn’t have any of the right macros, and Shane calls him gross, and Ilya wheedles and whines until they reach an acceptable compromise that, at the very least, has enough protein that Shane doesn’t feel so bad eating it. Shane doesn’t reply. He’s focusing on his breathing. He can’t be having a panic attack if he’s still breathing just fine.

From the corner of his eye, Shane sees Ilya’s eyebrows draw in, and then Ilya is leaning over and putting his hand on top of Shane’s where Shane is white-knuckling the steering wheel. “Lyubimyy,” he says, low, “you are shaking.”

Shane makes a concentrated effort to loosen his grip. “I’m not. I’m fine.”

“You are freaking out.”

“I’m okay,” he says, wooden and stoic. In the back, Mom and Dad have stopped talking, practically mid-sentence. Shane glances up at the rearview, and wishes he hadn’t. They’re both looking forward, at him, all concerned and shit.

“Okay,” Ilya replies, drawn out and sarcastic. “You owe me a honeymoon, Hollander.”

Shane blinks. Blinks again. “What?” Outside, the trees are slowly giving way to scattered houses and gas stations. Soon, they’ll be in the city proper, and the gas stations will give way to strip malls and fast food joints and apartment buildings. Shane breathes. He grinds his teeth. Almost home, he thinks. Almost home.

“You know, sex vacation you go on after you get married.” Ilya peels Shane’s hand off the steering wheel—fucking dangerous, fucking irresponsible—and holds it between both of his. “You owe me, and I am collecting. Right now.”

“You want to go on a honeymoon now?”

“Yes. I want to go to your cottage.” Shane has a flash of memory, then. Ilya, years ago, moaning out your cottage when Shane asked him where he’d want to honeymoon, cramped in the passenger seat just like this, gorgeous in the snow-bright dark. “We will go,” Ilya says, and raises the back of Shane’s hand to his lips, and presses a little kiss there, like he can’t help himself, “and your parents will go to their house, just ten minutes down the road, and after we are settled, we go over for dinner. And then we can look at what people are saying online, and text Scott Hunter, and check our emails, and call Farah, and put together twenty-step spreadsheet, because you are already thinking of it, yes? Putting it together in your head?” Shane nods, muted. It still surprises him, sometimes, how well Ilya knows him. How much Ilya loves him. It still makes him feel like crying, every goddamn time. “Okay,” Ilya continues, after a beat. “So we will write it all down, and then when it is done, you will let your very smart, very capable mama handle things for a few days, and we will go back to your cottage, and we will fucking relax. Sleep until noon. Laze in the sun.”

Shane smiles, a little, despite himself, and swallows around the feeling welling up in his throat. “Sounds boring,” he manages to say, and takes another careful deep breath, and tries very hard to think about the here and now; his hand in Ilya’s, the cold air blowing from the vents because Ilya always runs hot, the billboards for personal injury lawyers and real estate companies flashing by outside.

Ilya makes an offended noise. “Oh, so you have better things to do, Mr. Very Interesting?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

Shane desperately grasps for the last thing they did when they were up at the cottage. “We could take the jet skis out?”

Ilya blows a raspberry. “Boring. Try again.”

“Swim across the lake?”

“Oh yes, this I like,” Ilya says, and in the corner of his eye, Shane sees the look creeping across his face; thick and sugar-sweet, like honey, like molasses—remembering, probably, the last time they’d swam in the lake, and ended up with their hands down each other’s shorts while they were tucked away in the reeds, and Ilya had nearly drowned when he came, and they both had to pick leeches off their legs after. “We will race,” Ilya continues, and tugs Shane’s hand into his lap. “You will lose terribly.”

“I will not!”

“You will. My first apartment, back in Boston, had indoor pool. I swam every day.”

Shane laughs. Ilya rubs his thumb across his knuckles, and lifts their clasped hands up, up, so he can press a kiss to the back of Shane’s hand. “Ilya, that was years ago.”

“So?” Ilya replies, brow quirked, head tilted just-so. “The body remembers. I will leave you choking on my, fucking, the thing that boats leave behind.”

“Wake?”

“God, English is fucking stupid. Except for fuck. Perfect word. Ten out of ten.” He presses another kiss to the back of Shane’s hand, and lingers there, his lips pursed wet against Shane’s skin.  “It will be okay, Shane. We will be okay. I have fancy Canadian citizenship, and we are very rich. Worst comes to worst, we play hockey in Switzerland, which would not be so bad. I have always wanted to try snowboarding.”

Shane risks a glance over at him, even though he really should keep his eyes on the road. Ilya looks—he looks serious. Like he means every word. “You think it’ll come to that?”

“No,” Ilya says, with a gusty sigh and another kiss to the back of Shane’s hand. The spit is getting to be a bit much, but Shane doesn’t dare say anything. He doesn’t actually want Ilya to stop. “But even if it did, we would be okay. We would be in beautiful country with beautiful view of the mountains, surrounded by delicious chocolate and fancy watches and dubious banking schemes.”

“Sounds right up your alley.”

“Mm. You would like it, I think. Probably, you would buy a huge mansion and call it your chalet, and get it in your head to climb the fucking Matterhorn, or something equally ridiculous, and waste the whole off-season climbing a big stupid rock while I am eating chocolates at a little café, watching you through binoculars.”

In the rear-view, his parents are whispering to each other again, too quiet to hear above the road noise. They’re making the exact same faces they make whenever Shane wins a home game—a little proud, a little teary-eyed. God, he really needs to stop making his mom cry.

“You wouldn’t come with me?” Shane says, teasing now, so caught up in the picture Ilya was spinning that he forgot what he’d been so fucking afraid of just a minute or two before. It was a pretty image—him in climbing gear, Ilya in some slutty half-unbuttoned shirt lounging in a café, waiting for Shane to come home, watching through his binoculars and, presumably, thinking about how good Shane’s ass looked in a climbing harness. And Shane did love alpine architecture. It was one of the styles he’d pulled on most when he was designing his cottage; the blonde wood, with the clean lines and the dark stone and all that glass. He could probably learn to be happy there, in a house like that, living a life like that, so long as Ilya was there with him.

“Fuck no,” Ilya says, with feeling. “I am city boy, I hate camping. You know this. I would be very good cheerleader, though. You would hear me from all the way at the top.” And then, quieter, he says, “maybe is not so bad, that we are out. I can come to your games now, and scream in the stands like WAG.”

Shane blinks. “You’d do that?”

“Shane,” Ilya says, over-dramatic, “I have wanted this for years. I will even wear your stupid overpriced WAG jacket, even though it is always so ugly it makes me cry inside.”

“Oh,” Shane replies. He’s stunned stupid. In all their years together, he’d never once thought that Ilya would want something like that; he’d assumed that Ilya, like Shane, thought that sitting in the stands wearing someone else’s name was a little beneath him.

“Turn here,” Ilya murmurs. “Your parents can drop us off at my house, so we can grab clothes, and we can take my car to your cottage.” And, so. Shane turns where Ilya says, and waves goodbye to his parents while he’s standing next to Ilya on Ilya’s front porch, and manages to assemble enough outfits for a whole fucking week out of the clothes Ilya had pilfered from him over the years. And before he knew it, they were off again, in Ilya’s obnoxious, bright orange Urus, northbound on the A5 with a box of pizza and a takeout container from Chipotle going cold in the backseat.

_____

They stop at a Petro-Canada on the way up, and it’s run-down the way gas stations always are in a small town—the bathroom is full of flies, and the rest of the place smells like a nauseating mix of radioactive hot dogs and cigarettes. He pisses standing next to Ilya at a urinal that smells overwhelmingly of urinal cake, which is, somehow, a novel experience, and Ilya hip-checks him while they’re washing their hands, and they wander through the snack aisle debating whether they can make tomorrow’s breakfast out of beef jerky and popcorn and salted peanuts.

“Wait, wait,” Ilya says, and grabs Shane’s hand, and pulls him to a stop in front of a cooler stuffed full of six-packs. “Do we have vodka left from last summer? Nevermind, I will buy more.”

For a terrifying moment, Shane forgets that he doesn’t have to hide anymore, and he feels the store’s cameras trained on the back of his neck, and there’s someone standing next to the water bottles that keeps looking over at them both like they’re trying not to stare, and Shane feels like a helpless, caught-out prey animal; a stupid little field mouse trapped in the cruel yellow gaze of a hungry golden eagle. But then, Ilya squeezes his hand, and Shane remembers that he’s trying to be brave. Shane squeezes his hand back, just once, and replies, “they don’t sell spirits, dipshit. We’re in Canada, remember?”

Ilya blows a raspberry, and grabs a six pack of Moosehead. “Stupid Canadian rules. You want something?” He asks, but the question is pointless. He’s already reaching for a pack of Thornbury zero sugar cider.

They plop their haul on the counter—beer and cider, beef jerky and peanuts for Ilya, trail mix and puffed-up green bean chips for Shane, three packs of brats, a couple boxes of mac and cheese, and two cans of monster, just in case. And Shane is on cloud fucking nine, because sometimes, when he was feeling particularly lonely, he got through it by imagining he was grocery shopping with Ilya at Whole Foods. And it’s just like how he imagined—they fight over who gets to carry the bags, settle for splitting the load so they can hold hands, and giggle like twelve-year-olds on the walk back to the car, just because they can, because when Shane is brave, being together like this makes him so happy he can’t keep it all inside.

And then, some asshole in a beat-up baseball cap looks at the two of them as they’re walking back to Ilya’s godawful Urus, spits on the ground, and mutters fucking faggots, just barely loud enough for them to hear. Ilya pauses for a half-step, like he’s going to go over there or, god forbid, say something back, and for a moment, Shane isn’t a thirty-year-old man in a gas station parking lot. He’s fourteen, naked in the locker room shower and hard and desperately trying to hide it, surrounded by seventeen-year-olds with cruel imaginations and a mean look in their eyes.

He blinks, and the memory is gone just as fast as it came. He squeezes Ilya’s hand, tight, and tugs him along, back towards Ilya’s tangerine-orange, ungodly expensive SUV. And something petty and vindictive rises up in Shane, for a little bit, while they’re stuffing their plastic bags of junk food in the backseat. Some ugly thing that never really forgave Ilya for his come-out-or-we-divorce ultimatum; something that wants to say I told you, I fucking told you this would happen. Shane sits there, in the passenger seat, and thinks about giving that ugly thing a voice. But then, what would be the fucking point? Ilya already knew. Saying it would just hurt them both.

_____

Shane doesn’t wait for them to get to the cottage. He pulls out his phone after he finishes crushing his monster energy. It is, as expected, swamped with push notifications crowding the lock screen. Missed calls from his agent, missed calls from Coach, missed calls from his lawyer, and HR, and the Metros’ PA rep. And then there are the Instagram notifications, which scare Shane so much he can’t bring himself to look at them, and the suspicious lack of texts in the Metros’ group chat, which means they’d probably made a chat without him to talk behind his back, and there’s the radio silence from JJ, which hurts, and Hayden, which hurts even more.

It’s a lot. So, Shane starts at the top. He taps out a very apologetic, rushed email to Hunter, and offers to pay for his honeymoon because, honestly, it’s the least he can do. He skims over the rest of the emails—an email management sent to the entire team with a calendar appointment for mandatory diversity training, Reebok’s brand representative reaching out with an idea for a new ad campaign, a shit ton of requests for interviews and comments. He accepts the meeting request from management, forwards the Reebok email and a couple of the best interview requests to Mom, and moves over to his missed calls and dials Farah.

She picks up on the first ring, and says “Shane. Hi. I’ll cut right to the chase: the league is going to investigate you.”

“What?” Shane says, very small. He can’t breathe, he’s floating away, he’s—

“Shane,” Ilya says, from the driver’s seat, “put it on speakerphone.” And then he has his hand on Shane’s thigh, squeezing, shaking him a little. It helps. Shane’s hands aren’t shaking so bad when he pulls the phone away from his cheek and hits the button to let Ilya listen in.

“I don’t expect much to come of it,” Farah continues, like nothing is wrong. “And I’ve already reached out to your legal representation. We’ve got it handled. Right now, you don’t need to do a thing.”

Shane ducks his head. He presses his eyes closed, and bites at his lip, and slides his hand over Ilya’s, white-knuckling the meat of his palm. “What do they think they’ll find?”

“You know, I’m not sure. They kept throwing around match fixing and failure to disclose a conflict of interest, but, frankly, I don’t think the league even knows what it’s looking for, and of the accusations they’ve leveled so far, I don’t think either of them will stick. Honestly, I think they’re just fishing for dirt.” Shane’s ears start ringing. Ilya pinches at the inside of his thigh, hard, and doesn’t let up until Shane sucks in a full breath. “Shane, I’m gonna level with you. Someone up top wants you gone. The league is desperately looking for a reason to blacklist you. Don’t give them one.”

Stay quiet, Shane translates. Stay uncontroversial. Don’t rock the boat any more than you already have, which is a tall ask, because Shane is going to have to do interviews and articles and pressers where he explains himself; where he lays out his life and his marriage before the public and begs them not to crucify him for it. He’s going to attend meetings with Farah and his mom and whatever crisis management PR guy his mom digs up, and they’re going to have long talks about spin, about pivoting, about approved soundbites and statements. Less than a day, and being out doesn’t feel like being free. It feels a little like the car is closing in around him.

“Okay.”

“Congrats on the wedding,” Farah says, and to her credit, she sounds genuine. ”Tell your husband to pick up his fucking phone and call me back.”

“Okay.”

“Have a good night, Shane.”

“Goodnight.”

And then, Shane hangs up the phone, and Ilya takes one look at his face and pulls over right there, on the shoulder of the A5, walks around to the passenger side, and yanks open the door, and pulls Shane into his chest. Shane just breathes into his shirt, muffled and shaky and humid.

“How are you not freaking out right now?” Shane mumbles. Ilya rests his chin on the crown of Shane’s head, and pets through the hair at the nape of Shane’s neck.

“Would be stupid for both of us to freak out, yes?” This close, Shane can feel Ilya’s voice humming in his throat, and hear the way the spit clicks in his mouth when he swallows, and he can smell the cigarette smoke on Ilya’s clothes, and the sweat on his skin, and the soft scalp-smell that Shane has coveted and loved and craved since 2010. It’s nice. Shane never wants to leave. “I am being very generous. I am letting you freak out first.”

Shane laughs, a little strained, a little wet. “Yeah?”

A car honks as it whizzes past. Shane flinches, and Ilya tightens his grip. It hurts, a little—it’s almost bruising, where Ilya is holding the back of his neck, but Shane doesn’t mind. He likes it; the pain, the pressure. It’s a good reminder that he has a body, and that body is right here, and so is Ilya, and neither of them are going anywhere.

Ilya hums. It vibrates against Shane’s forehead. “So you better be prepared, Hollander. Tomorrow, it is my turn.”

“Okay,” Shane whispers, and presses a kiss to the notch where Ilya’s collarbones meet. And then, the moment is over. Ilya pulls away by degrees; putting space between their bodies, pulling his chin away from the top of Shane’s head, slipping his hand from the back of Shane’s neck to his shoulder, and then down his chest, and then away for good. Ilya jogs back around the car, to the driver’s seat, and picks Shane’s hand up and puts it on his thigh, and they’re off again, headed up the A5 like nothing happened. And god, it feels like they’ve been driving forever. Almost eight hours, plus two more left to go. And isn’t that an apt fucking metaphor; always headed somewhere, together only in transition, holding out for a happily ever after that never fucking comes.

_____

The food is stone cold by the time they make it to Mom and Dad’s cottage, so Dad tosses the pizza into the oven and pops Shane’s burrito bowl in the microwave. They sit at the table, Shane and Ilya on one side, Mom and Dad on the other, and eat in silence, mostly because they’re all too hungry to talk—they never did actually stop for lunch. But, soon enough, Shane is scraping the bottom of his plastic takeout container and Ilya is folding the last slice of pizza in half, so he can stuff it in his mouth faster.

Mom watches him with a sick fascination. And then, while Dad’s busy clearing away the empty pizza box, she unsubtly clears her throat. “So,” she announces, hands folded on the tabletop, “we need to figure out what version of the story we’re going to sell to the public.” Ilya looks at her, puzzled, and licks a stray bit of pizza sauce off his thumb. Mom hands him a napkin. “Of you two being married, I mean,” she continues, smoothly. “We won’t need to answer why you’re together or when it happened, thank god, you already covered that pretty clearly, but we will need to give people a good reason why you kept it a secret for so long.”

Ilya licks at his lips and swipes at his face. Shane looks at him, he looks at Shane. “We say it was because of Russia,” Ilya says, with a shrug that is so transparently not casual Shane reflexively grabs his hand under the table. “Because I might have needed to go back, one day, and it is very dangerous for me to do this if it is known that I am married to a man.”

“But that isn’t true,” Shane says, his brow furrowed. “You had to threaten to fucking divorce me before I agreed to come out.”

Dad comes back with four wine glasses awkwardly pinched between his fingers and a bottle of pinot grigio tucked beneath his arm. Mom snatches a glass first, and pours herself a glass so hefty the wine is almost bubbling over the rim, then slurps off the excess. “It’s not about whether it’s true, Shane,” she says, and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. “It’s about marketability. We need to demonstrate that the two of you can make the MLH just as much money married as you did when you were rivals. You don’t do that by showing up to an interview with GQ and announcing that the entire league is homophobic.”

Shane leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “The entire league is homophobic.” He looks over to his dad, but he’s retreated back into the kitchen, wiping down the shining countertops and washing Shane’s singular fork like he can’t bear to stop.

Ilya turns to face him then, his brows raised into a particular arrangement that never fails to piss Shane off—his you’re-being-stupid-and-it’s-annoying face. “Yeah, and you’re going to do what? Be gay Batman? Put on stupid outfit and beat up homophobic hockey players?”

“Yeah,” Shane shoots back, “Maybe I will.”

“No, you won’t,” Ilya replies, and blindly reaches for one of the wine glasses Dad set down, and gives himself a heavy fucking pour of his own. “Because it is a terrible, stupid idea, and you are not stupid. Even Scott fucking Hunter didn’t go on fucking Tonight Show and say the entire league is full of men who think it’s funny to call each other faggot.”

And that lands like a bomb went off right in the middle of the dining table. Everybody shuts the fuck up. It’s so quiet that Shane can hear Dad mutter jesus fucking christ into the kitchen sink. And Shane just sits there, staring down at the dining table, which has been here as long as Shane can remember. He traces a scratch he put in the tabletop with his skates when he was seven, and stares at a stray line of permanent marker that his mom left when it accidentally bled through her paper and never quite scrubbed out all the way.

“It’s a good story, Shane,” Mom says, after a long, heavy silence. “It adds something Shakespearean to the whole thing. An element of tragedy. It’ll provoke sympathy, that’s for sure, and you need that right now.” She nods towards Shane and Ilya, then, and sips her wine. “You both do.”

“So, what,” Shane bites out, suddenly and inexplicably furious. “You guys want me to go do an ad campaign in my fucking underwear, and tell people ‘oh yeah, the only reason we stayed closeted for over a decade was because there was a real possibility that Ilya could’ve been lynched every time he went back to Russia. Hashtag in my Calvins. Homophobia isn’t an issue in the league, by the way. Scott Hunter solved it. You guys just misheard the dozen or so times guys got caught on mic calling me a faggot.’”

“Yes,” she says, “that’s exactly what I want you to do. Because if you don’t, you’re fucked.”

And all at once, Shane can’t be here anymore. He stands, so sudden that his chair squeals against the linoleum. “Fuck this,” he spits, to cover the way he feels like he’s going to cry, and shakes off Ilya’s hand when he grabs at Shane’s elbow. “I’m going for a walk.” And he slams the patio door behind him when he leaves, even though he didn’t mean to, and some small part of him reflexively feels like he should apologize, after years of his mom yelling Shane Hollander, what did I tell you about slamming doors? The bigger part of him is so fucking tired of saying sorry, so Shane just keeps going, and going, and going, down the path through the woods that leads to the lake, and he stares out at the water for a very long time.

_____

It’s never quiet out on the lake, but it’s loud today. The bugs are out in full force, screaming to the afternoon sun, and the geese call back and forth, and the wind rakes its fingers through the trees like a monkey looking for lice to eat. There’s a gray smear on the horizon and an ominous feeling in the air—it’ll storm tonight, he thinks. Probably a good thing. It’s wildfire season, and they need the rain.

Shane crouches on the shore, barefoot, because he was so mad leaving the house that he forgot to put on his shoes. Mud squishes between his toes, but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s still wearing Ilya’s sweatpants and t-shirt; the wind cuts through it and leaves him shivering, and he doesn’t care about that either. It feels good, in a weird way. It’s nice that his inside-miseries and outside-miseries match.

In the car, somewhere in Jersey, Dad had asked if Shane was like Ilya—if he liked both, if he’d loved Rose Landry. And Shane had said no, he was gay as the day is long, and he’d only ever been in love with one person anyway, and Ilya said same here, only one, and Mom’s face had done this weird little thing that Shane was realizing meant she was sad they’d suffered and glad they’d survived, and she said so you both married the first person you ever fell in love with. Well. At least you match.

And it wasn’t true, exactly, but Shane didn’t bother correcting her. The truth was, Shane’s first love was hockey. For a long time, he’d thought that hockey was the one and only love of his life. He’d fallen fast and hard when he was three years old, and hockey just meant passing the puck back and forth with his dad. And he’d stayed in love, when hockey changed and meant playing with other kids, and he stayed in love when the other kids got mean, and he learned to love some of the not-so-good parts of hockey, too; the bone-deep aches, the bruising, the taste of blood in his mouth. Part of him would always love it: the smell of the rink; the cold against his cheeks; the sound of the puck against his stick, his stick tapping the ice, the shnick of the ice sliced clean through by his skates; the pure, clean rush of a good goal; the dogpile right after winning a game; hell, even the way skating still felt like flying, every goddamn time.

The truth was, yeah, Shane married Ilya, but he’d married hockey first. He married hockey the second he signed his rookie contract with the Metros, and his courtship began long, long before. And his marriage to hockey wasn’t like his marriage to Ilya. Hockey wouldn’t ever love him back. Ilya wasn’t going to chew Shane up and spit him out at some nebulous point after he turned thirty and before he turned forty, his joints busted and his mouth full of dentures and his brain fucked to hell and back. And that marriage—his first marriage—had always come before his second, illicit shotgun wedding.

It wasn’t ideal, maybe, but that was just how things were. Hell, it was probably the same for Ilya, too. The fuck was Shane supposed to do about it? Nothing, nothing, nothing. He liked his life just the way it was. He didn’t want to do anything different. He still doesn’t. And that’s the worst, most shameful part of it all: at the end of the day, some part of Shane will always wish he could wind back time like adjusting a watch; erase that Instagram post before it ever hit the internet and go back to the life they’d had before; the life that was slowly killing them both.

A squelch sounds behind him—the kind of sneaker-on-mud squelch he knows like the back of his hand. “Not now, Ilya,” Shane calls. “I’m not in the fucking mood.”

“I’ll fucking say,” Dad replies. “I’ve never, ever heard you talk to your mother like that.” And oh, it’s not what Shane was expecting, but it’s still familiar; a nostalgic pattern, a dance he and his parents have done before—Shane getting into a fight with Mom or pitching a fit over something, and then, inevitably, Dad smoothing things over after, until, of course, the next time Mom wanted Shane to try a new food, or comb gel through his hair, or put himself out there and make friends with other kids his own age, and then they’d do it all over, again and again and again.

Shane sniffs, and swipes at his nose. “Yeah, well,” he says, and turns back to the lake, “there’s a lot you guys don’t know about me.”

Dad settles on his haunches next to Shane, careful not to touch. “Okay. You’re right. There is a lot we don’t know about you. But we can’t help unless you tell us what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Shane replies. He stares out at the lake, alternately burning orange and black as tar in the light of the setting sun. A bird flies overhead—duck, maybe, or Canada goose. “I don’t know, I’m just pissed.”

For a long time, Dad just looks at him. Shane can feel it, but he doesn’t dare look back. He doesn’t want to know what he’ll see there—if he’ll look at his dad and see anger, or pity, or something carefully, meticulously blank. And so, they watch the clouds roll in, listen to the bugs and the birds go quiet and the water thrash against the shore. Shane closes his eyes for a while, and just lets himself feel the hot-and-cold contrast of the golden afternoon sun burning his skin and the wind whipping the heat away before it can really penetrate deeper.

“Come with me, kiddo,” Dad says, after a long, long time. “I was thinking we could do a bonfire tonight, and we need firewood. Do your old man a favor and chop some up for me.”

Shane follows him back up the trail, to the rickety shed just barely big enough to stuff the lawnmower in. “You have a huge pile right there, Dad,” he scoffs, because he fucking does—stacked neatly against the side of the shed, at least as high as Shane’s waist, with more full logs stacked on the other side.

“Just chop the wood, Shane,” Dad says, and hands Shane a two-handed axe, and points at the wide stump he uses as a chopping block.

So, Shane chops. He loses himself in the rhythm of it, the held-breath anticipation of the upswing, the pure, joyous violence in bringing the axe down. He puts more muscle into it than he probably should—the first couple logs are old and punky, and practically explode on the very first hit. After, though, Shane gets into the good wood that’s still solid on the inside; the kind that takes real effort to split in two. And Shane just goes and goes. He goes until he sweats, and then he goes until his arms start to get sore, and his back starts to ache, and the hot, funny feeling in his chest slips into something sadder, something so fucking morose Shane can hardly bear it.

All at once, Shane makes an embarrassing, hurt noise, tosses the axe to the side, and sinks into a crouch, his face buried in his hands.

“Shit, shit, shit. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?” Dad says, and runs over, and rubs his hand over Shane’s back.

Shane shakes his head. “I thought coming out meant I was done lying,” he mumbles, into his hands, and abruptly falls back on his ass.

“Oh,” Dad says, stupidly, and groans as he sits on the ground next to Shane and wraps an arm around Shane’s shoulders. “Well, I don’t think it really counts as lying. It’s more like, oh, how do I say this?” Shane doesn’t let himself lean in, but he can still smell Dad’s old spice deodorant and aftershave and in-the-car sweat riding high on the wind. The heat of him presses through his flannel shirt and seeps through Shane’s thin tee; a poor substitute for the warmth of the sun. Shane swipes at the side of his face and stares at the horizon until his eyes go strange and hazy. “Like giving people a curated version of the truth,” he finally settles on. “And you’re doing it to protect yourself. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.”

“Yeah.” Shane pulls his knees up, rests his elbows on his knees, and stares at the woodchip-covered grass between his bare feet. “That’s what I told myself every time I lied to you guys about Ilya.”

“Oh,” Dad says again, and pulls Shane a little closer. “I’m sorry. I wish I could fix it for you.”

“Nobody can fix it,” Shane says, and sniffs, and swipes at his nose again. “That’s the fucking problem. I knew it would fuck things up, being gay. I knew it would make everything ten times worse.” He pauses, then, and nudges a woodchip with his toe. “I knew being gay with Ilya would make things a hundred times worse. And I tried to stop, I really did. But I couldn’t, and it’s way too fucking late for that now. I just—I gotta find a way to live with it, I guess.”

Dad pulls Shane into a real hug, then, with both arms around him and his whiskery stubble scratching against Shane’s cheek and his glasses digging into Shane’s temple. And Shane doesn’t cry, but it’s a close thing. His eyes well up, and thin snot dribbles over his lips and down his chin, but the tears never actually leave his eyes, so it’s fine, and it means nothing. Dad’s cheek is a little wet, where it’s pressed against his, but Shane doesn’t mention it. And when they go back up to the house carrying armfuls of firewood, Shane looks at his mom and Ilya, where they’re sitting in adirondak chairs around the firepit holding matching glasses of wine, and he says okay, I’ll do it, whatever it takes, and that was that. He spends the rest of the night in his own chair, scooted as close to Ilya as he can get, knocking their feet together and draping his hand over Ilya’s forearm; an apology in the first language they’d ever really shared.

Chapter 2: may (part 2)

Chapter Summary

And Shane tries to get back to that bliss he had before, where he saw their retirement together painted clear as day in rosy golden tones, but he can’t reach it. The illusion is gone, and Shane sees this—their bed, the cottage, the empty fridge—for what it really is; two rats chased into a hole underground, slowly starving to death while they hide from the hungry things outside, lying to each other every time they whisper sweet nothings and comb fingers through each other’s hair; lying every time they talk about inane bullshit like Scott Hunter’s stupid honeymoon in fucking Rome; lying through their teeth every time they call the hole a home.

Chapter Notes

Of course, Ilya didn’t freak out the next day, when they went over to Shane’s parents’ much smaller cottage for dinner again, and got interrogated for like two hours. Mom and Dad traded off questions—when did this start, what was the wedding like, have you talked about children—and Shane and Ilya traded off answers; rookie season—no, summer before—beautiful, we watched the northern lights—cold, so fucking cold, and Shane took forever with the car, I thought I was going to die—a little, but not seriously, not until after we retire—I like children, but I don’t know how to raise one, I think I would be happy just running hockey camps for five year olds.

Ilya didn’t freak out the day after, either, when he and Shane finally sat down to go through their emails and found out they were both benched, indefinitely, until the MLH concluded their investigation. Ilya just shrugged and said is the off-season, who cares? Is not like we are missing anything. He didn’t freak out when he saw the insane schedule Mom put together for them—almost a month in New York, doing carefully scripted interviews with Sports Illustrated and ESPN and GQ, shooting ads for Calvin Klein and Reebok and Rolex inbetween wherever they could in a dusk-to-dawn sprint that had Shane exhausted before they’d even sat down to talk about the pre-selected interview questions. And Ilya continued to not freak out, not when the Metros and the Centaurs put out lukewarm and slightly warmer than lukewarm statements on twitter, tagged with #hockeyisforeveryone, and he continued to not freak out when speculation that they’d been throwing matches for each other started to pick up steam on the internet, and he continued to not freak out when the New York Post started publishing homophobic thinkpieces on all the ways that Shane and Ilya and Scott fucking Hunter have ruined hockey for good.

And when Shane finally had enough of the spinning and the planning—when he heard the phrase feel-good tragedy come out of his mother’s mouth and stood up from the dining table and begged her to please, please just give him and Ilya a few days alone before they finalized a comprehensive media strategy—Ilya just stood there behind him, stoic, arms crossed, and held his hand for the entire ten-minute drive home. All without saying a single fucking word.

So, when it comes, Shane is so on edge from the waiting and the anticipating that mostly, he feels relieved, which is so fucked up that he’ll never tell Ilya—he’ll take it to his fucking grave. When it comes, they’re three days out from Scott’s wedding, staring down an entire week where Mom had promised to leave them alone, and Shane wakes up because his feet are freezing, and when he reaches out for Ilya, his half of the bed is stone-cold and cavernous.

It’s so fucking early that it’s still dark outside, which means it’s still dark inside, because Shane’s cottage is mostly glass. But when he looks out the window, he can see a faint pinprick way out at the end of the dock, glowing cherry-red and following the same rhythmic path; temple to mouth, temple to mouth, the way Ilya smokes when he’s swiping at his eyes between puffs.

So. Shane drags the duvet out to the edge of the dock, where Ilya is shirtless and chainsmoking and dangling his feet into the freezing cold water, crying his fucking eyes out.

The dock creaks under Shane’s bare feet. Ilya starts, and sniffs, and hastily swipes at his cheeks, but when Shane sits next to him, he leans in, and helps pull the duvet tighter around them both.

For a long moment, it’s just quiet; cicada-song and the frogs dueting, the wind curling through the reeds, the moon distant and diffused. Ilya’s throat works once, twice. He takes a drag off his cigarette and turns his head away when he exhales—downwind, because he knows Shane hates the smell.

“My brother called,” Ilya finally says, once his shoulder has warmed up where it’s pressed against Shane.

“Oh. I thought you blocked his number.”

“I did. He used Polina’s phone.”

“What did he say?”

Ilya sniffs, again, and slouches down, to lay his head on Shane’s shoulder. “Oh, you know, the usual. He says I am terribly selfish. He says Ilya, did you even think of how this will affect me? My child? Your fucking niece? I say, what does it fucking matter? I am basically Canadian now, who gives a shit what I do. He says, people will wonder about her. They will wonder if she is faggot like her uncle. Children will call her names. I say, you didn’t care about children being called names when I was fourteen and you were calling me faggot, and he says so you will not send money, and I tell him no, the money is in a trust because I know that if he has access he will spend it all on coke, and he says he is clean, and I say bullshit, you say that every time, and every time it is a lie, and he says,” Ilya breaks, and takes another drag, and breathes, ragged. “He says that it is a good thing Mama is dead, because the shame of having a deadbeat faggot for a son would’ve killed her faster than the pills.” And then the tears come again, dripping down Shane’s chest, fucking freezing in the nighttime breeze.

Shane pulls him in closer and says, “Jesus fucking christ,” because fuck, what else can he say? There’s nothing in the whole world that could possibly make it better.

“Is nothing I haven’t heard before,” Ilya says. “I don’t know why I’m acting like a fucking pussy, crying over it.”

Shane cradles Ilya’s damp face between his palms, and says, “hey, hey. You’re not a fucking pussy. You’re the strongest person I know.” He rubs his thumb over Ilya’s lip, thinking. “And I’m not just saying that because you can bench two-eighty.”

And Shane can’t really see Ilya smile, in the dark like this, but it doesn’t matter. He can feel it just fine. Ilya laughs, a little, and thunks his temple against Shane’s collarbone. And then, he goes still, again, and Shane just waits, dragging his fingers along the edge of the dock, pressing little kisses to the top of Ilya’s head.

“I don’t know if he was wrong,” Ilya whispers, after a long time, so quiet Shane can hardly hear it over the water lapping at the shore. “That is the worst part. Mama loved me,” Ilya says, and pauses to take a drag off his cigarette, and stares out at the pitch-black lake, “but she loved her saints, too, and god, and tradition. Probably, she wanted me to marry nice Russian Orthodox girl and have one million babies. If she saw me now, I don’t know. I don’t know if she would like me very much.”

“Yeah, but she’d still love you.”

Ilya shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t know.”

Shane swings a leg over Ilya’s lap, then, but they’re right on the edge of the dock, and instead of meeting pressure-treated wood, his knee comes down on open fucking air. Ilya latches onto his elbow, but it’s too late, and Shane is too fucking heavy. “Oh fuck,” he cries, and then he overbalances, and flails backwards, and falls into the cold-as-shit water with a deafening shriek.

When he comes up for air, Ilya is laughing at him. Great, heaving cackles. He can barely fucking breathe with it. “Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” Shane says, and wraps his hands around Ilya’s ankles, and drags Ilya into the water right alongside him.

“You motherfucker,” Ilya says, gleeful, when he comes back up to the surface, and shakes his hair out like a dog. “You made me lose my cigarette. And you ruined the duvet.” And there it is, the fucking duvet, floating away in the lake. Shane can’t be bothered to give a shit.

“I’ll buy you another one,” Shane says, nonsensically, and reaches out for Ilya. “Come here.” It’s redundant; Shane is already moving towards him—a vague head-and-shoulders shape in the diffuse midnight moonglow. He gets his hands on Ilya’s shoulders, and then his lips on Ilya’s chin, and finally his tongue in Ilya’s mouth, because he still doesn’t know what to say to make it better. Maybe the only person who can possibly make it better has been dead for eighteen years.

“Come back to bed,” Shane whispers, against Ilya’s lips, when they break for air. Ilya nods, and fishes the sopping wet duvet out of the lake anyways, practically staggering under the weight of all that wet fabric. Shane helps him spread it over the deck railing, and then takes him inside and takes him to bed, still smelling like cigarette smoke and lake water.

They lay on their sides, curled into each other. Shane kisses Ilya’s cheek, his chin, the slope of his jaw, and licks his palm, and wraps his hand around both of their cocks together. He jerks them off like that, so slow it almost hurts, and Ilya gets his arm around Shane’s neck and gasps, wet, against Shane’s forehead. He cries, then, a little, right before he comes, and Shane licks away his tears, and then rolls him onto his back and jerks off on his belly and licks the cum off him, too. And then Shane collapses on top of him, and they fall asleep just like that; Shane’s face pressed to the space just below Ilya’s sternum, Ilya’s hand cupped loose over the back of his head.

_____

Shane wakes to sunlight splashed across his face in a narrow strip. He’s on his side, and Ilya is spooned up close behind him; his stinking breath tickling Shane’s ear, his sweaty chest pressed to Shane’s sticky back, his hand draped across Shane’s hip and shoved between Shane’s thighs, limply cupped around Shane’s half-hard dick.

Usually, mornings like these were Shane’s favorite; slow and lazy and over-warm, the whole day stretched out before him like a meandering two-lane country road headed nowhere in particular. Today, though, Shane still has Ilya’s broken-voiced I don’t know stuck in his head, and the back of his neck is tight from dried-out saltwater tears that Ilya cried sometime after Shane fell asleep again, and he can still smell the cigarette smoke on Ilya’s breath. He hasn’t fixed anything, he knows. The hurt inside Ilya is still there, and it could rear its head back up today, or tomorrow, or stay buried deep for another decade before Shane catches a glimpse of it again. It feels like chasing after the loch ness monster, sometimes, with Ilya. Like he’s spending all his time looking out for something that no one else believes in.

Usually, after a night like that, Shane would stay in bed, because Ilya doesn’t like waking up alone. But Shane really has to piss, and he really should sort out breakfast, and he’s starting to get that itching feeling along his scalp that always comes when he’s been awake too long without brushing his teeth.

Ilya stirs, when Shane tries to slip out of bed, and reflexively tightens his grip on Shane’s dick, which makes Shane yelp and twitch his hips back against Ilya’s crotch. Ilya presses a wet, sloppy kiss to the space behind Shane’s ear and makes a forlorn little noise when Shane bitchily throws the blankets off them both. “Where are you going?” he mumbles, thick, and throws his leg over Shane’s hip to better trap him in bed.

“Breakfast,” Shane says, and tries to pry Ilya’s hand off his dick, but he doesn’t try very hard, so he isn’t exactly successful. “I’m starving.”

Ilya grins into the back of his neck and gives Shane a proper stroke, then thumbs over the wet tip of his dick. “Definitely hungry for something.”

“Fuck off,” Shane replies, and swats at the back of Ilya’s hand. “I’m getting food.” And then, he eels out of bed and disappears into the bathroom, leaving Ilya whining behind him. He pisses. He brushes his teeth. He pulls on the sweatpants Ilya left crumpled on the bathroom floor the night before, even though it feels a little gross—he doesn’t want to put on nice, clean clothes before he showers.

In the kitchen, he stares into the fridge and despairs. It’s basically empty. He’s got a single leftover brat, half a dozen beers, a mostly empty bottle of ketchup, a half-full bottle of Frank’s RedHot that Shane had bought last summer because Hayden insisted it was the best sauce for wings and left in the fridge with vague notions of polishing it off eventually, even though he and Ilya agreed it was fucking disgusting. The pantry was more of the same; a half-gone bottle of olive oil, a big bag of dry white rice and a half-full container of flour, a rock-hard lump of sugar, an unopened box of corn starch, a single bag of beef jerky, a dozen jars of various spices and seasonings, a giant two-pound tin of President’s Choice with just enough grounds to make one last pot of coffee.

So. Shane makes coffee. He dumps chunks of sugar into Ilya’s mug, and wishes his cottage wasn’t so fucking remote, because then at least he could doordash Ilya some fucking coffee creamer. He takes one last look at the fridge, like the groceries they need somehow teleported inside while the door was closed. He rolls up the bag of beef jerky and stuffs it in his pocket, and snags the coffee mugs, and heads back to the bedroom.

Ilya’s sitting up in bed, staring at his phone. He looks up, when Shane comes back with nothing but coffee, and frowns, over-exaggerated and silly. “What, no breakfast in bed?”

Shane sets the coffee mugs on top of the nightstand, then pulls the bag of beef jerky out of his pocket and tosses it at him. “That’s all the food we’ve got in the house,” he says. “Well. That or a single leftover brat.”

 “So we need to do grocery run,” Ilya says. Shane hands him his mug, then crawls into bed with his own mug and sits next to Ilya, their backs to the headboard, thighs touching hip to knee. Ilya sips his coffee, and makes a yuck face, because Ilya only ever drinks coffee when its loaded up with enough cream and sugar and flavored syrup to give him a heart attack. He abandons his phone and cups his mug between his hands, frowning for real this time. Thinking, probably, of the small-town supermarket an hour away, where most of the customers looked exactly like the guy in the Petro-Canada parking lot that had called them fucking faggots; sunburnt white guys with untrimmed ratty-looking beards, wearing beat-up baseball caps and a jack daniels t-shirt and mirrored aviators, piling twenty-four-packs of beer in the beds of their pickup trucks.

“Well,” Shane replies. “We could take the boat out. I think we’ve got stuff for a fish fry.”

“My big strong man,” Ilya coos, and leans into Shane’s shoulder. “So butch. So competent. Going to go catch me breakfast while I lay in bed and jerk off? I feel like decadent cave woman. You will have your way with me when you come back, yes? Ravish me?”

Shane laughs, soft. “Jesus christ. You sound like a romance novel.”

“Is very romantic, catching me fish. I think I understand why girls swipe right on guys with fish pics on their tinder now.”

Shane stares at him, then; naked in their bed, lips pursed on the rim of his mug, big hands curled oh-so-careful around the ceramic, knees pulled up towards his chest, fuzzy curls radiant in the midmorning light. He looks like something out of a painting. Shane wants him so bad he can hardly see straight. “You could come with, you know. You might like it.”

Ilya blinks, once, twice. “You want me to?” He says, a little confused, a little unsteady. Maybe because he’s a self-professed city boy, who’s scared of loons and makes Shane handle bugs in the house, and has no idea why Shane would think he could possibly enjoy going on a fishing trip. Maybe because he’s still a little raw and unsure, after last night, and forgot that he is, at the end of the day, Shane’s favorite person in the entire fucking world.

“Yeah.” Shane says, and lays his hand over Ilya’s bare knee, and strokes at the divot to the side of his kneecap with his thumb. “I don’t really want to leave you alone right now.”

“I’ve never fished before,” Ilya admits. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s okay. I’ll teach you.”

Ilya smiles at him, soft. It glows in the sun. “Okay, mister mountain man. Teach me how to fish.”

And, so. They finish their coffee, and then they jerk each other off in the shower, and smear sunscreen over each other, and Ilya bitches and moans about Shane’s ugly cargo shorts, and complains even more when Shane plops his fishing hat on Ilya’s head, but his dick is hard in his stupid little swim shorts, so Shane knows he doesn’t really mean it. He follows Shane around like a duckling while Shane gathers his tools: the empty coffee tin, the hard-sided cooler in the garage, the last brat bun left in the plastic bag, the tackle box in the boat shed, the minnow net, the fishing pole Shane hasn’t touched in half a decade. And the questions! What do you need bread for, is cooler for beer, do I really have to wear this stupid hat? Shane answers one by one; the bread is for catching minnows, the cooler is for the fish, and yes, you do need to wear the stupid hat, it’s tradition.

Shane gets Ilya to help him fill the cooler with lake water. He shows Ilya how to catch minnows the easy way, with a balled-up piece of bread and the minnow net, and then he shows off, and shows Ilya how to catch them with the coffee tin—the tin half-submerged, a bit of bread held inside, the whole thing held perfectly still until a couple minnows wander inside to eat, then get trapped inside the coffee tin when Shane yanks it out of the water with a lightning-quick flick of the wrist.

He fills up the coffee tin with as many minnows as he can catch, then shows Ilya how to hook one—through the tail, because that was how Dad taught Shane to do it. Ilya, of course, refuses to try on his own, and Shane laughs and says you’re so prissy, how is it that you’re perfectly capable of putting your fingers in my asshole, but touching a tiny baby minnow is too gross for you, and Ilya replies is not the same, your asshole isn’t slimy and doesn’t wriggle like that evil worm in the Amazon that goes up your dick, and Shane calls him a fucking baby, because he’s such a giant fucking baby, Shane’s giant fucking baby, and he loves him.

Ilya complains about the boat, too, because Shane didn’t go out and buy a speedboat. Instead, he’d waited until his dad was looking to upgrade his fishing boat, and then bought it off him for twice what Dad had paid when he first bought it way back in the nineties. The boat is faded green and dotted with bits of rust; a stripped-down thing that used to be a row boat, probably, and doesn’t even have cushions on the seats. The nicest part is the motor on the back. And Shane could replace it, but he never will, because this is the boat he learned how to fish in, and in this, he’s like Ilya: terribly sentimental, overly attached.

And just like that, they’re off, loaded up with beer in their pockets, headed for a reedy patch on the opposite side of the lake where Shane knows he can probably catch a few northerns. It’s a beautiful day for it, too—bright and hot, but not so hot that Shane feels uncomfortable, and just windy enough to feel good on Shane’s face.

Ilya discreetly shoves Shane’s hat under his ass when he thinks Shane isn’t looking, and watches as Shane ties a new hook on the line. He winces when Shane baits it, and ducks, comically, when Shane casts. He stares out at the lake for like, maybe thirty seconds after the line plunks into the water, and then says, “so we just, what? Sit here and wait?”

“Pretty much,” Shane says with a shrug, and shifts to a more comfortable position on the hard bench. Maybe he should buy waterproof cushions for next time. “I’m using live bait, and minnows are pretty lively when you hook them through the tail, so it’s doing like, all the work. We just gotta wait and see if the fish are hungry today.”

Ilya sighs. “This is even more boring than weird Canadian habit of staring at fire.”

“I dunno,” Shane smiles, and nudges at Ilya’s foot with his own. “I like it. It’s, like, peaceful and shit. Quiet.”

“Is this your way of telling me to shut up?”

“No, no,” Shane laughs. The rod in his hands twitches, but it’s not strong enough to be a bite, Shane thinks. Just the minnow moving around through the water. “I like listening to you talk.”

“Mm.” Ilya digs in the pocket of his shorts and pulls out a beer. He pops the top off against the side of the boat, and takes a sip, even though it’s not even noon. “You never wanted to do this before.”

Shane shrugs. “I had better things to do before.”

“Like suck my dick?”

Shane laughs, again, and pointedly looks at Ilya, at the space between his sprawled-out legs, the unsubtle bulge there. “Yeah, like suck your dick.”

Ilya glances around, at the lake, the swaying reeds, the little waves lapping against the shore; the noon-high sun glinting off the water and the blue, blue sky. “Is this,” he says, hesitantly, and gestures vaguely around them with his beer bottle. “Is this something you’d want to do more, after you retire? Go fishing, camping, whatever. You know, nature shit.”

“Oh, god, you think I need to worry about that?” Shane says, too loud and high-pitched. His stomach drops and swoops, and he feels a little sick. Does Ilya think that they’ll need to retire soon? Does he think that the investigation will find that they did something wrong? Does he—

“No, no,” Ilya says, and kicks at Shane’s foot. “I’m just curious. Is like, I never really thought about what the future looks like for me.” Ilya takes a long pull from his beer, and pointedly turns away from Shane. “When I was younger, I thought maybe I’d end up dead in a ditch somewhere. And then, with you, I was like, okay, I will be living fairytale happily ever after with Shane Hollander, but that is so vague, you know? Now, I don’t know. I want to think about it, maybe.”

Shane’s stomach somehow simultaneously clenches and untwists. It’s a weird feeling—one he doesn’t care to repeat. “Oh,” he says, and scoots forward far enough that he can hook his foot around the back of Ilya’s knee and drag him in closer. “I never really thought about it either,” he continues, which is a bit of an omission. Shane has actively avoided thinking about what comes after hockey for a long time, because, truth be told, he can’t picture it. He started playing when he was just four years old. He can’t even remember a time before hockey. How can he possibly imagine a future without it? “Maybe I’d want to? I liked fishing a lot when I was a kid, but that was because it was, like, something I did with my dad. We were so busy all the time, me with hockey stuff and him with work, but every summer we’d find time to come up here and spend a few days fishing. Maybe it would be nice to go fishing with him again sometime, I don’t know. We haven’t gone since I made juniors.”

“Your mom didn’t go with?”

Shane snorts. “God, no. Our fishing trips were her break time. She’d bust out a bottle of wine and catch up on Survivor.” Shane stares down at Ilya’s feet. His slides are slipping off already. One is floating in the thin film of water that always seems to get inside the boat, no matter how hard Shane tries to keep it dry. “What about you? Did your dad ever…”

“Take me fishing? No. We had dacha when I was small. Like, uh, cottage, but not crazy fancy like yours. Belonged to Deda—my grandfather. Sometimes, in summer, we would go for a bit, and Papa would go hunting with his brother and brother-in-law, which was mostly an excuse to go drink vodka in the woods and play with guns. Alexei used to take me and my cousins out to the forest, to this big fucking berry patch, and we would eat straight from the bush, like bears.” Ilya takes another pull, and laughs into the rim of his beer bottle. “We saw bear shit there, once. Ran screaming all the way back to the house.”

There’s another twitch on the line, but nothing serious. A hit, maybe, instead of a bite. It’s hard to tell. It’s been so fucking long since Shane has fished for anything. “What kind of berries?”

Ilya holds his hand up, his thumb and pointer finger arranged in a circle roughly the size of a dime. “They’re like, green and round. Very tart, like rhubarb. I haven’t had in a long time. We stopped going when I was seven, eight, something like that. After Deda and Baba died, there was big fight over who would inherit the dacha. Next time I saw that uncle was at Papa’s funeral.” Ilya glances over at Shane, then, and says, “don’t look at me like that, all sad and shit. I didn’t even like him very much. He was fucking annoying. Always pinching my cheeks and asking me if I had a little girlfriend yet. I was seven. I still thought girls were diseased.”

Shane raises an eyebrow. “You’d better keep thinking girls are diseased, if you want to fuck me later tonight.”

Ilya carefully sets his beer to the side, and crawls out of his seat, which rocks the whole fucking boat. “Shane, Shane, moya lyubov,” he says, awkwardly slipping through the puddle of water in the bilge, until he’s kneeling between Shane’s spread legs, “how could any girl compare? You are first in my heart, the apple of my eye, the love of my life,” he pauses, with a sly twist to his mouth and a wicked gleam in his eye, “the hole to my cock—”

Shane shoves at his stupid face. “All right, all right, I get the picture.”

“I don’t think you do,” Ilya says, and licks his lips, and rubs at Shane’s thighs. “I think maybe you need, what is the term, hands on demonstration?” And then, he’s going for Shane’s zipper like he’s hiding a puck in his pants and it’s late in the third period and the score is all tied up, and then he’s shoving Shane’s shorts down as far as they’ll go when he’s sat like this, and pulling out Shane’s dick, which is hard and has been ever since Ilya took that first, sensual pull off his fucking beer bottle, and he licks at the tip once, twice, and then sinks down until his nose is mashed against Shane’s pubic bone.

“Oh my god,” Shane says, faintly, and nearly drops his fishing rod in the lake. His other hand flies to Ilya’s hair and pulls, hard. And Ilya’s absolutely wild with it, fucking his throat on Shane’s cock, practically gagging on it, and then there’s a sharp tug on the fishing rod in Shane’s hand. “Oh my god,” Shane repeats, nonsensically. “Ilya, Ilya, there’s a fucking, there’s a fish, oh god, don’t stop.”

Ilya draws back and says, “reel it in, then, Hollander,” and jesus, his voice is already a little raspy and hoarse, and then he goes right back to fucking his own face on Shane’s dick. And its so, so hard to pull his hand away from Ilya’s hair, but he does it, and he settles into the rhythm of reeling the fish in—the slow lean back, then forward-lean to wind line onto the reel—and Ilya settles into a rhythm on his cock, and Shane is dying, he is, he really is.

The fish breaks the surface, and Shane is so fucking close. His whole body is one line of tension, and more than anything, he wants to curl himself around Ilya’s head and come down his throat, but they’ve got to fucking eat today, Shane has to feed him, so instead, Shane reaches a shaking hand out for the net, stashed against the side of the boat, and awkwardly dips it in the water. It takes him three tries to get the fish in the net, but he does it, he fucking does it, and then the fish is thumping against the bottom of the boat, uselessly thrashing around in the net, and Ilya fucking shrieks around Shane’s dick, and that’s all it takes. Shane buries his hands in Ilya’s hair and comes down his throat.

Ilya shoves at Shane’s hands and rips himself off Shane’s dick. A bit of cum dribbles between them, into the murky bilgewater.

“Why the fuck did you put it in the boat!” Ilya cries, and tries to clamber over Shane, which nearly capsizes them.

“What?” Shane says, dazed and come-drunk. He’s still coming a little, he thinks. There’s a wet splotch of it on his nice khaki cargo shorts.

“The fucking fish, Hollander!” Ilya yells, and points at the offending creature, still flopping in the net. “It almost fucking touched me!”

“Oh my god, you’re such a fucking baby,” Shane replies, and carefully zips back up, then reaches over and picks the fish up with his bare hands. “Oh, cool, a northern. These guys are tasty.” Beside him, Ilya cringes into the seat, and looks at him like he’s fucking crazy. Shane digs into his tackle box and pulls out a pair of pliers, then pries the hook out of the fish’s mouth with a wet-sounding crunch. Shane eyeballs it, and he doesn’t think they’ll have to throw it back—it looks like it’s right around fifty centimeters.

He pops it in the cooler, and the fish thrashes in the water, still vigorous and mean. “You wanna look at it?” Shane asks, and Ilya glares at him.

“No,” Ilya replies. “I don’t want to fucking look at it, I don’t want to touch it, I don’t even want to eat it anymore. Fucking disgusting. I hate that thing. Take me to grocery store. I would rather brave one thousand homophobes in ugly hats than deal with another one of those fucking things in the boat.” He pauses, for dramatic effect. “And my beer is spilled. This is the worst day of my life.”

“Liar,” Shane says, fondly. “You don’t have to look if you don’t want. And you’ll like eating it, trust me.” And he does like it, later that day, after they’ve caught two more and Ilya ran for the hills when it was time for Shane to fillet their haul. He didn’t complain, though, when Shane mixed some flour and corn starch together in a bowl, and added garlic salt and paprika and a little bit of beer, and dredged the fresh fillets through the mixture and fried them in the rest of the olive oil. He eats everything he’s given and still asks for more, licks his fingers after every bite and solemnly declares that the hot sauce ruined it, Hollander, for once, you are right, is better plain. Shane kisses the taste out of his mouth, even though he hates that fucking hot sauce, and he says sorry about the fish, I’ll be more careful next time.

And Shane very carefully doesn’t think about what comes after this—the investigation, the trip to New York, the next season of hockey, or the next, or the next, or what comes after, when there’s no more hockey left for him to play. The only thing that matters is this moment, right here; the taste of fish fry on Ilya’s lips, his ridiculous girlish shriek when he sees the fish heads in the garbage, and the mean way he fucks Shane, later that night, biting and slapping hard enough to bruise for days. But, in the deep dark night, when Ilya is snoring beside him and even the wind has gone to sleep, Shane curls in close against Ilya’s broad back and thinks that maybe, life after hockey wouldn’t be so bad, if all of his days went exactly like this.

_____

In the night, somewhere between midnight and three in the morning, Ilya groans himself awake, sweaty and overheated. He kicks the blankets off them both and turns over, buries his face between Shane’s sweaty pecs and rubs there, settling back in.

Shane strokes over the back of Ilya’s head, absent-minded. He hasn’t slept. Instead, he’d checked his phone, saw that he had no new texts from anybody on the team, not even Hayden, and stared at it until his phone shut itself off, then stared at the ceiling for a while, after. Remembering Hayden and Jackie’s wedding, years and years ago. He still remembers the feel of the tux against his skin, the smell of the flower in his lapel, walking down the aisle with Jackie’s maid of honor on his arm and feeling an inexplicable dread curling high in his belly. And before, in the hotel getting ready, he’d caught Hayden in the middle of pacing and mumbling I can’t do this, I’m gonna fuck it up, smashed Hayden’s face between his palms, and said, seriously, she loves you, man, she won’t care if you fuck it up. She’s probably just happy you’ll be fucking it up together. And later, at the reception, Hayden had not-so-subtly pushed Shane towards Jackie’s maid of honor and said it’ll be your turn soon, man, I can tell, and Shane drank so much beer he ended up in the bathroom puking his guts up an hour and a half later, JJ slapping him on the back and congratulating him for finally letting loose.

Ilya mouths at Shane’s skin, then bites down, a little mean. “You are thinking something,” he mutters, slurred-together and thick. “It is very loud, Hollander, and I am trying to sleep.”

“Sorry,” Shane replies, and presses a kiss to Ilya’s curls. “I’ll go to sleep soon, I promise.”

Ilya blows a sleepy raspberry against his chest. “Liar,” he yawns, and shoves at Shane until they’re separated enough for Ilya to look him in the eye, then shifts so he’s comfortable on his side, cheek cradled on his bicep. “Just tell me whatever it is.”

“I was just wondering—”

“Mhm.” Ilya intones, dry, and trails his hands up Shane’s ribs, where he knows Shane is ticklish.

“Shut up!” Shane says, laughing, and slaps Ilya’s hand away. “I was thinking about vow renewals.”

In the dark, it’s hard to make out, but a lucky slant of moonlight still catches the edge of Ilya’s frown. “You mean, like, do-over wedding? In church, with fancy clothes and a priest and shit?”

“No. I mean,” Shane turns on his side, then, and buries half his face in the pillow. He traces over Ilya’s face; the mole on his cheek, the little lines just starting to show at the corner of his eye, the slope of his jaw, the soft wet heat of his mouth. “I was just thinking, like. Getting married was important to me, and it was important to you, and we never really got to share that with anybody. And you said you wished my parents were there. So I thought it might be nice to fly back up to Nunavut and, I don’t know, share a little bit of it? Take people down to the courthouse, say some words out on the tundra. Maybe rent out the conference room in a hotel and bust open a couple bottles of wine or something? Maybe a keg? And you could invite Svetlana, and some of the guys from Boston or Ottawa.”  Shane pauses, and then hurriedly tacks on, “but if you wanted a real wedding, with fancy clothes and a priest and shit, we could do that, too.”

For a long time, Ilya just looks at him. Shane can’t tell what he’s feeling—it’s too dark to read it on his face. “Tell you a secret?” Ilya finally whispers.

Shane nods. Ilya leans in and kisses him once, twice, then mumbles, “I hate weddings. Always have. Only one I liked was ours, and I liked it because there was none of the fucking, what is it called. Pimp and happenstance?”

Shane laughs, a deep belly laugh that nearly has their foreheads knocking together. “Pomp and circumstance?”

“Fuck you, is late, and I am very tired.” Ilya yawns, and shoves Shane over, so he can sprawl on top of him. He sticks his face into the crook of Shane’s neck, yawns again, and licks at the sweat there. “I like your idea,” he mumbles, so quiet and mealy-mouthed that Shane can barely make it out. “We should do it. Who else would you want to invite?”

And Shane thinks of his phone, then; the dead team group chat, the Whatsapp thread with Rose that, within the year, dried down to the occasional meme and insincere promises to get coffee next time they were in town together. He wonders if Hayden is also thinking about his wedding, years and years ago, and hates Shane for retroactively spoiling it. So, he shrugs, and puts his hands in Ilya’s hair, and tries very hard not to think about it.

Ilya lifts his head up, then, so he can look at Shane better. “Pike hasn’t talked to you?”

“No,” Shane mumbles, and gently guides Ilya’s head back down to where it was.  

“Maybe he just doesn’t know what to say,” Ilya replies, muzzily. “Maybe you could text first?”

“And say what? Sorry for lying to you for years?”

Ilya bites him again, harder this time. “I was thinking more like, come to dinner with me and my husband when I am back in Montreal.” Ilya slips a little lower, so his head is pillowed on Shane’s chest again, and presses his arms tight to Shane’s ribs, and his whole body goes limp, like he’s planning on staying there the whole night. “I don’t think you should say sorry,” he says, quiet. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Hayden used to like setting Shane up with various women. Usually Jackie’s friends. He’d sidle up to Shane after practice, or on the bus to the hotel after a game, and show Shane a picture of some random stranger—usually blonde—and say something like she’s really into yoga or you’ll like her, dude, she teaches a spin class, and waggle his eyebrows like an idiot. And he was so fucking persistent, too. When Jackie ran out of friends, he’d point out women at the bar or the club, and when Shane stopped going to the bars and the clubs, he’d send Shane screenshots of Instagram accounts and tinder profiles. And when Shane asked, once, why he was so dead-fucking-set on finding Shane a girlfriend, he said, completely sincerely, you just seem lonely, man, and I want you to be happy. And, so, Shane hadn’t had the heart to tell him to knock it off. He’d just kept making up excuses.

“But I did do something wrong,” Shane says, low, into the quiet, and waits for Ilya to reply. It never comes. He just sniffs, and shoves his face further into Shane’s chest, and keeps breathing, even and deep. “Ilya?” Shane whispers, but it’s no use. Ilya is dead to the world. Shane stares up at the blue-black ceiling, and waits for sleep to come.

_____

And so life goes, for the next couple of days. They take the boat out, every morning, because they’re both professional fucking athletes in the middle of bulking, and they can barely catch enough fish to keep up with their appetites. Shane talks Ilya into casting the line, and almost ends up with a fish hook impaled in the back of his head. Shane convinces him to finally, finally touch a minnow, and laughs at the look on his face. He takes Ilya into the woods, too, and shows him where all the good plants are—the ramps in a shady spot under a big old-growth maple tree, the watercress in a patch where the lake turns into a river, the little grove of serviceberry trees buried in the woods next to the boathouse, branches bursting with purple fruit, the dead log where Shane can sometimes find chicken-of-the-woods if he’s lucky enough.

Ilya keeps calling him names; cave man, wild man, mountain man, and every night he fucks Shane into the mattress, whispering my good little provider, feeding me so well, you are going to make me fat, and it does something to Shane’s hindbrain that has him coming so hard he falls briefly unconscious. And he is feeding Ilya well—fish fry, grilled lake trout on seasoned rice with a side salad of watercress and wild strawberry and end-of-season ramps, pan-seared bass and nannyberry pancakes, kissel made not-quite-right, because all Shane had on hand was corn starch and serviceberries. Shane can’t get enough of him; the scratches left on his knuckles after they picked a whole quart of haskap berries, his purple tongue after gorging himself on fruit plucked straight from the vine, the dirt under his fingernails, his sweat-smell, the way his belly bulges after a heavy meal.  

Every day, Ilya asks, where did you learn all this? When did you have the time? And Shane tells him his stories, one by one; Dad grew up out in the boonies, I learned it from him; I was a boy scout before hockey took over everything, my old troop master used to take us out hiking in the summers and send us home with buckets full of berries; I might’ve taken the what-would-you-do-in-a-zombie-apocalypse question a little too seriously, back in the day, and it stayed in the back of my mind when I built this place, which is why I’ve got an independent well and solar panels on the roof, and it’s also why the bottom row of the bookshelf is full of books on bushcraft. And Ilya says bushcraft? And Shane smiles, indulgent, and tells him fishing and foraging and shit. And Ilya grins, so bright Shane can hardly bear to look, and asks if Shane can start a fire by rubbing sticks together. So, Shane takes him out to the backyard and shows him how to do that, too. And every day, the urge to take Ilya and whisk him off to some remote, internet-less log cabin in the Yukon grows just a little stronger, and the dread Shane carries inside grows just a little bigger, but then Shane watches Ilya lick grease off his fingers after eating the fish Shane caught for him, and he forgets to think about anything other than Ilya’s wonderful, terrible mouth for a little while.

And then, Shane gets another phone call from Farah. It’s early, just after eight in the morning, and Shane’s hands are full of fish guts—he’d wanted to surprise him with breakfast in bed, so he’d gotten up before the crack of dawn and caught a walleye right off the dock. And he’d felt so fucking happy in the moments before the phone rang, elbow-deep in the kitchen sink, his hands covered in glittery fish scales. He’d been thinking about how pretty and pleased Ilya would be when Shane woke him up with breakfast in bed and a blowjob. And then, the phone’s cheerful ringtone echoing through his kitchen—a hard check Shane should’ve seen coming.  

Shane answers the phone with his elbow, and frantically washes his hands off in the sink. “Hi, Shane,” Farah says, no preamble. “Your lawyer called me. I’ve got good news and bad. The bad news is, they’ve almost definitely got both of you on failure to disclose a conflict of interest. The good news is that they’ve only got you on failure to disclose a conflict of interest. Dawn said you’re probably looking at a slap on the wrist. A fine for sure, maybe a disciplinary hearing.”

And Shane should feel better, he knows, but he doesn’t. The words disciplinary hearing make him feel a little like he needs to throw up. “And if it’s worse?”

“Dawn said if they try for worse, they’ll be handing both of you a multimillion discrimination lawsuit. Said they’re riding the line as it is, and if they try to push further, it would be like Christmas came early for her firm. I like her. That woman is a shark.”

Mom had thought so too, when she met her. They’d both been students at McGill, at the time, stuck in the same boring English class, and connected over their plans to take the world by storm once college was over. And Mom had always talked about her with a certain sort of envy that Shane hadn’t picked up on until he was much older. When Shane was a teenager, Mom would come home from a meeting with Dawn and say she’s so fucking good with this sad, wistful look on her face.

Shane had never really liked her much. She’d met him for the first time when Shane was just six months old, and he always got the impression that she still saw him that way—a big, drooling baby that couldn’t possibly understand how complicated real adult life actually was.

“Management will back you, too,” Farah continued. “Apparently, the GM said he didn’t care if you killed a baby and ate it on live television. You won them three cups, so Crowell will have to pry you out of his cold, dead hands.”

Shane breathes a sigh of relief, and carefully pats the fish fillets dry. He’d hoped, of course, but he still remembered the night of the draft, that dry, offhanded we’re so glad Shane is Asian. It’s good for diversifying our image. “And the team?”

“I can’t say. That’s more your department.” She sighs into the phone, crackly and distorted. “But honestly, Shane, so long as you don’t royally fuck it up, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t be back on the ice next season.”

“So just don’t fuck it up, right?” Shane replies, weakly, and starts heating up the days-old olive oil, still in a pan on the stove, crunchy burnt bits lingering at the bottom.

“Yeah, exactly. I’d tell you to stick to the script when you’re doing your press tour, but I think you’ll do great. It’s your husband I’m worried about.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“I’ll talk to him. He’s my client too, remember? You just relax, enjoy your vacation. You’re going to have a very busy June.”

And with that, it’s over. They say their goodbyes, and Shane hangs up before he gets flour all over his phone, and he should be relieved, he knows, but he’s just—he’s scared, again. He’d forgotten to be, somewhere between tumbling through the front door and Ilya sucking his dick in the middle of Lake Muskoka, but now it drips down his spine again, and raises the hair along the back of his neck. So management wants him. So what? The management from his Juniors team had wanted him. They’d wanted him so bad they drafted him all the way out to fucking Saskatchewan, and that hadn’t stopped people in the crowd from screaming slurs as he skated past, and it hadn’t stopped his teammates from forcing him to strip naked and kneel in the snow while they dumped buckets of ice water over his head, and it hadn’t stopped the coaches from smugly looking the other way on the bus when the other kids pulled down his pants and—

Shane lays his hands flat on the countertop and bows his head and breathes, in and out. He cooks his walleye; dredges it through a lightly seasoned bowl of flour and watches the meat curl as it fries. When it’s done, he carries it on a plate to their room and sets it on the nightstand, and takes a moment to stare at Ilya, still asleep, laying on his back with an arm crooked above his head and the other cast into the empty space Shane left behind. And Ilya smiles, smug, when he wakes up with Shane’s mouth around his dick, and he smiles even bigger after, when Shane wipes his lips on the back of his hand and unceremoniously plops the plate of fried fish in his lap. And Shane tries to get back to that bliss he had before, where he saw their retirement together painted clear as day in rosy golden tones, but he can’t reach it. The illusion is gone, and Shane sees this—their bed, the cottage, the empty fridge—for what it really is; two rats chased into a hole underground, slowly starving to death while they hide from the hungry things outside, lying to each other every time they whisper sweet nothings and comb fingers through each other’s hair; lying every time they talk about inane bullshit like Scott Hunter’s stupid honeymoon in fucking Rome; lying through their teeth every time they call the hole a home.

Chapter End Notes

i have finished writing chapter four, so you all get chapter two as a treat. thank u once again to my fellow perverts and very good friends, who read this many moons ago and told me what parts i needed to fix. also: i am not an expert on the internal politics of Big Sport. that said, i do think that regardless of what shane's teammates and coaching staff think, management looks at him and sees dollar signs, so they are going to cling tight to shane's contract and never let him go. its also like a really interesting position to be in, i think, where the bosses love you and want to keep you, but the people you work with every day maybe are not nearly as enthusiastic vis a vis your continued employment. additionally, yes, you can catch minnows like that. i have done it as a small child. very fun, highly recommend. rip shane hollander in another world you wouldve slayed on the history channel's hit tv show alone.

Chapter 3: june

Chapter Summary

They fly out early in the morning—three a.m., when they leave the cottage, almost six by the time they make it through security. In the first-class lounge, they eat breakfast sitting side-by-side, holding hands on top of the table, and Shane bristles when he notices the woman sitting in the corner, her phone unsubtly pointed in their direction. Ignore it, Ilya murmurs, and taps their feet together beneath the table. So, Shane swallows down the hunted-animal feeling, and eats his grainy airport eggs, and doesn’t say shit.

Chapter Notes

The day before he and Ilya leave for New York, Mom and Dad drop by for dinner unannounced—Mom carrying her laptop bag and a stack of paperwork, Dad with a crock pot full of chicken alfredo, both of them bringing the outside world nipping, uninvited, at their heels. Dad throws open their fridge and tuts at the empty state of it, and Mom sets up her laptop on the dining table, and they go through the comments on Ilya’s latest Instagram posts one by one.

“Your engagement is pretty good so far, Ilya,” Mom says, looking at a picture Ilya had posted of the two of them tangled together on the couch, “but we need something other than recent pictures to really sell this thing. Do either of you have—"

“No, Mom,” Shane says, exasperated, through a mouthful of pasta. “We don’t have anything. No pictures, no videos, nothing. We deleted them like, a day after we sent them.”

“Well,” Ilya says, guiltily, and slowly sets down his fork.

“Ilya.”

Ilya bites at his lower lip, and rubs at the tabletop with his thumb. “I have some. Not much. Mostly uh, not for sharing with other people. But there are a few things, maybe.”

“Let’s see it, then,” Mom says, encouragingly, and shoots Shane a glare when Ilya is distracted staring down at his phone.

And Shane watches over Ilya’s shoulder, incredulous, as Ilya opens his photo library and sheepishly navigates his way through. “You—” Shane cuts himself off, and pinches the bridge of his nose, and prays to god for patience. “You’ve been saving my nudes in an unlocked folder named fucking practice schedule?”

“Oh, Jesus christ,” Mom mutters, and stops trying to peer over Ilya’s shoulder.

“To be fair to me,” Ilya replies with a defensive shrug, “there are also lots of pictures of my actual schedule in there. And is not just nudes. I also have picture of you reading in bed, in your glasses. You are wearing shirt, is perfectly appropriate.” Shane watches, in horror, as he quickly scrolls past a series of hole pics to pull up the photo in question. It was cute, at least. Shane slouched in bed, book supported on his knees, glasses slipping low on his nose, hair just a little fucked up and messy in a way that somehow still looked good. He looked comfortable. To Ilya, he probably looked even more fuckable than he did in all the hole pics.  

He thinks, then, about Scott’s wedding—about staring at that fucking photo wall, near tears, because they’d never have a treasure trove of snapshots like that. But they did. They’d had it all along, and Shane hadn’t known because Ilya had been lying to his fucking face for years and years and years.

For a long moment, Shane stares at the tabletop, so mad he can hardly think straight. “We agreed to delete everything,” he says, low. “You promised you would.”

“I know, lyubimyy, and I am sorry. I just—” Ilya’s grip tightens on his phone until his fingertips turn flushed and red. He traces the edge of his phone, where Shane’s cheek is on the screen, with his thumb. “I was lonely, okay? I had drinking friends and team friends and Sveta, but nobody else wanted me so fucking bad that it made them cry in dirty fucking bathroom in LA. Nobody else asked me whether I felt safe in Russia. So, yes, I kept it, and I kept others, because it was nice to look at stupid fucking pictures of you and know that at least one person in the world wanted me. Even if, sometimes, you didn’t like me very much. Even if you were with Rose fucking Landry.”

Shane sniffs, and runs the back of his hand across his nose. “You can’t just say shit like that when I’m fucking mad at you.” He stares down at Ilya’s phone as he scrolls through his fucking practice schedule album, and god, the stuff there—blurry photos of billboard ads Shane did almost a decade ago, screenshots of texts Shane sent that said variations of I love you or I miss you, thirst traps he’d sent on rare nights he’d gone out and gotten drunk with the team, all sandwiched between pictures of Shane’s dick and ass and come-covered belly. “You kept stuff from way back then?” he asks, softer, weirdly touched.

“Mhm,” Ilya replies. “I still have stupid selfies we took for MLH awards in 2014.” And then he scrolls past a screenshot of the Metros’ official game schedule from 2014 and shows them to Shane; their awkward non-smiles, their stupid boxy suits, so painfully young it hurt to look.

“And it wasn’t even in a locked folder,” Shane says, faint. “Jesus fucking christ.”

“I’m sorry. I thought it was safer unlocked.” Shane glares at him, then, and Ilya holds up his hands; I’m sorry, I surrender. “Shane, the only person who would ever see this is someone who hacked or stole my phone, and I thought, you know what is less suspicious than locked folder? Boring normal folder full of pictures of calendars. Maybe then nobody will look for nudes buried in the middle.”

“You’re so fucking stupid. You’re lucky I love you.”

“Yes. The luckiest. Now please, will you help me dig through my pictures and find ones to go in this grid post?”

“Nothing too explicit!” Mom says, quick and sharp. “And remember the angle we’re pushing. Modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Nothing too sappy, either. We want people to look at it and go oh god, they’ve been through so much, I should buy their jerseys and make a donation to You Can Play to show my support.”

They settle on five pictures, in the end; a recent selfie Ilya snapped on the drive back from Scott’s wedding, a thirst trap Shane had sent on Snapchat seven years ago, a screenshot Shane had sent last year of his three-year duolingo streak, the best selfie of the bunch from the awards show in 2014, and the glasses picture, because Ilya kept hesitating on it, and when Shane asked him how many times he’d jerked off to it, he’d gone red all the way down his neck and refused to answer. It painted a particular narrative, Shane knew. It made their marriage look like a weed growing between the cracks in a disused parking lot—a starved, anemic thing, still alive only because nobody had bothered to look for it. And Shane hated it, but he didn’t say shit. He’d promised Ilya, that night by the fire. Anything it took, he’d said. And if this is what it took, well. It was easy enough to live with.

_____

They fly out early in the morning—three a.m., when they leave the cottage, almost six by the time they make it through security. In the first-class lounge, they eat breakfast sitting side-by-side, holding hands on top of the table, and Shane bristles when he notices the woman sitting in the corner, her phone unsubtly pointed in their direction. Ignore it, Ilya murmurs, and taps their feet together beneath the table. So, Shane swallows down the hunted-animal feeling, and eats his grainy airport eggs, and doesn’t say shit.

And later, when he’s gone back for seconds, he checks twitter and finds a video of the two of them in the airport has already gone viral; a short clip of Shane leaning up to give Ilya a thank-you kiss after he got both of them breakfast. It racks up ten thousand likes before Shane finishes eating. He watches the numbers go up while he chews, mechanical, and next to him Ilya watches Formula One highlights. It’s a strange feeling, like he’s seeing himself from the outside; a watcher in a crowd of fellow watchers, eager to see what his animal body will do next.

Someone else takes a picture of them boarding the plane. Another person tweets omg, I think I’m on the same flight to New York as Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, they’re in the row across from me, is it weird if I ask for a pic? And then they get papped leaving the plane, and Shane deletes twitter off his phone while they’re in the car to the hotel. Nobody has anything new to say—it’s all just variations on the same core themes: his marriage is cute, depraved, insanity-inducing, not real, a PR stunt, just for the citizenship; an I-don’t-get-it conundrum on the scale of Cher and Gregg Allman. He’s already tired of it, even though it scares him shitless.

_____

And so it goes. Scott emails back and says he’d love to get dinner sometime, which Shane really wasn’t expecting. They get papped again getting dinner by themselves while they talk about their upcoming dinner with Scott, and again pulling up to Madison Square Garden, where they’ll be doing their first shoot—something for the cover of GQ before they even do the interview. The concept is, of course, gay hockey Romeo and Juliet, which was clearly outlined in the creative director’s email. So, they put Shane in his Metros gear, sans helmet, and they put Ilya in a Raiders jersey, even though Ilya hasn’t played for Boston in like, three years, and send the two of them off to hair and makeup, where a harried-looking woman named Alexis pastes over Shane’s freckles, and a slightly less harried-looking woman named Alexandra coos over Ilya’s perfect hair texture, just perfect, I don’t even need to add gel.

It’s hot, under the lights. The gel in Shane’s hair makes his scalp itch. And it’s nostalgic, in a way—the photographer tells them to bend like they’re facing off, and says can you give me a little more intensity? I want you guys to look like you want each other so bad it hurts. Shane, can you, like, move your eyebrows together a little bit? And tilt your chin down, yeah, like that, hold it, hold it right there.

The raw photos look almost exactly like the CCM ad they did together over a decade ago. Ilya takes one look and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. They do other poses, of course—Ilya sat on the bench like it’s a throne, legs spread, wrists dangling limp atop his knees, Shane stood next to him with his arm around his shoulders; standing together at center ice holding hands, taken from the back so people can read the names on their jerseys; a candid of them cry-laughing against each other’s shoulders—but that’s the one they go with for the cover, in the end: the two of them facing off with a quietly devastated look in their eyes.

I don’t get it, Shane complains, later that night, after they’ve washed away the makeup and sucked each other off and curled together in bed. They could’ve just reused pictures from 2010, they’re practically identical, and Ilya replies that’s the point, moya lyubov. That’s the whole fucking point.

_____

They get papped again on Fifth Avenue, but for once, it’s on purpose; pre-planned weeks ago, sitting around the dining table staring at Mom’s laptop. They start at Reebok—a couple of discreet photographers tipped off beforehand—and Shane buys a pair of nineties-looking hightops he’ll probably never wear. He and Ilya clink together cans of City Seltzer standing outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Shane is very careful to make sure he doesn’t grimace at the taste. And then, they walk fourteen blocks north, to a Rolex service center, where he picks up a watch that he deliberately dropped in the kitchen sink last week, before he and Ilya had ever gotten on the plane to New York.

They duck into a Barnes & Noble on the way, to add a bit of plausible deniability, and Shane picks up Call Me Indian: From the Trauma of Residential School to Becoming the NHL's First Treaty Indigenous Player and a cookbook full of traditional Russian recipes. They cross the street when they’re walking past the Adidas store, just in case, and Ilya stares at it longingly—he’s desperate for a pair of yeezy 450s—and, not for the first time, Shane wishes they were normal fucking people, who could wear whatever they wanted, and go anywhere they wanted, and get married the normal way. But then, they wouldn’t be hockey players, and Shane loves hockey more than anything.

The crowd following them stays small enough to manage, by the time they duck out of Rolex, and Shane carefully tilts his bags, so the logos will be clearly visible in whatever photos end up published. They’re careful to hold hands on the street, too—cutesy, coupley shit they’ve hardly ever done before. It sends a shiver down Shane’s spine and raises the hair on the back of his neck. And as they’re headed towards the sleek black SUV the car service had waiting, Shane glances across the street, at some old-school building with an intricate white stone façade and red awnings over every window, Cartier spelled out in gold leaf above an ornate stone balcony.

And all at once, Shane remembers a soggy April afternoon, years ago—the day after Ilya had wrapped up his first season with the Centaurs. He’d come over to Shane’s apartment in Montreal and let himself in while Shane was at practice prepping for his playoff run, and when Shane came home he’d found Ilya poking through two big baskets of candy Shane had left on the dining table. Breaking your diet, he’d said, teasing, and Shane had replied, fuck off, it’s for Ruby and Jade, their birthdays are next week, and Ilya said, can I have some, and Shane replied no, Ilya, you’d literally be stealing candy from a baby. And Ilya had pouted, which always made Shane want to suck on his lower lip, so he did, and while Ilya was distracted he’d reached into the closest basket. When Ilya pulled away to breathe, Shane held up a ring pop between them and said well, maybe you can have one piece. You wanted a ring, right? And Ilya shoved him up against the table and said no, I am classier than that. You want to put a ring on my finger, you take me to fucking Cartier. And then he’d palmed Shane’s dick through his sweats, and bit at Shane’s earlobe, and whispered plus, I think you did it wrong. Proposals usually happen on your knees. And, so, Shane had gotten on his knees, and gotten distracted by Ilya’s dick, right there begging to be sucked, and he’d forgotten all about it.

Around Christmases and birthdays, though, he remembered, and he’d spend weeks looking up Cartier’s catalogue before bed, but he could never bring himself to buy anything. Ilya didn’t wear a lot of jewelry, and Shane didn’t know anything about fashion, or personal style, or whatever the hell people were calling it these days. He had no idea which ring Ilya would want, and he didn’t know Ilya’s ring size, and he and Ilya just didn’t do that sort of thing—fancy gifts, expensive gifts, things other people were meant to see. They’d always stuck with the classics: anal beads, imported vodka, Russian teas; advance copies of hockey biographies, a brand-new ps5, a pair of matching vibrating cock rings. So, he’d always end up buying something else. Something safer. After all, it’s not like Ilya could’ve worn a fucking wedding ring. It would’ve just stayed in the box, gathering dust at the back of a drawer somewhere.

But now, they’re here, right outside fucking Cartier, and neither of them have anything left to hide, and Shane wants a ring on Ilya’s finger so bad he can practically taste the metal on his tongue.

“Hang on a second,” Shane says, and tugs Ilya to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “There’s another place I wanna check out, I think.”

Ilya looks over at him, and follows Shane’s gaze across the street. “Absolutely not,” he says, and tugs Shane towards the car. “Is not on the list.”

Shane plants his feet. “Fuck the list.”

“Hollander, your mama will kill us both.”

“Ilya, baby,” Shane says, and pulls their clasped hands up to his face, so he can press a kiss to Ilya’s bare ring finger. “Let me put a ring on you. Please.”

“Fuck,” Ilya whispers, and presses a harsh kiss to Shane’s lips, once, twice. And then, he pulls Shane across the street at a clip so fast Shane has to jog to keep up.

 Inside, the two of them are led through a maze of dark-paneled rooms sparsely furnished with tasteful table-and-chair sets and softly lit glass cases of jewelry. They work their way through the displays of bespoke, obscenely expensive necklaces, past the cases and cases of ostentatious diamond engagement rings, to another wood-paneled room with a rug on the floor so plush and expensive-looking that Shane is a little scared to step on it. And here are the wedding bands in their multitudes; plain bands with square edges, rings made of layers of white gold and rose gold and regular yellow, rings with a couple of diamonds buried deep in the metal, paved rings that sparkle in the backlit case. And then there are the other rings, meant more as a fashion statement than a wedding band—interlocking square bands, spiky things that look like they’d hurt to wear on any finger other than the thumb. It’s completely overwhelming. Shane hardly knows where to look.

“Holy shit, Shane,” Ilya says, pointing to a ring that looks like a leopard, mouth open wide to fit someone’s finger through. “If you proposed to me with that, I think I would’ve been the one who ended up on my knees. I would’ve sucked you dry and just kept going.”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Shane replies. “I can’t fucking take you anywhere.”

The smartly-dressed woman behind the case does a double take, and tentatively ventures, “did you want to try it on?”

“Please,” Ilya says, and grins in anticipation, and his shoulders do that delighted little shimmy he does whenever he takes a bite of particularly good food. The ring isn’t the right size, when he tries his ring finger, so he slips it on his pinkie and holds it out like he’s showing off a new manicure. “Shane, lyubimyy, what do you think?”

“Well,” Shane says, diplomatically, “it doesn’t really look like a wedding ring, does it?”

“Hm. I guess not.” Back in the case it goes, and Ilya casts his eye over the case again. He points at a silver band with a whole row of glittering diamonds in the middle. “What about that one?”

“It’s—nice?”

Ilya laughs, and presses a quick kiss to the corner of Shane’s jaw. “So picky, Hollander. You want to pick one for me?”

Shane has a brief, intense flashback of the last time he’d looked at Cartier’s catalogue, so desperate to get it right that he’d given himself a panic attack. “No,” he says, a little too forceful. “I want you to get whatever ring you want. It’s not my fault your taste is shit.”

“Oh, you think you can do better? Which one do you have your fucking eye on, then?”

“Don’t laugh,” Shane warns.

“I would never!” And, so, Shane points to the ring he’s had his eye on ever since they stepped up to the case—a plain gold band with rounded edges. It’s on the slimmer side, and obviously designed with comfort in mind. It doesn’t even have a single fucking diamond. Ilya tries to hold it back, but he laughs and laughs anyways. “Of course,” he says, still giggling. “Of course. Only you could be in fucking Cartier and somehow manage to pick most boring ring in the case.”

“It’s not because it’s boring!” Shane protests. “It looks, you know, comfortable. Like I’d never want to take it off.” He compulsively rubs over the back of his ring finger, then, and stares down at the glass counter, so he won’t have to look Ilya in the eye. “And it matches your mother’s necklace, kind of,” Shane mumbles. “It’s like, simple and classy. Surprisingly traditional.” He shrugs, and wiggles his toes inside his shoes. “Kind of reminds me of this other guy I know, too.”

Shane glances up, and god. The way Ilya looks at him sometimes. He doesn’t know what to do with it, how he could’ve put that feeling there, how Ilya can possibly hold it all inside.

“You think I’m classy?” Ilya says, a little wobbly, a little wet, like he’s been knocked so far off balance that he’d cry right there, in fucking Cartier, if there wasn’t a salesperson standing behind the case staring at them like they’re both certifiable.

“Sometimes,” Shane replies, and gently knocks their shoulders together. “When you want to be.”

Ilya reaches down, and takes his hand, and weaves their fingers together. “And you want a ring so comfortable you never take it off. Not even to sleep?” Shane shakes his head. “Not even to play game?”

“Well, no,” Shane frowns. “That’s fucking dangerous. I’d have to get a silicone one to wear. But I’d put it back on right after.”

Ilya smiles, then. He looks at the plain ring, sitting in the case, and then he stares down at their hands—his right in Shane’s left. “Okay,” he says. “It is settled. We will both get that one.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes. I want to match. Plus,” Ilya says, and leans in close to whisper the rest in Shane’s ear, “the thought of wearing your ring everywhere, in the shower, in bed…” He licks his lips and presses even closer. “I am so fucking hard right now. You think they have our size, so we can wear them home?”

And, so. They walk out of Cartier with a subtle gold chain around Shane’s neck and matching wedding bands on their fingers—1895 collection, four millimeters wide, yellow gold. Shane wears it on his left hand, and Ilya wears it on his right, because he is, however much he might want to deny it, surprisingly traditional. The rings clink together when they hold hands, and god, does that give Shane ideas—getting his mouth on that spit-shine metal, hearing that same clink while Ilya fucks into him; what that yellow gold might feel like against his hole, or perched on Ilya’s finger after he stuffs his whole goddamn hand inside.

He tells Ilya, later, when they’re back in the hotel, and Ilya laughs and laughs, and says you aren’t worried it will slip off and get stuck in your asshole? And Shane replies if it does, I’ll happily explain it to the guys in the ER, please fuck me. So, Shane ends up on his belly at the edge of the bed, Ilya jerking him off with his left hand, stretching Shane open with the other as Shane moans and cries and begs for one-two-three-four of his beautiful fingers.

Ilya spends a long time playing with him like that; four fingers pressed deep inside, the cool metal of his wedding ring tapping against Shane’s stretched-out hole with every thrust. Please, Shane chants into the sheets, please, please, please. And then, Ilya traces his thumb around Shane’s rim, and slowly works it in, and Shane fucking wails when he feels the cool slick metal wrapped around Ilya’s finger finally slip all the way inside.

And there it is; Ilya’s fist lodged in his guts, hole blown wide around his wrist, so fucked open and ruined that he’ll never be the same again. Shane moans, long and loud, and lets go of the pillow under his head, so he can slide a hand down his own body and settle it just above his pelvis, where he can feel the faintest, tiniest bulge where Ilya is pressed deep inside.

Gimme your hand, Shane groans, and scrabbles at the back of Ilya’s left hand, which is still wrapped around his dick, and drags it up to his lower belly, and presses Ilya’s palm flat against the skin there.

Oh my god, Ilya breathes, and slowly rotates his fist inside of Shane, back and forth. Shane, Shane, he moans, I can feel me inside, and Shane comes onto the sheets with a drawn-out cry. Ilya jerks off on his ass after, then scoops it up with his fingers and pushes it into Shane’s fucked-out hole. Once he’s done, he slaps Shane’s ass, like he’s a prize head of cattle or something, and says hell of a fuck, Hollander, hell of a fuck, which makes Shane smile into the sheets like a fucking dope. And he mouths at his own wedding ring until he falls asleep, sticky and tacky, so in love he might die of it.

_____

The trip is a wash, in the end. The most popular photo isn’t Shane and Ilya holding hands walking out of Reebok, or stepping into Rolex, or any of the million snapshots various paps took of them walking fourteen blocks down the sidewalk with branded shopping bags on display. The most popular photo is a close-up of Shane kissing Ilya’s ring finger, eyes wet, Ilya’s slick mouth fallen open in shock and curled up at the corners; the fucking shopping bags twisted up so the logos are hidden against Shane’s leg in the zoomed-out version. And it’s a good photo. They look drunk on each other, fucking obsessed, still in the honeymoon phase all these years later.

It pisses Rolex off so much that Shane wakes up the next morning with an email in his inbox requesting an immediate meeting to discuss the future of his relationship with the brand, and ten minutes later, he gets a call from Mom where she doesn’t even bother to say hello.

“They want to drop you,” she says. “That’s what the discussion will be about. They haven’t because doing it now could make them look homophobic. You should probably apologize. Profusely. And wear your watch every time you leave the hotel.”

Shane stares down at his wedding ring, and twists it, around and around and around. “Jesus fucking christ,” he says. “This is fucking ridiculous. They don’t even sell wedding rings!”

“You think that matters? Cartier sells watches. That’s all they care about. So, if you want to keep making Rolex money, you apologize, you wear your watch, and you stick to the script when you do your pap walks.”

And for a moment, Shane lets himself daydream about telling Mom that he doesn’t need Rolex money. Rolex can go fuck themselves. Everyone can go fuck themselves, her included. But then he glances over at Ilya, who’s sitting on the other bed looking so fucking hangdog and guilty, and the self-righteousness leaves him in one big rush. “Okay,” Shane replies. “Sorry, Mom.”

The zoom meeting is at ten in the morning, squeezed between a sunrise photoshoot with a five-a.m. call time and a joint Calvin Klein ad he and Ilya are filming later in the afternoon. Shane lets his mom do all the talking, and occasionally chimes in to grovel, his wedding ring kept tucked away under his shirt, on the chain he’d bought specifically so he can keep it on him during games. The brand representative tells Shane to buy from Brilliant Earth or Viltier next time. Shane bites his tongue so hard it bleeds.

_____

In bed, in their hotel room, Shane settles into Ilya’s side; his head pillowed on Ilya’s outstretched arm, his leg tossed over Ilya’s thigh, pressed rib-to-rib and hip-to-hip. It’s late—sometime around midnight, he thinks. He’s got his phone balanced on Ilya’s chest, right above his nipple, and he scrolls past Yelp reviews of restaurants in Iqaluit while Ilya plays his candy crush. The TV is on, volume low, playing 90 Day Fiancé, but neither of them are really paying attention. And it’s really, really nice. Comfortable. Cozy. So domestic it makes Shane feel a little like he’s about to cry. They’ve only ever really done this a handful of times; usually the third-to-last day before they had to leave the cottage, when the hangdog summer days finally caught up to them, and they ran out of things to say.

Shane scrolls past a one-star review for a place called, rather enigmatically, The Snack. He bites at his lower lip, and peels a thin strip of skin off with his teeth. “What are you wearing to dinner with Scott?” he murmurs, and shifts sideways, so he can peer at Ilya’s face. His glasses dig into Ilya’s bicep, but if it bothers him, Ilya doesn’t say.

Ilya looks over at him and raises an eyebrow. “You are nervous,” he replies, hair crushed against the pillow, breath gusting over Shane’s face.

On the TV, a serious-looking woman says something about open and honest communication. Shane looks back at his phone and scrolls past a couple more places in quick succession—Yummy Shawarma, Gallery Fine Dining, Black Heart Café. He shrugs, and swallows. “I just want to make a good impression.”

“Of course you will make a good impression,” Ilya says. “You are pretty, polite Canadian boy. You make good impression on everybody.”

“Okay,” Shane frowns. “But what are you wearing?”

Ilya groans, over-dramatic, and tosses his phone onto the bed. “Jeans,” he replies, bitchily. “Shirt. I’m sure Hunter will be suitably impressed.” Shane bites at his lower lip again; tastes red-iron blood on the tip of his tongue. He opens a new tab on safari and googles what to wear to a dinner party. Ilya stares at him, incredulous, then grabs his phone and tosses it across the room, where it lands, neatly, in the center of the other bed. “Shane. Lyubimyy. Stop thinking so much. Is just dinner.” He scratches through Shane’s hair, near his temple, and shifts, so he’s laying more on his side, pressed impossibly closer. “I called Gina, by the way.”

Shane blinks. “Who?”

“Justice of the Peace that married us. Her name was Gina. You remember?” Shane didn’t, but he didn’t want to admit it, especially not to Ilya. “She said she would be happy to do vow renewal. Had no idea who I was on the phone.”

“I’ve been looking at restaurants,” Shane says. He knows Ilya’s game, here—it’s not the first time he’s tried distracting Shane from one worry by bringing up another—but part of being married to someone, Shane has learned, is being willing to dance these familiar steps, even though they both know it won’t really work. “There’s not a lot to choose from, but I found this brewery we could do a reception thing at,” he continues, and idly toys with Ilya’s nipple. “It’s called NuBrew. They’ve got beer and board games, apparently.”

Ilya hums. His nipple hardens beneath Shane’s fingers. “Sounds perfect,” he says, and grabs Shane’s hand, so Shane will play with his fingers instead. “You will play scrabble with your dad, and your mom and I will get so trashed they have to carry us out on stretchers.”

Shane ignores him. “And I booked out a dozen rooms at a hotel in Iqaluit,” he continues. “I wasn’t sure who you wanted to invite, but you said you wanted to keep it small, right? So that should be more than enough.” He pauses, then, and lets go of Ilya’s fingers, and takes his glasses off, so he can turn all the way on his side and look Ilya in the eye. “Have you talked to Svetlana at all?”

Ilya slowly shakes his head. “Mm-mm. You talk to Hayden?”

An ugly, nauseous feeling settles low in Shane’s stomach. “Nope.”

For a long moment, Ilya just looks at him. He runs his fingertips, feather-light, over the slope of Shane’s cheek, the curve of his eyebrow. “Okay,” he says, soft. “I will make you a deal. If you call Hayden, I will call Sveta.”

“Seems like a shit deal.”

Ilya shrugs. “Well,” he says, with a smarmy little smirk, “I can also suck your dick if you want.”

On the TV, one of the newlywed couples is having an intense not-argument about moving in together. He has a job lined up in North Carolina; she wants to stay in Chicago. What about my friends, the bride says. My whole support system is here. I don’t know what I’d do without them.  

Amber was just turning four. Would she remember him if Hayden never wanted to talk to him again? Would Ruby and Jade and Arthur miss him? Would Jackie? Would Hayden? Shane didn’t know. Sometimes, he thought that maybe people only loved him because of what he could give. Dependable, reliable Shane, fucking great on the ice, good in a crisis, always ready with an extra protein bar in his bag or a spare roll of tape, happy to stay late after practice and demonstrate trick shots for the rookies, sleeping with his ringer on during roadies just in case one of the guys needed to get bailed out of the drunk tank. But it had felt different with Hayden, somehow. Like Hayden didn’t care about what Shane could do for him—he just wanted Shane to feel included.

“What if he hates me?” Shane whispers, and turns his face into Ilya’s armpit. He closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of him; cheap hotel body wash and the faintest hint of sweat and Tobacco Vanille Tom Ford cologne.

“Then he is very stupid,” Ilya replies, and strokes over the back of Shane’s neck, slow and sure. “And you should get a better best friend.”

Shane unburies his face from Ilya’s armpit, and fixes him with a look. “What about Svetlana?”

“She doesn’t hate me, she’s angry with me,” Ilya says. “There is a difference. And she is angry because I kept blowing her off every time she asked to go out, and then I move to Ottawa for some mystery man with maybe nefarious intentions. I am very rich, you know. Could be that you are trying to take advantage and steal my fortune. Put poison in my vodka. We never did sign a prenup.”

“I’m serious,” Shane replies, and rolls on top of Ilya; cages him in with elbows planted on either side of his head. “Are we—” he pauses, and sighs, and drops his forehead to Ilya’s collarbone. “Are my parents really the only people that would come?”

Ilya gets his hands back in Shane’s hair, and scratches, gentle, at his scalp. His breath sits low and heavy in his chest. “Christ, this is sad. Hey,” he exclaims, and squishes Shane’s cheeks between his hands, and manhandles him until Ilya can look him in the eye. “You think Scott Hunter will want to be friends if this dinner thing works out?”

Shane looks down at Ilya’s collarbone, his chin. “I dunno. I hope so.”

For a long moment, Ilya just looks at him. What he’s looking for, Shane can’t possibly say. And then, when he’s had his fill, he folds Shane back into his chest, wraps his arms around Shane’s shoulders, and rocks back and forth, like Shane is a fucking child or something. “Hm. Okay. Wear the dark jeans. And that slutty little polo shirt you got from Gucci. The one with no buttons.”

“It’s a normal shirt!”

“It makes you look like a pool boy, bending over in front of some pervert old man so he will leave extra big tip. Is good look on you. Hunter will definitely appreciate it. And who knows! Maybe you can seduce him into being friends!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane mumbles, and presses a kiss to Ilya’s chest. He fumbles his glasses off and tosses them towards the nightstand. Beneath him, Ilya’s breath slowly goes deep and even—drifting off to sleep, Shane supposes. And Shane tries to follow, he does, but the sick feeling in his gut is still there, and it’s paired with this awful tight feeling in his chest. So instead, Shane just stares at the wall, in the dark, and he waits, and waits, and waits, without really knowing what he’s waiting for.

_____

Between the photoshoots and ads and zoom calls with sponsors, there are the interviews. In cafés, in private offices, in fucking studios, where they sit on ugly, uncomfortable armchairs in front of a live audience and do their best to sweat through their tuxes as discreetly as possible. And Shane’s been training for this sort of thing since he was twelve—sat around his parents’ dining table with flashcards handwritten on a pack of neon-colored paper, rolling his eyes when Mom would look in the rearview mirror on the way to the grocery store and bark what do you need to do to secure your next win and wait for Shane to rattle off the appropriate canned response in conjunction with the appropriate canned facial features. Hell, he’d done the exact same thing before flying to New York. He’d written out their rehearsed Romeo-and-Juliet pitch on plain white index cards, and he and Ilya quizzed each other until their eyes glazed over, and the not-quite-truth they’d put on the cards felt more real than their real, actual memories of one another.

It didn’t prepare him for how fucking annoying the whole press tour is. Shane has always hated doing media, mostly because people always ask the same fucking questions, just worded slightly different, so the person asking can feel original and smart. And everyone here is still asking the same questions, every single time. How did you meet? Was it love at first sight? Why Nunavut? Why keep it a secret?

And, so. “Was at junior nationals,” Ilya tells GQ. “I saw this beautiful boy with beautiful freckles—“

“And I just knew I had to talk to him,” Shane tells an overworked journalist for Sports Illustrated, an inauthentic shy smile plastered across his face. “So I walked up to him and told him he really shouldn’t be smoking in a no-smoking area, and I shook his hand twice—“

“And the first time he kissed me, I knew,” Ilya tells Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. “Was like magic, yes? Sparks, or whatever the phrase is, so—”

“In retrospect,” Shane tells a serious-looking writer for The New York Times, and rests his left hand on the table, where his wedding ring will flash in the light, “I wanted to lock him down years before I got up the courage to ask. It took a long time, though, because—”

“I couldn’t bring myself to leave Russia behind,” Ilya says on Ellen. “Too many people there needed me, and I thought it was too dangerous, to be with Shane when I have Russian passport, and I am in Russia every summer. It was big fight, a few times.” And Ilya is supposed to round out the script with something like and then Shane got it in his crazy head to propose, because we were terrible at quitting each other, and after I said yes, because I am a huge sucker for his big pleading eyes, he came up with this crazy plan to get married in Nunavut, so we could keep it secret until I had Canadian citizenship. But before he can, Ellen herself cuts in.

“Uh oh,” she says, with a stiff head tilt and a stupid-looking smirk. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Paradise?” Shane says, a touch too loud and way too aggressively. “Seriously? I used to have nightmares about something leaking to the press while Ilya was in Russia. I used to dream about having to pick him up from the airport in a body bag.”

The studio goes dead silent. The audience leans in, breath held, hungry and tense.

“Was difficult sometimes, yes,” Ilya replies, and takes his hand, and gives him a we’ll-talk-about-this-later look that Shane knows means he’s simultaneously worried and pissed. “But worth it in the end, I think.”

Ellen looks between the two of them, and visibly debates whether she should lean in, follow up, push harder. But then, she leans back and says “So, Nunavut? Not exactly the wedding destination of the century, is it?” and Ilya picks up the script—oh, yes, it was part of Shane’s crazy plan to keep it secret until I had my green card, but it was beautiful, we saw the northern lights—and Ilya squeezes Shane’s hand until Shane’s fingers go white and bloodless.

And Shane doesn’t say, that wasn’t the only thing I had nightmares about. He doesn’t say, sometimes, I dreamed that my coach found out about us and took the hockey stick right out of my hands and broke it over my body. And he doesn’t say, I’m pretty good at being captain, I think. I’ve been a groomsman at a lot of weddings. Held a lot of babies. Talked a lot of guys off the ledge when their wives were cheating, or their parents were demanding, or they really fucking missed their families. I love those guys, and I think they loved me, and none of that fucking mattered, because when I was twelve, I watched a six-foot-two thirteen-year-old named Tyler beat another one of our teammates half to death because he thought the kid had been looking at his dick in the showers. And our coaches didn’t do shit. Tyler was at practice the next day, like nothing had ever happened, because he was six-foot-two and an okay d-man, with a real shot at going pro one day, and the other kid was nothing. Some bottom-of-the-barrel new kid that probably would’ve washed out soon anyway. And Tyler kept playing for a while, too—kicked around the AHL for years before he realized he wasn’t ever gonna get called up and got a job in real estate. And I don’t know what happened to that other kid. I never saw him again. I hope he’s okay. But sometimes, I think about the way his blood looked, spiraling around the drain in the middle of the floor, and sometimes, I dream that I’m him, and he’s me, and I’m bleeding out in the locker room shower while my teammates just stand there and wait for me to die. And sometimes, I dream that they’re Tyler, and I’m me, and they’re beating the shit out of me in that fucking locker room, and they’re not going to stop. Nobody’s ever gonna stop. And I’ll just keep bleeding and bleeding, until I’ve got nothing left to give.

“So we heard you guys went down to Fifth Avenue and bought yourselves some wedding rings,” Ellen says, and behind her, the blank white wall flashes to life and puts that fucking pap photo on display—the one that Shane never meant for anyone else to see; his lips on Ilya’s ring finger like a knight of old escorting his lady, Ilya’s usual façade blown wide open and crumbling. “Tell us about that,” she continues. And so it goes. So it fucking goes.

Chapter End Notes

listen you read slaughterhouse five ONCE and it changes you forever. many thanks again to my beautiful friends for listening to me whine and moan whenever i get stuck on something <3 also yes yes chapter count went up I AM AWARE. I redid the outline and nearly cried when i realized how far under my estimate was 😭

Chapter 4: july

Chapter Summary

“Okay, Kip,” he says. “You’ve been here before. What’s good?” And he listens as Kip launches into an impromptu lecture about French cooking, debates the merits of filet mignon versus côte de boeuf, and sidetracks himself getting into the history of Fourme d'Ambert—one of the oldest cheeses in France, apparently, with roots that trace all the way back to Rome—and he pointedly doesn’t think about all those gay kids he’s been letting down for a decade. He doesn’t think at all. Instead, he just feels: the taste of Steelhead trout and green salad and sugar snap peas in his mouth; Ilya’s foot resting lightly on top of his beneath the table; the arousal that builds every time he catches Scott staring at his mouth; the welcome surprise when Kip taps the tip of his shoe against Shane’s ankle; the occasional jolt of pleasure, when he shifts just-so and the plug inside him taps against his prostate; the indecent, shameful thrill that comes whenever Shane feels like he’s getting away with something secret.

Chapter Notes

The second time they meet Scott and Kip for dinner, Kip gets them a table at Chez Fifi—some French place, with beef tartare to die for, Kip had said on the phone, so drawn out and dramatic Shane could picture the specific way Kip had tilted his head when he said it. Not that it was hard. Ilya had done the exact same thing thirty minutes before, when he was trying to decide between two identical silk shirts to wear, and asked Shane for his opinion, and Shane said, innocently, aren’t they the same, and then laughed when Ilya groaned, and called him fucking hopeless, and tackled him to the bed to stick a spit-wet finger in Shane’s ear and kiss him stupid, then told him to turn over, so he could plant a wet, sloppy kiss on Shane’s hole before working a thick plug inside.

In the car, on the way over, the sensation goes from overwhelming, to tolerable, to barely there at all—Shane’s always been good at tuning out stimuli. So, while they work their way through the stop-and-start traffic, he stares down at  his phone, at the last text Hayden had sent. Drink extra champagne for me, he’d said, on May 21^st. He’d also said dude, how the fuck do I explain two dudes getting married to Amber? She keeps asking me to ask you for pics of the wedding dress.

And, in truth, Shane had been a little scared to tell Hayden that he’d been invited to Scott’s wedding, and he was still a little scared when he told Hayden that he’d RSVP’d yes. Partly because he was always scared of doing anything that could possibly be construed as gay, and partly because Hayden used to like calling Ilya a faggot. It was a thing for a few years, back in like, 2012. Ilya would end up in TMZ—photographed with his pants halfway down in some club, caught going 200 on some country road in Massachusetts, calling Shane boring on live TV—and someone would bring it up, because hockey players loved gossip almost as much as they loved playing hockey, and like clockwork there Hayden would be, sighing and saying what’s that faggot done now? He’d only stopped in 2014, when Jackie’s cousin came out as gay and she told Hayden that he should probably stop saying things like that, because it made gay people feel unsafe, and Hayden had been so broken up over it. He’d come over to Shane’s apartment, sometime around then, and said Jackie’s real pissed, dude, and I don’t fucking blame her. I don’t think I said it around him, but I can’t remember, and he’s just a fucking kid. I don’t want to hurt a fucking kid like that. Do you think he knew that I never meant anything by it?

Shane had been twenty-three, back then, and scared, and so deep in the closet that he still thought he’d marry a woman someday, and he couldn’t figure out how to tell Hayden that yeah, it did hurt. It hurt every fucking time. So Shane had mumbled something insincere and affirmative, like, well, if he didn’t’ say anything to you directly he probably didn’t care all that much, and felt like the biggest piece of shit in the world. And Ilya likes to call him brave, but he’s still right fucking there—thirty goddamn years old, and still too scared to be honest with his best fucking friend.

And then, when they’re driving down Fifth Avenue, just passing the Met, Shane’s phone vibrates with an incoming call, and for a second, he’s so fucking relieved—maybe Hayden finally broke the unofficial stalemate. But then, it’s Farah’s name that flashes on his screen, and Shane feels like he’s trying to rack three hundred pounds after a particularly intense squat set.

“Hey, Shane,” she says, cheerful. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll make it quick. Word on the street is that the MLH’s investigation into you two should be concluded by the end of the week. Fucking finally. I guess whoever was dragging their feet finally threw in the towel.”

Shane bites at a sore spot on his lower lip. “Someone was dragging their feet?”

“Don’t worry about it. The only thing you need to worry about is the upcoming season. Oh, and Crowell requested a meeting,” Farah says, casually, like she hasn’t just told Shane that god came down from heaven and said he just wanted to talk. “In person, this Thursday. I can’t fly down, but Dawn said she’ll meet you there, and she’ll be ready to go. You won’t need to do a thing.”

Beside him, Ilya looks up from his candy crush game and mouths at Shane, asking who he’s talking to. Farah, Shane mouths back, then says aloud, “why does Dawn need to come? What does he want?”

“I’m not sure,” Farah replies. “But you’ve got this in the bag, Shane. They either let you play next season, or you bleed them dry with the discrimination suit of the fucking century. He might try to play hardball, but that’s why Dawn is gonna be there. She won’t let him push you around.”

“If you’re sure,” Shane says, hesitantly, and chews at the side of his thumbnail. Outside, the car pulls to a stop in front of an unassuming building—brown trim, with a little red awning perched over a couple of steps that slope down to an eight-pane glass door. Shane can’t tell if the restaurant is behind the awning-door or the big brown door set a half-dozen steps above street level.

Shane looks down at his nice navy blue slacks and subtle pinstriped button up, which he’d spent fifteen minutes steaming and ironing before he and Ilya left the hotel, and blushes furiously. Why the fuck had he assumed Kip would have the same taste in restaurants as his mom—recently gentrified, carefully minimalist, the illegible sign outside glowing soft white, the décor inside carefully chosen to ooze modern sophistication, the menu reasonably priced between twenty and fifty dollars for an entrée, a five-page wine list. Kip is a born-and-raised New Yorker, and is proud enough of his working-class roots that he apparently wouldn’t let Scott pay his tuition until after they were married. He’d probably walk into Mom’s favorite restaurant in Montreal and laugh.

“I’m sure,” Farah replies, which sends Shane pinballing between what he should worry about most, because nobody who says I’m sure has ever, in the history of the world, actually fucking meant it. “It’s all good, you’re good. Have a good night!”

Shane hangs up, slips his phone into his pocket, and lets Ilya poke and badger him out of the car and onto the street. He peers at the little red awning and the big brown door, confused, not sure whether he’s supposed to go up or down. Across the street, someone stops and pulls out their phone. Shane does his best to ignore it.

“Who was that?” Ilya says, and grabs Shane’s hand, so he can lace their fingers together.

“Farah,” Shane replies, and glances down the street in both directions, but he doesn’t see Scott and Kip—just people out shopping, but most are well-dressed enough that Shane feels a little less out-of-place.

“And?” Ilya presses, swinging their hands back and forth like a little kid at the zoo. “What did she want?”

Shane shakes his head. “I’ll tell you later,” he says, absently, and pulls his phone back out with his free hand, so he can text a string of question marks to the swinging scandal chat. LOL, Kip replies. We’re already inside. Scotty got hungry, so we ordered appetizers. He sends a photo after that; a half-demolished charcuterie board with some sort of meat spread, little red berries Shane has never seen before in his life, pistachios, and a violently purple sauce that he immediately distrusts. Door’s under the awning, Kip texts barely thirty seconds later. Tell the host you’ve got a reservation for Hunter and Grady.

“They started without us,” Shane bitches, and tips the phone to show Ilya.

“Those fuckers,” Ilya replies, then squints at Shane’s phone and snatches it out of his hands, zooming in on the picture Kip sent. “Are those krasnaya smorodina? Oh my god,” he says, delighted. “I haven’t had in years!”

“Wait, I recognize that.” Shane tugs Ilya down the stairs, and elbows him aside when Ilya reaches for the doorknob, so Shane can be the one to hold the door open and gesture him inside. “Those are the berries your mom would use to make juice?”

“Mhm.” Ilya shoves at him, but Shane gets himself partly wedged behind the door, and braces like he’s anticipating a check. “Fucking menace,” Ilya says, fondly, and flips Shane off when he walks through first. Shane reaches out and flicks his bicep as he goes past. “You will like, I think. They are very sour. Like you.”

“Fuck off,” Shane replies, and follows Ilya inside. And it’s not the dive Shane had expected, based on what it looked like outside—it’s all warm wood paneling, low-light lampshade fixtures and buttery leather upholstery, classic white tablecloths and tables scattered with immaculate place settings. The host leads them to a four-person booth done up in that same buttery leather, a single candle in a golden cup burning on the table, the wall papered over with an abstract floral design that looks thick and textured.

Scott and Kip are already there, wine glasses half empty, sitting next to each other, so the bench opposite them is empty. Scott is busy unhinging his jaw and stuffing a large cracker covered with purple sauce and meat spread into his mouth; Kip raises his glass in mock salute when he catches sight of them coming down the aisle between tables.

“You guys should try the duck rillettes,” Kip says, his cheeks already a little pink. Shane doesn’t think this is his first glass of wine. “It’s, like, really incredibly good.”

“Yes, yes, whatever,” Ilya replies, and plops down into the bench. He steals a handful of berries and pops one in his mouth, then moans at the taste. “Oh my god,” he says, exaggerated, moans again, and thumbs at Shane’s lower lip, so he can push a berry into his mouth. It pops between Shane’s teeth and floods his mouth, tart and just a tiny bit sweet. “Tastes like just like I remember. Like summertime.”

Shane pictures him, then; hitting up some farmer’s stall after his conditioning is done for the day, buying a bucket of those little red berries and shoving them into his mouth by the handful on his way home. He pictures Ilya as a chubby-faced preteen in track pants, sat in a berry patch out in the woods somewhere, glutting himself on the fucking things, sunburnt and covered in mosquito bites, red staining his mouth and tongue and the pads of his fingers, the way that Shane’s fingers stained purple when a much-younger him got into the blackberry patch near his parents’ cottage. He pictures Ilya even younger, running wild through the house he grew up in, sneaking through the kitchen to steal fistfuls from the fridge before his mom turns them into juice later, the stains on his hands like the ink-stains bank robbers get when they burst dye packs hidden inside bundles of money.

He wishes he had a picture of it, but if there ever was one, it, like most things in Ilya’s childhood, was probably buried with his mother. He wonders if those little red berries would grow in the woods surrounding his cottage; if it’s warm enough for them to fruit in the summer. He’ll have to get Ilya to spell it out for him later, so he can put the name through google translate, maybe talk to his gardener.

“So,” Scott says, once he’s awkwardly swallowed the food in his mouth and washed it down with the pale white wine in his glass, “what’s new with you?”

“Shane got a phone call from our agent, and he won’t tell me what she said,” Ilya replies, and shoves the whole handful of berries in his mouth.

“Seriously?” Shane kicks him, under the table, and starts spreading the duck rillettes on a cracker. Ilya just looks at him, brows raised, studiously innocent, cheeks bulging with fruit. Shane sighs, and rolls his eyes. “She said Crowell wanted a meeting. On Thursday.”

“Oh,” Kip says. “Fuck that guy.”

Shane pauses. A glob of duck fat drips off his knife and plops onto the table. “You think it’s bad?” he says, cautiously. The duck rillettes doesn’t really look appetizing anymore; dubiously brown, suspiciously soft, dripping with gut-churning fat. Thinking about putting it in his mouth makes Shane feel vaguely nauseous. He passes the cracker to Ilya, and cracks open a pistachio.

“Babe,” Kip says, and nudges Scott’s side with his elbow. “Tell them about that fuckass meeting you had with him after you came out.”

Kip’s elbow catches Scott mid-sip. He gulps, and juts his chin forward, like he’s about to drip wine into his lap. “I got a phone call,” he says, and swipes the back of his hand across his chin. “The day after. An assistant said he just wanted to chat about media strategy. I figured it was probably normal, you know? Nobody’s ever done that sort of thing before. He probably just wanted to touch base on how to handle things. I thought it was weird that he wanted to do it in person, with me, instead of just calling Todd.”

Ilya makes a face. “Who the fuck is Todd?” He says, and steals Scott’s wine glass, and drains what little wine is left. He winces—too sweet for him, Shane thinks—and snags a cracker, so he can dip it in the purple sauce.

“My agent,” Scott explains, and flips Ilya off across the table. “So, I go down to headquarters, super fucking hungover, because we’d just won the fucking cup, and I was chugging champagne out of the fucking thing. You know how it is.” Shane nods. After he won his third cup, in 2020, Comeau and JJ filled the Stanley Cup with champagne and poured it over Shane’s head, and then Shane had gotten so spectacularly drunk that he forgot how to talk, and then he drank some more, until he was convinced that he could swim across the St. Lawrence, and he woke up the next morning sopping wet in the bottom of a canoe with no idea how he’d gotten there. The hangover—only the fourth in his life—had been spectacular. Shane thought he was going to die. “And it was weird.”

“Weird how?” Shane asks.

“He congratulated me, and then he asked if I was considering retirement. Said it would be a good time for it, that I’d be going out on a high note. And I was like, the fuck? I’m only thirty-three! So I told him that, and he laughed, and told me that thirty-three isn’t exactly young in hockey years. And then he said, just remember what you’re good at. You’re a hockey player, not an activist. Direct fucking quote, by the way. And he told me to keep it clean when I was talking to the press.”

Shane frowns, and eats another pistachio. “And you did?”

Scott and Kip look at each other, something unreadable on their faces. “Yeah,” Scott says, with a careful shrug. “for a couple months. Then I did my acceptance speech at the MLH awards. He called me into a meeting the next day and cussed me out. Said I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Threatened to bury me if I wouldn’t do the right thing and retire. Todd ended up pulling out my sales numbers.” He laughs, then, bitter and mean, and flags down a waiter to ask for a new bottle for the table. “There were a couple months back in 2017 where I managed to sell more jerseys than everybody. Even you. He backed off once he saw the dollar signs.”

“Jesus. Why—” Shane stops; scrubs his fingers through his hair and scratches at the side of his neck, presses the side of his foot to Ilya’s, underneath the table. He clears his throat, tries again. “What the fuck did you even say to piss him off that bad?”

Scott shrugs, and halfheartedly pries a pistachio open. “I dunno. He never said.”

“I think it was the line about the locker rooms.” Kip interjects. “In his speech, Scott said something like, I’ve been in locker rooms my whole life. It wasn’t exactly easy. I think Crowell didn’t like the implication that jocks can be homophobic.”

“And it has been… okay?” Ilya ventures. He knocks his foot back against Shane’s; a steady, reassuring pressure. “He leaves you alone now?”

Scott shrugs again. “More or less. I keep my head down, do my yearly You Can Play poster, keep things light, you know. And the refs haven’t started ignoring penalties against me or anything, so I’m counting it as a win.” He pauses then, and stares down at the tabletop, and runs his fingertip around the base of his wine glass, over and over. “I feel kind of guilty about it, though,” Scott confesses. “Like, I could be doing more. I should be doing more for all the kids like us out there.”

And now Shane feels guilty. Christ. He’s always cared about the little kids watching him—the kids that look like him, the Asian kids, the Japanese kids watching from their mites teams, who might grow up and get drafted to the MLH and, when asked, say that their favorite hockey player is Shane fucking Hollander, because he built the path they’re walking down. All those fucking diversity initiatives, the ones that made him feel like an exotic pet the league liked to trot out whenever some dipshit from Ohio said something racist on Twitter—he’d done it for them, the little wannabe Shane Hollanders. And their eyes had always felt heavy; like burning brands, like the packed-to-the-gills backpack that weighed him down for days when his boy scout troop went backpacking in La Mauricie National Park, the summer before he’d had to quit because he didn’t have time anymore; because his life became a pitched battle between school and hockey, and hockey was winning, and it would win in the end, too—Shane never did go back and get a GED.

“But, I dunno,” Scott says, with another guilty shrug. “Crowell was right. I’m not a fucking activist, I’m a hockey player. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Shane stares at the table, at the charcuterie board covered in crumbs and pistachio shells. Never once, in his decade-long affair with Ilya, did he think about the gay kids, or the queer kids, or whatever you want to call it. Too wrapped up in his own misery, maybe, or too scared to remember what it felt like, when he was twelve, and popped his first boner staring at a poster of Wayne fucking Gretzky, and felt so scared and so ashamed that it wilted before he could do anything with it. Not that he would’ve. Shane hadn’t worked up the courage to touch his own dick until he was fifteen, and figured he should do something before he tried having sex with his not-quite-girlfriend. And Shane doesn’t know what it would look like to represent those gay kids, either. Would he have done a PrEP campaign? Put out a PSA on how to act in the locker room? He doesn’t know. He’s not very good at being gay. He’d be a terrible role model. 

“We would all be terrible activists anyway,” Ilya replies flippantly. “Too many concussions. Makes us stupid. I think you are okay just retweeting stuff from your very smart, un-brain-damaged husband.” With that, he looks down at the menu and swears. “Fucking French,” he mumbles. And then, “Shane, what is frites maison?”

Shane glances over his shoulder. Ilya helpfully points at a column labeled ACCOMPAGNEMENTS. “House fries,” Shane supplies. “But you should probably get the green salad. Salade verte,” Shane says, at Ilya’s confused look. “It’s healthier, and we both know you don’t eat enough fiber.”

“Is the off season, lyubimyy, and fries come with caviar for extra twenty dollars. This is disgusting. I have to try it.”

“Oh, I’ve tried those,” Kip pipes up. “It’s actually pretty good. I’m still getting the beef tartare though. Fucking to die for.”

Ilya leans in close, and puts his mouth to Shane’s ear. “Besides,” he whispers. His breath ghosts against Shane’s skin, and it raises the hair all over his body—the back of his neck, the small of his back, between his thighs. “You will eat enough fiber for both of us. You need it, yes? So tonight will go the way you want?” And then, he grabs Shane’s hand below the table and squeezes, twice; a silent you okay?

Shane blushes beet red and squeezes back: yeah, I’m okay. “Okay, Kip,” he says. “You’ve been here before. What’s good?” And he listens as Kip launches into an impromptu lecture about French cooking, debates the merits of filet mignon versus côte de boeuf, and sidetracks himself getting into the history of Fourme d'Ambert—one of the oldest cheeses in France, apparently, with roots that trace all the way back to Rome—and he pointedly doesn’t think about all those gay kids he’s been letting down for a decade. He doesn’t think at all. Instead, he just feels: the taste of Steelhead trout and green salad and sugar snap peas in his mouth; Ilya’s foot resting lightly on top of his beneath the table; the arousal that builds every time he catches Scott staring at his mouth; the welcome surprise when Kip taps the tip of his shoe against Shane’s ankle; the occasional jolt of pleasure, when he shifts just-so and the plug inside him taps against his prostate; the indecent, shameful thrill that comes whenever Shane feels like he’s getting away with something secret.

Ilya carefully pulls Scott into a devil’s-advocate debate over some true crime documentary and keeps them pressed together through the whole dinner, thigh-to-thigh, toe-to-toe. He keeps steering Scott back into it whenever he tries to circle back to hockey. Shane is so grateful he could cry, or propose all over again, or crawl under the table and suck Ilya’s dick right here; the prim white tablecloth the only thing saving them both from a public indecency charge.

He does none of those things. He eats his trout and his salad, and lets Ilya order him fromage blanc ice cream for dessert, and laughs when Ilya and Scott almost come to blows over who gets to pick up the check, then discreetly slips the waiter his card while they’re both distracted. He piles into the back of a yellow cab, him and Kip on Scott and Ilya’s laps, but it still feels like he’s doing something wrong, as the cab winds its way towards Scott and Kip’s shared apartment. Like there’s some metric for being queer that he’s fallen short of, and he should fix it, but he doesn’t know how. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. Great at the game, his coaches used to say, but he can’t read the fucking room to save his life. And the older he’s gotten, the more convinced Shane is that life is just a series of rooms, each one more unreadable than the last.

_____

By the time they’re stumbling through Scott and Kip’s front door, Shane is so turned on he’s practically shaking—halfway through the ride, Ilya had snuck his hand under Shane and started tapping the base of the plug through Shane’s clothes, and each light little tap moved the plug just enough to feel so fucking good, making him think about how much better it’ll feel later, when he’s got someone, anyone, deep inside.

And the walk up isn’t a hands-on-hands-on-hands affair the way Shane had expected. Ilya plasters himself up against Shane’s back and sneaks a hand between Shane’s shirt buttons, rubbing at the skin just above his navel, but that hardly counts—Ilya is always finding a way to plaster himself to Shane. Shane cups his hand over the back of Ilya’s wrist, grateful that for now, at least, he knows where to put his hands. And they watch, together, as Kip deftly twists the key in the lock, and Scott hovers, awkward and unsure, pointedly not looking at anyone. Shane isn’t really sure what to make of it—whether it’s just nerves, or something else. Something closer to shame, or fear.

Inside, there’s the usual scramble. Shoes off and tucked away into the entryway cabinet, keys in a little dish by the door, Kip’s light linen jacket tucked neatly between a leather jacket and knee-length peacoat with a black-and-gray heather pattern.

“Nightcap?” Scott says, awkwardly, and lurches towards the liquor cabinet. He fumbles at the cabinet door; the glass rattles in its frame.

“No, thank you,” Ilya replies, low. “There is something else I want.” And then, he marches over, and grabs Scott by the arm. He spins Scott around, so he’s got his back to the cabinet, and leans in close to kiss him. Scott’s eyes go wide and round, and he turns his head at the last second, so Ilya’s lips smear over his cheek. Scott turns those round, round eyes to Kip, then, and his hands hover awkwardly at his sides—not sure if he’s allowed to touch, maybe, or scared Ilya will bite.

“You don’t want to kiss me?” Ilya says, pouting, and follows Scott’s gaze, so he can pout at Kip, too. “What, you have pretty woman rule, or something?”

Kip laughs, high and bright. “God, you’re annoying,” Scott replies, and then, he gets his big, big hands around the back of Ilya’s neck, hauls him in, and kisses him. It’s not how he and Ilya usually kiss—Ilya has stuck to his usual tongue-first approach, and instead of collapsing back into the nearest surface and gratefully sucking on it, like Shane would, Scott has instead opted to use the couple of inches he has on Ilya to loom over him and shove their mouths together, noses squashed flat between them. A bolt of heat shoots through Shane, and then Scott rubs one of his hands down over Ilya’s back, then lower, and lower, until he’s shoving it under Ilya’s waistband to grope his ass, and the half-chub Shane’s had since the taxi ride fills and presses uncomfortably at the front of his boxers; nearly popping the zipper on his tasteful slacks.

Ilya laughs, low, against Scott’s lips. “You want something?” he murmurs, and licks over the side of Scott’s neck, sucks a kiss to the bolt of his jaw.

“Yeah,” Scott replies. Shane watches his arm flex; Ilya makes a high-pitched, affronted noise Shane has never, ever heard him make during sex before. “I wanna fuck you.”

Ilya reaches back and seizes Scott’s wrist. “Too bad,” he says, and pulls Scott’s hand out of his pants. His waistband sags, once Scott’s hand is gone, falling low enough on his hips that Shane can read the Hugo Boss logo on the waistband of his boxers.

Scott frowns. “You don’t?”

“Nope,” Ilya says, with an obnoxious popping sound at the end of the word. “And before you start, yes, I have tried. I did not like the first time, did not like the second time, and did not like when I found a woman with strap, either. Plus, you said something about wanting to shut me up, last time,” Ilya continues, and sinks to his knees. His hands come up to Scott’s fly; pulling his belt open, tugging at his zipper. “And I am not Roger Crowell. I do not talk out of my ass.”

“That was awful,” Kip complains, cheerfully. Shane glances over at him, and oh, he’s already got his fly open, his dick out, his hand pumping up and down the shaft at a leisurely pace. Should Shane be undressing now? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t’ know anything.

Ilya flips Kip off, then pulls a couple lube packets out of his pocket and tosses them in Kip’s direction. “Go play with Shane,” he says, and flaps a hand in Shane’s direction. Shane starts—he’d forgotten, in watching, that he was supposed to be an active participant in this whole thing. “Scotty and I will give good show, yes?” he says, looking up at Scott; Scott nods, furiously, blush already creeping down his face and towards his neck. “And Kip?” Kip freezes, crouched low to pick lube packets up off the living room floor, dick hanging out of his pants. “Do not come. You make him come,” Ilya says, severely, “but you wait. Okay?”

Kip nods, serious, then comes over to Shane, lube in hand, dick still, ridiculously, hanging out of his slacks, bobbing with every step. Shane tenses; his gaze flits from Kip’s lips to his sincere-looking eyes to the wet head of his dick.

“Can I kiss you?” Kip says, soft, and reaches out to grab Shane’s hand, light, like Shane is some delicate medieval lady who needs to be helped down from her carriage.

“Yeah,” Shane replies, already a little floaty, and then Kip is kissing him, a little tentative, a little dry and unsure.

“Beautiful,” Ilya murmurs, and that particular thought—that Ilya is watching, that he likes it—sends those old, familiar butterflies shooting through Shane’s belly, and, so. He grabs the closest parts of Kip he can reach, his hip and his surprisingly muscular bicep, and opens his mouth, so Kip can run his tongue over the back of Shane’s teeth.

“C’mere,” Kip mumbles into his mouth, then leads him over to the couch. He plops down first. Shane undoes his fly with sharp, aggressive movements, and yanks his slacks and boxers down in one go. Kip’s eyes get big and wide, and he reaches out, puts careful hands on Shane’s thighs.

“Jesus fucking christ,” he swears, and his hand creeps up to palm Shane’s ass while Shane is busy folding his pants and underwear and setting them aside. And then, Kip’s fingers creep up, higher, and find the base of the plug. “Jesus fucking christ,” Kip says, again, and shoves against the base, driving the plug further into Shane’s hole.

“Fuck,” Shane says, thready. And then, he turns around and straddles Kip’s lap, backwards, so he can watch Ilya suck Scott’s dick.

Ilya had gotten his shirt off, while they were getting situated, and Scott’s pants are pooled around his ankles, his back still pressed against the liquor cabinet. Ilya glances back at them, over his shoulder, and taps at Scott’s hip, turning him so Shane and Kip can see their side profiles; the bump in Ilya’s nose and the full length of Scott’s dick framed perfectly against the blue-black wood and sparkling crystal glasses. And god, what a picture they make. Ilya is just so fucking pretty, with his lips a little swollen and his cock tenting his slacks, and Shane has always thought Scott was hot in the teenager-with-an-inappropriate-crush-on-their-gym-teacher kind of way. He looks especially good here, looming over Ilya, eyes wide like those sad little make-a-wish kids Shane sometimes met at the children’s hospital.

“Thought it’d be bigger,” Ilya mutters, pumping his hand over the entire length. And before Scott can reply, he gets his mouth around the head and takes it, right down to the root, his nose pressed tight to Scott’s pelvis.

Scott yelps, then moans, and hunches over, and buries his hands in Ilya’s hair. His hips twitch, once, twice, and then Ilya is letting an inch or two slide out of his mouth, before sinking right back down. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Scott chants. Ilya reaches up, gets his hands around Scott’s hips and tugs, the way he does whenever he wants Shane to fuck his face. “Oh god,” Scott groans, but he doesn’t move his hips; he just stands there, hunched like he took an elbow to the kidney.

Ilya draws back then, letting Scott’s dick fall out of his mouth, one thick, viscous string of spit stretched thin between his bottom lip and the head of Scott’s dick. “Come on, Hunter,” Ilya says, and god, he barely sounds hoarse at all. “Fuck my face. Like you fucking mean it.” And then, he gets his mouth back around Scott, and the next time he tugs at Scott’s hips, Scott fucks himself in about halfway, then fucks the rest of the way inside when Ilya rudely pinches his inner thigh.

Behind him, Kip presses a kiss to the skin just behind Shane’s ear, and whispers, “god, they’re hot together. How do you wanna come, baby?” And then, he pulls the plug out just far enough that the wide bulb inside forces his hole to stretch, then lets go and taps it back into place.

“Stretch me,” Shane says, and gasps when Kip tugs at his dick, just once, familiarizing himself, or something. And then, they’re off—Kip tugging the plug out of Shane’s hole and replacing it with two fingers, then three, then four, when Shane begs for more, and they watch as Scott fucks Ilya’s mouth until he’s almost sobbing with it, and Ilya is crying with it, too; tearing up when Scott hits the back of his throat and just keeps going, spit bubbling up at the corner of his lips and dripping down his chin. And his hands, god, his hands; tugging at Scott’s balls, rubbing at Scott’s thighs, shoving Scott’s hips back far enough for him to take a couple deep, ragged breaths before yanking Scott back in, as far as he can go.  

And then, Ilya reaches between Scott’s legs and rubs over his hole, and just like that, Scott is coming down Ilya’s throat, across his tongue, and Ilya is standing, crossing the room, bending over and putting his hands on Shane’s knees so he can lean in and kiss Kip with Scott’s come still in his mouth—the first time he’s touched Kip all night. It’s a wet kiss, a sloppy kiss—Shane can hear it, right up against his ear. And then Ilya pulls back and kisses Shane, just as wet, gets a hand around Shane’s dick and whispers “good show, yes? You like?” in his hoarse, hoarse voice, and Kip presses hard against Shane’s prostate, and Shane comes, too, all over his belly and his button-up and Ilya’s hand.

Kip eases his fingers out, and Shane makes a sad, hurt noise at the loss, but slumps back against him regardless. Ilya thumbs at the head of his dick, and laughs when Shane flinches. “Look at this mess,” he says, and tuts, and works Shane’s shirt buttons open, one by one. “Much better,” he says, once Shane is naked and loose-limbed, his head tipped back against Kip’s shoulder, Kip mouthing at the line of his jaw. And then, he kisses Shane again, and smirks against his mouth, and says “Kip? How many fingers you give him?”

“Four,” Kip replies.

“Hm.” Ilya reaches between Shane’s legs, and pushes four fingers inside him—his right hand, Shane realizes. He can feel Ilya’s wedding ring against his rim. “You think this is enough, lyubimyy?”

“Enough for what?” Scott says, from where he’s sprawled on the other couch, dick shining wet in the lamplight and limp against his thigh.

Ilya grins, wicked, and kisses Shane again. “My Shane is very greedy,” he says against Shane’s lips. “Always wanting more inside. And,” he strokes his middle finger over Shane’s oversensitive prostate, “for a long time,” Shane squirms and whines, pitched-up and desperate, “he has wanted to try two cocks in his asshole.” Ilya keeps rubbing Shane’s prostate, and god, it hurts. It hurts so good Shane can hardly stand it. Behind him, Kip gasps, and ruts his dick against Shane’s thigh. It slips, neatly, between them, and the tip rubs over Shane’s stretched hole and slides against Ilya’s wrist. Shane moans, again, and his dick gives a valiant twitch.

“So, Kip,” Ilya says, conversationally, and pulls his hand out of Shane’s hole, so he can wrap it around Kip’s dick. He strokes, once, twice. Shane feels his knuckles bumping into his ass cheek and the back of his thigh, which just makes the empty feeling inside him even worse. “Do you want to double-team my husband with me?”

“God, yes,” Kip moans. On the other couch, Scott whispers what the fuck and stares, forlorn, at his own soft dick. Ilya grins, then, wolflike, and pulls a condom out of his pocket. He rolls it onto Kip, easy as anything, then guides Kip’s cock to Shane’s hole. Shane grunts and strains downwards, but Ilya won’t let him take it inside. He teases; letting Kip’s cock slide past his hole and below his balls, rubbing the tip there until Shane’s knees go weak.

“Come on,” Shane begs. “I’ve been waiting all fucking night. I want it. I need it.”

“Use your manners, zhadnyy mal'chik,” Ilya replies.

“Please,” Shane says, wretchedly. Behind him, Kip presses a series of wet, sucking kisses to the back of his shoulder. “Please please please please please—” and then, he cuts himself off with a choked-out cry as Ilya finally guides Kip’s cock to his hole and lets Kip fuck up into him. “Oh-my-god,” he moans, and sinks down, low as he can go. “Thank you, thank you.”

Ilya grins against Shane’s open, panting mouth, and fits a finger alongside Kip’s dick. It’s not an unfamiliar stretch—they’ve done this before, him and Ilya, with a dildo, on a few notable occasions; the night after Shane won his third cup, Ilya’s twenty-seventh birthday. And god, Shane loves it; the hit of pain, the I-can’t-do-it feeling and the rush of pushing past it, the way Ilya stares, transfixed, at just how far Shane’s hole can stretch.

Shane lets himself go all loose-limbed and floaty, leaned back against Kip, keeping his dick warm deep inside. And then, Ilya fits another finger to his hole, alongside Kip’s dick, and scissors them apart, and the stretch is so, so overwhelming. It’s almost more than he can bear. Shane wraps his arms around Ilya’s shoulders and clings. His nails bite bloody little moons into Ilya’s skin. And then, there’s a third finger inside him, and there Ilya is, kissing Shane’s slack mouth, pushing at his leg, hiking it up against Shane’s chest. “Hold it,” he says to Kip, and Kip mutters something about Shane’s hip flexors when he fits his hands to the back of Shane’s knees and spreads his legs up and out.

“Deep breath, sweetheart,” Ilya says, sweetly, and then his fingers are gone, and the head of his dick is pressing against Shane’s hole, and oh god oh fuck it hurts, it hurts so good Shane wants to fucking die, and it just won’t go in, just keeps stretching him and stretching him and—

Shane cries when it finally goes in. Tears leak down his cheeks and drip into his open mouth, and his asshole is on fire, really, actually on fire, and it’s so much worse than the time Ilya got down some internet rabbithole and decided to stick a peeled piece of ginger up Shane’s ass, and it’s so much better. It’s so good Shane can barely breathe.

Ilya gets one of his hands on Shane’s chest and kneads at the muscle until it aches, and he licks over the tear tracks on Shane’s face, and presses a delicate, careful kiss to the corner of Shane’s eye. “You are okay?” he whispers there, against the thin skin, and carefully rubs his thumb against Shane’s rim. Shane shudders, and moans, and nods, shakily. He glances past Ilya’s shoulder, and locks eyes with Scott, who flushes red and looks down at Shane’s gaping, burning hole.

And then, Ilya moves inside him; a barely-there thrust that still, somehow, has Shane seeing stars. “So perfect,” he coos, his thumb still tracing over Shane’s rim. Shane makes a rough, incoherent noise in reply, and his dick drips between their bellies, leaking like a fucking faucet. Behind him, Kip moans, and leverages his grip on Shane’s knees to start moving, too—a gentle back-and-forth that has Shane clenching down on them both. And then, Ilya slides out further on the next thrust, and pushes back in harder, and Shane cries out in sheer fucking ecstasy. It’s so, so good—somebody always fucking their way inside while the other is pulling out, prying his hole apart in two different directions, nailing his prostate on every thrust because he’s so fucking full it’s impossible to miss.

From there, Shane loses track of things. Someone is making these rhythmic little noises, and they might be him or they might be Kip, and he’s got someone’s fingers pinching his nipple and someone else tugging at his hair, a mouth on his neck and a mouth on his cheek and a burning ache in his hips from where his legs are held up, spread wide apart. And there’s Ilya’s belly slapping against his dick, or maybe his dick slapping against Ilya’s belly, and the everpresent, all-consuming, burning stretch in his hole, and at some point Shane comes, he thinks, but the men inside him just keep going, and going, and going, until Kip whines behind him and gently pushes at his back. And Ilya is pulling him off the couch, laying out on the floor with Shane perched over his hips, slapping his ass and telling him to ride, and Shane does. He rides Ilya until he comes, again, two of Ilya’s fingers crammed beside his dick and his other hand wrapped around Shane’s cock, and keeps going until Ilya comes inside him with a barely-suppressed shout.

Shane collapses forwards; cheek to Ilya’s chest. A used condom plops onto the floor somewhere next to his foot. Shane can’t bring himself to give a shit. He lays there, Ilya stroking over his back and his sweaty hair, until Ilya’s cock softens, and slips out of him, and he starts dripping come out of his sore, gaping asshole and onto the floor between their legs.

Scott comes over and lays his hand over the small of Shane’s back, light-fingered, like he’s touching something fragile. It tickles, but Shane doesn’t dare move—Scott seems like he spooks easy, and Shane doesn’t want him to go. And then, Scott leans in for a kiss, and it’s so fucking sweet. Close-mouthed and careful, like benediction, like permission for something Shane never even thought to ask for.

And, so. For a long time, they just lay there, him and Ilya, Scott knelt next to them, Kip practically passed out on the couch. Nobody says a word; there’s nothing to say. But, eventually, Ilya taps at Shane’s hip and moves him off to the side, then hauls himself up off the floor with a groan. “Kip,” he says, hoarse, “where are your towels? And your bathroom?”

“I’ll show you,” Kip replies, muzzily. “I need my post-sex gatorade anyways.”

For a moment or two, Shane just lays there, belly-down on the floor, eyes closed, while Scott’s fingers go right back to trailing across the small of his back. He moans, a soft, quiet thing, and when Scott’s fingers trip lower, between his legs, Shane dutifully spreads his thighs and lets Scott explore. He shivers when Scott traces around his hole—it hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt, still. Like hard work, like muscle driven as far as it can go.

“Jesus,” Scott breathes, and rubs the pad of his thumb over where Shane is still wide open and wet. Shane tilts his hips up into it. “You’re insane. Like, actually certifiable.”

“You can finger me if you want,” Shane mumbles into the hardwood. There’s a wet spot beneath his cheek—it drags against his skin with every word. “But I probably won’t come again, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Actually insane,” Scott mutters, and slips the tip of his thumb inside Shane’s hole before slowly withdrawing; his thumb out of Shane’s hole, his hand from between Shane’s legs; retreating to lay on the rug next to Shane.

“Scott?”

“Hm?”

“How was your team when you came out?” Shane asks. “Like, how were they really. No bullshit.”

“No bullshit,” Scott repeats, softly, and leans in close, so he can stroke his thumb over the short little scar on Shane’s shoulder. “Most of them got quiet,” he says, low. “Scared to look me in the eye, avoided me in the shower, stopped texting in the team chat, that kinda thing. It didn’t last forever, though. Vaughny whipped most of them into shape, and the ones that didn’t fall in line all traded out, eventually, when they realized I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Vaughny—Carter Vaughan?”

“Yeah.” Scott says, with a soft little smile. “He’s a good guy. Probably my best friend.”

Yeah, Shane thinks. Best fucking friend, indeed. Last year, right before the season, the MLH had made a dual announcement. They’d finally be lifting the ban that prevented players from competing in the Winter Olympics, and they were banning the use of pride tape on the ice, supposedly out of concern for Russian players. And Shane had been sick to his stomach, but he’d thought things might turn out okay—he might not be able to say anything, but Scott could. Scott would. Scott had to. But Scott never did. Instead, Carter Vaughan had taped his stick up in rainbow for the next game, and when asked in the press scrum later that night, he said I don’t think it’s right. They can fine me, but I’ll be using pride tape at every game from now on. And then he did, for a solid month, until the league finally caved under overwhelming public pressure and lifted the ban on fucking rainbow-colored tape.

Meanwhile, in Shane’s locker room, Hayden heard about Vaughan’s rainbow tape protest and said well why isn’t Hunter doing it with him? Where’s Saint Scotty? And JJ had laughed, and replied maybe he is taking the day off, you know? Even Jesus needed three days of rest before he rose, and stuck his fist between his legs so he could slowly raise his pointer finger; a crude imitation of a pencil-thin dick. And then, Drapeau came in and said I bet he sucked Vaughan’s cock. Why else would he be doing all that?

“Did he, uh.” Shane stops. Swallows. Tries again. “Did he say anything to you, after you came out?”

“Yeah, of course,” Scott says. His hand stills on Shane’s shoulder. “He was the first one to congratulate me after I got done making out with Kip.” Scott’s brow furrows. “Why? Are you—”

“Gatorade,” Kip announces, cheerfully, and pitches a bottle at Scott’s head. Scott catches it, reflexively, but he’s still frowning at Shane. And Shane has no idea how that sentence was going to end—are you safe, are you alone in that locker room—and suddenly, he doesn’t want to know, either. He peels himself up off the floor and lets Ilya rub a wet washcloth over his asshole, then disappears into the bathroom to raid Scott and Kip’s stash of Aquaphor. And when he comes back, Scott and Kip are tucked into bed, and Ilya is waiting in the guest room, and Shane tries to put it out of his mind; pretend it had never happened. But it lingers, later that night, when Shane is trying to sleep. All he can think is a carousel of the same three phrases, over and over and over. Am I safe in that locker room? Do I have anyone? Am I all alone?

_____

And then, on Thursday, Shane calls a car and bullies Ilya into it an hour before the meeting, which means they’re stepping through the double-wide glass doors of the MLH headquarters half an hour early, and whisked down a hallway lined with glass-framed jerseys, ushered into an elevator, and in front of Crowell’s office door twenty minutes before they’re supposed to be there. Shane tells his assistant they’re fine waiting—his mom would kill him if he went to this meeting without a lawyer—but the guy must’ve emailed, or something, because he and Ilya have barely been standing there for a minute before Crowell’s door flies open, and Crowell himself is striding out and shaking their hands, one by one, and ushering them inside before Shane can get a word in edgewise. And, so, Shane discreetly opens a voice memo on his phone, hits record, and follows Crowell inside.

Crowell’s office is purposefully, overwhelmingly masculine—stark white walls, polished concrete floors, industrial elements popping out on the ceiling and prominent in the light fixture hanging over his desk; a giant backlit MLH logo splashed across the far wall, a wall of windows to his left; a collection of jerseys displayed in skinny glass cases the only color in the room. The desk itself is a glass monstrosity, kept purposefully empty. The chair behind it looks like something that belongs to a Bond villain.

“Sit, sit,” Crowell says, and gestures towards the sparse, modern-looking chairs set in front of his desk. Shane looks at Ilya, Ilya looks at Shane. Ilya shrugs. They sit. “Well,” Crowell sighs, and leans back; a king languishing in his throne. “What in the goddamn hell am I supposed to do with the two of you?”

Ilya blinks. “Sorry?”

“We already had a poster-boy faggot in the league,” Crowell continues, and leans forward. “We didn’t need two more.”

With that, Shane’s breath catches, and his stomach sinks, and his chest goes tight and heavy. Where the fuck is Dawn? He wants, desperately, to reach over and take Ilya’s hand in his, but he doesn’t. He can’t. That sort of thing isn’t allowed inside this room.

“Now, don’t get me wrong!” Crowell continues. “I love diversity. Diversity makes me money. But I only love it when it’s neat, and clean, and easy to market. This,” Crowell says, and gestures between them in disgust, “is anything but. This is a fucking clown show. I’ve got half the league calling for my head if I let you play, the other half calling for my head if you don’t, and the two of you are out here going on the fucking Today Show without my goddamn permission, saying whatever the hell you want, getting photographed inappropriately,” he says, with a scowl, “in fucking public.” Crowell takes a deep breath, then, and grips the armrests on his stupid Bond villain chair so hard his knuckles go white. “If this was anyone else,” he hisses, “we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I would’ve turfed you out the second that fucking TMZ article got published.”

“But you didn’t,” Ilya says. Shane whips his head over and glares at him, but Ilya is staring, defiantly, at Crowell, and Shane has seen that look on his face before—it’s the exact same expression he gets just moments before he drops his gloves.

“Don’t test me, boy,” Crowell replies. “I’ll have you banned from the MLH so fast your head will fucking spin.”

There’s that familiar jolt of fear, again, and Shane feels a bit like he’s going to puke. But then, the afternoon light shifts, and it slants across Crowell’s desk in a golden column, and under the piercing glare Crowell doesn’t look like a god, anymore. He just looks old; hairy knuckles, faded blue veins popping out of the backs of his hands, sunspots crowded around his thinning hairline. There are needle marks around his lips—he’s topped up his filler recently—and he’s paler around the eyes because he gets his California-sunshine-glow refreshed bi-weekly in a tanning bed, and his watch is a flashy gold Rolex, but Shane knows that model, and it’s one of the least expensive ones in the catalogue—a watch designed for men who want to look richer than they actually are. And all at once, Shane isn’t so scared anymore. He’s met men like this hundreds of times over the years; greedy, grasping men who cling to their youth with both hands; men who look at Shane and see a business opportunity and a body to exploit; men who have loved and hated Shane in equal measure because they wanted him, and they wanted to be him—young and beautiful and powerful, a three-time Stanley Cup champion, a household name with more brand recognition than most MLH teams would ever have.

He cares about the money, Scott had said. And Crowell just said it himself, too—he likes his things clean and marketable. And, well. Shane can work with that. Maybe he doesn’t need his lawyer here after all. 

“Respectfully,” Shane says. “I don’t think you’re going to do that.” He leans forward a bit, so the light will catch against his Rolex—a brand-new model that retails for more than most people’s cars—and his latest championship ring, worn on his index finger, next to his wedding band. “Right now, we’ve got millions of people watching us, which means you’ve got millions of people watching you, and that’s millions of potential new fans, if you handle this right. And sure, some of those people might want us out of the league, but a lot more of them want us to get our happy ending,” Shane pauses, and raises his eyebrow—playing at more confidence than he feels. “And, frankly, you need all the good press you can get after that clusterfuck last year with the pride tape.”

Crowell blinks. Beside him, Ilya turns and stares at him, like the Shane he knows has been body-snatched and replaced with a total stranger. “What exactly are you saying, Hollander?” Crowell says, an edge to his voice, but Shane has him, he fucking has him. He can see the greedy little glint in Crowell’s eye.

“I’m saying that if you clear us to play, lean into the story, you could make millions. You remember how Scott Hunter’s sales shot through the roof after he came out? Take that effect and apply that to the money I’ve been making you for the last decade.” Shane shrugs, faux casual. “Or, you could play the villain, I guess, but if you do, our lawyer is prepared to file a discrimination suit so iron-clad you’ll be paying us two faggots damages for the next forty years.”

Crowell looks at Shane, then. He sizes Shane up, maybe a little surprised, maybe with a little bit of grudging respect. Shane stares back, cool and level. And before Crowell can reply, the door opens, and there Dawn is, in her smart black power suit, briefcase in hand, hair pulled back in a severe low bun.

“Well,” Crowell says, once Dawn has introduced herself and dragged a chair over to sit between Shane and Ilya. There’s a sour look on his face, and Shane pointedly keeps his own face perfectly blank and expressionless. “I just wanted to call you boys down here to give you the good news in person. You’re cleared to play. Not even a fine. The announcement will hit the press tomorrow.”

And Shane should feel relieved. He should feel giddy with it, fucking incandescent, the same way he feels when Ilya fucks him so good that the tension drains out of his muscles and he forgets all his troubles, but he doesn’t feel any of that. He just feels tired. The meeting ends barely five minutes later, after Crowell carefully requests that Shane and Ilya keep it clean with the press. Shane shakes his hand before they go, and plasters on a polite smile he doesn’t really feel.

This is a huge victory, Dawn says, later, when they meet in Shane and Ilya’s hotel room to debrief. You’re laying good groundwork for future queer players. But it doesn’t feel like a victory to Shane, not really. It just feels like he’s been given permission for something he was already doing. How fucking generous, to have to beg the commissioner on bended knee to bless his faggot marriage. How fucking generous of the commissioner to grant it without making him pay for the privilege. What a crock of shit.

_____

The announcement goes out on Friday, just like Crowell said. On Saturday, Shane wakes up to a bunch of texts in the team chat—guess we’ll see you in September, let’s fucking go—and a voicemail from Hayden, sent at nearly two in the morning. Hey, dude, it says, when Shane plays it, out on the hotel balcony while he watches Ilya sprawled in bed, still asleep. Sorry I haven’t checked in. Shit’s been crazy over here. Ruby got mono, and then Jackie got mono, and we’re in the middle of getting Arthur diagnosed with autism, and Amber has not adjusted well to preschool, and I dunno how Jackie does it all, man. I’m losing my fucking mind. In the background, there’s a shriek, a crashing noise, and a loud, high-pitched wail. Amber, why the fuck are you awake? What the hell did you do? Hayden whisper-yells, then says sorry man, I gotta go. We should totally hang out before the season starts, though! Gimme a call when you’re back in town.

And Shane just stares down at his phone, completely numb, for a long, long time. He sinks down, until he’s sat back on his haunches, and looks at Hayden’s contact photo—a pic Shane had snapped of him asleep on the bus, face slack, drool visible on his chin—until his eyes go all unfocused and hazy. And then, he laughs to himself, a deranged and awful little thing, and collapses back on his ass, crumpled against the railing, so dizzy and so fucking furious he can barely breathe. Of course. Of fucking course Hayden only called after Shane got cleared to play. He doesn’t know why he ever expected any better.

Chapter End Notes

i have spent. a truly unconscionable amount of time. looking at michelin star menus and restaurants in new york city and WHY are so many of the menus in fucking french. please i almost failed french class my junior year of high school and they never taught me the fancy food words. i only remember pomplemousse because it sounds fucking funny. please i beg. also the bad friend hayden pike tag is nuanced and complexes but it will kick in next chapter. be aware.

Chapter 5: august

Chapter Summary

There was a time, once, when Shane was excited to be captain of a hockey team. He’d been fourteen, his last year playing bantam, and when coach picked him for captain he’d felt the responsibility settling on his shoulders like an ermine cloak wrapped around a king of old. He’d thought, foolishly, that maybe the other kids would be nicer to him, now that he was technically in charge. Instead, the teasing and hazing just got more insidious. Sometimes, his teammates would go behind him and take a box cutter to his tape job. Sometimes, he’d come out of the showers and find his street shoes full of piss. He’d walk into a room full of laughing boys and the laughter would cut out, stifled behind sticky, nail-bitten hands. The joke was always that Shane wasn’t in on the joke. The joke was always that Shane didn’t have any friends. He didn’t belong in that locker room.

Chapter Notes

And just like that, they’re free for an entire month. No obligations on the docket, press tour over, nothing left to do but rest and bulk and rest some more. They fly back to Ottawa, him and Ilya, and Shane stays in Ilya’s house, because he doesn’t want to go back to his empty, cavernous apartment in Montreal, and they don’t have to ration their time together so carefully, anymore. Shane wants to fucking glut himself on it.

Their days go down easier, now that they know they’ll be back on the ice in September—morning runs, mismatched protein smoothies, stupid little competitions to see who can bench more or squat more or sprint further, lunches eaten haphazard at the kitchen island, dinners eaten on the couch while they watch whatever dumb action movie Netflix put on Ilya’s recommended for you tab. And it’s there, one night, while they’re sat on the couch eating pho and halfheartedly watching old reruns of Bridezillas, that Ilya turns to Shane with a shy, hesitant look on his face.

“Okay, Mr. Real Estate,” he says, after they’re done eating, his phone cradled in his outstretched hand. “Look at this house, tell me what you think.”

Shane peers at the Zillow listing. He can’t fucking see it without his glasses. Fuck, he’s getting old. Shane scrolls through the facts and features first—three bed, two bath, finished basement, two stories, attached garage, patio, wood-burning fireplace. Central heating and forced air. New appliances, all included. Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, master bed and bath on the main level. Two-thousand square feet of living space, which is on the smaller side, but doable.

“The dormers are nice,” Shane says, diplomatically, while he scrolls through the pictures. And he’s not lying—they really are nice, lined up on the second story in a neat little row of three, with a brick façade arranged in a grid pasted over the first floor; modern black trim on the windows, to match the black shingles and black siding, decorative black shutters on either side like dutiful left- and right-wingers.

“Good built-in garage,” Shane continues, and zooms in to stare at the double-wide stall—the garage door has the same vertical pattern and color as the board-and-batten, which is a nice touch, and the cutout for it has these little forty-five-degree angles at the top, which lends the whole thing an old-fashioned air that Shane, surprisingly, finds a little charming. “I like the board-and-batten. The black really makes it pop.” Shane zooms in on the landscaping out front. Paved stone steps leading down from the front door to something that could be a walkway or a little patio—the picture is taken from a bad angle. It’s hard to tell. “The lamp post is a bit much, though.” It’s a decorative thing, planted in the middle of a circlet of rose bushes.

Ilya smiles at him, some unspeakably fond look on his face. “It’s a fucking lamp post, Hollander,” he says, and wraps his arm around Shane’s shoulders, so he can settle his face in close and snoop. “Would be really, really easy to remove. Look at the inside.”

Shane scrolls to the next set of pictures, and gasps. “Oh, wow,” he says, and zooms in on a picture of an absolutely gorgeous living room—a wall of windows looking out over the woods in the back, big fireplace with that same grid-patterned brick rising all the way up the right wall, straight to the peak in the roof. They’ve got it staged with an ugly white rug covering the hardwood, but they didn’t paint over the honeyed wood paneling on the walls, thank god, and the exposed ceiling beams loom dark over the whole thing; fucking breathtaking. Shane skims past another photo of the staircase to the upstairs bedrooms—matching wood treads, glass railing—and a few different angles of the kitchen; sleek black cabinets, a shiny, stainless steel range with a matching range hood. “Was this remodeled recently? The kitchen looks new.”

“Mhm. Whole house got a facelift in 2020, I think.”

“The designer did a pretty good job,” Shane says, and zooms in closer on a picture of the layout. It’s not dissimilar to his cottage, but it’s shaped like an L instead of a single line, and the island is bigger, and there’s a sliding glass door to the backyard next to the pantry. “The floors are nice. Those appliances look really high-end. But god, that countertop,” Shane complains. “I swear, I’ve seen that marble thousands of times,” he says, thinking of HGTV reruns where someone in an outfit way too nice to belong on a construction site rambles on and on about Calacutta gold. “Everybody keeps putting it everywhere, and it’s so fucking boring.”

“But it can be fixed, yes?” Ilya replies, and there’s an anxious edge to his tone that Shane can’t quite place.

“Yeah, it wouldn’t take too long,” Shane says, absently, and scrolls past a couple pics of the master bedroom. It’s a good size, with a cedar-paneled walk-in closet and a big picture window and a smaller version of the massive fireplace in the living room—probably the other side of it, Shane thinks, and sharing the same chimney. “Bathtub in the master?”

“Of course,” Ilya says, and reaches with the arm he’s got wrapped around Shane’s shoulder, and scrolls to the next picture. And Shane can’t help it—he gasps again. The master bath is done up in this beautiful polished concrete, floors and walls alike, and the tile on the floor inside the shower looks like pebbles, and the ceiling has more of that same wood paneling that Shane has always, always loved. The vanity he could do without—the base is a little too ornate, and the top is that same boring marble—but he likes the dual sinks, and the dual mirrors, backlit with a soft golden glow. It’s even got a window, so the room doesn’t feel so much like a dreary box. And then, Ilya scrolls again, and there’s the tub, white porcelain and resplendent, tucked away in a corner right next to yet another picture window. It’s got Shane picturing Ilya in that tub, naked in the midmorning sun, or maybe staring out at the pitch-black while he smokes his way through a post-game ice bath.

“God, that’s gorgeous,” Shane says. “I fucking love it.”

Ilya smiles, then, and shifts down, so his temple rests against the point of Shane’s shoulder. “I thought you would. Reminded me of your cottage, a little bit.”

Shane scrolls through the guest rooms. They’re nothing special, really. Painted a nice white, and the dormers add an interesting touch. They’re a good spot for a desk, maybe, or a comfortable chair, or maybe a built-in with a window seat. “Good bedroom size,” he comments, idly. “Finished basement—oh, cool, polished concrete. That’s like, perfect for a gym.”

“And the yard is huge,” Ilya points out. “Like, two whole acres. So the neighbors will not be close.”

Shane scrolls back to the top of the listing, and looks at the photos of the outside. “It looks like it’s set back from the road, too. Nice and private.”

“So,” Ilya says, and pointedly looks up at the TV, so Shane can’t see his face. “You like?”

Shane curls further into Ilya’s side, and sets Ilya’s phone facedown on his thigh. On the TV, the bride-to-be shatters her wine glass against her apartment wall, and Shane jumps, just a little, which makes the corner of Ilya’s mouth curl up. Shane flicks at his earlobe. “Why? You planning on moving?”

Ilya shrugs, and looks down at his lap. He picks up his phone and starts playing with it—holding it between his thumb and index finger and flipping it, over and over; upside-down, rightside-up. “That depends,” he murmurs, inexplicably shy.

“On?”

“On whether you like it.”

Shane blinks. Recalls, suddenly, the whole wretched affair when Ilya moved to Ottawa, how he kept asking Shane’s opinion on things without offering one of his own, until Shane snapped and said fuck’s sake, Ilya, it’s not my house, stop asking me and just buy something for you, and it pissed Ilya off so bad that he drove back to Boston and didn’t text for a few days, and the next time Shane saw him he acted like nothing was wrong, even though it obviously wasn’t true. And Shane hadn’t pushed; their marriage was too new, and Shane hadn’t wanted to ruin it. He’d just gently steered Ilya towards places that reminded Shane of his house back in Boston—ultramodern and stark, with a high privacy fence and a pool in the back—until he’d ended up in this house, which sort of looked like a stack of interlocking boxes from the outside, and cost one-point-five million dollars. “Yeah,” Shane says, oh-so-carefully. “I like it. Do you?”

“Obviously I do,” Ilya scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “You, uh,” Ilya hesitates. “You like enough to drive an hour-long commute to work every day?” Shane stares at him, blankly. Beside him, Ilya glances over, takes in his blank face, and sighs. He turns, then, to face Shane, and rubs his thumb over Shane’s jawline. “I want you to move with me. Maybe. To this house. In Hawkesbury.” Shane just stares and stares. God, this fucking man. “We are out, yes?” Ilya continues, roughly. “No need to hide?”

“Ilya,” Shane says, low. “How long have you been looking at houses in Hawkesbury?”

Ilya flaps a hand around his face. “Oh, you know,” he says, faux casual. “Long time. Years. Since before I bought this place.”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Shane says, then gets both hands on Ilya’s cheeks and tugs him in and kisses him, wet and rough. “Of fucking course I want to move in with you. Of course I do.”

And god, there he is, clambering on top of Shane, pushing him to lay back on the couch, grinding on his lap, tongue in his mouth, hands fucking everywhere; sneaking under Shane’s clothes to tweak his nipples and grope at his sides and slip down the back of his sweatpants. Ilya breaks the kiss with a groan, and pants. “Wait, wait,” he says, and forcibly pulls Shane’s hand out of his pants. “I have to call realtor. Right fucking now.”

Shane lets him sit up, then slips down to kneel on the floor and muscles his way between Ilya’s thighs. “You can be quiet, right?” he says, already burying his face in Ilya’s crotch.

“Fuck, fuck,” Ilya chants. And Shane feels so fucking high on it, on life, on cock. It makes him braver than he usually is. So, he makes a game of it, trying to see if he can get Ilya to stutter or gasp, but it doesn’t work—Ilya has always been the better actor between the two of them. Fuck, he’s gonna have this for the rest of his life, isn’t he? The ache in his knees, the spit dribbling down his chin, Ilya’s cock filling his mouth and tapping at the back of his throat; his own dick so hard in his sweats that he feels wet, like a girl, hands fucking shaking with it, so turned on he could choke if he hadn’t diligently trained out his gag reflex years ago. And he won’t just have it for two weeks in the summer, four games during the season, and a handful of stolen evening hours either—he’ll have it year fucking round, in the same fucking house. Matching toothbrushes in a cup in the bathroom, matching house slippers side-by-side next to the front door, matching morning coffee mugs in the dishwasher. God, god. Shane comes in his pants picturing their clothes smelling the same because they’re gonna use the same laundry detergent, and Ilya comes in his mouth not long after, and it’s perfect. Maybe the first perfect thing Shane has had in a long, long time.

_____

They close on the house two weeks later—things go fast when you pay cash, as it turns out. Shane pulled half a mil out of his stock portfolio, and Ilya sold off ten bitcoin out of his stash, and together, they covered the million-dollar price tag pretty easily. It barely made a dent. And it’s right around then, when the ink is drying on the deed to his and Ilya’s new house, that Shane abruptly decides that having a fair-weather friend is better than having no friends at all. So, he texts Hayden; hey, sorry I haven’t replied, we bought a house, lol, it’s still kind of a mess but I can give you the grand tour if you want. And Hayden said, you’re moving? not far I hope, and Shane said just to Hawkesbury, and Hayden said shit dude, that’s like an hour away, how are we gonna hang out during the season? And instead of pointing out that Hayden sounded a bit like a clingy college girlfriend, Shane just replied we play hockey together dude, we’ve got plenty of time.

And, so. Shane and Hayden make plans for Shane to pick Hayden up and drive him out to Hawkesbury. He pulls up to Hayden’s sprawling suburban house driving Ilya’s lambo, because Ilya can’t fit the last half-dozen boxes he needs to move in the teeny-tiny trunk, and doesn’t trust the suspension with his mama’s fine china even if he could.

Hayden whistles, low, when Shane pulls up, and runs an appreciative eye over the car, all the way from the headlights to the stupid-looking spoiler. “I’m guessing this isn’t your car?” he says, lightly, as he settles into the passenger seat, and rubs his hand over the top of the dash, like he’s petting a well-behaved dog.

“Nah,” Shane says, and cranks his head all the way to the right, so he can look over his shoulder while he backs out. He gives it a bit more gas than he needs to, when he’s ready to peel out of Hayden’s neighborhood; really lets the engine roar, even though he thinks it’s obnoxious, because he knows Hayden will like it. And he’s right—Hayden whoops, delighted. “Ilya had some extra stuff he needed to bring to the house, so we swapped for the day. Lucky us, right?”

“Hell yeah, lucky us,” Hayden says with a breath of a laugh.

Shane looks over at Hayden, where he’s moved on from caressing the dash to caressing the center console. “You wanna take it for a spin?” he ventures, and bites at the side of his thumb, where the skin meets the fingernail.

Hayden turns and looks at Shane, eyes enormous. “For real?” he says, grinning, and then the grin slowly dies, and Hayden frowns. “Your guy isn’t gonna like, hunt me down and kill me if he finds out I drove his baby, is he?”

Shane chews on his bottom lip. “Well, you can keep a secret, right?”

“Fuck yeah, I can,” Hayden replies, cheerfully, and so, Shane pulls over to the side of the road, just before they hit the main road out of Hayden’s neighborhood, and tosses Hayden the keys when they cross paths in front of the hood. Hayden snatches them out of the air and practically skips to the driver’s seat, and he floors it while the car is still in park, just to hear what Ilya’s lambo sounds like when the engine really revs up. And maybe it’s because he’s still scared of Ilya, or because he doesn’t want to misbehave in front of Shane, but he eases off the gas early, still a ways shy of redlining. “Holy fucking shit,” he says, and then says it again when he puts the car in drive and peels out. He laughs when he takes a corner tight enough the tires screech. “I feel like a fucking kid again!” He hollers over the roar of the engine, and Shane laughs along with him, and for a brief, shining moment, Shane slips back into the easy, familiar headspace where Hayden is the one uncomplicated thing in his life—his best fucking friend, who made hockey feel a little less life-or-death, who pretended to trip and bodied a rookie into the boards after he caught the fucker pulling up the corners of his eyes and leering behind Shane’s back, who kept Shane’s favorite protein bars on hand and laughed at Shane’s jokes and, somehow, liked Shane enough to keep rooming with him, years after the PA won individual rooms for every player in the league. Shane’s best fucking friend, who dragged him out of his shell, years ago, the way a fisherman lovingly shucks an oyster to reveal the tender meat inside, and never once made Shane feel scared, the way he’d been afraid of the other boys when he was young.

Hayden flips the radio to a classic rock station, and they roll the windows down, and they fly down the street while Hayden sings I-E-A-I-A-I-O at the top of his lungs and drums on the steering wheel, but the sound system is cranked so loud Shane can hardly hear it. This is fun, Shane tells himself, even though he’s not a big rock fan, and doesn’t know the lyrics, and has no idea why the lead singer keeps talking about pussy peppers. This is fun, you are fun, don’t fucking ruin it now.

They swap back before they hit the highway, and Shane flicks the radio off—mumbles some excuse about needing the GPS—and he watches from the corner of his eye as Hayden settles back into the passenger seat, legs akimbo, thumb tracing over the leather just below the window.

“You’d better enjoy this thing while you got it, dude,” he says, with a low whistle. “You’ll be trading it in for a minivan once you start having kids. God, I miss my Mustang.”

Shane smiles at the memory. Back when they’d first met, Hayden had a cherry-red 1969 Mustang with a black racing stripe up the hood. It was the first thing he’d bought with his MLH money. It broke down constantly, and always smelled overwhelmingly of burning motor oil, but Hayden had loved it with everything he had. “That car was like your first baby,” Shane teases, remembering how Hayden cried when he found out that a valet took it for a joyride while Hayden was clubbing and hit a deer going 120, which, of course, ended with the deer fucking vapiorized, the valet in the hospital, and Hayden’s pride and joy completely fucking totaled. “But uh,” he continues, and nervously taps his fingers against the steering wheel, “me and Ilya aren’t gonna be having kids anytime soon. Maybe ever.”

For a long moment, Hayden says nothing, and they just listen to the road-noise. It’s kind of nice. Familiar, in its own way. The GPS chimes in and says in half a kilometer, take exit 70-0. And then, Hayden blurts “wait, you don’t want kids?” and he watches, incredulous, as Shane shrugs. “I thought you did, though. Like, I’m pretty sure I remember you telling me you do. More than once. We talked about setting our kids up when they were older.”

“I think that was mostly you and Jackie,” Shane replies, carefully. He pulls onto Autoroute 40 O, and focuses on shifting through the gears; third to fourth, fourth to fifth. “And, like. I dunno. I think I mostly just wanted to be normal, and kids are, like, part of normal, you know?” He glances over at Hayden, but Hayden isn’t looking at him. He’s staring down at his lap, a deep furrow carved between his eyebrows. “Like the whole wife-and-two-point-five-kids, white picket fence, golden retriever in the backyard thing,” Shane continues, then winces. Hayden’s house literally has a white picket fence, and he’s been talking about getting the kids a dog for Christmas. “It took a while to realize that I didn’t want the wife part, and I think being with Ilya made me realize that I didn’t have to want the rest of it, either.”

“So he doesn’t want kids then?” Hayden says, slow, emphasis on he. Shane bristles, then forces himself to relax. He’s overreacting, he knows. Too fucking sensitive about Ilya after years and years of keeping him like a secret.

Shane shakes his head. He gets in the left lane and speeds up, whipping past a semi-truck plastered with an ad for Saputo. “It’s not just him. And, like. He likes kids, but he says he doesn’t want to raise one. And if he doesn’t want kids—”

“Then you don’t want kids, either,” Hayden interrupts. Shane shrugs. It’s close enough. Hayden runs his hand through his hair and scratches at the top of his head. “Jesus fucking christ,” he says, wonderingly, “it’s like I don’t even know you at all.”

“Of course you know me,” Shane replies, weakly. “You’re my best friend.”

Hayden stares at him for a beat. “You know,” he says, slow, “I’m not sure if that’s true.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Just—” Hayden awkwardly circles his hand through the air; a series of half-assed shrugs. “You know, like, I didn’t know you were gay for a decade. And, I dunno. I would’ve done things differently, If I knew. I would’ve tried setting you up with Jackie’s guy friends instead of her girlfriends, for one,” he says, with a weak chuckle. And then his face goes all serious, and he looks down at his hands, and he says, quiet, “why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Shane taps at the steering wheel with his thumb, rabbit-paced. “Does it really matter?” he says, soft, and stares at the road, so intent his eyes briefly unfocus. He checks his mirrors, but there’s nothing to see. Just the usual traffic, abnormally well-behaved this close to Montreal proper.

And god, Shane doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to do it today, or tomorrow, or next fucking year. He doesn’t want to ever, ever have this fucking conversation. Because he’d known, more than Ilya, exactly how it would go, every single time he had it. Maybe because Ilya didn’t have many people in his life who loved him, or maybe because Ilya had, against all odds, a rosier view of people as a concept than Shane generally did. But the truth was, people would always want something after finding out a secret like theirs. Strangers would want justifications, or timelines, or juicy sordid details, and the people close to them would want this; an opportunity to lay the hurt at Shane’s feet, to ask why did you lie to me before ever bothering to consider how scared Shane must’ve been, or how hurt, or how close he’d come, at various points in his life, to finding a tall bridge and letting himself jump.

“Yeah,” Hayden says. “It does. You lied to me for like, an entire decade, dude. And I’ve told you so much shit! Like, shit I didn’t even tell my fucking pastor. You were the first person I went to when Jackie and I started getting worried about Arthur. You were the person I leaned on when Jackie was struggling with PPD. I—” Hayden cuts himself off, then, and rubs at his eyes with both hands. “Jesus, I told you about my grandpa dying before I told my fucking wife. And you just let me do it, and you never, ever offered anything in return.”

“Hayden—” Shane says, low. A warning, maybe, or a plea.

“When was the last time you told me something true, Shane?” Hayden says, steamrolling. He’s in a groove now; he won’t stop until he’s said his fucking piece. “And not stupid bullshit like ‘your edges need work’ or ‘deke left next time we run through that play’. When was the last time you told me something that actually fucking matters?”

“How was I supposed to say anything?” Shane cries. It’s awful—his voice has gone up an entire octave, and it cracks in the middle, a bit of weakness Shane hasn’t been subjected to since he was seventeen. “I could never get a word in edgewise! Every fucking conversation was about Jackie, or your kids, or your, fucking, ingrown toenail or some shit. And when it wasn’t about Jackie, or the kids, or some stupid mystery wart you picked up in the showers, you were trying to set me up with Jackie’s friends!”

“Because I was worried about you, you fucking asshole!” Hayden bursts out. “You seemed lonely! You told me you wanted a life like mine one day!” And oh, that makes Shane see fucking red. How many goddamn times had he sat there, next to Hayden, and given noncommittal mhms or I guesses, especially after he’d married Ilya, and the vague wife-and-kids vision Hayden was so fucking fixated on moved from a distant maybe to an impossibility. How many fucking times has he sat in Hayden and Jackie’s living room, silently begging Jackie to pick up on what her painfully oblivious husband wouldn’t, or couldn’t, or outright refused to. And still, Hayden keeps going. “So, yeah, I kept trying to set you up! And you just fucking let me do it,” Hayden says, wonderingly, “even though you knew you were just wasting my time, and your asshole husband didn’t even want kids anyway. You just went along with it. You let me make a fool of myself. For fucking years.” Hayden sniffs, practically on the verge of tears. “You could’ve fucking told me, man. You know you could’ve told me. Jackie literally has a gay cousin. So why didn’t you say anything?”

Shane white-knuckles the steering wheel. He says nothing. What the fuck is there to say? Nothing Hayden wants to hear. 

“Don’t you fucking trust me?”

“Maybe I don’t,” Shane snaps. “So fucking what? I had a husband that was thinking about killing himself, who was from a home country that would kill him if they found out we were married, and was trying to stay on top of a locker room that probably would’ve killed me if they found out about any of it! So, sorry I didn’t think about your fucking feelings,” Shane sneers, “but I had more important shit to deal with.”

And that, those words, feel like they echo through the car, even though they’re swallowed up by road noise the second they leave Shane’s lips. A beat-up Honda Civic cuts Shane off; he honks, and swears, and swerves to avoid rear-ending the moron and killing them all—the idiot in the Honda, the people in the Toyota riding Shane’s ass, him and Hayden and everything else inside this stupid fucking Lamborghini; the energy drink in the cupholder, the groceries he’d crammed in the backseat because Hayden probably wouldn’t like eating Shane’s boring food or Ilya’s weird low-effort monstrosities, the box of odds and ends Shane found leftover at his apartment and dutifully crammed into the tiny trunk before heading over to Hayden’s house.

“Yeah, okay,” Hayden says, after a long moment. “I think we’re done here.” He points at the upcoming sign—Exit 35; attractions include McDonalds, Starbucks, and a Holiday Inn just down the road.  “You can drop me at the Costco. I’ll get an uber home.”

The polite part of Shane, the part raised by his parents, wants to demur, to tell Hayden sorry, to say no, no, it’s fine, I’ll drive you home. But Shane thinks about that drive—the stony silence, the fucking shame of it, of Jackie seeing him drop Hayden off barely half an hour after they left—and he clenches his jaw, and puts his blinker on, and takes the exit.

He pulls up right in front of the Costco, and puts the car in park. “Don’t bother coming to dinner next weekend,” he says, then, one hand on the door handle and the other clutching his unopened energy drink.

Shane bows his head. The righteous anger leaves him in a rush, and without it he just feels hollow and empty and so fucking sorry. “Hayden—”

“Just don’t. Fucking don’t.” And with that, he’s opening the door, and he’s fucking gone, jogging towards the side entrance where they sell fifty-cent hotdogs and massive slices of pizza. And there’s really nothing left to do. So, Shane puts it in drive, and gets back on the highway.

_____

“Where’s Hayden?” Ilya says, light and teasing, when Shane trudges through the side door, kicks off his shoes, and hangs his keys, which are technically Ilya’s, next to the two other sets of keys hanging on the little row of tiny hooks mounted inside the shoe closet.

“We got in a fight,” Shane says. And then, he falls into Ilya’s arms, and he falls the fuck apart.

There was a time, once, when Shane was excited to be captain of a hockey team. He’d been fourteen, his last year playing bantam, and when coach picked him for captain he’d felt the responsibility settling on his shoulders like an ermine cloak wrapped around a king of old. He’d thought, foolishly, that maybe the other kids would be nicer to him, now that he was technically in charge. Instead, the teasing and hazing just got more insidious. Sometimes, his teammates would go behind him and take a box cutter to his tape job. Sometimes, he’d come out of the showers and find his street shoes full of piss. He’d walk into a room full of laughing boys and the laughter would cut out, stifled behind sticky, nail-bitten hands. The joke was always that Shane wasn’t in on the joke. The joke was always that Shane didn’t have any friends. He didn’t belong in that locker room.

He’d cried about it to his dad, once, late at night. I don’t know how to get them to like me, he’d wailed, more like a toddler than a teenager, and Dad just said well, you’re not gonna be on that team forever, are you? You don’ t need them to like you. You just need them to pass you the puck. And Shane had replied but what if my next team is just as bad, and Dad said well, then you wait for the team after that. But honestly, Shane, I think you’ll do alright. You’re mature for your age. You’ll fit in better with the older kids.

Only, he hadn’t. He never fit in, no matter where he went. He was too intense, too quiet, too strange, too good at hockey. He’d show up for things, sure. He went to birthdays and team dinners and too many club nights to count, but it didn’t matter. Shane always had at least one person he liked to talk to, but once life stopped forcing them together—when Shane moved schools, or moved teams, or his parents moved to a new neighborhood—it was like they’d never known each other at all. Shane didn’t have a phone full of former teammates and school friends. Nobody ever liked him enough for that.

And sometimes, when Shane feels particularly pissed off and uncharitable, he thinks Hayden only tried so hard because he knew he’d have a more stable career if he was attached to Shane; a planetary body orbiting Shane’s rising star. Sometimes, he hates that C on his chest with everything he has. It’s a job he feels like he’s perpetually failing—how the fuck do you set the tone in a room? How do you turn a group of strangers into friends? Shane doesn’t know. He never has. He still walks into the locker room sometimes, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years later, and hears cut-off laughter.

“I love you,” Ilya murmurs into Shane’s hair, hours later, after Shane has cried himself out and Ilya has tucked them both into bed and pulled Shane into his chest. The bed is the only thing they’ve unpacked in their bedroom. Shane stares at a box labeled MOM DO NOT OPEN with one eye; the other smashed flat against Ilya’s chest. Ilya strokes over his back, back and forth, back and forth.

“Thanks,” Shane whispers, obscenely grateful for the reminder that someone, at least, wants him enough to keep him.

“The fuck are you thanking me for?” Ilya says, light, and cups Shane’s cheek, the same way he curls his fingers around his mama’s fine china teacups; oh-so-careful, like Shane is something irreplaceable. “Loving you? Don’t do that. You don’t ever have to do that.” He strokes over Shane’s cheek with his thumb; smears the sticky saltwater there over his freckles and takes his hand away, briefly, to suck it off the pad of his finger. “What did he say to you, huh? That makes you cry so much?”

Shane sniffs. “He uh—” he curls himself further into Ilya’s chest, slides his hand around to Ilya’s shoulderblade and tries to pull him in even closer. “He was mad at me. Mad I didn’t tell him.”

Ilya’s hand stills on his cheek. “About me?”

“No. Well, yeah, kind of. Mostly I think he was mad I didn’t tell him about me.”

“Ah.” Ilya traces over the whorl of Shane’s ear, the line of his jaw, the corner of his eye. “Is very stupid of him. Very selfish. Maybe,” Ilya pauses, contemplative, or something. His hands on Shane are so soothing. His eyes droop lower and lower, each blink taking just a little longer than the last. “Maybe he is not worth all these tears.”

Shane goes all stiff and pissy, like he’s twenty years old again, and so tightly wound that the lightest poke from Ilya set him off. “He’s my only friend on that fucking team, Ilya,” he says, low, a little mean.

“There is nobody else?” Ilya asks him, gently, and presses against all Shane’s most sensitive scalp-spots like he’s trying to diffuse a bomb. And Shane thinks hard about it, he really does, but there just isn’t anyone there to fill the hole Hayden would leave behind. He and JJ were natural allies, he supposes, and they were friendly enough, but they didn’t really like each other, when things came down to it. JJ was too loud, Shane too serious. JJ probably thought Shane was a stick in the mud, and Shane didn’t really get JJ’s sense of humor, which was unfortunate, because JJ told jokes like he was laying landmines during the Vietnam War. Hayden was always the glue that held them together; the happy medium between their personalities. Shane didn’t fit with the other cliques, either—too American for the Europeans, too middle class for the richies, too rich for the poors, too old for the rooks, too childless and allegedly single for the vets, and too Asian for all of them.

“Come to Bood’s with me, next month, for welcome-back barbecue.” Ilya says, when Shane doesn’t reply. “They might not be your team, but they could be your friends, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Shane replies, and he doesn’t know what he’s responding to, anymore—the idea of attending a party as Ilya’s plus-one, or the notion that Shane could make friends with Ilya’s coworkers. Both ideas seem laughable, impossible, outright insanity. He can’t even inspire, what, love? Loyalty? He can’t even inspire any of that in people he’s known for over a decade. And besides, he suspects that he already knows exactly how that barbecue would go—he’d spend the whole night watching Ilya flit from clique to clique, social butterfly that he is, and feel visceral, incurable envy at how easy he made it all look. There his beautiful, gorgeous husband would go, standing around with his coworkers, laughing, beer in hand, and Shane would hate him, just a little bit. And Shane loves Ilya more than anything. He doesn’t want anything to spoil it.

So, sure, Ilya would introduce him to everyone. Hell, he’d probably have a couple guys picked out expressly for Shane days before the party actually happened, and he’d tug Shane along and watch, anxiously, as Shane tried to socialize, like he’s introducing two cats and praying they won’t start hissing. Shane already resents the whole affair, and it hasn’t even happened yet. Because, even if Shane is a sad, friendless sack of shit, he’s still Shane fucking Hollander, captain of an original six team, fucking three-time Stanley Cup champion. He doesn’t want Ilya’s fucking leftovers. He’s fucking better than that.

_____

Every year, ever since he made captain, Shane has hosted a party on the last Saturday in August. A sort of welcome-back party for the returning vets, and a welcome-to-Montreal party for the new rooks. It was supposed to be a casual thing, where Shane could make the rounds and ask things like how was your summer, Smola, or hey Tuna, you settling in okay, but then, somewhere along the line, it grew into something Shane hardly recognized, like Godzilla in the original black-and-white. The first year, it was a quiet little gathering at his apartment, where everybody was so nervous they barely spoke, and most people cleared out before nine. Last year, he’d done it at one of his investment properties. JJ slept over because he pregamed too hard and passed out somewhere around one in the morning, Drapeau got a DUI on the way home, and Grammy cheerfully announced the following afternoon that his wife had seen pictures from the afterparty, and had finally followed through on serving him with divorce papers.

The plan for this year, before everything had gone to shit, was to rent out a club, leave his Amex at the bar, and hope his teammates didn’t run up too high a tab after Shane left at nine-thirty. But between the clusterfuck at Scott’s wedding and their month-long, mad-scramble PR tour, Shane forgot to actually find a venue, let alone put down a deposit. Shane liked the idea of Bood’s parties, though. Something chill and lowkey, with good food and all the guests out of his goddamn hair before his usual ten p.m. bedtime.

And, so. He sends a text in the team chat once he and Ilya are mostly moved in—hey guys, welcome party’s coming up, usual rules apply: do NOT bring your own beer, do NOT bring any food, and if you’ve gotta do coke in my bathroom, clean your shit up once you’re done, I moved, new address to follow, if I find out any of you fuckers leaked it to the press I’ll mount your head on my hockey stick. And then, after, he texts JJ make sure everyone comes, because JJ is friendly enough with most of the team to actually get them to show the fuck up, and Shane needs to set the tone in the room early; show the guys that nothing is different, really. Nothing has changed. Shane is the same person he’s always been, and he’s still gunning for that fourth cup win, and he’s still someone they can trust, out on the ice and everywhere else. He’ll let them into his home, he’ll feed them pasture-raised porterhouse steak and lobster from Maine, he’ll cheer while the rooks do kegstands in the backyard, keep rolling papers and an old credit card in the guest bath, laugh along when Mickie D makes some stupid joke about going five-hole with a stripper over the summer break. He’ll do anything, fucking anything, to get back on the ice like things are perfectly fucking normal.

He asks Ilya to find somewhere else to be, that night. His house in Ottawa, Shane’s parents’ place, a fucking hotel, wherever, and it starts one of the worst arguments they’ve ever had. Ilya says I’m not your fucking mistress, Shane, and Shane tells him that of course he’s not Shane’s mistress, what the fuck, and Ilya says then stop fucking hiding me like one, and Shane says when the fuck have I hidden you, we literally just finished a fucking press tour talking about how married we are, and Ilya says then why don’t you want me to meet your teammates, and Shane says because they’re fucking assholes, and Ilya says what, you don’t think I can handle people being assholes to me for a couple hours? Which pisses Shane off so bad that he screams, close-mouthed, and tugs at his hair, and yells I get it, you can handle fucking anything! Well guess what? I can’t! And gets in his car and drives out to Montreal to look at last-minute venues he could rent out instead.

And later, when he gets home, Ilya asks him what he meant, and Shane says of course you can handle my teammates being assholes. You’ll only meet them, what, five times this year? I’ve gotta spend every single day with them from October to April. And Ilya just looks at him like he pities him, which almost sets Shane off again. Please, Shane says instead, and Ilya caves, because he always does when Shane says please with his eyes all wet and glassy.

You text and I’ll come, Ilya tells him, all worried and shit. Like Shane is a teenager going to his first house party, which just pisses him off even more. He’s thirty goddamn years old. He doesn’t need a fucking babysitter. But instead of picking another fight, he rides Ilya into the mattress, later that night, hand splayed over his sternum and pressing him down, fingers stuffed so deep in his mouth that his nail beds nudge at Ilya’s soft palate. And he keeps going, fast and vicious, when Ilya’s face goes all red and a vein starts throbbing in his temple, when Ilya comes inside him, when Ilya twitches and winces and starts to go soft.

Ilya is so sweet with him after—cleaning out his come with a wet cloth, washing Shane’s hair in the shower—but some small, vindictive part of Shane wishes he wasn’t. Wants him to be petty like Shane feels, mean like Shane feels. Wants Ilya to unceremoniously kick him out once they’ve washed off the sex, the way he used to when they were twenty-somethings who didn’t know how to be careful with each other yet. Instead, Shane leans into Ilya, who’s pressed up against his back and breathing heavy in his ear, takes that big wad of ugliness all tangled up inside and shoves it down so deep he’ll never, ever have to feel it again.

_____

Come at five, Shane had said, so at four-fifty-five, Shane’s doorbell rings, and he opens it to the entire goddamn team standing outside. JJ at the head of the pack; Shane’s left wing Guigui and goalie Pat Drapeau flanking him left and right. Over their heads, Shane spots the whole second line loitering in his driveway—center Marty Lacasse looking like he just stepped out of a kayak and right wing Walkman like he just stepped off his daddy’s yacht, the rest trying their best to case the joint as discreetly as possible and failing very badly.

Behind Drapeau and Guigui and JJ, d-man Gil Comeau is swaying on his feet, like he started pregaming at noon. The third line is already at each other’s throats, same as always; center Joe Brown is taking a raspberry-flavored hit off his grenade-shaped vape, and his left wing Joey is telling him all about how vapes can tank your lung capacity too, man, my sister was telling me about this new study, and d-man Mickie D, who just joined the team last year, loudly announces that he brought enough weed to share, if Joey needs something to make him chill the fuck out already.

Hayden is notably, glaringly absent. Shane tries not to think about it.

“Holy shit,” Shane announces to the crowd. All together like this, the group looks fucking huge. Overwhelming. Shane pastes on a quiet little smirk and leans against the doorframe. “You guys are actually on time. Did somebody die or something?”

“Or something,” Drapeau says, ominously. Shane chooses to ignore it.

“Capitaine!” JJ says. “You look well. Pike sends his regrets. Something about his wife having a surgery?”

“Hysterectomy, I think,” Guigui chimes in. “I think I heard something about a pregnancy scare.”

“Jesus,” Shane replies, and chews on his lower lip. He hadn’t known. Hayden never told him, and it’s not like Shane had actually asked him how he was doing, on that aborted drive from Montreal. Too wrapped up in his own bullshit, and too used to Hayden offering up tidbits without needing to ask. “Well, get the fuck in here already,” he says, and steps back from the door to gesture everyone inside. “I was counting on you guys being late, so I haven’t had the chance to hide all the loose change yet.”

“Fuck you, man,” Joe says, cheerfully, and sets his camo-patterned baseball cap on top of his heydudes, which are the only shoes Shane has ever seen him wear in the four years he’s known him. “We all know you don’t keep spare change. Do you still toss it in the trash, or did your mom finally break the habit?”

Shane laughs, then, and doesn’t even have to try very hard to force it. “Fuck off, Joe,” he says, and pauses a little, for dramatic effect. “I put it in the recycling. It’s better for the environment.”

Next to him, JJ peers around the entryway like he’s looking for something, but whatever it is, he hasn’t found it in the decorative bowl they never actually use to store their keys, or the copy of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses that Shane bought years ago when he was designing his cottage and stuffed underneath a vase full of incense sticks he never plans on burning, or the blocky abstract painting that Ilya said reminded  him of the concrete khrushchevkas in Moscow. “Rozanov isn’t here?” he says, eventually, after most of the team has kicked their shoes into the corners and shuffled into the living room.

“Nah. He’s out of town.” And this is, technically, true—he’s up in Ottawa with Shane’s parents, enduring an awkward dinner of his own.

And with that, some of the tension in the room eases. JJ stops peering around like he’s waiting for a ghost to swoop down from the rafters, Guigui’s shoulders come down from around his ears, and the rookies look a bit less like world-war-one-era soldiers whose commander just ordered them to charge through no man’s land, shelling be damned.

“Ah, I see. This one is just for the boys, eh?” Guigui says, sly, and eels in close just so he can dig his elbow into Shane’s ribs.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess so.”

Drapeau wanders into the living room and runs an appreciative hand over the back of the sofa, which he’s never seen before—Shane hated his old couch because the white upholstery stained so easily, and he hated Ilya’s couch because it was huge and bulky and ugly, so they’d gone to a high-end boutique in Montreal and compromised on a new couch, with dark brown upholstery and tapered midcentury modern legs, still big enough to hold them both. “So, what,” Drapeau says, staring at the mismatched, old-fashioned china cabinet full of delicate Russian porcelain in the corner, glaring at the sepia-toned portrait of Irina propped up on the mantle next to a more recent photo of Shane’s parents. “Rozanov is the wife?”

“You know, before I would’ve said I couldn’t see it,” Marty chimes in, from where he’s stood behind one of the armchairs in the living room, rubbing the cashmere throw blanket draped over the back between his fingers, “but now I kinda think I can.”

Shane bristles. His shoulders roll back and up, just a hair, and he clenches his right hand into a fist so tight his bitten-to-the-quick nails bite into his palm. He doesn’t like the way they’re both looking at the china cabinet—smug, almost, like cartoon caricatures of high school bullies, like the fact that Ilya’s dead mother once owned a set of teacups with delicate floral filigree was a shameful, girlish secret, no different than finding dresses and heels on Ilya’s side of their shared closet.

Oh, god. What if they wanted to take the thin little cups and fragile matching plates out of the cabinet and laugh at the pink and purple flowers? What if they fucking broke one? Shane would never, ever forgive himself. He’d fucking die. He shoves down the sudden, overwhelming urge to plant himself between the cabinet and the rest of the house and sit there like a bouncer all night. Instead, he claps his hands together and shouts “So! Bathroom’s upstairs, there’s a keg out back—”

“What’s in the keg?” Comeau interrupts, and launches himself over the back of the couch so he can sprawl, loose-limbed, across the cushions. He’s still got his shoes on, tracking god-knows-what all over Shane’s freshly cleaned hardwood floors and brand-new upholstery, but he doesn’t say shit.

Shane shrugs. “Molson.”

“Nice.” Marty replies, and beelines for the patio door through the kitchen. Half a dozen players trail after him, already talking about getting the rookies to do a keg stand.

“There’s also a cooler with Smola’s Radegast,” Shane says, steady, into the absence Marty and his hangers-on leave behind, “and Slättöl for Bergy. And Chris, too, I suppose. There’s enough for both of you.”

Guigui grunts. “You got my Crown Royal?”

“I swear to god, Guigui, you’re the most expensive date I’ve ever had,” he drawls, then winces, internally, at how fucking gay it sounded. “Yeah, I got your Crown Royal. I got soda, too,” Shane says to the cluster of nervous-looking rookies, “if you guys wanna teetotal. I’m gonna be sticking with ginger ale all night.”

“Boring!” Walkman calls from the upstairs landing, where he’s already poking around the spare bedrooms. What he’s looking for, Shane can’t say.

“Fuck off, Walkman.” Shane replies, and gives him two middle fingers. “Anyways,” he continues, “snacks are on the dining table,” he gestures towards the spread there; shrimp cocktail, spinach artichoke dip and homemade pita crackers, various bite-sized bacon-wrapped things, an elaborate-looking charcuterie board, artfully arranged cut-up fruit that only Shane and the European crowd will touch, and something that the caterer described as an elevated jalapeno popper. “Surf and turf should be ready in an hour or so, but if you get hungry before that, just ask Marc,” he points to Marc, who’s standing in the kitchen with three assistants, wearing a chef’s uniform and a polite expression. “He’ll make you something.”

Outside, the half-dozen guys are already crowded around the keg. The usual chug, chug, chug chant drifts through the glass door, so familiar it makes Shane’s teeth ache. He does a quick head count, but all the rookies are still inside, standing next to JJ, staring at him expectantly, and if it’s not JJ out there getting the first hit off the keg—Shane glances, and yeah, there Grammy is, already hoisted upside down and sucking at the dispenser the way Shane sucks Ilya’s cock; spilt, foamy beer dribbling up his red, red face and into his nostrils.

And so, for the next hour, Shane holds court inside, next to the dining table, holding a half-empty can of ginger ale in one hand, grazing alternately on shrimp and pieces of pineapple with the other. He gives the usual responses when people drift in from the backyard, halfway to drunk off their asses—Crown Royal’s in the liquor cabinet; seriously, dude, just take the whole bowl of dip out with you, it’s fine; somebody tell Micky D to stop smoking in my fucking garage, he set off the fucking smoke detector. He asks the rookies about their apartment hunts—Ryan you-can-call-me-Stouffer-yes-like-the-lasagna Stofferson hesitantly admits that the Wi-Fi in his place went out last week, but he doesn’t know how to get it fixed because his mom handled everything with the landlord, and he doesn’t want to have to call her and ask. Jesus fucking christ. Christian call-me-Chris Lundgren, the other rookie, isn’t much better. He’s freakishly tall, visibly uncomfortable, and more stoic than a statue of that king guy from 300. After another twenty minutes of conversation, the only thing Shane knows is that Chris plays left wing, is from Helsingborg, which is in Sweden, and that he’ll answer any other question with a shrug and nothing else.

It’s not all his fault. Shane isn’t a very good conversation partner at the best of times, and right now, he keeps getting distracted by the stupid shit happening in the backyard, or checks out mid-conversation to stare, overprotective, at Irina’s teacups and saucers, perched inside their cabinet.

Soon enough, he’s kicking his way through the discarded red solo cups in the backyard to yell how do you fuckers want your steak, and asking Marc for twenty medium-rare steaks, same as he does every year. Shane doesn’t even know why he bothered to ask. And then they’re all in the back, squeezed into a long table Shane rented and set up close to the deck. He’s sat between JJ and Stouffer, plates piled high with the finest surf and turf Shane could get catered to fucking Hawkesbury, hasselback potatoes, and asparagus wrapped in yet more bacon, which strikes Shane as the human equivalent of tricking a dog with a pill hidden inside a rolled-up piece of cheese.

“So, capitane,” JJ says, loud, at the tail end of the meal, “you had something you wanted to tell us?”

Shane, halfway through a sip of his ginger ale, chokes a little, and awkwardly wipes at his chin. “Uh, no? I mean,” he stutters, “I guess I wanted to make sure we were cool. You know. After everything that happened in the off-season.”

“So you aren’t trading to Ottawa then?” Guigui slurs, visibly confused. He’s got the whole bottle of Crown Royal to the right of his plate instead of a cup, and it’s already three-quarters empty.

“What the fuck? No, I’m not trading to fucking Ottawa. Why the fuck did you think I was?”

“Well,” Comeau says, and gestures vaguely with his red solo cup. Beer slops over the rim and drips onto his half-finished steak. “That’s just what you do, right?”

Shane blinks, and for the first time in his life, desperately wishes the ginger ale in front of him was alcoholic. “Gil, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Comeau glances around the table, and takes another swig of his beer. “You know, like,” he waves his hand around, vaguely, and then stops to belch and slap his chest. “When you’re in a relationship. Nobody wants to do the distance thing forever, and it’s not like we have cap space for your guy, so…”

“So you all assumed that I would trade. To fucking Ottawa.” Shane says, flat.

Walkman washes down one last bite of steak with a swig of beer. “I mean,” he says, glancing around at the rest of the table, “that’s why you moved out here, isn’t it?”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Shane says, exasperated. “I moved out here because I wanted to live in the same house as my fucking husband, and Hawkesbury is almost exactly halfway between Ottawa and Montreal.” Shane eyes the rest of his ginger ale, thinks fuck it to himself, and steals JJ’s beer, and pours the entire mostly-full cup down his throat without really bothering to swallow.

“Right,” Drapeau says, low and bitchy, like he didn’t mean for Shane to hear.

Shane turns towards Drapeau, then, and sits a little higher in his seat, filling it out better, making himself look just a little bigger. “The fuck does that mean?”

“You drop this bomb that you’ve apparently been married to Ilya fucking Rozanov during the off-season, you go ghost in the team chat, and then you move closer to Ottawa right before the season starts? We’re not fucking dumb, Cap. If you can’t talk about it yet, then just say so.”

Shane about hits the goddamn roof. You all fucking ghosted the team chat first, he wants to say, but he reigns it in, stuffs it down, buries it deep inside.

“Okay,” Shane replies. He glances around, and yeah, he’s just close enough to snag the cooler full of fancy imported European beer. He pulls out a Radegast, hits the cap against the tabletop to open it, takes a swig, and pointedly stops himself from grimacing at the taste. “I kept a lot from you guys. I get it. I’m sorry. But seriously, there’s no trade happening.” He glances around the table, and no one will look him in the eye—not even JJ. “Seriously, guys,” he says, pleading, “I just re-signed in 2020. You guys know this. It was all over the news. And I fucking love this team,” Shane says, and suddenly, he’s not sure if he feels more like punching something or crying. “I won three fucking cups with the Metros—”

“Did you?” Drapeau spits. “Or did your boyfriend hand them to you because he wanted to make you happy?”

“If I thought that was even remotely possible, I wouldn’t have fucking married him,” Shane replies, without even needing to think about it at all. “And that’s straight up not how winning the cup works, Drapes. What, you think Ilya was somehow fixing matches when we beat Colorado last year? Or Minnesota in 2015?” He gets a couple of considering looks, then, like a handful his teammates were finally starting to remember how the game they played for a living actually fucking worked. And for a brief, blinding moment, Shane wishes that he really was trading to Ottawa. He’d hate it, probably, but he thinks he’d hate it less than this stupid, pointless, bullshit conversation with a gaggle of stupid, pointless people. I like these guys, Shane reminds himself; I like them, I love them, and I want them to like me in turn.

“It’s just a lot, no?” JJ interjects. “Many things changing, all at once. It makes sense, I think, that we assumed there would be more change coming.” And then, with a significant look at Shane, he says “I am glad to hear we were wrong, Capitaine.”

Shane takes a deep breath. He sips his beer. He reigns himself in before he does something he’ll regret. “Sure, sure. And like I was saying,” he says, “I love this fucking team. I’ve got two more years on my contract, and I’m gonna sign again after that if they’ll let me. I’m not going anywhere.” And with that, Shane drains the rest of his beer. He stands, and gathers his leftovers, and tosses them in the trash. He gets himself one of those stupid red solo cups and fills it to the brim, then fills it again when it’s all gone. And he doesn’t remember much of what happens after that.

_____

In the morning, Shane wakes with a wicked, pounding hangover. He can feel his heartbeat in his fucking temples, and it pulses in time with the grinding noise of the garage door coming to a close. He groans, and rolls over, and checks the time. Early, still. Just after eight. He’s only been asleep for about five hours—the last stragglers finally ubered home sometime around three.

For a long time, Shane just lays in bed listening to Ilya moving through the house; the clink of his keys on the hook by the garage door, the sound of the fridge opening, the click of the burner on the stove. When the smell of eggs and bacon wafts through the crack under the bedroom door, Shane wraps himself up in the comforter, which he’ll probably need to wash anyways, and stumbles out towards the kitchen.

He doesn’t make it very far. Their bedroom is on the first floor, connected to the living room by a short hallway, and the hallway is tacky with spilled beer from a couple of those goddamn red solo cups scattered across the hardwood. The living room is worse; the cups are more numerous, and it smells overwhelmingly like skunk weed, and there are obvious barbecue sauce fingerprints on their nice cashmere throw, which is puzzling, because Shane hadn’t even served anything with barbecue sauce. Someone left an entire plate full of food on their brand-new couch and didn’t bother to clean it up, and an empty bottle of Ilya’s good vodka is tipped sideways on the coffee table.

In the kitchen, Ilya is dodging more of those fucking plastic cups while he tries to cook breakfast. The floor is sticky here, too, and there are smears of food across the dining table where people dripped spinach artichoke dip or cocktail sauce and didn’t bother cleaning it, and the nice ceramic fruit bowl Ilya brought from his place in Ottawa is shattered on the floor, the fruit bruised and scattered everywhere. Shane whips his head around to look, and whispers oh thank fuck when he sees that Irina’s fine china is, perhaps, the only thing in the living room that survived the night unmolested.

“Seems like you had an interesting time,” Ilya says, with a wry little smile, and flips the eggs with a spatula because he still can’t do it with just the pan, even though he’s been trying for years. “You put me to shame, sweetheart. I haven’t seen a house this trashed since I was, what, twenty-three? Twenty-four?”

Instead of replying, Shane wraps his arms around Ilya from behind, and buries his face against the back of his shoulder. He stays there for a while, slowly rocking them both while Ilya slides the eggs onto a plate and flips the bacon with a fork. They eat standing at the island, because the barstools are sticky and the dining table is a fucking biohazard, and Ilya doesn’t say a word the whole time. Shane is so grateful he could cry.

“Bood’s thing is tomorrow,” Ilya eventually says, quiet, when they’re stood side-by-side at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes by hand because the dishwasher is full and Shane was too drunk to remember to run it the night before.

“Ilya,” Shane starts, but Ilya interrupts him before he can reply.

“Let me guess. You can’t come with.”

Shane briefly closes his eyes, and bows his head over the sink full of suds like a priest at an infant baptism, and scrubs hard at the pan Ilya cooked their eggs in, even though it’s already clean—the pan is fucking nonstick. “It’s not that I don’t want to—”

“Shane,” Ilya interrupts, sour. “I am big boy. I don’t need you to lie because you think it will make me feel better.”

He turns to look, then, and Ilya is, god, he looks like he’s about to fucking cry. “Hey,” Shane says, soft, and abandons the pan to the dishwater. “I’m not lying,” he continues, even though he’s not sure if that’s entirely true. But then, Ilya shakes his head, and so, Shane reaches over, and gently tugs the cloth he’s using to dry the dishes out of his hands, so he can dry himself off and cup Ilya’s cheek. “The guys thought it was a going away party, alright? They were all like, fucking convinced I was trading to Ottawa. I told them I wasn’t—”

“But if you go to team dinner with me, it will look like you lied to them,” Ilya interrupts, again, which is how Shane knows that he’s really, actually upset.

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

Ilya shakes his head again, and he still won’t look Shane in the eye. “Sorry for what? Not like you did anything.”

“Yeah, well,” Shane replies, and carefully folds the two of them together; his arms tight over Ilya’s shoulders, his hand buried in the hair at the back of Ilya’s head, his lips pressed lightning-quick to Ilya’s cheek and the shell of his ear. “This is clearly important to you, so I’m still sorry.”

“I just want you to meet them,” Ilya says, muffled, into the side of Shane’s neck.

“I know, baby,” Shane replies. God, his husband. His big, beautiful husband, who still got scared to ask for things sometimes, who somehow managed to think the best and worst of people all at once, who was so easy to hurt if Shane wasn’t careful.  “I know. Maybe we can do something after playoffs. You know, give everything time to calm down.” And Ilya nods against him, but from the way he sighs, Shane can tell he doesn’t really believe it. Shane can’t blame him, either, after all those years of telling Ilya I’m not ready, I just need more time.

And so, they stand there for a long time, him and Ilya, in the beer-sticky wreck of their house, and that same ugliness from before rises inside him. Surely Ilya wasn’t this naïve. Surely he knew exactly what he was asking for when he laid that ultimatum at Shane’s feet, knew that coming out wasn’t a storybook ending to their fucking fairytale—it wouldn’t wish away their problems or make the world safer. They wouldn’t get the sort of golden-edged life where they got to attend workplace picnics together. Anything they got would come to them bloody, scraped raw, mangled in their desperate fight to seize it. He stands there, holding Ilya in their kitchen, stray grapes and the remnants of hand-rolled joints squashed underfoot, and that black tide inside swells until Shane feels like he’s being torn clean in two; no idea how to make it better, no clue what to do.

Chapter End Notes

i did say that the bad friend hayden pike tag would get activated this chapter. i did say that. anyways if you want to know what it was like writing the first scene of this chapter, i was on zillow for like an hour and ended up going to the home improvement store to get paint samples for the wall color, flooring samples for the floors, and laminate countertop samples for the tile and such because frankly none of the houses on zillow had the right vibe and i love picking out paint colors and shit. in another life i went into the construction business like my forefathers. next up is the preseason, where nothing bad could possibly happen i promise :)

Chapter 6: september

Chapter Summary

So. Shane learned quick. The best way to shut everyone up was to simultaneously blend in and keep himself apart; to wear painfully neutral clothes and keep his hands still and his eyes down and avoid going over to other people’s houses; to laugh and say my mom’s way out of your league, you look like a fucking bridge troll, instead of saying my mom’s from Mississauga with a flat affect; to train hard, train so fucking hard that he’d never make a mistake, so nobody could ever have the opportunity to call him anything other than good, great, goated, fucking fantastic.

It didn’t work, of course. People hated Shane when he was bad, and they hated him when he was good, and they really fucking hated him when he was great. And, there was another, worse thing—the one thing Shane could never train away. At the end of the day, Shane was a faggot. And there wasn’t a single fucking thing he could do to fix it.

Chapter Notes

The day before training camp starts, Shane heads over to Montreal Sports Medicine Clinic for his usual workup—how much does Shane weigh? How much of him is bone, how much is muscle, how much is fat? Is his problem shoulder from last season still inflamed? Has he been injecting anabolic steroids? Are there trace amounts of coke in his piss? So, Shane strips, and does what he’s told; stands where he’s supposed to stand, pisses where he’s supposed to piss, dutifully sits and bleeds into half a dozen little vials. When it’s time, he steps up on the scale, and Dr. Moore, who’s probably been the official team doctor for the Metros longer than Shane has been alive, turns to Shane with a grim look on his face and announces, “you’re underweight.”

Shane closes his eyes, and lets his head go loose on his shoulders, face tilted back towards the ceiling. Remembers, then, that week and a half eating nothing but fish and berries and fucking foraged salads—not enough carbs, not enough fat. Remembers, too, the faint queasiness he’s felt, on and off, since June, and wonders if that alone was enough to cost him the cup this season. “How much?” he says, and doesn’t inhale once the breath leaves his body. 

“Ten pounds,” Dr. Moore says, and drifts over to the sleek desktop computer in the corner to click a few buttons. “It’s not bad, but it’s not ideal.”

Shane inhales, a little too loud and a little too fast. “Okay,” Shane replies, toneless, and exhales, and drops his head to stare down at his hands, which are limp in his lap. His palms are already starting to sweat. “What should I do?”

“Well, I’ll have to get you in the bodpod before I can say for sure,” Dr. Moore hedges, and nods towards the sleek-looking contraption in the corner that’s supposed to measure Shane’s body composition—better than the old way, which involved pinching him all over with a pair of calipers. “But in my opinion, your fat reserves look low. You should talk to your nutritionist first, obviously, but if you’re doing a cup run this year,” he says, trailing off, and makes meaningful eye contact.

“Every season’s a cup run, Dr. Moore.”

Dr. Moore laughs, even though Shane didn’t think what he said was particularly funny. “Right, right. Well, in that case, you’ll need to build those fat reserves up quick. You’re probably looking at knocking back a shot glass full of olive oil with your dinner for the next month. Or maybe you could do eggs. Raw eggs. Like bodybuilders back in the eighties.”

Shane shudders, at that, and strips, and gets in the bodpod, which confirms exactly what Dr. Moore suspected. He’s got most of his usual pre-season muscle packed on, but his body fat percentage is hovering right around four percent. Fucking incredible if he wanted to become a professional model; disastrous for playing hockey. It’s like starting the nine-month season with virtually no gas in the goddamn tank. Shane passes along the olive oil idea to his nutritionist, partly as a joke, but then Melissa hums thoughtfully, and says well you said you’re having trouble with nausea, so I don’t think we can add an extra meal or shake. Maybe that could be a good way to get the extra calories you need. You’ll have to monitor, though—it might negatively affect your gut health. And when Shane makes a confused noise into the phone, she says it could make you shit a lot, Shane. The slipperiest shits you’ve ever shat in your life.

So. When Shane hangs up, he pulls up his notes app and adds olive oil to his grocery list, and mentally prepares to explain why, exactly, he can’t let Ilya fuck him in the ass for the next month. Fucking anything for hockey, he supposes, but it’s not just for hockey, this time—it’s for them, for him and Ilya. The simple truth is, he and Ilya need a cup. Sure, they can prove to Crowell that they can sell plenty of jerseys, but the real money is in the tickets. That’s the product the entire league is designed to sell, be it a cheap nosebleed for a college student or season passes for a devout fan. And nothing, fucking nothing, sells tickets like a goddamn Stanley Cup. And, beyond that, they need to prove to their respective teams that they’re too good to get rid of—that they’re worth all the extra hassle, the firestorm press and the fucked-up locker room politics. A cup means money and prestige. A cup proves that two faggots still run this goddamn league, no matter what anyone else might think.

So. They need a cup. They need it bad. And it’s not gonna be Ilya, not with Ottawa still neck-deep in a rebuild, the playoffs a distant dream. And, if it’s not gonna be Ilya, then it has to be Shane. Shane, ten pounds underweight, already eating like he’s halfway through the playoffs, choking down piles of food and chanting I will not puke, I will not puke to himself between every bite. Shane, whose team probably still thinks he’s got a trade in the works and don’t trust him for shit. Shane, who has never felt less capable in his entire fucking life.

_____

And so, Shane goes home, and he picks up a liter of olive oil on the way, and when Ilya asks how things went, Shane shakes his head and kisses him quiet. That night, Ilya fucks him slow, spooned up behind Shane, whispering sweet nothings like tak prelestnyy and tak polezno dlya menya and pinching the head of Shane’s cock every time he gets close. By the time Ilya finally lets him come, Shane is sobbing; great, heaving things that have Ilya briefly stilling behind him and whispering you okay? you want me to stop? against the shell of Shane’s ear, but Shane doesn’t want him to stop, Shane wants to fucking come, so Ilya fucks him and fucks him until Shane finally comes so hard his ears ring.

They stay on their sides, after, too lazy to clean up properly. Ilya falls asleep behind him, his arm heavy across Shane’s ribs, his soft cock still pressed up against Shane’s hole. And for a long time, he lays there, and tries to fall asleep by matching Ilya’s breathing, but it’s no use. He’s too wired to sleep, more nervous than he was the night before his very first MLH training camp. So, at four in the morning, he leaves Ilya sprawled across their bed, a string of drool trailing from the corner of his mouth to his special silk pillowcase, and starts the drive to Montreal unshowered and on an empty belly.

The route to Bell Sports Complex is relaxing, at least. He’s early enough to avoid some of the morning rush, and between the long riverside drive out to Brossard, the sporadic sips of lukewarm green tea, and his latest meditation audiobook, the nervous energy coiled up in his belly untwists, a little, and settles into his fingers and toes, which he taps against the steering wheel and the floor. He finally pulls into the parking lot just before five-thirty, and the sun is just barely peeking over the Maison Corbeil + Must Société boutique across the street. And, for a long time, he just sits there, in the driver’s seat of his Land Rover, sipping the dregs of his cold green tea and staring at the white, boxy building where he’s honed his craft for the past eleven years.

It had looked so impressive, back when Shane was new to the team. The building was new, too, just built in 2008; so fucking tall and so fucking imposing, a white box dropped into an empty field in the middle of a Montreal suburb. Shane had sworn he could still smell fresh paint in the locker room, back in those days—the Metros’ blue-and-red as fresh on the concrete as it was across Shane’s back. In the decade since, the parking lot has cracked so many times that the facility can’t keep up with the patches, and weeds poke through the miniscule spaces, knee-high this time of year. The cinderblock has started cracking, too, beneath the paint lining the tunnel. These days, the locker room just smells like foot fungus and sweat.

There’s something wrong in the air, Shane thinks. It feels like everything is just slightly to the left. It reminds him, for some reason, of a puff piece he did, back in 2011; a camera crew followed him to his old high school, even though Shane never actually got a diploma from there, and filmed him talking to the kids on the CSSHL team. To this day, he has no idea what he said. He’d spent the whole day feeling like he was trapped in a very surreal dream, and then he’d walked past the bathroom where Declan Staples—Shane’s teammate at the time, and seventeen to Shane’s fourteen—cornered him and pressured him into smoking a joint so strong that Shane thought he was going to die, then filmed Shane sobbing on the floor with his shitty Motorola phone and showed the entire fucking team. It was like he could still smell the fucking skunk-ass weed, and then grown-up, twenty-year-old Shane drifted through the rest of the shoot feeling like he really was a hockey robot, and someone had engaged his autopilot without permission.

The wrongness follows Shane inside, and so, he breaks his usual routine. He skips past the door to the gym, where he’d usually get a yoga set in before the other guys were here to make fun of him, and instead, he works his way up top, to the rinkside seats usually reserved for coaching staff. He sits, and watches as the Zamboni makes one last pass, and Marcel runs through his camera checks, and janitors rope off a wide swath of seats for the press. Anticipating more people than usual, he supposes, because right now Shane is more than just a household name—he’s a scandal, a saint, a future hockey martyr. Practice will be hell this year. Worse than when he was a rookie and worse than 2015, when all anyone could talk about was Ilya winning the cup. Every misstep, every incomplete pass, every look between his teammates will be interpreted and reinterpreted to fucking death, packaged into neat little headlines like Slow Start for Montreal Metros and Metros’ Team Cohesion Lower Than Ever and Hollander Loses The Room.

Shane thinks he should be scared, or something, but he doesn’t feel anything at all—numb like he used to get when he was a kid, out on the lake for hours and hours, shooting pucks until he couldn’t feel his toes. It’s not a good feeling. He wishes he felt something, anything else. God, what the fuck is he doing here? He could’ve spent the morning with Ilya, eating spinach-and-mushroom omelettes because he’s been on an egg kick recently, done his yoga on the back deck with Ilya leering at him through the window, let Ilya pull him in and rub his back ten minutes before he had to leave, kissed him on his way out the door—

“Hollander,” Assistant Coach McCann says, directly behind him, and Shane starts so bad he stubs his toe on the glass separating him from the rink. “Theriault wants to talk to you.” And the feeling comes rushing in, then; prickles at the back of his neck and swoops low in his belly, lingers in his toes, wiggling back and forth inside his shoes where no one will see. And it’s funny. It’s so fucking funny. Now that he’s scared shitless, all he wants to do is go right back to feeling like a freezerburnt steak forgotten at the back of the refrigerator.

______

Shane had a coach he loved, once. He never had much luck with them, coming up through juniors, but in peewee, there was this one. Assistant Coach Mathieu Loranger. God, he hasn’t thought about Coach Matt in years. He was nice. He was less than twenty years older than Shane—just barely entering his thirties. He’d retired after just one season in the MLH, when he blew out his knee so bad that half a dozen surgeries couldn’t put him back together. And he hadn’t been a particularly good player, as far as the MLH went, but having been there at all was more than enough for eleven-year-old Shane. And he wasn’t like the other coaches, who looked the other way when his teammates hid his water bottle in the middle of a game, or tossed his clothes into a toilet while he was in the shower, or decided it would be funny to race around the rink yelling konnichiwa, konnichiwa at the top of their lungs. Coach Matt would tell them to knock it off. He would tell Shane he was sorry. In retrospect, it was worse than useless, but that didn’t matter. Shane loved him for it regardless.

Coach Matt disappeared after just four weeks, and for years, Mom and Dad refused to tell him why. And then, when Shane was eighteen, staring down the barrel of the draft, and wondering whether he’d ever have a coach as nice as Coach Matt again, he’d looked him up. Turns out, Shane’s peewee team wasn’t the only team he’d coached. Turns out, he was serving a ten-year sentence for molesting a twelve-year-old on a bantam league in Sudbury.

What fucked Shane up, in the end, wasn’t the near miss. Sure, it was disturbing to know he was absolutely the guy’s next target, but what was so much worse was the simple, damning knowledge that the lonely, awestruck eleven-year-old boy he used to be would’ve done whatever Coach Matt wanted. And, worst of all, eighteen-year-old Shane hadn’t been sure whether he would’ve said no, either.

Shane doesn’t know why the fuck he’s thinking about all this shit now, following Coach McCann back to Coach Theriault’s office. It’s in the past, fucking over with, done and dead and buried down deep. And Coach Theriault is nothing like Coach Matt. Any respect or affection Coach Theriault feels is mostly against his will—he might love Shane’s hockey, but he doesn’t particularly like Shane, and he doesn’t particularly like anyone else, either. For years now, JJ has been saying that McCann has only stuck it out working under Theriault for so long because he’s convinced that soon, Theriault will retire and go be a hermit in the woods somewhere. Where he can make sweet, passionate love to his trophies in peace, Comeau would usually chime in, and they’d all laugh while glancing surreptitiously over their shoulders, just in case Coach Theriault was lurking nearby and overheard and made them do sprints until they puked.

Those jokes always made something twist in Shane’s gut. That was his retirement plan for years, after all; to retreat back to the cottage, his house where the trophy room is packed to the gills and the guest rooms have never once been used.

Shane knocks on the wide-open door of Coach Theriault’s office as he walks through, careful to make sure his knuckles land on the thin perimeter of wood instead of the glass. Inside, Theriault has filled the room with clutter—he’s an old-school man, and he hates computers, so everything has to be paper. The papers cover his desk, fill an entire wall of file cabinets, and occupy a small army of interns dedicated to organizing and fetching and printing off emails. In the corner, a whiteboard on wheels looms—the kind that flips, so Coach Theriault can draw two plays at once. On the shelf behind his desk, where his predecessor kept pictures of his wife and kids, Coach Theriault proudly displays the trophies he won during his own career with the Metros back in the eighties. And that’s the closest Shane has ever heard to a personal anecdote from him—old hockey stories about winning the cup with Jean Perron and Bobby Smith.

“Hollander.” Coach Theriault says, and doesn’t bother to look up from the paper in his hands while Shane crosses the room and takes a seat in front of his cluttered desk “I hope you are not expecting congratulations.”

Shane pauses. “No, Coach,” he says, jerkily, and tucks his left hand under his thigh.

“Management is very committed to keeping you happy,” Coach Theriault continues, and takes a sip of steaming black coffee in a Metros branded mug, and finally sets his papers aside. When he’s done with the coffee, he looks down his nose at Shane, peering over top of the reading glasses slipping low on his nose. “They asked me for a list of names. People who might become,” he pauses, then, and rolls the word around in his mouth, “problématique. Who should, perhaps, be traded before the season proper.” Coach Theriault stares expectantly at Shane, then. “I need to know your intentions. I am not going to trade away half this fucking team for an asset with one foot already out the door.”

And Shane thinks, not this shit again. He thinks, did someone fake a leak to the press? “I want my jersey in these rafters,” he says, and christ, he’s welling up, about to fucking cry, like the pussy faggot he’s trying so, so hard to pretend he isn’t. “And I’ve still got two years left on my contract, Coach. I’m not going anywhere.”

Coach Theriault stares at him for a minute. Clocks the tears lingering, unshed, in Shane’s eyes, and his lip curls—satisfied or disgusted, Shane can’t tell. “Mm. Good to know. I think you will agree that there are no problems here, yes?”

Shane closes his eyes, briefly, and nods. “Yes, Coach.”

“And there will be no problems later, either,” Coach says, but it isn’t really a question.

“Yes, Coach.”

Coach nods. “Good. I expect you to play just as hard out there. And Hollander?” Shane turns, his hand on the doorknob. “There is catered breakfast in the player’s lounge. Go eat something. You look like shit.” And so, Shane goes, and chokes down a Muscle Milk, and goes back up to the rink. He just sits there, in the cold, wearing nothing but last year’s team shirt and an old pair of athletic shorts. And he stays until his fingers go numb, and his toes, and his lips and his ears and his nose, but the numb feeling from the morning won’t come back, no matter how hard he tries.

_____

At eight sharp, the off-ice testing starts. Coach McCann lines the players up—everyone from last season’s roster, the new drafts, fresh-faced prospects from Laval Rocket and Trois-Rivières Lions—and has them do a vertical jump test, one by one; Comeau and JJ and Hayden egging the rooks and the prospects on with shit like pretty fly for a white guy and close, very close, just a few more millimetres and you would’ve beat me. And then, the line snakes down to the indoor soccer pitch, where Coach St. Pierre times how long it takes each player to sprint from the goal line to the center spot. At the center spot, they all lay on the ground and do pushups until they can’t, Coach Theriault calling out down, one! down, two! Shane makes it to eighty-one before his arms finally give out, and Hayden grunts, agonized, before he collapses at eighty-two, the last man standing. Shane looks at him, ready to congratulate or something, but Hayden neatly ducks away and flexes at JJ with a horrible approximation of a blue steel plastered across his face. So, Shane guzzles down half his water and leaves it.

Jani you-can-call-me-Tuna Turunen, second-line left wing, takes the pull-up test, and Shane takes the final two—the wingate and the VO2 max. In the locker room, the guys all groan and moan while they pull on their gear. Some of the prospects cluster around a trash can and take turns puking their guts up. Hayden’s locker is next to Shane’s, but Shane carefully, studiously avoids looking at him. He just lets the locker-room talk wash over him and focuses on taping his stick.

On the ice, Coach Theriault has them sprint end-to-end, skate a sixteen-lap endurance test, do a timed sprint from center ice around the goal and back to center, and sprint from the red line to the goal, over and over, until Shane finally runs out of gas and joins the rest of the guys wheezing and guzzling water on the bench. And it feels good, back out there on the ice. Like a guy with two broken legs finally remembering how to walk. It feels good, too, when the guys razz him a little, same as they always do—it’s like racing Sonic the motherfucking hedgehog; yeah, and he got a fucking power-up, Sonic goes faster when he gets them rings—and Shane squirts water into his mouth to hide his relieved little grin.

“Rest up, boys,” Theriault announces, and stares, impassively, when a guy who can’t be older than eighteen leans over and pukes up frothy, bright blue Gatorade. “Tomorrow, you will need it.” And so, they troop back to the locker room to dump their gear, and then into the recovery room, where they rotate through the ice baths and beat themselves with foam rollers.

In the showers, after, Shane is determined not to overthink. He crowds right along in there with the rest of them, and if some of the guys give him wary glances, he chooses to ignore it. He fixes his eyes firmly on the ceiling and soaps up his pits, lathers up his hair with shampoo and decides to condition later, at home, when he’s not surrounded by guys who’ll call him a primadonna for using the same fancy CÉCRED shit Ilya gets for his hair instead of two-in-one from fucking Axe.

“Dude, what the fuck is this,” Comeau says, laughing, and snatches a bottle away from Stouffer, who’s too new to know that showering next to Comeau is one of the most annoying things on the fucking planet. The bottle is dark blue, with a white pump on top. Shane isn’t really sure why Comeau is laughing so goddamn hard. It’s not like it’s pink.

Stouffer goes bright red, and desperately tries to snatch the bottle back. Instead, he almost falls on his ass, and barely catches himself on the shower knob. “It’s uh, face wash,” he admits, timidly. “I get really bad acne.”

“La roach pussy,” Comeau reads aloud, and holds the bottle high above his head, where the kid would have to jump to reach. “That’s so fucking faggy.”

And all at once, Shane’s stomach flips, and he feels like he’s falling through the floor. He’s suddenly, intensely aware of how vulnerable they are, here in this room, soaped up and slippery and naked. It would be so, so easy for this shit to get out of hand, and there are so many ways to hurt someone in a locker room shower and claim it was an accident. And Shane should say something, he knows, but the words stick in his throat. If he tells Comeau to knock it off now, everyone will assume it’s because of the faggot thing, and not because Comeau is thirty-two and bullying a kid who can’t even legally drink in the states. They’ll think Shane is a sensitive little pussy, a crybaby, a killjoy; the worst type of nark.

Shane looks over at Hayden, desperate, but Hayden refuses to look him in the eye. “What are you, five?” Hayden says, and shuts the water off, picks up his towel and wraps it around his waist. “Give the kid his lotion back.” And with that, he heads out into the locker room, and leaves Shane behind.

JJ frowns. “It is pronounced La Roche-Posay, you crétin,” he says, and cuts his eyes towards Shane, brief, as if to say you’re good, or I got it, and some tension Shane didn’t even realize he was carrying eases. “You should know this, you are from Joilette, you speak fucking French.” He briefly raises his eyebrows at Hayden’s retreating back, then, before directing the full force of his glare straight at Comeau. “But regardless, I do not think you should be saying that, Gil,” he continues, and reaches up, and neatly plucks the bottle out of Comeau’s hands.  

“What?” Comeau says, baffled, and then looks directly at Shane. “Oh, yeah, but like. Hollander’s cool. Right Hollander?”

Shane blinks, and jerkily reaches up to rub a lingering streak of soap bubbles off his chest. Pretending that he hasn’t been so preoccupied with their little unfolding drama that he’s just been standing there like an idiot. “What?”

“You’re cool,” Comeau reiterates. “You don’t care about what we say, right?”

“… are you asking me for permission to say slurs?”

Comeau shrugs. “I mean, I’m not not asking you for permission to say that Stouffer’s acting like a faggot right now,” he says, and next to him, Stouffer goes even brighter red, and the poor kid turns to face the wall and rubs at his shoulder, washing off invisible soap.

“Gil,” Shane says, after a long, careful pause. “I really don’t get what’s so faggy about French face wash. Honestly, you should probably ask to borrow some. Your face looks worse than the ice after an open skate.”

Gil laughs, then. “Fuck you, man,” he replies, and turns to let the water pound into his back, and flips Shane two middle fingers. “But seriously, you don’t care if I call a faggot a faggot, right? Like, you’re not gonna stop me.”

Helpless, Shane looks at JJ again, and JJ mimes I don’t know what to do, his face somehow simultaneously pained and sympathetic. And the thing is, this wasn’t the first time Shane had heard the word faggot. Not even close. The first time he’d been called a faggot was so long ago that he couldn’t even remember it. And when he wasn’t getting called a faggot, his teammates were saying go back to China if you can’t get the fucking puck in the net or hey, Hollander, your mom’s kinda hot, do you think she likes me? So. Shane learned quick. The best way to shut everyone up was to simultaneously blend in and keep himself apart; to wear painfully neutral clothes and keep his hands still and his eyes down and avoid going over to other people’s houses; to laugh and say my mom’s way out of your league, you look like a fucking bridge troll, instead of saying my mom’s from Mississauga with a flat affect; to train hard, train so fucking hard that he’d never make a mistake, so nobody could ever have the opportunity to call him anything other than good, great, goated, fucking fantastic.

It didn’t work, of course. People hated Shane when he was bad, and they hated him when he was good, and they really fucking hated him when he was great. And, there was another, worse thing—the one thing Shane could never train away. At the end of the day, Shane was a faggot. And there wasn’t a single fucking thing he could do to fix it.

“Do whatever you want,” he says, flat, and then he stalks out of the shower with soap still clinging to his pits. He leaves like that, too—barely toweled off, soaking through his clothes, hair dripping down the back of his neck. Behind him, Comeau says the fuck is he so pissy for, and JJ calls him a putain d’abruti, and the whole world shifts just slightly to the left again, and Shane is numb, numb, numb; going, going, fucking gone.  

_____

Shane stays gone walking out to the car, and stays gone for the whole drive back to the house, and doesn’t really come back to himself until he’s standing in the kitchen, blankly staring into the fridge, his shoes still on and his keys still clutched in his fist. The only thing Shane wants to do is sleep. But there is dinner to make, and sweaty clothes to pack up for the laundry service, and Ilya is still in Ottawa, picking up papers for a contract with Skittles that Mom wanted them both to look over.

So, Shane makes dinner. He tosses some asparagus in olive oil and salt, smears mustard over half a dozen salmon fillets and sprinkles seasoned bread crumbs over the top, preheats the oven to 350. He starts a batch of rice, pulls fresh greens out of the fridge and mixes up a light vinaigrette, blends up a quadruple-batch of protein shakes so they can drink one tonight and another tomorrow. The kitchen is just starting to smell good when he hears the garage door go off, and the side door jiggle open, and Ilya’s keys jangle while he hangs them on the hook where they belong.

“Hey, baby,” Shane calls, halfway through dicing sweet peppers to go with his salad, “how was work?”

Ilya laughs, delighted, and drops his bag on the floor to come stand behind Shane. He wraps his arms around Shane and buries his face in the side of Shane’s neck, still laughing, and rocks them back and forth, back and forth. Shane tilts his head back and turns to nose at Ilya’s hair, even though he’s scowling and confused.

“What’s so funny?” Shane gripes, and Ilya gently tugs the knife out of Shane’s hands, so he can spin Shane around and crowd him into the kitchen island. He kisses Shane, then, but it’s not a very good kiss—he’s still laughing into Shane’s mouth, fucking ridiculous.

“Nothing, just,” Ilya waves his hand around, vague as anything. “I feel like I am in an episode of I Love Lucy or something. Like I am, what is his name? Raymond?”

And that gets Shane to smile, despite himself. “I dunno,” he replies. “I’ve never seen it.”

“I am Raymond,” Ilya says, decisively, “And you are Lucy. Look, you even have dinner in the oven!”

“Well, now I don’t wanna share my salmon. And you didn’t answer my question, dickhead.”

“What? How was work?” Ilya pouts, over-exaggerated and ridiculous. “Oh, it was terrible, sweetheart. Absolutely terrible. Fucking guess who was there.”

Shane huffs and glances down, at where their bellies are pressed together. He smiles, again, and looks back up at Ilya, head tipped coyly to one side, and licks at his lower lip. “Who?”

“No, no, you have to guess.” Shane stares at Ilya, flat and bitchy, and raises his eyebrows. “Okay, okay, fine,” Ilya relents, and Shane watches as the light in Ilya’s eye shifts to something decidedly catty and gossipy. “Was Troy motherfucking Barrett,” he says, and waggles his eyebrows like an idiot.

Shane blinks. Blinks again. “What the fuck?”

“Apparently,” Ilya says, gleeful, and peels away to steal a pepper while Shane is still reeling. “Toronto started their training camp a couple days before us. Apparently, Kent has somewhere between three and seven women accusing him of doing very bad things to them. And, apparently,” Ilya pops the pepper in his mouth, stem and all, and continues talking around the food in his mouth, “Troy motherfucking Barrett called Kent a rapist. Very loudly. On the first day of training camp. And then punched him in the face.” Ilya swallows, and gestures expansively while he waits for his throat to work. “There is video, of course. Is all over twitter.”

“Holy shit,” Shane says, and whips out his phone to look it up. He sits on one of the barstools to watch, Ilya crowded over his shoulder, and sure as shit, there’s Troy motherfucking Barrett, helmet off, yelling shut the fuck up, you piece of shit rapist right in Dallas fucking Kent’s face, and then Kent throws a wild punch that barely clips the side of Barrett’s head, and Barrett responds with a wicked cross that lands right in the middle of Kent’s fucking face. The camera helpfully zooms in on Kent’s nose, bent the wrong way and gushing blood, before the footage blurs into wild movement and cuts.

“This is like, third best day of my life,” Ilya says, low, into Shane’s ear. “I asked Weibe, he says the trade was in the works before Kent’s nose stopped bleeding. The Guardians are very mad that Barrett broke rank.”

“Holy shit, it’s like, spraying out of his face,” Shane says, delighted, and restarts the video. Ilya kisses the shell of his ear while they both watch it through again, and snickers when Kent’s head snaps back. “Please, god, let him be on IR for at least a month.”

Ilya hums in agreement. “Is terrible, of course, what happened to those women, and is also a little bit terrible that I have to share a locker room with Troy fucking Barrett, but holy shit, Shane. Is like a miracle from above.” Ilya lays one last kiss to Shane’s cheek, and then, he eels away and takes Shane’s place in front of the cutting board, and starts chopping up the rest of the peppers. “But that is enough about me,” he says, and gestures with the knife like a fucking maniac. “I want to know how your day was.”

Shane shrugs, and slips his phone back in his pocket. “Not much better than yours, honestly.” Ilya raises his eyebrow, and nods his head in a little go on motion. Shane bites at his lower lip, runs his hands through his hair, and sighs.

“I’m underweight,” he confesses.

Ilya’s brow furrows. “How much?”

“Ten pounds,” Shane replies, listlessly, and traces one of the veins in the marble countertop. “Melissa says I should try drinking olive oil for a month, see if that helps me get the weight on.”

“Craziness. Is that what the giant thing of olive oil is for?” Shane nods, and Ilya shakes his head. “Fucking craziness. That woman scares me.”

“You’re just jealous of our love,” Shane replies, but he can’t quite bring himself to muster up a shit-eating smile to go along with it. And he thinks about telling Ilya the rest—the ambush from Coach Theriault, the thing with Comeau in the locker room—but then he thinks of how fucking outraged Ilya would be, how Shane would probably have to talk him down from doing something stupidly drastic and drastically stupid, and the simple act of remembering his shit-ass godawful day is so fucking exhausting that Shane can’t bring himself to say any of it.

“And it could be good, you know,” Shane says instead. “Having Barrett on your team, I mean. Like, you guys have great defense. You just can’t score for shit because Bood is wasted on wing, and Dillon is fucking awful, and the rest of your lines have no fucking depth at center. But you’ve got that new guy, Haas, who seems like he can keep up with you, and Barrett is actually decent…” Shane thinks about it, then. It would be an overstatement to call Ottawa the worst team in the league, but, privately, he’s always thought Ottawa is the worst sort of team to play. Not terribly hard to beat, but it’s not a satisfying victory. The reason why the Centaurs consistently lost was because, as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. Every game Shane has played against them for the past few years has been a low-scoring slog, and it just got worse after they acquired Hayes. Ilya’s been complaining about it for years—after all, you can’t win a hockey game by being the best at stopping the other team from scoring. But if Ottawa had that brick wall defense and a first line that could consistently score? Jesus. “You could make playoffs this year, Ilya.”

“I know,” Ilya says, quiet, and carefully scrapes the chopped-up peppers into Shane’s salad bowl. “I am trying not to get my hopes up.”

Shane frowns. “You think you won’t click?”

Ilya shrugs, and rinses off the cutting board before he sticks it in the dishwasher. “Is hard to tell. Haasy has baby rookie crush. Right now, he trips over his skates if I look at him too long. And Barrett is an asshole.”

“You’re also an asshole.”

Ilya shakes his head. “Not like that. And is hard for me to get a read on him,” he continues, while he washes the knife Shane was using and dries it off with the dish towel draped over the oven handle. “He’s so fucking quiet. Didn’t say a word all fucking day.”

Shane laughs, mirthlessly, and snitches a bit of pepper he isn’t really hungry for, pops it in his mouth and winces at the crunch. “Wow. Guess someone finally figured out how to make him shut the fuck up.”

“He looks at me weird.” Shane snaps his gaze to Ilya, then, his brow furrowed, and pictures the thousand little ways that things in Ilya’s locker room could go wrong. Thinks about all the times Barrett sneered at him from across the ice and called him a cocksucker, or a pussy, or a faggot. Thinks about Ilya not-so-accidentally tripping face-first into the shower handle, Ilya laying puddled on the floor with his blood streaking down the shower drain, Barrett catching Ilya with that wicked cross during practice and leaving Ilya’s nose bent crooked and gushing. “Not like, wants to beat me up,” Ilya says, reassuring. “Like, something else. I don’t know what yet.”

“Well,” Shane replies, and snitches another bite of sweet pepper that he forces himself to eat. “I hope you figure it out soon. You’ve got some fucking games to win, Rozanov.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, and then the timer Shane set to remind himself to take the food out goes off, and conversation devolves into a flurry of activity; Ilya pulling the pans out while Shane mixes up the salad, liberally doused in an oily vinaigrette. He pours himself a shot of olive oil, and at the table, he toasts Ilya with za vashe zdorov'ye in his mangled, horrible Russian before knocking it back and letting it slip down his throat. The taste isn’t so bad, but it feels weird, after—somewhere between the burn of too-spicy and tequila. Ilya grimaces at him, and ends up near tears when Shane tells him that the olive oil might give him the shits, which means absolutely no assfucking for the next month.

My love, please, I do not care if you shit on my dick, Ilya cries, dinner abandoned, literally on his knees begging for it. Well I do, Shane replies, and if I shit on your dick I will literally—I’ll change my name and move to Timbuktu, he says, instead of telling Ilya he’d fucking kill himself. And when that doesn’t get Ilya up off his knees, he says eat your fucking dinner, Raymond, which makes Ilya laugh and say sorry, sorry Lucy and finish his goddamn dinner. And it’s good. It’s so fucking good. It’s everything Shane has been dreaming of for years.

_____

In the morning, Shane feels like a fucking idiot. He overreacted—Comeau hadn’t even called him a fucking faggot. Later that day, after practice, Shane showers next to him, and says hey man, sorry I said you look like shit, that was immature. I got you a present to make up for it, and he tosses Comeau a green squeezy bottle. Simple refreshing facial wash, Comeau reads aloud, and Shane replies yeah, I figured that was the only one you’d be able to pronounce, you dumb faggot, and Comeau throws his head back and laughs and laughs. JJ looks at him with something like pity, but Shane ignores it. Some of the lingering, invisible tension in the room has eased, and the more loudmouthed guys aren’t shooting Shane wary looks while they change into their street clothes, and that’s all that fucking matters.

Shane wants to keep things easy, so he starts calling weekly captain’s practices; renting out ice time and bribing the guys with cash—one grand to the guy who can make the best trick shot, two grand to whoever skates a lap the fastest. He offers to teach them all the Rozanov—Ilya’s stupid, showy, signature triple-fakeout backhanded shot—just because he knows it’ll piss Ilya off. He lets the guys goof off, making snow in the corners and trying out figure skating moves, playing chicken by sprinting at each other full-tilt and practicing their hockey stops, playing increasingly nasty games of keepaway with pucks and water bottles and, on one notable occasion, Walkman’s brand new iphone.

Hayden begs off the first one. When he tries to beg off the second, Shane texts him I get that you probably hate me, but you’re still my fucking A, and the guys take their cues from you. If you want to win some fucking games this season, I need you to at least pretend you respect me enough to show up to things. And Hayden replies and what’ll happen if I don’t, so Shane says please don’t do that. You know what’ll happen. And, so, Hayden comes to the extra practices, even though Shane knows he’s taking up time Hayden could be spending with his kids, and on the ice, at least, he acts like nothing is wrong. He looks Shane in the eye again, he laughs at Shane’s jokes, he’s fucking perfect on the ice. But he doesn’t text, and he doesn’t tell Shane little things about his life, like the crazy weird math homework Jade and Ruby used to get, and he doesn’t ask Shane to come over for dinner. Jackie doesn’t either. Sometimes, late at night, Shane wonders what Hayden said to her.

So many extra practices, Ilya says, one night, when Shane’s home late after another captain’s practice ran a little long, is like you are avoiding me or something. And Shane kisses him, right there in the kitchen, and he says no, baby, I would never, I love spending time with you, I love living with you. It’s just the team, yeah? I’m still working out the kinks, that’s all, and Ilya grabs at Shane’s chin and stares at him, all concerned and shit, and says, what kinks? Is something wrong? And Shane just can’t. He just can’t. So instead, he shoves Ilya down onto the couch and drops onto his lap and sucks on his earlobe, then whispers there are a couple other kinks I’d rather work out right now, which makes Ilya slap at him and call him bad, so fucking bad, and then Shane slips off Ilya’s lap to get on his knees, and somehow they end up migrating to the bedroom, where Shane lays with his head hanging over the side of the bed and lets Ilya fuck his face so deep he can see his dick bulging in Shane’s fucking throat. Ilya lays his hand over it and says god, god, and comes right as Shane goes from lightheaded to on the verge of passing out for real.

And, slowly but surely, Shane muscles his team together. Drills go smoother and smoother, the guys learn to ignore the larger-than-usual crowd of press jammed elbow-to-elbow in the visitor’s section; the locker room lightens up enough that when Drapeau calls Grammy a cocksucker, Grammy just laughs and says probably not as good as Hollander though, I should him ask for tips. And then, the last week of training camp, when they’re half an hour into running the Ricky, everything slots neatly into place, and Shane finally feels that wonderful, familiar, magical feeling, where every goal feels inevitable—a feeling he’s spent the last four months terrified he’d never get back. Like Shane is guided by the fucking hand of destiny, and destiny says that when Roger fucking Crowell awards the Stanley Cup this year, he’ll be doing it on Montreal ice, and delivering it straight into Shane’s fated hands.

Chapter End Notes

dont worry :) there's still plenty of space before we hit rock bottom :)

Chapter 7: october

Chapter Summary

And then, Shane sees it. Smeared across the back of his stall, the word WHORE, written in lopsided, red capital letters. It’s rushed, messy. It still smells like sharpie. Shane touches the edge of the H and drags his finger across the pale wood.

He should feel sad, he thinks, or scared, or really fucking angry, but the only thing Shane feels is the overwhelming urge to go home and sleep. What else can he possibly do? Probably, this would’ve happened no matter what he did. Maybe if they’d lost again, whoever had that red sharpie would’ve written FAGGOT instead. And sure, if they’d won against Ottawa, this wouldn’t be happening now. It would be happening in February, when they play each other next, or March, or April. Because Shane never had the room, not really. At best, the room tolerated him for a little while, and now they were done. Simple as that. And, maybe, Shane was done with them, too.

Chapter Notes

The tunnel at Centre Bell is dark and dim. The cold glare streaming in from the arena gets lost quick amongst the rubber rink mats and dense sea of blue sweaters. It’s loud, same as it always is—the crowd singing we are the champions, we are the champions, over and over, as loud as they can. Shane stands in his usual place, behind Hayden, and waits for the cue for the line to run forwards, for the game to start.

It’s the first of the month, the first game of the season. Montreal v. Ottawa, because god—or, more likely, Roger fucking Crowell—has a wretched sense of humor. Ahead of him, Hayden whoops and beats his fist against his chest like a fucking Roman gladiator. Shane swallows down the sick feeling in his gut, and pounds his chest in turn.

“Hell yeah, we’re the fucking champions!” Shane shouts. The cue is coming soon. He can feel it, same as he can feel the ice on his breath and the stands practically vibrating above his head. “Let’s get out there and fucking skate like it!”

And they’re off, sprinting out the tunnel one-by-one, skating wide circles around the arena while the announcer lists off the lineup. Shane follows Hayden around the backside of the goal, and blinks against the light. And your captain, Shane Hollander! The announcer cries, and the whole arena picks it up—the same chant of Hollander, Hollander, Hollander that’s served as the backing track to some of his best moments these past ten years. Shane finally brings himself to look at the crowd, and god, it’s fucking beautiful; the whole stadium shot through with rainbows, pride night merch from years past, people draped in flags with color combinations Shane has never seen before. And yeah, there are jeers—one red-faced guy holding up a sign that says MAJOR HOMO LEAGUE? SAVE OUR CHILDREN, another guy holding up a sign that just says WOKE with a big red X through it—but next to them are people waving signs that say shit like GAYEST OF ALL TIME or HOCKEY IS FOR HOMOS, and for once, Shane hardly sees them. He’s trying, desperately, not to cry.

He raises his arm in salute; the crowd roars, the chant swells, until it’s all Shane hears—it’s in his blood, in the beat of his heart. And then, he locks eyes with Ilya from across the ice, and he sees the unshed tears glittering there, and for a brief, shining moment, nothing else in the whole world matters.

God, he loves this man—loves his stupid pregame breakfast of instant mashed potatoes topped with cheez whiz, because if it is good enough to be filling for shitty Canadian pierogi, it is good enough to be eaten without the dough there to hide your shame; the stupid Limp Bizkit album he’s been listening to in the car to pump himself up before a game since he was thirteen; the fight he picked because he wanted, desperately, to be the one driving Shane to the arena tonight and taking him home after; hell, Shane even loves his ridiculous blacked-out lamborghini. And for the first time in his life, Shane feels like maybe, he’s not alone. Maybe the eyes on him aren’t all hostile. Maybe, once he gets through this rough spot, he’ll find them both a soft place to land.

Back at the bench, Mickie D loudly says, “what’s with the pride parade tonight?” JJ tells him to shut the fuck up and slaps the back of his head. Shane keeps his eyes on Ilya, out on the ice warming up his hip flexors. As Shane watches, Ilya looks up, directly at him, and winks, and despite himself, Shane smiles, big and wide, and hides it by squirting water into his mouth, even though he’s not particularly thirsty.

“Listen up!” Coach Theriault shouts, and heads snap towards him like sunflowers flocking to the sun. “I do not care that they have a shiny new winger to play with. Our strategy has not changed. Keep the pressure on, wear down their defense, don’t let Rozanov near the puck,” he says, with a meaningful glare at Shane, “and you,” he says, menacingly, pointing towards Drapeau, “keep it tight. Hayes has a save average of .95. I expect the same performance from you tonight, Monsieur Sieve.” He raises an eyebrow, expectant, and everyone choruses yes, Coach! “Puck drops in a few minutes,” he continues. “First line, get ready. Hollander will take the faceoff.”

Shane bristles, at that. Of fucking course he’s taking the first faceoff. He doesn’t like the implication that he wouldn’t. But there’s no time for Shane to get angry. One last look over his tape job, and then Coach is waving him over the boards.

At center ice, Shane crouches across from Ilya, their faces so close that Shane can practically feel his breath. And this, too, feels like coming home. How many times have they been here before? The whole arena singing, the scant space between them muffled and electric. There’s a glint in Ilya’s eye, too—one he hasn’t seen since Ilya traded to Ottawa. Ilya smiles at him, a shit-eating, ear-to-ear thing.

“I have good feeling about this one,” he says, sly. “I will have you crying tonight, I think.”

Shane smiles back. “Fat fucking chance, Rozanov,” he replies. On Shane’s left, Guigui whispers what the fuck to no one in particular. And then, the ref drops the puck. He watches it fall in slow motion, wrists easy, thighs tense. Ilya goes for it, but Shane is faster, slapping his stick away and chipping it over to Hayden, dodging neatly around Ilya and sprinting for the offensive zone.

Hayden cycles the puck right up until the red line, then sends it back to Shane, and Shane passes it to Guigui, right between Ilya’s legs, which has Ilya muttering motherfucker and sprinting towards Guigui, ready to check him into the boards. Before he can, Guigui dumps it, and Shane gives chase—ends up in a three-way battle between him, Chouinard, and Dykestra behind the goal. After a brief scuffle, Shane gives up trying fancy stick-work and plants his skate right on top of the fucking thing, kicks it back towards Guigui, lingering on the edge of the crease and just open enough, but then Barrett swoops in and steals it. And they all give chase—him and Hayden and Guigui, Ilya and Haas racing out ahead—but Shane is furthest away, starting from behind the goal, and watches in horror as Barrett passes and Ilya gets the fucking breakaway, racing down the ice with the rest of them trailing behind, and Comeau comes up to meet him all the way in the fucking neutral zone. Ilya keeps cycling the puck until Comeau is almost within reach, then dekes, fakes a pass to Barrett, which has Comeau lurching left, then slips the puck back between his legs, where Haas is waiting just behind him.

Hayden is hot on Haas’s heels, but instead of pivoting to follow, he keeps going, and checks Ilya, hard—thinks Ilya still has the puck, maybe—and loses all his goddamn momentum as him, Ilya, and Comeau go down like fucking bowling pins. Haas goes wide, around the chaos, and cycles the puck up the right-hand boards, which are wide fucking open now that half the Metros are stuck in a pileup in the fucking neutral zone.

“Eleven, eleven!” Shane cries, and Drapeau pivots, but it’s too late. Shane is too far behind to poke or sweep, Guigui is on the other side of the fucking ice, and Haas slips around JJ in a spin so neat Shane audibly gasps, then buries it, bar-down.

The goal horn sounds. Shane watches, chest heaving, as Ilya hugs Haas so tight he bodily lifts the kid off his skates, and Barrett slaps at his helmet like he’s playing the drums. Shane glances at the clock. A minute ten into the first. Jesus fucking christ. He bites at his bottom lip, hard enough that the skin turns white, practically on the verge of drawing blood, but it’s no use. His smile creeps out, around the corners of his mouth. His dick presses uncomfortably against his cup, an inconvenient half-chub that Shane knows, from past experience, won’t go away until Ilya fucks it out of him after the game.

God, he’s missed this. Sure, Ilya always played good, played fucking great, sometimes even played better than Shane. But it’s different, playing Ilya when they’ve both got good fucking teams behind them. These past four years, every game Shane played against the Cens felt a little like he was leading an invading Roman army against Ilya’s ragtag band of Gallic villagers, which is to say, it felt a little mean. A little cruel. Maybe a little unearned. Now, though, Shane can grind Ilya into the dust guilt-free. Shane feels drunk, giddy, fucking ecstatic.

Across the ice, Ilya finally puts Haas down, and catches Shane’s eye as they both skate towards their respective benches. He blows Shane a kiss, fucking obnoxious, and Shane laughs, high and bright. He mimes catching it, then makes a surprised face and shakes his fist by his ear, like there’s something inside. And then, he turns back to Ilya, cocks his head, and flips him the bird.

Shane hops the boards with a little extra spring in his step. Bergy, their backup goalie, scoots down to make space for Shane to sit. “I thought you two were married?” he says, incredulous.

“Yep,” Shane replies, and knocks back a couple sips of water.

“You’ll understand when you’re older, kid,” Grammy says, with all the wisdom of a man smack in the middle of a long, nasty divorce.

“I’m twenty-six!” Bergy complains. “You’re only three years older than me!”

Tiny, their thirty-six-year-old third-line right winger, leans over and says, “both of you are fucking children.” He would know. His oldest is on the cusp of moving from U18 to U21.

“Enough chit-chat,” Coach Theriault snaps, and turns to Comeau. “You,” he spits. “What the fuck were you doing in the neutral zone? Are you a lost little timbit? A stupid fucking child?”

Comeau’s face goes all red and thunderous. “I was keeping Rozanov off the puck, Coach! I was doing what you told us to!” Shane winces, at that. Talking back to Coach Theriault is a great way to be doing sprints until you puke after the next practice.

“That was not your job, Gilbert. Your job,” Coach says, low, and pokes a finger into Comeau’s sweater. A fleck of spit flies from his lower lip; Shane sees it gleam under the arena lights. “Is to cover the right half of the defensive zone. Your job is to help our very own sieve guard the fucking goal. Keeping Rozanov off the puck is Hollander’s responsibility.”

As one, they turn to look at Shane, and Shane fights back the urge to slouch. He sits up straighter, instead, and sets his jaw. “Hollander,” Coach says. “That was too fucking slow. I know you are faster than that. You should have caught Rozanov before he even got to the neutral zone.” And a part of Shane knows it’s bullshit. Ilya was already halfway to the neutral zone when he caught that pass, and Shane was behind the fucking goal. Usain Bolt couldn’t have caught Ilya that quick. But the larger part, the part of him that guided him all the way to the top of the MLH, has him nodding solemnly and muttering yes, Coach; his heart down near his boots, his stomach queasy-feeling and delicate. “And you,” Coach Theriault continues, and whirls to point at Hayden. “Let me guess: you caught an edge.”

Hayden shrugs. “I just really wanted to hit him, I think.”

Coach makes a huh face. “Okay, fair enough. Make sure he has the fucking puck next time you go in for a check,” he continues, waving a hand dismissively, already turning back towards the ice. “And aim for the fucking head!”

And that makes Shane feel really, truly sick. Hockey is a dirty sport, he knows—hell, he’s targeted injuries before—but it’s different, when it’s Ilya on the other end of it. He takes another drink of water. It doesn’t sit well, cold down his throat, uneasy inside of him. He tries to look at Ilya, sat on the bench next to him, but the wall there blocks his view entirely. So, instead, Shane snatches up the ipad, and starts rewatching the play, breaking down which parts went wrong, looking for places he can compensate and gaps he can plug.

And Shane tries, he really does, but it’s no use. Hayden is too busy dogging Ilya to set himself up for a good goal, and it’s like Hayes is fucking psychic. The game stays at 0-1 through the first, and the creeping dread comes back with two minutes left of the second, when Shane fires off his tenth shot on goal of the game, and Hayes blocks it with his fucking head. The small talk at the bench quiets down, and the mood gets mean, the fourteen guys not on the ice glowering out at the rink with something akin to hate in their eyes.

It feels like the ice followed them into the locker room, once the horn sounds and the second is over, still at 0-1. Nobody will look Shane in the eye. It’s deadly quiet, too; even the fans have died down, now that there isn’t anyone on the ice to cheer for. So, Shane just sits in his stall, alternately sipping green Gatorade and re-taping his stick. Next to him, Hayden does the same, and for a brief moment, Shane can pretend, at least, that things are normal between them.

“I get wanting to let your boy have one,” Comeau says, standing across the room with his jersey and pads in a heap on the floor. “But come on, man. The season opener? Really?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shane snaps, furious. “Hayes has one of the best save averages in the league, and he’s on fire tonight. Do you really think I’d be up to ten shots on goal if I was trying to throw the fucking game?”

“With ten shots on goal, you should’ve scored by now,” Comeau replies, mulishly, and crosses his arms.

“Okay, dickhead. You think this shit is so fucking easy? You get out there and do it.” Shane sets his stick aside and stands. He’s an inch or so taller than Comeau—unlike him, Shane never took his skates off. “I’m fucking serious. We can swap, you can try to rack up ten shots on goal for yourself, set up nine for Hayden and Guigui, and try to keep Rozanov off the puck for the entire goddamn game, and I’ll stand in the neutral zone like a fucking idiot.”

“You cocksucking piece of shit—” Comeau yells, and lunges towards Shane with his fist up. The team surges around them; JJ plants his hand on Shane’s chest to hold him back, Hayden says whoa, guys, save it for the ice, Guigui and Drapeau and half the second line just stand back and watch like canny hyenas as Shane neatly tilts his head away from Comeau’s wild swing and tries to push JJ out from between them. Instead, JJ gets up in Comeau’s face and shoves him back a little, screaming putain! Tu te pronds pour un grande homme? Tu n’es rien, tu n’es rien—

“Ay, ay!” Coach Theriault screams, and bodily forces his way to the center of the fight. He clocks JJ, and plants both his hands on him, shoves him down onto the bench. He turns to Comeau, then, and shoves him all the way back to the other side of the room and down onto the bench in front of his stall. “Mais qu'est-ce que vous faites, tabarnak? Vous prenez pour des enfants?? Do I need to send all three of you to fucking time out?” Comeau sniffs and wipes at his nose, like a fucking boxer or some shit, and that single, small noise is enough to draw Coach’s ire like a red flag waving in front of a bull. “You think I won’t?”

Comeau just stares, nostrils flared.

Coach raises his eyebrows. “Putain de bordel de merde!” he exclaims. “You want to measure the size of your dick, fine, but you do it elsewhere. Change out, Comeau, Boiziau. You’re both fucking done for the night.” And then, he turns to Shane. “And you,” he says, practically sneers, “you think you are too good for me to eject you, too?”

Shane breathes in, breathes out. “No, Coach.”

“It was not him who started it, Coach,” JJ interjects.

“I don’t give a shit,” Coach replies, and then he turns his ire back on Shane. “If you were not our best scorer, and we were not down by one, I would have you out of this arena so fast your head would fucking spin. There will be a fine, for all of you. And I expect the rest of you idiots,” Coach says, louder, to the rest of the room, “to keep your fucking mouths shut about what you saw here. If I hear one word of fighting in my locker room has been leaked to the press, I will find out who did it, and I will have that person put on fucking waivers.”

“Yes, Coach!” the room choruses. And five minutes later, they’re back on the ice. Coach Theriault bumps Bobby and Grammy up to play first and second line, and tells Mickie D and Brie that they’ll be playing third and fourth. You are getting plenty of ice time tonight, Coach told them, so I expect no complaints about it for the next month.

And again, Shane tries, he really does, but the whole team is rattled. He manages to set up three more shots on goal—two for Guigui, one for Hayden—but nothing makes it through Hayes, the brick wall in the fucking net, and most of Shane’s plays fizzle out once they get close to Ottawa’s d-men. Soon enough, every shift is a battle to the death in the Metros’ defensive zone; furiously guarding the goal, picking the puck only to turn it right back over to the Cens a few seconds later, playing just clean enough that the refs won’t award a penalty. There’s a heartstopping moment where Shane thinks Hayden finally got a hard hit on Ilya, but Ilya just laughs, tells him my babushka hit harder than that, and skates away.

The game ends 0-1. Shane doesn’t stick around for long, after. He strips out of his gear as fast as he can, facing his stall, eyes carefully kept to himself, and skips his post-game shower. He feels so fucking gross, with his sweaty skin shoved back into his walk-on suit and his disgusting feet shoved into a clean pair of socks, but when he thinks about showering in that room, surrounded by those mean, sullen stares, he remembers, again, that thirteen-year-old kid lying motionless and bleeding under the shower spray, and he just—he can’t fucking do it.

Outside, in the player parking garage, Shane crouches low by the wheel of Ilya’s lamborghini and texts him, how long before you’re ready? Ilya replies, depends, how eager are you to fuck, and Shane presses his lips together, bows his head, then leans back and looks up at the ceiling, inexplicably close to tears. Hurry, please, is what Shane eventually replies.

Ilya does a double take when he finds Shane. “What the fuck happened to you?” he says, and Shane watches as the sheer, unbridled joy drains from his face, replaced by a concerned furrow in his brow. His dick goes soft, too. Shane feels more guilty than words can say.

“Just take me home,” Shane begs, and slides into the passenger seat. “Please, I just want to go home.” So, Ilya takes him home, and holds his hand the whole way, and doesn’t ask what happened, not again—just presses kisses to the back of Shane’s hand like he’s a damsel of old, which makes Shane so grateful that he does cry, just a little, the tears leaking from him the way Ilya sometimes gets. And if Ilya notices, he doesn’t say shit.

_____

When Shane wakes, the next morning, Ilya is already wide awake. They’re facing each other, this time, Shane’s face turned in and half-crushed into his pillow, Ilya’s arm trapped under his head, Ilya’s leg sandwiched between his thighs. Ilya strokes light over Shane’s cheekbone—tracing his freckles, probably. He’s staring, too; something inscrutable on his face.

Shane is tempted to pretend he’s still asleep. He feels so fucking stupid in the cold light of day, completely falling to pieces over a comment he’d been anticipating, a punch that didn’t even land. He doesn’t regret what he said, Comeau had all that coming, but the aftermath? Begging Ilya to take him home like he’s twelve years old all over again and begging his mommy to save him from the mean older boys at hockey camp? Being so scared to shower that he got sweat stains on his favorite walk-on suit and stunk up Ilya’s car? Falling into bed the second he got home, like a Victorian damsel who got too stressed out and swanned onto a fainting couch? Shame curls low in Shane’s gut. He’s supposed to be better than that.

And physically, he’s so fucking comfortable. Ilya always makes him feel so safe. The blankets are the perfect body-warm temperature, Ilya’s arm props his head at the perfect angle, his pillow soft below his cheek. But, Shane’s mother didn’t raise him to be a fucking coward, so, he breathes deep, cracks his eye open, and smiles at Ilya, slow and sleepy.

“Morning,” he mumbles, and tilts his face into Ilya’s gentle hand on his face.

“Good morning,” Ilya replies. His thumb gets, impossibly, gentler over Shane’s freckles. “Will you tell me what happened now?”

Shane turns his face further into his pillow, and slips his eyes closed. “It’s stupid. I’m overreacting. And I ruined your big night with my stupid bullshit.” Below the covers, Shane drags his foot up Ilya’s shin. “Let me make it up to you?” he says, coquettish, and puts his hand on Ilya’s chest, starts to move it lower.

Ilya grabs his hand and raises it up to kiss Shane’s knuckles, then lays it carefully over his heart.  “You scared me last night,” he says, with an intense look at Shane. “You were fucking terrified. I think I have seen you that scared maybe twice in the eleven years I have known you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

Ilya carefully brushes Shane’s hair away from his forehead, rubs the back of his thumb over the corner of Shane’s lip. “You know I will just keep freaking out if you do not tell me what is wrong, yes? I will, fuck, what is the word Galina says.”

Shane smiles, despite himself. “Catastrophize?”

“Yes, that,” Ilya says, and snaps his fingers. “I will catastrophize. I will think to myself, maybe he is dying, and then I will convince myself that you have rare prostate cancer because I fuck you too much, and you have like, six weeks to live.”

Shane huffs out a breath of a laugh, and slides the hand on Ilya’s chest up, to cup the side of his neck and stroke over his jaw. It’s prickly with stubble, this time of day. “Really? That’s the story you’re coming up with?”

“Mm, yes.” Ilya wiggles closer, and throws his leg over Shane’s hip, and stares straight into Shane’s eyes, somehow sincere and mischievous at the same time. “And I will cry and cry, every night, because my beautiful husband, the best thing in my life, is dying of rare prostate cancer and he won’t tell me.”

“It’s really not that big a deal,” Shane sighs. “Gil sort of, like, implied I threw the game for you. And then he threw a punch. That’s all.”

Ilya’s brow furrows, and he pulls himself up, so he’s leaning on the elbow he’s got stuffed under Shane’s head. He looks down at Shane, eyes roving frantically. “He fucking hit you?”

Shane snorts. “Well, he tried.” When that doesn’t get the furrow between Ilya’s brow to ease, Shane elaborates, “he missed, Ilya. I’m okay.”

Ilya looks like he doesn’t believe a word Shane says. “Is that why he was out the rest of the game?” He asks. Shane nods. “And he is, what, suspended?”

Shane shrugs, and gently tugs Ilya to lay back down. “He’s nothing. He’ll probably be at practice this afternoon.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? He tried to fucking hit you!”

And there’s that white-hot flash of anger, that black tide rising up again, ugly and mean. “And what the fuck am I supposed to do, huh?” Shane snaps, and pulls out of Ilya’s arms, and sits up.

Ilya tries, vainly, to catch Shane’s waist. Shane squirms away and out of bed, scooping up last night’s boxers from where they lie crumpled on the floor. “You put in complaint—”

“Yeah, because that always goes over well.” And Ilya stops, at that. They’ve both heard the stories—guys who filed complaints with HR and got traded the next week; guys who levied sexual assault allegations against coaching staff, only to withdraw them later and vanish from the sport; the two players, Baldwin and Lundin, who came out after Scott and got quietly booted from the league. “There’s nothing to be done, Ilya. There’s nothing either of us can do.”

Ilya shakes his head. He comes to Shane, bare-assed naked, and takes his hand, rubs his thumb over Shane’s knuckles. “You could leave.”

And all at once, Shane feels cold all over; the hair at the back of his necks stands, and his stomach twists, and he feels a little like the whole world has gone slightly to the left again, like he’s been knocked out of alignment and can’t put himself back where he’s supposed to be. Shane shrugs out of Ilya’s grasp, and says, “he’s just one guy, Ilya. I’m not letting one asshole drive me off of my fucking team.”

Ilya, stubborn asshole that he is, just grabs at Shane’s shoulder, holding him still. And for a long time, he just looks at Shane. What he’s searching for, what he finds, Shane can’t possibly say. “Okay,” he says, after a long, tense silence. “Okay. Yes. You are right.” And it’s a good try, but Shane doesn’t believe him, not for a second. He’s still got that worried set to his brow, his hand coming up to rub below his lip, the way he does when he’s nervous and craving a cigarette. He disappears into the bathroom. Shane hears his piss hitting the toilet bowl. “And he was so fucking terrible!” Ilya calls, still pissing. “In the neutral zone like that! If your front office is smart, you will not have to put up with him long, I think.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Shane heads into their closet, plucks one of Ilya’s sweatshirts off the hanger and tugs it over his head. He still feels cold. “You want eggs for breakfast?”

“Please,” Ilya calls. And, so. Shane makes breakfast in day-old boxers and Ilya’s sweatshirt; scrambles a dozen eggs in their biggest frying pan, adds milk and cheese the way Ilya likes, pops four slices of toast in the toaster while he works on putting together two strawberry-and-kale protein smoothies, so Ilya will have something green.

The eggs are in that strange half-cooked, half-liquid stage when Ilya emerges from the bathroom, hair wet like he tried to tame it by dunking his head under the faucet, bare-chested, sweatpants slung low on his hips, feet stuffed into the slides he wears as house shoes. He walks up behind Shane and wraps his arms around him, stuffing his hands into Shane’s hoodie pockets, rubbing at his belly through the fabric. He kisses the back of Shane’s neck, then buries his head in the crook of Shane’s shoulder, and just stands there, swaying them back and forth, for a long, long time.

At the table, after they’ve eaten their eggs and drank their smoothies and Shane has downed his shot of olive oil, Shane checks twitter. The very first thing he sees is a tweet from The Sun—a link to an article called FRIENDLY FIRE: Fight Between Shane Hollander, Gilbert Comeau Breaks Out In Montreal Metros Locker Room.

“Fuck,” Shane says, and then louder, with feeling; “fucking shit.”

“What, what,” Ilya says, concerned, and Shane wordlessly hands his phone over. “Oh, shit.” Ilya hands his phone back, then stands, and starts collecting dirty dishes. “Maybe,” he says, hesitant, while he carefully stacks Shane’s dirty plate on top of his own. “Maybe this could be a good thing. People will know what happened, and you did not have to make complaint.”

Shane shakes his head. “No, no, this is—” He scrubs a hand over his mouth, runs it through his sleep-soft hair. “Fuck, we’re supposed to be keeping our noses clean. Crowell’s just waiting for an excuse to kill us, and the sponsors are already nervous, and Coach is gonna be so fucking pissed. He’s—” Shane cuts himself off, and buries his head in his arms, crossed against the tabletop. “Someone’s gonna get fired over this.”

Ilya sets the dirty plates back on the table, and rests a careful hand across the back of Shane’s neck. “You really think?”

Shane nods, with what little room he has. His forehead rocks back and forth across the hard bone in the back of his wrist; it soothes him, almost as much as Ilya’s hand. “You didn’t see him in there, Ilya. He’ll—god, he’ll hit the fucking roof. He said—” Shane cuts himself off and breathes, too-quick.

“He said what?” Ilya asks, so, so soft and careful, like Shane is something delicate.

Shane swallows, and sits upright; pulls his head out from his arms and looks Ilya in the eye. “He said,” Shane  “That if any players talked to the press about it, he’d put them on waivers. And I know,” he swallows again, and toys with the hoodie string dangling down his chest. “That coaches sometimes just say shit when they’re mad. I know. This wasn’t that. He was fucking serious about it.”

“Well,” Ilya replies, and sinks down to kneel in front of Shane, right there in the dining room, and takes one of Shane’s hands in both of his. “You did not talk to press, right?”

“Right.”

“So you didn’t do anything wrong,” Ilya continues, “and if you didn’t do anything wrong, no reason to put you on waivers, yes?” And Shane wants to shake him, or scream, or both. Since when has it mattered whether Shane did anything wrong? He didn’t do anything wrong, having a Japanese mom, but parents of other kids on opposing peewee teams still yelled across the ice to their kids and told them to teach the jap a lesson he’d never forget. He didn’t do anything wrong falling in love with Ilya, either, or marrying him, and they both almost got crucified for it—unceremoniously forced out of the sport they both love, lambasted in the media, shamed into irrelevancy and early retirement. Shane is under no illusions. Without his mom’s carefully managed press tour, without Farah working her contacts behind the scenes, the two of them wouldn’t be on the ice. They’d be rotting in their rat-hole cottage, probably tearing each other apart. And it wasn’t fair. God, it wasn’t fair. But Mom had taught him early: life was never fair. Not to people like them.

_____

After breakfast, Ilya kisses him at the door, and then Shane is off, on the road to Bell Sports Complex. The room is quiet, when he gets in—partly because he’s early and the room is only half-full, partly because Comeau, Guigui, Walkman, and Drapeau keep taking turns shooting Shane dirty looks.

He ignores it. Sinks into that hollow, laser-focused space he sinks into on game days. Sits on the bench in front of his stall, and focuses on stowing his gear bag. Comeau, Guigui, Walkman, and Drapeau are all clumped together in front of Drapeau’s stall, opposite Shane’s, even though the stalls are arranged in a U and Guigui’s is just three down from Shane’s; a stupid-ass line drawn in nonexistent sand.

The rest of the guys trickle in, one-by-one, and nobody will look him in the eye. Nobody except JJ, who wordlessly claps him on the shoulder, and Hayden, who walks in, sees the stupid-ass line in the nonexistent sand, and sits down in his usual spot next to Shane anyways. He gives Shane a careful nod, too, which briefly makes Shane so grateful he could cry, and then just pisses him off.

Ten minutes before practice is supposed to start, Coach Theriault walks into the locker room, and the silence gets even thicker. “Boiziau, with me,” says, with a two-fingered pointing motion.

JJ frowns. He’s half-dressed; geared up below the waist, bare-chested up top. “Tout de suite?”

“Oui,” Coach replies. “Maintenant.”

So, JJ pulls on a shirt, lightning-quick. Hayden and Shane both watch him go, and Shane’s stomach sinks right down to the floor. “What do you think that’s about,” Hayden whispers, barely above a breath. It’s the first time he’s said anything directly to Shane since that awful, awful fight back in August.

Shane shrugs, but deep down, he already knows. HR doesn’t pull guys out to reprimand them right before practice. Coach threatened waivers to anyone who talked, but, realistically, it’s probably a trade. Shane can see exactly how Coach told the story to management, too—after all, Coach walked in after the fight already started. In the story, there is six-foot-six JJ, even more foreign than Shane because he’s black and speaks Haitian French instead of Québécois, cast as aggressive, as dangerous, as escalating a simple disagreement to a fistfight; Comeau provoked into things instead of fucking instigating them. Comeau is a fixable problem, Coach would’ve said. Boiziau is not.

And, sure enough, just as Shane is finishing lacing up his skates, JJ walks back in the room and drops onto the bench beside him, heavy, like he can’t bring himself to care if he pitches over and falls on the floor. “Ils m’envoient à Vegas,” he says. And god, he sounds rough. Hollowed out and barely there.

Next to Shane, Hayden looks up from where he’s trying and failing to pull his sock up higher below his already strapped-on shin guard. “They’re fucking trading you?” he demands. JJ just nods.

“How long?” Shane asks, soft as he can manage, and bumps their shoulders together. It’s all he can do.

JJ smacks his fist into his palm, once, twice. He taps his foot so fast his knee blurs. “I fly tonight.”

“Jesus,” Hayden hisses, low.

Stouffer creeps closer, from where he was hanging around blatantly eavesdropping on the parts of their conversation that happened in English. “Who are we getting?” He asks, real timid and quiet, like he’ll be sad to see JJ go, even though he’s known JJ for less than a month.

JJ shrugs. “It is a complicated three-way agreement. They said we—” he swallows, then. “Montreal is getting Mike Brophy, Jersey is getting a draft pick and a rookie they wanted, and Vegas is getting a third-line winger from Jersey.” He looks down. Rubs at the back of his neck. “And me, I imagine.”

“Je suis désolé,” Shane whispers, just barely above a breath, so quiet even Hayden can barely hear. “C'est de ma faute.”

JJ shakes his head. “T'as rien fait de mal,” he says back, just as quiet. “Coach a dit qu'il mettra tout ceux qui ouvriront leur gueule sur un waiver. Je regrette rien, mais, je veux pas y aller. J'ai vérifié leur équipe. Je suis le seul noir. Le seul francophone. Je veux pas être seul.”

Shane opens his mouth, but Coach Theriault pokes his head back through the locker room door before he can reply. “The MLH does not pay you to sit around and gossip like old women,” he snaps. “Get your asses out on the ice. And Boiziau,” he says, not unkindly, “Good luck in Vegas.”

And so, with a helpless look at JJ, and a promise that this is simply au revoir, not adieu, Shane goes. He looks back one last time, at the door, and the image there, he knows, will burn itself into his brain forever; JJ sitting on that bench all alone, half-naked, leaned back and looking up at the fluorescent light above his head, the rest of the team parting around him like the Red Sea parting around Moses; like he’s a fucking leper, like if they touch him, they’ll get traded too.  

_____

The second game of Shane’s season is another home game. Boston v. Montreal. His favorite, back in the day, and even though Ilya doesn’t play for the Raiders anymore, he still holds some strange, nostalgic fondness for the team anyways.

Ilya flew out in the morning—an early game in Toronto, another in Buffalo the next day. Shane saw him off at the door with a kiss, his hands around Ilya’s waist, tongue halfway down his throat. It was, Shane realized, the first time they’d be apart for more than a day since getting papped at Scott’s wedding. He’d been a little listless, after that, all alone in their big empty house. He hardly knew what to do with himself, so he did nothing at all. Just sat there, on the couch, staring at nothing in particular on his phone until it was time for him to go.

On the ice, things are fine. Shane misses JJ like a world-war-two vet misses his foxhole partner, but the new guy, Brophy, has slotted right into JJ’s place easily enough. And it’s a total fucking blowout, too—Boston’s goalie, Koslov, retired last season, and their new guy is so unseasoned that his save percentage is hovering right around 0.898, so it’s like fish in a fucking barrel. Shane racks up two goals and an assist; one scored off what Coach Theriault reluctantly calls the nastiest dangle he’s ever seen, the other off a rebound.

The game ends 4-2, after Stouffer makes like the lasagna he’s named after and stuffs the goal in the net with barely thirty seconds to spare. It looks exactly like he’s sliding a tray of frozen pasta into the oven, too; bent low, stick awkward in front of him, backhanding the puck in a move that’s less a shot than it is a desperate shove. It slots right between Koslov’s legs, which is just embarrassing. It’s Stouffer’s first goal in an MLH game. So, when he cruises back to the bench, Shane pulls him in and smacks a kiss on top of his helmet, too loose and easy and ecstatic to care about whether that kind of thing is too gay, now that everyone knows Shane is a card-carrying faggot. He’s on the fucking moon, high as cloud fucking nine. It feels like a do-over for that awful, messy season opener. It feels like he’s catching his groove; the groove that will take him all the way to the Stanley Cup this season.

They pull Shane and Hayden for a post-game, rinkside interview with Centre Bell’s anglophone ice-level reporter. Shane has seen her around for the past couple of years, but he can’t remember her name for the life of him. Chelsea? Kelly? Kathy? He doesn’t know, and he can’t ask, not while they’re live, him and Hayden towering over her in their gear. He feels a little ridiculous, every fucking time. She’s not a very tall person, and her immaculate makeup always makes Shane feel like a sweaty, disgusting slob.

“Shane,” she says, and Shane plasters on his media-ready smile, “it seems like you guys had a bit of a rough start to the season. Any comment on that?”

She shoves the mic in Shane’s face. He has to squat down a little to speak into it. “Yeah,” Shane says, awkward, “that opener wasn’t our best showing, but sometimes there’s a bit of an adjustment period coming back, and I think we really started to hit our stride tonight.”

“For sure, for sure,” she nods. “You guys were on fire out there! Do you think the new lineup has something to do with your win tonight?”

 “JJ was an important part of this team, and we were all very sad to see him go,” Shane replies, diplomatically. “He left behind some pretty big shoes, but Brophy’s done a pretty good job filling them so far.”

“So far? Care to elaborate?”

“Well,” Shane says, with his face still frozen in his media-ready smile, “It’s only the second game of the season. We’ve got a ways to go yet.”

Her smile, impossibly, sharpens. She shoves the mic even closer, like she’d stuff it straight down Shane’s throat if she could. “So you’d say that there are still some problems in the room?”

And she says it all innocent, but Shane can see the sharpness in her smile and the reminder of who she works for—the mic she’s shoving in his face is plastered over with the MLH logo. She’s a fucking shark, Mom would say. A little shark sent here by a bigger shark that hoped she’d find blood in the water. Shane freezes his face in place, and idly wonders if she came up with that question all on her own, or if Crowell sent her a script. Off camera, Marcel makes eye contact with Christy? Chloe? and draws his thumb across his throat.

Before Shane can think of a reply, Hayden cuts in. He grabs the mic and pulls it towards his face, which has Kayla? Katie? stumbling on her pristine white figure-skating skates. “I think it’s pretty clear that we’re doing what we need to do out there,” he says, mouth so close to the mic that he sounds a little muffled, and the people watching can probably hear his spit moving in his mouth. “Like, the scoreboard really speaks for itself.”

The rinkside reporter yanks the mic back. “And what do you think you need to do to keep winning?”

Hayden shrugs, and leans in to reply. “Pucks deep, man. Pucks deep. It’s as simple as that.”

Shane glances over, and Christ, Marcel looks pissed. Shane wonders if he’ll see whatever-her-name-is again on Tuesday, when they’re back to play Colorado. Her outro follows him and Hayden down the tunnel--that was Captain Shane Hollander and Assistant Captain Hayden Pike, back to you, Rodney.

“What a bitch,” Hayden declares. Shane hums in reply, and they settle into an easy-enough silence.

It’s quiet in the locker room, too. The rooks look spooked, and Comeau’s crowd of hangers-on watch Shane just like the rinkside reporter did not ten minutes before. They’re all standing around pretending to be busy, fiddling with their bags or chugging Gatorade while they sneak sideways glances. Well, fuck them. Pissy when they lose, pissy when they win. What a bunch of fucking babies. Shane goes up to Stouffer, claps him on the back, and tells him great fucking job, kid, and Stouffer scuttles away like an ant under a kicked-over rock. Shane frowns, then, and turns to look at the rest of the room, but nobody will look him in the eye.

And then, Shane sees it. Smeared across the back of his stall, the word WHORE, written in lopsided, red capital letters. It’s rushed, messy. It still smells like sharpie. Shane touches the edge of the H and drags his finger across the pale wood.

So that’s what they’re watching for, Shane thinks. Waiting to see if he’ll get mad, or cry, or do something equally embarrassing. Shane should’ve clocked it before—it’s the exact same way the other kids used to look at him when they’d pissed in his shoes while he was busy showering. The sideways glances, the muffled snickering behind sweaty hands, the shame-faced onlookers too scared to intervene.

And it’s like something breaks, deep inside. Some too-stubborn thing he inherited from his mother, bent until it cleaved right in two. He was never gonna win them over, he realizes. Not when he was an awkward little kid, not when he was a teenager crying to his dad because his teammates kept coming up with new and interesting ways to torture him, and not now, either; thirty years old, at the top of his game, the best in the fucking league, and still the butt of the fucking joke. All those years he spent trying to court his teammates’ favor were wasted, fucking pointless. There was nothing Shane could’ve done. They would’ve hated him regardless.

He should feel sad, he thinks, or scared, or really fucking angry, but the only thing Shane feels is the overwhelming urge to go home and sleep. What else can he possibly do? Probably, this would’ve happened no matter what he did. Maybe if they’d lost again, whoever had that red sharpie would’ve written FAGGOT instead. And sure, if they’d won against Ottawa, this wouldn’t be happening now. It would be happening in February, when they play each other next, or March, or April. Because Shane never had the room, not really. At best, the room tolerated him for a little while, and now they were done. Simple as that. And, maybe, Shane was done with them, too.

And, so. Shane showers. He gets dressed. He sits in his car for a very long time and stares at nothing in particular. Just rise above it, Mom said, over and over; back in mites, when the kids would pull at the corners of their eyes and leer at him when they called him names; after games where opposing players’ parents told their kids to go after Shane specifically; when he called her, crying, after his first night in his first billet house and begged her to take him home, because the kids there spent his whole practice whispering heads up samurai and hitting him with their sticks when the coaches weren’t looking. And Shane was rising, always rising above it all, floating right up to the top, until there was nowhere left for him to go, nowhere he could escape from any of it; nothing left to do but come crashing down, and down, and down. But, maybe if he was lucky, there was a safe place to land. A place Ilya had been preparing, these last four years—a place to catch them both. Ottawa might not be so bad, Shane thinks. Ottawa might make the playoffs this year. Ottawa needed more depth at center. Maybe—maybe Ottawa needed him. Maybe they would ditch Troy motherfucking Barrett and take Shane instead.

_____

And, so, Shane calls Farah in the morning, while he’s still sitting up in bed, and he tells her he wants a trade to Ottawa, please and thank you, will you please work your magic? She calls back before lunch. They won’t release you from your contract, she says to him over the phone, and when he asks why, she hesitates. They said you’re a difficult asset to trade, is what she says, eventually, and Shane says what, like difficult to trade because I’m too valuable, or too difficult to trade because no one wants a faggot on their team, and Farah replies don’t call yourself that, and Shane says please just answer the question. Please.

I don’t know, is what Farah says. But you don’t have much leverage to work with, and you’ve only got two years on your contract. If you can stick it out, I might be able to get you to Ottawa then. And Shane doesn’t say another word. He hangs up, and then he whips his phone across the room. It hits the wall with a crunch and an almighty crash, but Shane doesn’t look. He can’t. He’s curling into a little ball, knees tight to his chest, hands tugging at his own hair so hard it hurts, holding his breath until it feels like it’s all going to explode out of his chest. And then, he takes all that hurt, and over a period of hours, he watches the sun track across their bed, and he squashes it down, and down, and down. And then, when he can finally breathe around the hitch in his chest, he gets in his car, and he drives down to Rona for a drywall patch kit.

_____

And, so. Shane fixes the four-inch hole in the drywall before he leaves for afternoon practice. His phone is shattered beyond repair—he stuffs it down the side of the trash, buries it beneath last night’s dinner scraps and this morning’s coffee grounds.

The red-lettered WHORE isn’t there when he gets in—of course it’s not. Wrong locker, wrong location. Some poor custodian at Centre Bell probably had to furiously scrub it with acetone before a guided tour came through the locker room in the morning.

Around him, the room goes dead quiet and tense. Shane’s belly goes quiet and tense, too, but he carefully blanks his face out, and hides his trembling hands by fiddling with his gear. “You know, we haven’t had a captain’s practice for a while,” Shane says, idly, like he’s commenting on the weather. “We’ll do one today. Let off some steam after practice.”

“I’m not going to that shit,” Comeau mutters.

“You will,” Shane says, coolly. “I wouldn’t want to give management the impression that you’re not a team player. They might send you to Vegas with JJ.” And that—Shane’s unflappable non-reaction, his resting face, the implicit I’ll-get-you-traded-too threat—is enough to make Comeau nod.

Practice is a shitshow. They run a scrimmage between first and third line, and Guigui simultaneously refuses to pass to Shane and bitches and moans whenever Shane passes to Hayden instead. Comeau seems more interested in tripping up Shane than tripping up the opposition, and Brophy just watches, a canny gleam in his eye. Coach Theriault calls a halt and sets them up with passing drills, which Shane runs through on autopilot right up until the end of practice. We’re staying a little late, Shane says, when Coach calls time and gets pissed that nobody’s leaving, doing a little team building. You know how it is.

So, they all stand there, on the ice, still in their pads, and wait while the coaching staff packs up and leaves. And when the door finally closes behind Marcel, and the public is ushered out, Shane turns towards the guys, nervously clustered around the bench.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that most of you guys have a problem with me,” Shane announces, voice pitched to carry. “So, I figured we could settle this shit. You all think I gave Rozanov that goal on purpose, right? You think I could’ve skated just a little faster, and I could’ve caught up to him, right?” He looks Comeau in the eye, then, and stares him down, impassive. “Well, lets put it to the fucking test. I’ll start on one of the endzone faceoff dots, you guys will start behind the goal, and we’ll see if you can fucking catch me before I get to the neutral zone.”

Marty, the second-line center, shakes his head. “That’s not fair, Cap. You’ve got the fastest time in the league.”

Shane huffs out a humorless laugh. “My PR is only a tenth of a second faster than Rozanov’s,” he says, tapping his stick against the ice in a steady rhythm. “But I can rein it in for you guys, if you think that tenth of a second will make a whole lot of difference.”

No one says anything. None of them will look him in the goddamn eye. And then, Hayden skates up and whispers, “you sure about this, dude?” and Shane could fucking kill him, he really could.

“Okay,” Shane says. “How about I sweeten the fucking pot. We’ll do it individually. You guys each get one shot, and if you catch me, I’ll give you the fucking C.”

Hayden’s head snaps up. “You’d give up the C? Seriously?”

Shane shrugs. “The fuck would I keep it, if nobody’s gonna fucking listen to me?” He glances over at Comeau, and yeah, Shane’s fucking got him—he’s staring at the C on Shane’s chest like it’s the Holy Grail or some shit. “Offer’s open,” Shane goads. “Unless you’re all too scared to lose to a whore like me.”

“Fuck you,” Comeau spits. “Drapes, get up there.”

And, so. Shane takes his place at the endzone dot, and Drapeau gets behind the goal, and Shane hands Hayden the captain’s whistle, and tells him to start them off. He stands facing Drapeau, like he’s just received a pass, puck cradled against his stick. And they stare at each other from across the ice—Shane cold and still, Drapeau with something murderous in the furrow of his brow and the set of his mouth; a wannabe Brutus with a stupid-looking face.

And then, the whistle comes, and they’re off. Shane whirls, carving a smooth, tight half-circle, stick snapping the puck back and forth, cycling it up the ice, legs pumping as fast as they’ll go, heart thumping deep in his chest, the winter-tinged wind whipping past his face and pulling faint tears from the corners of his eyes. Shane crosses the blue line and flips around to skate backwards—a figure-skating move Ilya taught him over Christmas break, one winter, when they managed to sneak up to the cottage and goof off on the frozen-over lake. So, Shane gets to watch from a distance while Drapeau finally whips across the blue line a handful of second later, his face already red and sweating.

Shane circles around Drapeau and laughs, barely out of breath. “Harder than it looks, isn’t it,” he calls, and Drapeau gets even redder.

“Fucking faggot,” he spits. Shane ignores it. He’s not Shane’s target tonight.

“Walkman,” Comeau barks. “You’re up.” So, they reset, and they go again, and again, and again, until Shane has raced the entire second line, and the third, and the rookies on fourth, and the backup goalie. And it’s not even close. How could it be? He and Ilya are the best sprinters in a league full of sprinters. Shane leaves them all eating his fucking snow. He goes and he goes and he goes, until he’s finally breathing hard, and his face feels red-hot, and his feet are sweaty inside his skates.

He beats Guigui, circles around the rink, and raises an eyebrow at Hayden. “Nah, man,” Hayden says, and waves him off. “I don’t need you to prove yourself to me.”

“Okay,” Shane pants. “Guess it’s just you, Gil.”

Comeau grins, sly. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess so.” So, they take their places. Hayden stares at Shane, worried, but Shane rolls his eyes and motions at him to get the fuck on with it. He knows Comeau’s game—waiting to go last because he’ll be fresh and he thinks Shane’s gotta be gassed after sixteen sprints like that. And yeah, Shane feels winded. But he’s a fucking center. His zone of coverage is the entire goddamn rink. He’s been skating sprints like this since he was seven.

Behind the goal, Comeau smirks at him. Mouths cocksucker, and mimes a blow job by poking at his cheek with his tongue. Shane just raises an eyebrow, lowers one of his gloved hands to his crotch, and thrusts, just once. And then, when Comeau’s face is almost purple with rage, Shane winks.

The whistle sounds. Just like before, Shane whirls and cycles the puck up the ice, hauling air in through his nose and out through his mouth. His thighs burn, and his back aches, but he just pushes harder. He hears Comeau behind him, the snick-snick of his skates on the ice, but it’s getting quieter as he falls ever so slightly behind. Shane puts on an extra burst of speed, crosses the blue line uncontested, and just keeps fucking going, sprinting clear to the other goal and circling behind it, dumping the puck off to the side and barreling back towards Comeau, drifted to a near stop in the neutral zone. Shane circles around him like a fucking shark, and then, when Comeau is a little disoriented from trying to keep his eye on Shane, Shane hooks his stick around the back of his ankle and pulls. Comeau falls, flat on his back. The back of his head hits the ice with a sickening crunch.

Shane tosses his stick aside and leans over Comeau, sprawled on the ice, panting and red. He puts his hand on Comeau’s chest and forces him down when he tries to sit up. The rest of the team shouts in alarm and barrels towards them, gloves off. “I don’t fucking like you,” Shane hisses. “I think you’re a piece of shit. And did you see me calling you a whore after you cheated on your ex-wife on every fucking roadie we had in 2017? You see me go crying to the media about your fucking oxy problem after you almost overdosed in my goddamn bathroom? Yeah,” Shane says, at Comeau’s white-faced, fearful look, “I know all about that shit. Get it the fuck together.” And then, Shane raises his voice, so the rest of his approaching teammates will hear. “I don’t need you to like me,” he says, steady. “I don’t even need you to respect me. The only thing I need,” he continues, and shoves back, gets to his feet, so he can address the whole crowd at once, “is for all of you to act like the goddamn professionals you are. You think you can do that?”

“Yeah, Cap,” Comeau says, and slowly gets to his feet. He glares at Shane, even more hateful than before. Shane doesn’t’ give a shit. “We can do that.”

And just like that, it’s done. Shane snaps at them to get the fuck off the ice, then, and they all shuffle off to the locker room. For a second, Drapeau glares from his corner, mutters fucking faggot under his breath, just loud enough to hear, but before Shane can do anything, Comeau grabs his arm, hard, and whispers don’t, man. Just don’t. And, to his credit, Drapeau doesn’t. Nobody does. The rookies all flinch when Shane passes too close, like they’re scared he’ll fucking bite, and the vets take turns glaring, but, for the first time in a long time, Shane isn’t scared anymore. He knows plenty of their secrets, too.

And, so. Shane drives home. He buys a new phone at an Apple store in Montreal. He buys a little can of drywall texture at Rona on his way back, so Ilya won’t notice the suspiciously smooth patch on the wall. He buys a gallon of paint. He pulls all their furniture to the middle of the bedroom and repaints the whole thing, just in case. He fishes his old, smashed phone out of the trash and pops off the case, cleans it, and sticks it on his new phone. He does a shot of olive oil. He makes himself salmon for dinner.

He’d been there, at Comeau’s wedding. Not the man of honor, like he was with Hayden, but still a groomsman. It had been in a barn, Shane remembers, and the dress code was pretty casual. Most of the guests showed up in jeans. He’d watched their first dance—Gil in his boring black suit, his wife Genevieve in a big fluffy thing that Gil kept stepping on, which made them both laugh, because they were both already drunk. The bridesmaid assigned to him had nice hair. Red, he remembers, because it was notable in a sea of bottle blondes, and long, and wavy. Shane had ended up holding it back while she puked outside, later that night. He’d bought them a full set of Le Creuset—skillets, saucepans, casserole dishes, a stock pot and a dutch oven, all in the same bright red cerise. He hadn’t been invited to Genevieve’s baby shower for either of their children, but he’d gotten ahold of the registry and bought the most expensive thing off it both times. He’d held Gil while he cried, in some sticky club bathroom in Nashville, after Genevieve served him the divorce papers. And Gil hadn’t known how to say thank you, so instead, he’d bought Shane a pound of Kilauea Mountain Oolong because he knew Shane didn’t really drink.

Shane treasured that tea. He still had some left in his kitchen cabinet. He makes himself a cup, that night, and cries into it until he can barely breathe. Grieving the now-dead part of him that was still twelve, and so sad, and begging his dad to please just tell him how to make his teammates like him; mourning the friends he’d once thought he had; alone and miserable and terrified that he’ll always be just as alone and miserable as he feels right now, sitting alone in his cavernous house with the lights dimmed; missing Ilya like a fucking limb.

Chapter End Notes

alas. i couldn't dodge writing hockey games forever. also. i did say we had plenty further to fall before we hit rock bottom :) and we are still traveling downwards :)

Chapter 8: november

Chapter Summary

And then, something heavy careens into Shane’s back. His head bounces off the glass, his body flattened to the boards, wrist at an awkward angle between the hard wood and the rest of his body. And for a second, everything goes white, white. His ears ring. Someone says something in his ear, but he can’t make it out. Something grinds into his ass. And then, the pressure at his back vanishes, just as fast as it came, and Shane stumbles back from the boards, shakes his head, goes down on one knee. It’s so fucking loud, so fucking bright—the lights above washing out all the color until the whole world looks like a photo with the exposure cranked way too high. Someone yells caught you, bitch! Shane doesn’t know who. Maybe a teammate? It’s hard to tell—he can’t remember if his guys are wearing blue or white.

Chapter Notes

The Little Caesars arena in Detroit is violently, wretchedly orange. Every time Shane plays here, it feels like he’s a bug stuck inside a traffic cone. The barn is packed to the fucking gills, and when Shane takes his place at the faceoff circle for the game’s first puck drop, the crowd starts humming, quiet at first, then louder and louder the longer the puck lingers in the air.

Hartman, the Red Wings’ first-line center, bends low, his stick at the ready. He spits, then nods at Shane, crouched low to match, and says, “that how you bend over for your husband?”

Next to him, Guigui lets out an amused little exhale. Behind him, he hears Comeau snort. And then, the puck drops, and Shane whips it back to Brophy, dodges around Hartman like he’s a goddamn tree planted in the ground, and takes off. He listens with half an ear, as Brophy calls out seven-four and passes to Guigui, and Guigui takes it up to the blue line and fucking dumps it. Shane races to catch the puck before the Red Wings d-men and manages to pick it out from under a hulking guy named Kerr. He glances back, but Hayden is tangled up, the passing lane between him and Guigui is blocked, and so. Shane fights through both d-men, takes the puck right up to the crease, swoops to the right, then does a fucking three-sixty and shoots towards the top left corner while the goalie is still watching his right.

The goal horn sounds. Shane pumps his fist and whisper-yells let’s go, and takes his victory lap while he works his way back to the bench. None of his teammates reach out to touch him, or tap sticks, or even acknowledge he exists. Hartman spits just shy of Shane’s skates while he flies past and calls him a faggot. On the bench, Hayden sits pressed in close on one side. On the other, Stouffer leaves as much distance between them as he can.

So it goes. So it fucking goes.

______

After that first goal, Kerr boards Shane so hard he sees stars and feels a familiar tingling, burning numbness shoot down his neck and through his right arm—neck stinger. A bad one. His stick drops from nerveless fingers. Kerr grinds him into the boards just a little harder, and the burning ratchets up enough that Shane gasps. When Kerr finally skates off, Shane looks towards the ref, but he won’t meet Shane’s eye, and he doesn’t call shit. Shane’s grip feels funny for the rest of the game, and the next morning, his shoulder is locked up so bad that he spends an hour in the shower with the water on as hot as he can stand, and then he’s off to the airport, to play a game in Boston that afternoon. In Boston, Shane plants himself in front of the crease because Drapeau’s save average is fucking abysmal this season, less than 0.900 for the first time in years, and a stray puck catches Shane’s finger and gives him a hairline fracture. Dr. Moore slaps on a buddy splint, gives Shane two white mystery pills to swallow, and has him back out on the ice within ten minutes. And then, in the last period, Shane gets a beautiful goal, a bar-down wrister, and feels something in his wrist pop—the same fucking hand with the hairline fracture. Dr. Moore tests his range of motion, gives him a cortisone shot, and tells him to ice it when he gets back to the hotel. So, Shane fills up the bathtub in his hotel room with hot water, and awkwardly rests his arm on the lip, a thin plastic bag of ice draped over it.

He flies down to New York, takes a puck to the hip, and loses the game for his fucking trouble. It bruises all the way to the fucking bone. After, his teammates strip out of their pads and line up to strip off the rest of their layers in the bathroom stalls, like they’re afraid of Shane bad-touching them or something. So. Shane takes an uber straight to Scott’s house. Ilya drives up after his own game in Jersey, high on victory, and alternates kissing the bruise on Shane’s hip and sucking his dick while Scott kneels over Shane’s chest and fucks his mouth, and Kip ruts between Ilya’s asscheeks.

You okay, rook? Scott asks him, in the aftermath, tracing over that bruise on Shane’s hip and kissing the splint on Shane’s left hand and eyeing the fucking lace burn on his shins that refuses to clear up, no matter what he tries. And Shane looks at him, then; his earnest fucking cow eyes and his crooked nose and the smile lines carved into the skin by his mouth. It’s just part of the game, old-timer, Shane replies, and leans in to kiss him quiet.

They’re papped at the Kingfisher, later that night, him and Ilya and Scott and Kip. There are two pictures, this time—one of all four of them standing in a cluster knocking back shots together, the other of Shane stuffing a twenty into a redheaded drag queen’s bra while Ilya looks on and laughs. The headline says Hollander Caught Fraternizing With The Enemy (Again). Conservative fans flock to twitter and kick up a fuss about Shane encouraging transgenderism or something. He doesn’t care, but fucking Rolex does, because, of fucking course, Shane’s Rolex flashes bright under the pink-and-blue lights, the most obvious thing in the photo besides the dollar bill and the drag queen’s fake boobs. It nets him another meeting with their marketing department, and Mom lectures him for twenty minutes about how close he is to losing Rolex as a sponsor. Shane hangs up midway through, and goes to take another too-hot shower, hoping to loosen up his shoulder before bed.

And through it all he watches, alone in anonymous hotel rooms in various cities, as Ilya goes the sort of generational tear he had back in 2014. He ekes out an overtime win against Dallas with an insane double-rebound, gets a hattie in a truly embarrassing 5-0 shutout against Chicago, buries Minnesota with a respectable 3-1, and finally ends his streak playing Boston, and even then, it was a close game. He’s got a new celly, this season. Keeps blowing a kiss to the camera every time he scores. Shane mimes catching it, every time, even though there’s no one around to see, and presses a kiss to the back of his fist. Kissing Ilya’s kiss, since he can’t kiss the man.

Barrett is always there, lurking in Ilya’s shadow—slapping him on the back, smacking a kiss to his helmet, grinning and tapping their sticks together, sitting next to Ilya and peering over his shoulder at the iPad. And it’s not like Shane is worried, really. He trusts Ilya. He wouldn’t have married him if he didn’t. It’s just—why him? Why does he get to touch Ilya like that, be close like that, be on the same fucking line like that. The fuck did he do to deserve it? Nothing Shane hadn’t already done. Nothing Shane hadn’t worked harder for, worked longer for, bled and sweat and cried for. Fuck him, Shane thinks to himself, while he watches Barrett score off an assist from Ilya, lips pressed against the back of his fist. Fuck him. Fuck him.

_____

And then, back to Montreal for three blessed days of overlap with Ilya’s schedule. Ilya’s already home when Shane trudges through the door. He’s laying on the couch, scrolling on his phone, the smell of braising beef heavy in the air. He jumps up like an overeager kid when he hears Shane, tosses his phone aside, and all but bounds over, like some pampered, overgrown golden doodle that never got told down, boy, down.

He sweeps Shane up into his arms; Shane drops his bag on the floor and falls into them, his face pressed hard against Ilya’s collarbone, arms wrapped tight around his neck. “How was your flight, lyubimyy?” Ilya says, soft, against Shane’s temple.

Shane sniffs, and rubs his face against Ilya’s shirt. “Bad.” He and Hayden had sat next to each other, not saying shit, for the whole goddamn thing. And Shane’s not quite sure how to explain the weirdness between them to Ilya; how the fight they had back in September lingers between them whenever they’re in the same room, but neither of them are willing to say anything about it. Too scared of fucking things up, maybe, or too proud to apologize, or something somewhere between the two. But that, at least—the awkward silences and meaningful eye contact and subtle nods—is better than how the rest of the team treats him, these days. It’s like they heard Shane tell them to be fucking professionals, and decided that the best way to do that is to treat Shane like a bomb about to go off, or a would-be rapist, or typhoid fucking Mary. “I think I fucked up. I’m pretty sure they all hate me now.”

“Fuck,” Ilya says, and pulls Shane in closer, arms cinched so tight around his waist that it hurts, just a little. “Did…” he trails off, and Shane can feel him biting at his lip. “Did you want to talk about it?”

And Shane thinks about it. He could tell Ilya everything; how quick the room turned, how alone he is inside it; how scared he is now that the only person he sort of trusted is gone and never coming back. But saying it makes it real, and Shane desperately doesn’t want it to be real.

So, instead, Shane shakes his head, and tries very hard to lose himself in Ilya’s body—the warmth of him, solid breadth of his shoulders and the dip of his waist, the smell of his bodywash layered under expensive cologne and lingering cigarette smoke, because he probably snuck one on the way home. He tries so hard, digs his nose so deep into Ilya’s collarbone that it’ll probably leave a bruise on them both, but it doesn’t work. “Tell me something funny,” he begs. “Please.”

“Okay.” It’s quiet, for a moment, as Ilya thinks. Then, he chuckles to himself, just a little. “Well,” he drawls, in his I’m-starting-a-bit voice. He’s straining a little to reach it, his voice all worried around the edges, but Shane doesn’t care. It’s easy enough to ignore, and he needs it. Needs this. Needs to feel fucking normal. “I had very interesting talk with Troy the other day.”

Shane raises an eyebrow, even though Ilya can’t see. “You’re on a first name basis with him now?”

“After that talk, yes.”

“How did you and Barrett click so fast, anyways?” Shane mumbles into Ilya’s shoulder. And Ilya’s got his fucking number—he’s a little curious, too. Last month, when Ilya talked about Barrett, he was complaining about the guy being overhyped, speculated that he’d left all his hockey talent back in Toronto with his asshole best friend, and lamented that he hadn’t been able to draw Barrett into any of the team shit, or even get him to string more than half a dozen words together. And then, out of fucking nowhere, they were pulling off passes that should be illegal, and Barrett was hanging off Ilya the way a monkey hangs off a goddamn tree.

Ilya smiles, and presses that smile to Shane’s forehead. “Okay, you cannot tell anyone this,” he says, conspiratorially, and leans in close to whisper, even though they’re the only two people in the house. “Barrett told me he is gay.”

“Seriously?” Shane says, his voice cracked and half an octave higher than his usual, and pulls back to look at Ilya’s face, but it doesn’t look like Ilya is bullshitting. He wouldn’t, Shane thinks. Not about something like this.

“Shh, shh,” Ilya says, and presses his thumb over Shane’s lips, “the little birdies outside might hear, and gossip to their little birdy friends, and then all the geese in Canada will know that Troy Barrett likes cock.”

Shane shakes Ilya’s thumb away. “Fucking. You’re not fucking with me? He’s really gay?”

“I mean,” Ilya shrugs. “I don’t have proof, if that is what you’re asking. But he did tell me that he is gay, yes.”

“Troy Barrett? The guy that’s been calling me Hole-ander for years? The guy that did a feel-good political ad for Rob fucking Ford with his best buddy Dallas fucking Kent? Who once asked me, on mic, if Rose left me because I was gay, or because Asian guys have tiny dicks? And then doubled down and shared racist dick size studies on twitter when people got mad? That guy is fucking gay?”

“Mhm,” Ilya murmurs. “I was also surprised.” He pauses, then, and strokes over the back of Shane’s head, like he’s not sure how this next part will land. “He told me that his whole friendship with Kent was an act. Like, he found the biggest schoolyard bully and pretended to be his friend so nobody would suspect anything.”

Shane pulls back even further—Ilya slides his hands up to Shane’s shoulders once he can’t reach Shane’s waist anymore. Shane grabs at Ilya’s wrists. He imagines Barrett’s stupid fucking face in front of him, deeply apologetic, saying some shit like I’m so sorry for calling your mom a geisha, but you gotta understand, I didn’t really mean it, and pisses himself off so bad that Ilya winces, Shane’s grip bruise-tight and unforgiving. “Jesus fucking christ. He really thinks that makes it better?”

Ilya shrugs. “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. But Shane,” he says, gently, “even if he does think that, I do not.”

Shane frowns. Thinks, then, of all those times Ilya clapped Barrett on the back after he scored a goal, or shared his smelling salts with him on the bench. How he probably tells Barrett I love you when he stands at the entrance to the tunnel after a game, fist-bumping all his teammates. “But you’re like, friends with him now.”

Ilya shakes his head and tries to pull Shane back in. “No, friends is too strong a word.” Shane relents, and lets Ilya reel him in like a fish on a hook. “I understand him better, is all. Is easier for us to work together. Easier for me to give him what he wants.”

Shane scowls. “Like, boyfriend shit?”

“God, no,” Ilya laughs. “He wants older gay man to take him under his wing and teach him things. Like baby bird. He is my terrible, problematic baby bird.”

“Well,” Shane replies, still scowling. He shoves his hands down the back of Ilya’s pants. Problematic baby bird indeed. He’ll fucking show Ilya problematic. “Good luck with that.”

“Thank you, lyubimyy. You want dinner?” Ilya says, sweetly, and walks Shane into the kitchen, the both of them stumbling like drunks. “There is pot roast, should be done soon.”

Shane hums, backs himself into the kitchen island and pulls Ilya along with him, then gets his fingers in Ilya’s waistband and tugs him in so they’re pressed hip-to-hip. He kisses Ilya, then; pries his mouth open and shoves his tongue inside, smiles into Ilya’s mouth when his hands dip down behind Shane’s thighs and lift him up to sit on the countertop. And the anger, the sadness, the lonely and pitiful jealousy and the rest of the ugliness Shane’s carried around inside him for as long as he can remember, it all seeps out, burnt to a fucking crisp, until all that remains is his all-consuming, overwhelming desire to have Ilya inside him. God, it’s been months. Shane misses it like air.

But the fucking olive oil. The fucking olive oil. So, Shane makes do with what he has; turns around, pulls his pants down around his knees, and lets Ilya smear some of that stupid olive oil between his legs, so he can fuck Shane’s thighs. He gets Shane practically crying with it, with how much he wants Ilya to aim his dick just a little higher and fuck him for real. Instead, Ilya comes all over his ass, then bars his arm across Shane’s throat and jerks him off onto the kitchen floor.

They clean up. They sit down and eat pot roast for dinner. And later that night, after they’ve showered and slipped into bed, Ilya spoons up behind him and whispers, “I wish you would talk to me.”

Shane goes very, very still. “About what?”

“Shane.” Ilya’s arm tightens around his stomach, then pulls, rolling Shane onto his back. He leans over and turns the light on, then settles back over Shane, propped on his elbow. “You think I don’t see you make hurt face in the morning when you get out of bed? Or getting out of your car after practice? You think I don’t notice you favoring your wrist when I watch you play? How skinny you are still, even though you drink that fucking olive oil with every fucking meal?” He cups Shane’s face. His callouses scrape against Shane’s cheek. “You look so tired, all the time,” Ilya whispers, and rubs his thumb over the dark circle below Shane’s eye. “And you look so sad. Always, so sad. And now you tell me your whole team hates you, but you won’t say why—”

Shane looks to the side, then. Stares at the box of tissues on his bedside table. “Does it really fucking matter?”

Ilya furrows his brow. “Of course it matters!” He runs the back of his fingers over Shane’s cheekbone, like he’s brushing away a nonexistent tear. “I love you, Shane. I want to know about your life. Even the shitty parts. Like when some asshole cuts you off in traffic on your way home, or the grocery store is out of your favorite yogurt, or,” he says, hesitant, “when your teammates are hurting you.”

“They’re not hurting me,” Shane mumbles. He knows it’s not true. He doesn’t even know why he says it.

“Comeau tried to punch you last month.”

“He missed,” Shane replies, weakly.

“Okay, so he didn’t touch you. Still hurt you here,” Ilya says, with a big, broad palm cupped over Shane’s heart.

Shane blinks, hard. Stares at that box of tissues like it can solve all his problems if he doesn’t look away. He’s just so fucking tired. So fucking empty. So, so close to falling the fuck apart. And he can’t. Not now. He’s too exhausted to put himself back together by morning.

“Can we talk about this later?” Shane asks, and rolls on his side, away from Ilya. “It’s late, and we’ve both got games tomorrow.”

For a long time, he feels Ilya’s eyes on his back, his hand oh-so-careful on Shane’s waist. He traces the bruise on Shane’s hip, so light Shane can barely feel it, and presses a kiss to the back of Shane’s shoulder. “Okay,” he concedes, after a time. “But we will talk tomorrow, after the game, yes?”

“Yeah.” Shane replies. Ilya turns out the light. And instead of staring at the box of tissues, he stares at the red-glowing numbers on his alarm clock for a long, long time.

_____

The graffiti is gone, when Shane changes out in the Centre Bell locker room. The only trace left behind is an illegible pinkish orange stain. Like the marker seeped so deep into the wood that no amount of acetone in the world could wash all of it away.

Shane carefully hangs his suit up to cover it. And he tries to pretend he doesn’t know it’s there, but it’s no use. He can’t unsee it—not the lurid red WHORE splashed across his locker, or the permanent stain it left behind, or the way his teammates looked at that orange discoloration with something like satisfaction before they’d looked away.

_____

Centre Bell howls around him; olé, olé, olé. The crowd boos when they announce the Toronto Guardians’ lineup—it’s Kent’s first game back on the ice after the crown declined to criminally charge him, citing lack of evidence, and he settled a civil suit in the states for twenty million dollars. Paid out, presumably, by Roger fucking Crowell, because god knows Kent barely has one million lying around, much less twenty, based on his ostentatious Toronto rape-mansion and the stupid fucking Bugatti collection he only has because he wants, desperately, to be just like Andrew fucking Tate. He’s fucking obnoxious about it, too—skating around the perimeter of the rink and waving at the crowd, grinning when the boos ratchet higher. Someone tries to throw their drink over the glass, and he laughs, over-exaggerated, when they get escorted out by security.

“That how you bend over for your boy?” Kent says, with a stupid-looking sneer, when they both bend for the puck drop at the top of the second. The peanut gallery, at least, stays quiet this time. Bored of the joke, maybe, or less willing to laugh along with Kent; a man so pathologically annoying that, before they were outed, Shane could reliably diffuse any viciousness the room showed towards Ilya by casually saying yeah, Rozanov’s a pain in the ass, but at least he’s better than Kent.

“You bend over like that for Crowell?” Shane replies, innocently. “Is that why he keeps bailing you out?”

To his right, Hayden snickers. Brophy, too, which is a little surprising. Kent’s whole face goes red. Shane watches with glee. “Shut the fuck up,” he hisses. “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Shane replies, and winks. The puck drops a second later; he slaps Kent’s stick away and takes it, chips it back to Comeau and shoulder-checks Kent on his way to the offensive zone. Comeau passes to Hayden, Hayden carries it across the blue line and dumps it. Shane digs deep and chases the puck, fast as he can. Catches it, snaps it back to Hayden, who takes it around behind the goal and passes to Guigui. Guigui lines up a shot and misses; Kent scoops up the rebound and takes off for the Metros’ goal, Shane hot on his heels. He dumps it towards the defensive zone; Brophy catches it and passes to Shane, and Shane pivots, pushing back towards Toronto’s goal, weaving between Kent and the up-and-coming rookie Toronto got to replace Barrett.

They pass the puck back and forth like that for the first ten minutes of the game. Shane can feel the tension mounting in the air; the anger, the frustration, the sideways glares his teammates shoot in his direction, wondering why he hasn’t fucking scored yet. And then, with three minutes left in the first and their second line out on the ice, Tuna, their left wing, snipes a goal from an angle so ridiculous it looks practically impossible, and the tension on the bench eases, just a little.

Shane scores his own goal at the top of the second—a nasty, messy rebound he batted in straight out of the air, like he’s playing fucking baseball or some shit. He steals Ilya’s new celly, and blows a kiss to the camera while his teammates stare on, impassive, and Kent hollers suck my dick you fucking faggot across the ice while Shane skates back to the bench. Shane glances over at the ref, who definitely heard it, but there’s nothing. Shane doesn’t know why he fucking bothers.

Toronto gets a goal four minutes into the second. Another barely a minute after that. Shane jiggles his leg, anxiously, as he watches the second, third, and fourth lines cycle through. And then, Coach Theriault calls out first line, and Shane is over the boards before anyone else, taking over play from Stouffer and dumping the puck towards the left-hand corner behind Toronto’s goal. He ends up in a three-way battle for the puck; Toronto d-men on either side, trying to poke the puck away from him. Shane hip-checks the guy on his left, furiously slaps at the stick to his right, tries to snake his own stick between the puck and the boards to shake it free and chip it back behind him, where Hayden is waiting, but then, the d-man he hip-checked muscles his way back in, blocks Shane’s awkward pass before it can even leave his stick, and tries to muscle the puck away.

And then, something heavy careens into Shane’s back. His head bounces off the glass, his body flattened to the boards, wrist at an awkward angle between the hard wood and the rest of his body. And for a second, everything goes white, white. His ears ring. Someone says something in his ear, but he can’t make it out. Something grinds into his ass. And then, the pressure at his back vanishes, just as fast as it came, and Shane stumbles back from the boards, shakes his head, goes down on one knee. It’s so fucking loud, so fucking bright—the lights above washing out all the color until the whole world looks like a photo with the exposure cranked way too high. Someone yells caught you, bitch! Shane doesn’t know who. Maybe a teammate? It’s hard to tell—he can’t remember if his guys are wearing blue or white.

Someone leans down over him and puts their hand on his shoulder, tries to pull him up. Shane stumbles, a little, and the person tries again, until Shane is up, wobbly on his skates, following whoever-it-is wherever they want to take him. It’s all he can do to keep going. He’s so fucking tired. His head really fucking hurts. He really, really wants to sleep.

“You okay?” the person says. Shane squints. It’s—Hayden. Pretty sure it’s Hayden. “Come on, buddy,” probably-Hayden says, “off the ice.”

“No,” Shane mumbles, and tries to pull away. “I’m good, I can play, I’m good.” Shane looks down at his hands, but he’s not holding his stick. He pats around, at his thighs and his chest, looking for where he put it, but he can’t find it anywhere.

“They gotta check for a concussion,” Hayden replies, and hands Shane off to a trainer. Shane knows his name, probably. Mark something. The bald one. He guides Shane down the tunnel, hand on his elbow, and into a room with an exam bed. The paper crinkles when Shane sits.

A light shines in Shane’s eyes, one after the other. He winces, but keeps them open. He has to, for some reason. Fuck if he knows why. And then there’s a doctor, Dr. Moore, yeah, that’s right, asking all sorts of questions. What’s your name? Where are you right now? What day is it? What team are we playing? Shane answers them all in turn; my name is Shane, I’m at Centre Bell, it’s tomorrow, I remember ‘cause Ilya has a game in Ottawa and he wanted to talk after, we’re playing Toronto, fuck Toronto, worst team ever. They make him do all sorts of stupid things; walk in a straight line with his arms held out and his eyes closed, touch his fingertips to his nose, stand on one foot for ten seconds, which seems unfair, because Shane still has his skates on, so he keeps falling over no matter how hard he tries.

—probably, Dr. Moore says. Shane isn’t really paying attention. He’s sitting on the exam bed with his legs swaying gently below him, head bowed and eyes closed, like he’s praying. Funny. Neither of Shane’s parents were particularly religious. Shane’s never prayed. He’s never even been to church.

—send him back out? Another voice says. Theriault, Shane thinks. The voice has a French accent. Shane cracks his eye open and stares at the floor. It’s very far away, he thinks. His skate is loose, but his head hurts, and he’s too tired to lean down and fix it. He thinks he’ll fall right off the table if he tries.

—headache and light sensitivity, but he passed the balance and coordination tests. If he’s concussed, it’s minor enough that it probably doesn’t matter. The floor is covered in this ugly linoleum. Fake terrazzo. Black with gray-and-white pebbles embedded inside. It looks dirty. It needs to be cleaned. The pain in his head crescendoes, briefly, and Shane slips his eyes closed, and rubs at the bridge of his nose. It hurts. He touches more, and his whole nose feels like one big bruise.

“—llander. Shane.” Someone shakes his shoulder. Shane looks up, and Coach Theriault is staring down at him. “You are cleared to play,” he says, impassive. “Get your things. There are five minutes left of intermission, and then you are starting in the third.”

“Okay,” Shane says, dumb. He gathers his gloves, his helmet, his mouthguard. Theriault guides him back to the locker room and parks him in his stall. Shane goes where he’s put, fixes his skate, readjusts the padding he stuffed inside at the start of the game to try and help the lace burn. And, so. He follows everyone when they stand up and walk back down the tunnel. He gets back on the ice and bends to take the faceoff, shakes his head like he’s got water stuck in his ears, barely hears whatever the guy across from him tries to say. He doesn’t like that guy very much, but he can’t remember his fucking name. The puck drops, and it’s like some part of Shane just shuts off. His body moves without him telling it to. It goes without Shane really knowing why. Hayden whoops and claps him on the back, at some point, and Shane doesn’t know what for. Some guy gets up in Shane’s face and throws a punch. It connects with Shane’s shoulder. A hand tugs him away—he follows it. He just goes where he’s told, does what his body wants him to do, sits back down on the bench with his eyes closed and burrows deep into the pain inside his head, and swallows down the puke rising in his throat, over and over, until he feels raw and scratchy inside. Until there’s nothing left for him to swallow. He wants to go home. He can’t, he knows, not yet, but he doesn’t remember why.

_____

Shane is in the shower. He’s not quite sure how he got there. He’s not quite sure if he’s supposed to be there. He soaps up his pits, scrubs at the sweat and the stink there, and watches the suds swirl down the drain. The water feels too hot. Shane turns the temperature a little lower. The water swirls down the drain, and it makes him shiver, for some reason. It makes him feel afraid.

Shane is in the shower. There’s noise off in the distance. People talking, laughing, but he can’t make out what they’re saying. He thinks it’s probably better not to know, but he can’t remember why. He soaps up his pits, scrubs at the sweat and the stink accumulated on his chest, cups his hand and runs body wash through his hair. That’s not right, he thinks, but he doesn’t know where his shampoo went. Maybe he’s not supposed to use it in here. He can’t remember.

Shane is in the shower. He doesn’t feel clean. He scrubs at his hair, his pits, turns towards the wall and washes his pubic hair. He’s forgetting something, he knows. He leans forward, face in the spray, and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. It hurts, more than it should. Shane yelps. God, his whole nose feels like one big bruise. When did that happen? He opens his eyes, and it burns. Fuck, the soap. The soap in his hair. He forgot. He sticks his head under the spray and shakes it, which also hurts. There’s something wrong with him. He needs to go home. Shane pats around for his car keys, but they’re not in his pockets, because he doesn’t have pockets at all. He’s in the shower, yeah, that’s right. He’s shivering. Why is he shivering? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know a single goddamn thing.

Shane is in the shower. He’s got his face turned directly into the spray because it feels good. It makes the headache feel a little better. He was doing something, he knows, but he can’t remember. He cracks a single eye open, reaches for the body wash, and—

“You’re still in here?” Hayden says, incredulous. “It’s been, like, half an hour!” Shane turns to look, and Hayden’s fully dressed, back in his walk-on suit. When did that happen? He was showering next to Shane a second ago. Hayden visibly deliberates, then marches over to Shane and turns the water off, nice suit be damned. He puts a hand on Shane’s shoulder and swears. “Fuck, you’re freezing!” he exclaims. “Okay, come on. Jesus Christ. You know where you are, bud?”

“The locker room,” Shane mumbles. “I gotta shower, Hayden. I’m not clean yet.”

Hayden takes Shane by the shoulders and steers him out, towards the lockers. “You’ve been showering for thirty minutes, dude.”

“Oh.” Shane stares down at his feet. They look wrinkly and pale. “So I’m clean?”

“You’re clean.”

Shane bites at his lower lip. “I can go home?”

“Yeah, bud,” Hayden replies, and digs around in his bag. He pulls out his phone and his car keys, stares at something on his home screen, tucks the keys into his fist. “You can go home.”

Shane stares into the stall in front of him. It’s empty. He peers closer, but there’s nothing inside, no day-bag or dress shoes shoved into the little shoe rack at the bottom, no suit hung up in the back. Just a few rolls of spare tape up top and an empty water bottle he doesn’t recognize shoved in the corner. “Hayden?” Shane calls, confused. “Where are my clothes?”

Hayden looks up from his phone and frowns. “That’s not—Shane,” he says, slowly. “Does your head hurt?”

Shane nods, but that hurts, so he stops and holds really, really still. “Yeah,” he says instead.

“Does the light in here make your head hurt?”

“Yeah. It’s really bright. And my ears feel weird. And I kinda wanna throw up.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hayden hisses. Shane sways on his feet a little. He gags, touches his fingertips to his lips. “Why the fuck did they let you back on the ice? Oh, dude, hang on,” he says, and makes Shane sit on the bench, then kicks a garbage can between his legs. “Okay, throw up in that. Where are your keys? Nevermind, got ‘em.” And he waits there, patiently, while Shane throws up in the trash can. When Shane finally stops, Hayden’s got his bag, and he’s digging through the pockets like a man on a mission. “Okay, pants on,” he says, no-nonsense, and pulls Shane’s feet through the leg-holes on an old pair of sweatpants. “And shirt—there we go. Alright, Shane. Come on.” He slips a pair of slides on Shane’s feet, pulls him to standing, and takes him by the hand, leading him out the door and through a white-painted hallway Shane doesn’t remember being in before.

“Where are we going?”

“Home, bud,” Hayden tells him, casually, over his shoulder.

“Oh,” Shane replies. And he follows along, dutifully, as Hayden leads him through a series of white-painted hallways that look exactly the same, up into a parking garage. It’s cold in there—the wind cutting and harsh, carrying the promise of snow. And there, at the end of the row, Shane’s car, his practical land rover, so fucking good in the winter. Hayden unlocks it for him, then pops their bags in the trunk, boosts Shane into the passenger seat, starts the engine and quickly shuts the radio off when the low burst of music makes Shane wince. Shane leans his head against the window, and watches the parking garage fly by—the empty spots all lined up like missing teeth. The cool glass feels so, so good against his head. And he lets the motion of the car rock him to sleep, the same way he used to fall asleep in the backseat when Mom drove him home from practice.

_____

“Shane, wake up, we’re here.”

Someone shakes Shane’s shoulder. He groans, and tries to pull away, so he can go back to sleep, but whoever-it-is won’t let him. They pull at him, forcing him out of the car, marching him up to the front door of a house—his house, right, the house he bought with Ilya—and press the doorbell insistently, over and over.

Ilya answers the door bare-chested and rubbing his eyes, like he’d fallen asleep while waiting for Shane to come home. Shane drifts towards him, lets his head thunk down on Ilya’s shoulder and hums, low in his throat.

“Pike?” Ilya says, incredulous, and rubs at Shane’s back. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I drove him home,” Hayden answers. Yeah, yeah, right, Hayden drove him home. Because Shane is—he’s—there’s something wrong with him, he thinks, but he can’t remember what. “He’s, like, fucked up. I think he’s concussed.”

“Lyubimyy, look at me.” Shane shakes his head and tries to burrow into Ilya’s shoulder, but Ilya pries him out, cups Shane’s face between his hands and looks at him, long and hard. “You feel sick? Your head hurts?” Shane nods, miserably. “Okay, come here,” Ilya says, so soft and careful, and leads Shane by the hand to the kitchen. He gives Shane a glass of water, two pink little pills, and a big old tupperware, for if you need to puke, he says. Shane nods, gratefully, and puts his head down on the counter, soaking up the cold from the marble.

“—fuck didn’t you take him to fucking hospital, Pike!” Shane hears, distantly, from the front door. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

Shane frowns. He sits up, goes to stand, but his eyes catch on the countertop. There’s a big brown stain on the top, like Ilya knocked over his coffee and left it there to dry. Shane huffs, rolls his eyes, and grabs their dish rag, runs it under the faucet.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he hears Hayden reply. “I can’t take him to the fucking hospital!”

“Why the fuck not?” Ilya hisses. In the kitchen, Shane starts scrubbing at the stain on the countertop. It’s a wide streak, and an ugly yellow color, but it doesn’t come off with his first couple passes.

“Are you fucking stupid?” Hayden hisses back. “It’s in his goddamn contract! It’s in all of our contracts! He can’t seek outside medical treatment without approval from the team doc! You know, the guy that let him back out on the ice when he was like that,” Hayden spits.

“Rude,” Shane says, absently, and keeps scrubbing at the counter. The stain hasn’t budged at all. Shane opens the cabinet under the sink. Leaning down makes him feel dizzy, so he sits on the floor instead, and pulls out a half-used bottle of dish soap.

“Ty chto, izdevayesh'sya? I don’t care about what his fucking contract says!”

“Okay, but he does. You really think he’d want to go to the hospital if he was lucid?”

Shane squirts a lot of dish soap on the counter and scrubs. It goes all frothy, so frothy he can’t see the stain underneath. “No,” Ilya says, in the distance. “He would not.”

“Thank you.”

“There are guest rooms upstairs,” Ilya says, quieter this time. Almost resigned. “Pick one, I do not care which. Beds are made, there is spare toothbrush and things in the bathroom.”

“Oh,” Hayden replies. Shane tries to wipe away some of the soap suds, to see if the stain is underneath, and accidentally drips soap on the floor. The stain is still there, in the little spot he’s cleared. Motherfucker. “I mean, thanks, but I was just gonna head home.”

Shane hears Ilya snort, and smiles to himself. “With what car?”

“I was gonna uber.”

“Pike.” Ilya says it so serious. Shane scrubs harder. Why won’t this fucking stain come clean? What is he doing wrong? “Is almost midnight,” Ilya continues. “Stay. I will drive you to Montreal in the morning.”

For a long time, nobody says anything. The only sound in the room is the swish of Shane’s dish rag through the soap on the counter, the heaviness of his breath, the soreness in his arm. He’s been scrubbing so hard, and for so long, and the countertop still isn’t clean. Shane doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know how to make it better. God, he’s so frustrated he could fucking cry. Can’t fix a single goddamn thing in his life—not even a stupid fucking coffee stain on the countertop in his brand-new house that he and Ilya bought together. It feels like a metaphor for something, but what that thing is, Shane couldn’t possibly guess.

“Fine,” Hayden says, eventually.

“Thank you,” Ilya replies. And Shane listens with half an ear as Ilya shuts the front door, and Hayden muscles off his shoes, and they both trundle down the hall.

Someone—Ilya—comes up behind Shane and carefully touches the small of his back. He starts, then relaxes into it. “Lyubimyy,” Ilya says, gentle. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning,” Shane replies. “There’s a spill.”

“Shane,” Ilya says, slow, a little scared. “That is not a spill. Is veining, in the marble. Is supposed to be there.”

“Oh.” Shane replies. He frowns down at the countertop, smeared all over with soap. “But it’s dirty.”

Ilya comes up behind him, wraps an arm around his waist and kisses him just behind his ear. “Come to bed, yes? We can fix it tomorrow.”

Shane looks up. Hayden is staring at him, or maybe Ilya, he can’t tell which, and he’s got this weird look on his face. Like he’s just licked a lemon after doing a tequila shot, or is trying really, really hard to solve a complicated bit of math. Whatever. Shane leans back into Ilya’s arms, closes his eyes, and smiles, faintly. “Okay,” he says, and rests his hand on top of Ilya’s arm, which is still wrapped around his waist, and lets Ilya steer him down the hall, to their bedroom.

He strips off Shane’s slides—shit, he forgot he was wearing them, he’s not supposed to wear shoes in the house—and Shane’s shirt, and raises his eyebrows when he strips off Shane’s pants and finds nothing underneath. He slides a clean pair of boxers up Shane’s legs. Gently pushes him to sit on the bed and trots back out into the kitchen. Comes back with the pills Shane forgot to take, and the glass of water he forgot to drink, and the big old tupperware, which he puts on the floor by Shane’s side of the bed. Take your medicine, he says, gently. Drink your water. He rubs Shane’s back when he finally gives into the nausea that’s been dogging him and pukes into the tupperware, kisses Shane’s temple when he’s done and empties it down the toilet. The sink runs. Ilya brings him a clean tupperware and a wet washcloth. He coaxes Shane to lay on his side and drapes the washcloth over his eyes, and it feels so, so good, even if he feels a little spinny, now, when he closes his eyes.

Ilya spoons up behind him. He shakes, just a little. Something wet drips on the back of Shane’s neck. He’s crying, Shane thinks, and Ilya’s not supposed to cry. So, Shane reaches back and grabs Ilya’s hand. He laces their fingers together, and pulls their hands up, up, so they’re curled just under his chin. He says hey, hey, don’t cry, which doesn’t really work, and presses a kiss to Ilya’s knuckles, which doesn’t really work either. He falls asleep just like that, despite the throbbing in his head, and the sick swooping in his gut, and the sore twinge in his lower back. And if he dreams, he doesn’t remember it.

_____

Shane wakes with a gasp. He tosses the washcloth off his face and cracks his eyes open, and fuck, the sun is way too bright—he’s fucking late to practice. He groans, because the light makes his head hurt, and rolls out of bed anyways. He stumbles into the kitchen, and Ilya is already there, sitting at the counter, halfheartedly eating cold, leftover pot roast while he stares at his phone. He looks up when Shane walks in and frowns, over-concerned. “Shane,” he says, mouth half-full, “what are you doing out of bed?”

“I overslept,” Shane says, frantic, and stumbles over to the fridge. He throws it open, and starts pulling out smoothie ingredients as soon as he spots them—bananas, almond butter, ginger, extra-protein Greek yogurt, vanilla-flavored Muscle Milk, blueberries for antioxidants, kale for fiber. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he snaps. “I’m fucking late for practice!”

“You are calling out today,” Ilya says.

“But—”

“No.” He says it so final, so authoritative. Like a fed-up father getting after his bratty child. It makes something in Shane bristle, pisses him the fuck off.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Shane spits, and starts throwing ingredients in the blender. He’s haphazard, less careful than he usually is. Yogurt slops over the counter, and the kale drips water on the floor, and the almond butter won’t come off the spoon, so he scrapes it off with his finger, then wipes his finger on the towel hanging off the oven handle. “You’re not my fucking mother.”

“I am your husband,” Ilya says, low, furious, “and I will tie you to the fucking bed if you try to leave today. I will melt your car keys, I will slash your fucking tires, I do not care. You have fucking concussion. You should not be anywhere near the ice for the next two weeks, minimum.”

Shane scoffs. “I’m fine.”

Ilya’s eyes flash. He storms over, forcibly turns Shane away from the blender, and jabs a finger into Shane’s chest. It knocks Shane off balance, a little. He grabs at the edge of the countertop to steady himself and breathes in, deep. God, his fucking head hurts. “Why do you let them do this to you, huh?” he sounds angry, but there are tears glittering in the corners of his eyes. “They hurt you and hurt you, and you say nothing. You go crawling back, you let them hurt you more, you say thank you, another. You are letting them fucking kill you, Shane!”

“The fuck do you want me to do about it?”

Ilya throws up his hands. “I want you to quit that shitty fucking team!” He yells. Shane winces—the volume feels like a knife through the eye. “I want you to come play in Ottawa with me!”

Shane turns back to his smoothie. Fiddles with the settings on the blender, looks around for the lid. “I can’t,” he says, shrill enough that it hurts his own ears. He slaps the lid on top of his smoothie and pulses it, once, twice.

Ilya slaps his hands away from the blender and lets out a muffled, frustrated scream. “How would you know? You haven’t even tried!”

“I did, you fucking asshole!” Shane screams, and shoves Ilya away from him. He stumbles back and just stares at Shane, then, chest heaving, some wounded look in his eye. “I asked,” Shane says, quieter, “all the way back at the start of fucking October. I called Farah, told her I wanted a trade; that I wanted to play with you. She called me back with the rejection by noon.” Shane stares at Ilya, breathing hard. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me,” he says, low. “The team can ice me out, beat me up, Coach can send me back on the ice with a concussion, and I’m still trapped there,” his voice breaks, then, and he swallows, hard, “because management will never, ever let me go. And if I try to file a grievance, or make a complaint, it’s fucking useless. They never go anywhere. And even if this one did, Crowell would bury it, or it would piss management off, and I need to build up as much goodwill as possible,” Shane continues, small, “if I’m gonna get the trade I want when my contract is up. If I’m gonna get to play with you.”

“That’s your fucking plan?” Ilya says, incredulous and horrified. “You just wait out your contract?” He stares at Shane for a long time; Shane doesn’t deny it. And Ilya looks at him like Shane is breaking his fucking heart. “You have two more years, Shane,” he says, and reaches out, to touch Shane’s injured wrist, the bruise on his hip.

Shane moves in close. Rests his head on Ilya’s shoulder and sniffs, just the once. “I know,” he says, soft. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

Ilya’s hands come up, then. He strokes Shane’s back, rubs the nape of his neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. But Shane,” he continues, and pulls back, so he can look Shane in the eye. “You are scaring me. You know what can happen if you get another concussion before this one is healed?”

“I know.” He’s seen the mandated posters on concussion health, on secondary impact syndrome, on CTE and dementia and permanent brain damage.

“I don’t want you to die,” Ilya says, wretchedly.

“I’m not gonna die,” Shane tells him, softly. “I’ll talk to Dr. Moore, see if I can sit out the next week or two. I’ll wear a cage. I’ll be okay, baby,” he says, and pulls back to press a kiss to Ilya’s lips. He tastes salty, like he’s been crying. “I’ll be okay. I promise.”

He is, of course, lying through his goddamn teeth. Shane doesn’t know how the fuck he’s gonna make it through two more months of this shit, much less two whole years. He’s just so fucking tired. Exhausted before he even wakes up in the morning, exhausted all through practice, too tired to even fall asleep. He feels like a fucking zombie; like he already died, somewhere in the months that came before, and he’s just going through the motions; a ghost haunting his own goddamn life. Ilya was right, Wednesday night, when he said that Shane looks fucking awful. Too skinny, bruises under his eyes; a shambling corpse-of-a-man held together with k-tape and B-12 injections. But it’s this or quit, and Shane has never quit a single goddamn thing in his entire fucking life. He doesn’t know how. And, so. He’ll soldier on. He’ll keep going until he can’t, until his limbs rot off and he falls to fucking pieces right there on the ice underneath the jumbotron. Whatever she demands, he’ll give without a second thought. Anything for hockey: his first girlfriend; his first wife; the love of his goddamned life.

Chapter End Notes

FOR EVERYONE WONDERING HOW TROY BARRETT ENDED UP IN A CAMPAIGN AD FOR ROB FORD: imagine if you will, a world where, instead of coaching middle-grade football and starting a foundation to provide funds to children’s football teams in underprivileged areas, Rob Ford instead coached hockey and made a foundation that buys equipment for childrens hockey teams in Toronto. Imagine it is 2014 and Rob Ford is running for reelection, and someone has JUST leaked a video of Rob Fucking Ford, Mayor Of Toronto, smoking crack cocaine. It is also 2014, and Troy Barrett is on his second season with the Toronto Guardians, and he is a hometown boy who JUST SO HAPPENED to play on a peewee team that Rob Ford’s foundation funded. Imagine that you are Troy Barrett and you get an email from the Sitting Mayor Of Toronto asking if you and your good buddy Dallas Kent would like to participate in an ad for his campaign. And you say yes, because your buddy Dallas thinks it would be hilarious. And then, it is 2021, you are no longer nineteen and stupid, and you come out at pride night, and its fucking beautiful, it really is, and then you go on twitter, and the top comment on the centaur’s tweet about it is someone going “this u?” and posting a clip of that fucking ad you did for Rob Fucking Ford in 2014.

Chapter 9: december (part 1)

Chapter Summary

Why the fuck should he have regrets? What’s the fucking point? The hiding kept them safe until it didn’t. And they’ve neatly dodged every worst-case scenario so far: they’re still in the game, they’re still alive, Ilya got his citizenship and somehow ended up on a team where the worst thing he has to worry about is Troy motherfucking Barrett’s sad-as-fuck gay love life. And if it’s Shane’s turn to suffer for a few years, he’ll take it. He’ll take it all. Ilya’s had it so hard for so long. Shane is fresh off the bench by comparison. He’ll be fine. He’ll be perfectly fucking fine. And in the meantime, at least he has this: early-morning phone calls and late-night facetime sessions and kisses passed through rinkside cameras; secondhand gossip and ill-timed dick pics; passing glimpses of the soft landing Ilya found for himself in fucking Ottawa, of all places.

Chapter Notes

Ilya cleans the mess in the kitchen; wipes up the yogurt on the counter and the water on the floor, tosses the dirty spoon in the dishwasher, finishes blending Shane’s smoothie and pours it into a glass for him with careful, steady hands. His eyes are still red and wet, and he sniffs, over and over, and keeps swiping at his nose with his sleeve. Shane stares out the window over the sink and watches snow drift down in lazy clumps—first flurries of the year, just in time for American thanksgiving. He holds the smoothie to his forehead, rolls the cold glass across the overheated skin there, but it doesn’t really help with the headache.

Shane finishes his smoothie slowly. He keeps stopping to rest his forehead against the cool marble countertop to swallow, over and over, and concentrate on keeping the smoothie in his belly instead of puking it all up. Ilya stands behind him and rubs over the back of his neck. And then, he vanishes into the bedroom, and comes back with Shane’s phone clutched in his fist.

Shane takes it, taps Coach Theriault’s contact with nerveless fingers, and holds the phone to his ear with his eyes closed.

“Allô?”

“Hey, Coach,” Shane says. His voice croaks a little at the start; he exaggerates it a little, to better sell the lie he’s about to tell. “It’s Shane. I’m gonna need to be out for the next couple of days.”

“You are fucking kidding me.”

“No, I’m feeling pretty sick—”

“Tabernak, Hollander,” Coach Theriault spits. Shane flinches; Ilya’s attention snaps to him like a dog catching wind of a scared little rabbit. “Maybe I should give the C to someone else, if you are going to call off every time you get a little tickle in the back of your throat.”

Shane clears his throat. “Sorry, Coach. I’ll be there for the game tomorrow—” Before he finishes, Ilya snatches the phone out of his hand and stalks over to the other side of the kitchen. “Ilya!” Shane cries, and chases after him, but Ilya fends him off, shoving at Shane’s chest and curling away from Shane’s grasping hands.

“Shane will not be at the game tomorrow, so sorry,” Ilya says, smoothly, into the phone. “He is concussed. Has been puking all night. Can barely keep his eyes open.” Shane makes another grab for the phone, and Ilya clambers on top of the kitchen island. He stands there with his head next to the light fixture like a fucking idiot, and god, he looks furious. Something hot and helpless wells up inside of Shane, and he makes a wild grab at Ilya’s ankle. Ilya dodges, neatly, and then he stares Shane down and mouths go sit. “This is Shane’s fucking husband,” he spits. “Who the fuck are you?” A brief pause, then. Ilya’s fingertips turn white where they’re clenched around the edge of Shane’s phone. “Oh, his head coach? Put the fucking team doctor on the phone.” There’s a burst of angry yelling on the other end of the line, so loud Shane can hear it from here. He paws at Ilya’s ankle again, and Ilya glances down at him, but he doesn’t budge. “You think I give a fuck? Put doctor on the phone before I hang up and call your fucking boss.”

“Ilya,” Shane begs.

Ilya tucks the phone into his shoulder, screen-first. “Please,” Ilya says, and he doesn’t look so angry, anymore. God, he just looks sad. So, so sad, and so, so scared. “Let me help. Please.”

Was this what he looked like when he found his mother dead in her marriage bed after school? When he got home, about a year after his mama died, and found Alexei overdosed in the bathroom, and cried so hard when he was calling 1-1-2 that he burst a blood vessel in his eye? When his father called him at two in the morning, night after night for months before he finally died, frantic because he couldn’t find Irina anywhere? Shane pictures what Ilya would look like if something happened to him; if Shane died on the ice after back-to-back concussions and Ilya got a fucking phone call about it from some overworked nurse—I regret to inform you that your husband has passed, my condolences, would you consider donating his organs? It would fucking kill him. It would be the worst thing Shane could possibly do to him.

So, Shane slides onto one of the barstools lined up against the long edge of the kitchen island. “Okay,” he whispers. He reaches out, slow, and cups Ilya’s ankle.

Thank you, Ilya mouths, and then puts the phone back to his ear. “Hi, is this team doctor for the Metros? Yes? This is Ilya. Rozanov. Shane’s husband. Yes. I am calling to ask you very important question: are you fucking stupid? You should fucking know better than to let a player with concussion back on the ice so soon—” There’s a burst of noise on the other end of the line again. Shane rubs his thumb over Ilya’s ankle bone. Fuck, he’s got his bare feet on the counter where they eat. Shane will have to clean it later. “No, you listen to me,” Ilya hisses, low and furious. “You have two fucking options right now. Option one, Shane comes back in for a proper medical exam, goes on concussion protocol, gets plenty of time on IR. Option two, Shane seeks a second opinion, and you lose your fucking medical license. Oh, no, you will, he is so concussed he tried to scrub color out of countertop last night. Probably, he could sue for malpractice. I will, of course, encourage this.” And then, Ilya stands there, stock still, while he waits for Dr. Moore to answer. He looks so stern, so statuesque. Shane’s dick twitches in his shorts, despite the throbbing in his head and the churning sick feeling low in his belly. “Mhm. Yes. I will bring him in after lunch. Put head coach back on the phone.”

There’s another long pause. While he waits, Ilya squats and plants his unoccupied hand on the edge of the counter, then hops down to the floor. He walks over to the patio door and stares outside at the cold, weak light and lazy slumping snow.

“Hello, Coach. Shane will not be at practice today. He is going in for medical exam—” Coach Theriault is yelling on the other end of the line again. Shane can’t quite make out what he says. “I don’t fucking care!” Ilya interrupts. “I don’t fucking care! I hear so much as one word about him going back on the ice before he is ready, and I call your fucking boss. How long do you think you will keep your job after I tell team GM exactly how you’ve been treating his star player? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Zhri govno i zdohni.” With that, he hangs up and tosses Shane’s phone at him; Shane catches it and holds it loosely against his chest. He watches, completely fucking out of it, as Ilya lets out a vicious string of Russian curses, paces around the room, and makes to punch the wall next to the patio door before he pulls it at the last second. He watches Ilya sigh explosively, and plant his hands on the kitchen countertop, and bow his head like he’s praying—for what, or to who, Shane couldn’t possibly say.

And Shane can’t fucking help himself. He tosses his phone in the direction of the counter, reaches out and spins Ilya around, backs him into the wall of cabinets and kisses him, his hands cupped around Ilya’s jaw and their noses crushed flat, pries Ilya’s mouth open and sticks his tongue in there, tastes the leftovers he had for breakfast and the cigarette he snuck while Shane was still asleep. “I love you,” Shane whispers against his lips, then drops his head down to nestle in the crook of Ilya’s neck.

“I love you, too,” Ilya whispers back. “Moy muzh.” He cards his fingers through Shane’s hair, rubs at his lower back, right where it’s sore and aching. And they stay there, him and Ilya, for a long, long time.

_____

He misses five games, in the end; a home game against Winnipeg and the first four games in a six-game roadie that takes the team up the east coast and down through the Midwest. It’s fucking embarrassing to watch; a 1-2 overtime loss against fucking Winnipeg, 2-4 loss in Washington, 2-3 in Buffalo, a humiliating 1-4 blowout in St. Paul, and finally, a hard-won overtime 2-1 win against Chicago.

Shane watches it all from home, as November bleeds into December and the snow outside starts to stick; laid out on their dark-upholstered couch, covered in a plaid-patterned cashmere blanket so soft it feels like a cloud, a cold wet washcloth pressed over his eyes during commercial breaks. Mom and Dad come over, too, and pull their usual sports commentary routine from the loveseat—Mom with the play-by-play and Dad doing the color. Some mean, vicious part of him crows at every failed play and turnover and unblocked shot—every mistake his teammates make. How fucking vindicating to see real, tangible proof that the Metros aren’t shit without him. It’s nice to feel needed, even if the rest of the team hates him for it. Even if they’re probably talking behind his back, saying shit like didn’t Rozanov have a couple home games coming up? Maybe Hole-ander faked it because he wants to get dicked down more than he wants to fucking win.

He watches Ilya, too—kisses him goodbye when he leaves for a game at Canadian Tire Center; kisses him goodbye again when he heads out later that week for a roadie that takes him down the west coast, and whispers reassurances against his lips when Ilya says you will be okay? maybe you should call your parents. And it’s fucking beautiful, watching Ilya. He’s on the same tear he was before; stomps Vancouver and Colorado and San Fran into the fucking dirt. Barely two months into the season, and the cens are sitting at twenty-four points. Fucking monster of a season. Shane could fucking cry. All those years he spent at the bottom of the standings, putting on a brave face so Shane couldn’t see how it was fucking killing him, and now here he is, dominating the Atlantic division, the entire fucking league; on top of the fucking world.

And yeah, Shane feels jealous. How could he not? Some part of him watches Ilya out there and wails that should be me, like a toddler throwing a tantrum. But the rest of him is just—he’s so fucking proud. He wears one of Ilya’s old jerseys for every game, and Mom and Dad cheer softly every time Ilya scores, and it doesn’t really feel demeaning, the way Shane thought it would. It’s so fucking good. Like he’s finally getting something he never even knew he wanted.

_____

Like all good things, it doesn’t last. Shane is cleared for play after two weeks. He rejoins his team in St. Louis; catches a separate flight, and just barely makes it to the hotel in time to take the bus to the arena. He sits in his usual spot this season—up front, right behind the driver—and pops his headphones over his ears. He turns the noise cancelling on, but doesn’t play anything through them. Sometimes, it’s nice to sit and listen to nothing but the sound of his own breathing. He briefly debates texting Ilya, but he’s probably busy prepping for his own game in Anaheim, and it’s not the same, when he knows Ilya can’t text back for a while. It doesn’t really feel like talking.

So, Shane stares out the window. The sun has already set, and the weather is nasty—somewhere between freezing rain and sleet. It blurs the street lamps and stoplights, and the cold, wet wind howls as it carves its way around the bus. If he concentrates, he can hear it over the distant, muffled sounds of his teammates settling into their own seats. In the back of the bus, Bergy says at least Hollander’s back, anybody know why he was out, and Drapeau replies I dunno, but I heard Rozanov called Coach and threw a total fucking bitch fit, threatened to get him fired, the whole nine yards, and Walkman says that’s gotta be breaking some kind of rule, and Guigui says I dunno, but it’s kind of pathetic, no? And then, someone plucks Shane’s bag out of the seat next to him. Shane starts, and almost flings his phone into the back of the bus driver’s head, but it’s just Hayden, looking a little sheepish, a little contrite.

Hayden stuffs both their bags into the overhead storage, then plops down into the seat next to Shane without asking. He taps at his ear; Shane dutifully takes off his headphones and slings them around his neck.

“Hey, man,” Hayden says, low. “You feeling better?”

“I’m alright,” he replies. And he’s not lying, exactly—the headaches are gone, and he isn’t puking his guts up anymore, but he’s still so tired all the time, these days. Feels like he could sleep for a year and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Hayden quirks a brow, and scratches at the top of his head. “You sure? You seemed pretty out of it.”

Shane shrugs. “I’m cleared to play, and I feel fine.”

Hayden nods. “Look,” he starts, then pauses, looks down, and fidgets. Taps his fingers against his knees, his foot against the floor, bounces his knee up and down so fast it practically blurs. “I just—I wanted to apologize. I’ve been thinking a lot, and like,” he swallows, and then he finally looks up at Shane with this soulful, sincere expression on his face. Shane braces for fucking impact. “I shouldn’t have iced you out like that. I should’ve done a better job at sticking up for you. Maybe if I had—”

“No, come on," Shane interjects weakly; mostly out of habit. “That—that’s not your fault.” He closes his eyes, just for a minute. God, if this had come last month, he would’ve cried. He would’ve been so fucking thankful and so fucking pissed. And he does feel an echo of it—a little twinge of anger and a faint flicker of something fond—but neither feeling sticks around for long. He’s just so fucking tired; tired of feeling, tired of fighting; tired of being so goddamn tired all the time.

“I feel like it is, though. I’m the AC. I let shit get way out of hand, and I shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have had to, fucking,” Hayden stutters, and gestures wildly, “challenge the whole team to a sprint contest because I was too busy wallowing in my own shit to do my goddamn job. And I think,” he says, thick, and swallows loud enough that Shane can hear his throat click. “I made you feel like you were alone. And you’re not alone, man. I’ve got you.” And then, he slowly, carefully hooks his arm over Shane’s shoulders. Shane does his best to stay loose and relaxed.

And for a second, that muted bit of anger catches spark and flares, hot and overwhelming. He opens his mouth, ready to say something like oh, so now you’ve got my back. Where were you before? Where were you in May, after I got outed by fucking TMZ? Where were you in October, when Comeau tried to punch me in the fucking face? Nowhere. You left me. You fucking left me to rot. But then, a little voice that sounds like his mother starts up, and reminds him that right now Hayden is the only person he’s got in this room, and an olive branch is an olive branch, and if he blows this bridge, he’ll have nothing left. He’ll spend these next two years a one-man island; a bleeding hunk of meat floating in a shark-infested ocean.

“Thanks, Hayden,” he says instead. “I appreciate it.” Hayden pulls him in with the arm he’s got draped across Shane’s shoulders and jostles him around; brotherly affection, or something. Shane smiles at him, wan and thin. He checks his phone—fifteen more minutes until they get to the arena. And, so. He puts his headphones back on, and he listens to himself breathe, and he sits there, with Hayden, in companionable enough silence, until the bus pulls to a stop in front of the player’s entrance.

_____

They eke out a 3-1 win in St. Louis, somehow. Shane spends most of the game riding the bench; easing back in, now that Dr. Moore actually gives a shit about his fucking concussion. And then they’re off to Nashville; the last stop before he and Ilya get four days of overlap in their schedules. Shane doesn’t have time to call Ilya after he lands—Coach Theriault wanted to squeeze a practice session in before they flew out, and the only slot available at Centene Community Ice Center was at nine p.m., so Shane doesn’t get into the hotel in Nashville until midnight, and he’s so exhausted by the time he gets up to his room that he collapses onto the bed and falls asleep before he can plug his phone in or brush his teeth.

So, he calls Ilya in the morning, just past seven. It’s still dark, and freezing rain beats a steady rhythm against the window. He’s got some HGTV show about a family moving from Toronto to Mexico muted on the TV, and he’s waiting for his room service breakfast order to show up—avocado toast with salmon and eggs, fresh fruit, a tomato omelette, green tea.

Ilya doesn’t pick up on the first ring, but Shane’s phone starts buzzing with an incoming call halfway through Ilya’s ridiculous voicemail message.

“Hey,” Shane says, and requests a facetime. Ilya declines the request, and groans into the speaker, long and low. “Rough night?” Shane asks, teasing.

“Yes, little bit.” Ilya replies. There’s a rustle on the other end, like he’s digging his face into the pillow, another quiet groan, a faint squeaking from his shitty hotel bedspring. “Is fine. What about you? Your head feel okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m like, not getting headaches and stuff anymore.” There’s a knock at the door; Shane levers himself up out of bed and peers out the peephole. Room service, thank god. “You sound awful, though. What the fuck happened to you last night?”

“I am maybe a little hung over. Don’t tell anyone.”

Shane laughs, and cradles the phone between his cheek and his shoulder, and carts his breakfast over to the desk wedged in the corner of the room. “Seriously?”

“Mm, yes.” Ilya sighs. It sounds gusty and tinny through the phone. “I went out with the team, had normal amount of vodka, but then I caught Troy trying to sneak a whole handle of whiskey back to his room late last night, and he told me many terrible things, so of course I helped him drink it.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Did you know he had a boyfriend?” Ilya pauses. Shane takes a sip of his tea and hisses—it’s so fucking hot. His tongue feels numb and burnt. “Obviously not. Well, now I am telling you. Troy had this ex-boyfriend, some guy named Adam or something. I forget. Anyways, he was dating this Adam guy for like, entire year. Kept it secret the whole time. Craaazy,” Ilya drawls. Shane giggles. “And this Adam guy, apparently he had big kink for straight guys. Like, he tells Troy ‘wear this cologne when we fuck’, and hands him the fucking Axe body spray everybody was using back in two-thousand-nine—”

“Not you though,” Shane interrupts. “You smelled like, fucking, fucking—”

“Like too much Old Spice, probably.” Ilya interjects. Shane frowns, because he remembers Ilya smelling so fucking good, like, musky and sharp, and he’s pretty sure Old Spice doesn’t smell like that, but Ilya steamrolls right over him before he can get a word in edgewise. “Anyways,” Ilya continues, “this guy Adam would have Troy do, like, roleplay shit. Like, Troy would pretend to be Roman gladiator or something, and then Adam would pretend to pay him for sex, and while they fucked Troy would have to say ‘no, I’m straight, I like girls’ the whole time. Weird for him, because Troy is super gay. Almost as gay as you, lyubimyy.”

“Fuck off.” Shane says, fond, and takes a bite of his toast.

“You love me,” Ilya coos. “Are you eating?”

“I do,” Shane says, mouth full, and swallows before he’s ready. The food sticks in his throat. “And yeah, I got room service.” He sips at his tea, and takes another bite, and smiles when Ilya makes a vaguely jealous noise. The sheets rustle, like Ilya’s getting out of bed. “Wait, ex-boyfriend? They broke up?”

“Oh, yes. Apparently Troy told him he loved him, and this was just too gay, so Adam ran for the hills. Then Troy sees post on Instagram a week later. Adam announcing his engagement to some makeup artist he’s been working with for three years.”

“Jesus.”

“Mhm. And then,” Ilya says, in his can-you-believe-this-shit voice, “two weeks later, Troy punches his very good friend Dallas Kent in the face and gets traded to Ottawa.”

“Jesus,” Shane says, with feeling this time. He feels a little sorry for Barrett, despite himself. What a fucking series of unfortunate events. Shane really shouldn’t laugh, but god, it’s so funny, in a fucked up sort of way. Cosmic justice, or something. Payback for all the times Barrett looked at Shane from his spot on the faceoff circle and called him a faggot.

“And then, yesterday,” Ilya continues, “Adam-something posted wedding pics on twitter. Apparently they eloped to Ibiza. Apparently, Adam-something had promised Troy that he would take him on vacation to Ibiza before he ghosted. Apparently, Ibiza is very good for anonymous gay sex. Naturally, I could not be sober for this conversation. He cried a lot.”

“No, yeah,” Shane says, faintly. He slurps at his green tea. “That’s insane.” Ilya is a stronger man than him, Shane thinks. Last time a teammate was struggling with relationship stuff, Shane ended up at some cowboy bar in Dallas with Grammy, sipping ginger ale while he poured his heart out about his impending divorce, nodding vaguely whenever he stopped talking and saying yeah man, that really sucks without actually listening to a word he said. Shane had awkwardly patted him on the back and slipped him the list of Montreal-based divorce lawyers he had saved in his in-case-of-emergencies spreadsheet, and then he’d hauled Grammy up the hotel stairs and tucked him into bed.

Yesterday, on the bus, when Grammy didn’t think Shane could hear, he’d cupped his hand around his mouth and whispered to Drapeau, I hope he trades soon, I’m sick of his faggot shit. And Shane felt his eyes on the back of his head, even though he didn’t dare turn to look.

“I think maybe things will work out for him, though,” Ilya rambles on. “I am pretty sure he has a crush on our social media guy. Our very gay social media guy.”

Shane snorts, then. Wonders, briefly, what Ilya thinks the difference between very gay and super gay is. “Do you think they’ll…”

“What, fuck? I hope so, but Troy keeps acting like a fucking martyr about it. And he has no game. None. It’s fucking embarrassing.”

“Maybe you’ll have to show him how it’s done sometime,” Shane suggests, with a teasing little lilt.

“Oh yeah?” Ilya replies, and god, Shane can hear his grin from here.

“Yeah.” Shane bites his lip and thinks to himself, fuck it. His teammates already hate him. It’s not like he can make things any worse. “We’re flying back to Montreal tonight, after we thrash Nashville. I could come out with you. Maybe. After your game in Ottawa tomorrow.”

For a long moment, Ilya says nothing. It goes on for so long that Shane checks his phone to see if the call dropped, but it’s still there, the call time ticking up second by second. “For serious?” Ilya finally says, incredulous. “You mean it?”

Shane shrugs, even though Ilya can’t possibly see it. “Yeah. Fuck it, right? These guys might be my teammates in two years.”

“Oh my god,” Ilya says, giddy, like a little kid. “I have so many people to introduce you to. You will love Dykestra, he is crazy mountain man like you. Always talking about some fish he caught over the summer, or some deer he shot, or something. Last time we all hang out, he is trying to teach us how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together. Took him almost forty-five minutes. I bet you could do it better. He has terrible taste in music, though. Don’t listen to anything he recommends—”

“And you have to introduce me to your problematic baby bird,” Shane interrupts. “I wanna see what he’s like, now that he’s all sad and gay and shit.”

“Of course, of course,” Ilya replies. He’s talking a mile a minute, tripping over every other word. “I am going to spend the whole night introducing you to people. Is like when babies are first born, everybody sits in a circle and waits for their turn.”

Shane laughs, then, and takes another sip of his tea. “What, because I’m your baby?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, simple.

Shane blushes, furiously, and stabs at his omelette with his fork. “Jesus fucking christ,” he says, still blushing. “Don’t you have a game to get ready for? Where’s your breakfast?”

“Ay-ay-ay,” Ilya complains. “Always nagging me. I have to see if Troy died in the night, and then I will go down and eat, okay? I will eat extra healthy for you, even. We are at that Mariott with the Italian brunch place, the one that has the orange-ginger juice you like. I will drink it, just for you, even though it tastes disgusting.”

“And you’ll text me when you land tonight?”

“You will be in the middle of a game, probably,” Ilya says, dismissively. Shane can picture the specific hand gesture he probably made to go along with it—waving his hand around his temple like he’s shooing a fly out of his hair. “But yes, I will text. I love you.”

“Love you,” Shane replies. “Good luck tonight.”

“Thank you, lyubimyy,” Ilya says, “kill those Nashville fuckers for me,” and then, he hangs up. Off to go dig Barrett out of bed, probably, and force-feed him orange-ginger juice and ibuprofen. Shane smiles into his tea. Grimaces his way through his toast and omelette—both gone cold while they were talking.

And so it goes. Shane hits the hotel gym and does his morning yoga. Hayden knocks on Shane’s door, after he’s done showering and is idly flipping through channels, looking for something more interesting than the boring schlock on HGTV. They watch Ilya’s game together, when it finally comes on at two; Shane working his way through a seafood risotto on one queen-sized bed, Hayden practically inhaling his burger and parmesan fries on the other. And Hayden watches, incredulous, as Ilya scores a goal on Carolina eight minutes into the second, does his usual blow-a-kiss celly, and Shane mimes catching it and kisses the back of his fist. Wow, he says, flabbergasted. You’re like, besotted. Aren’t you embarrassed? And Shane flips him off and says oh, like you’re not sexting Jackie right now, which has Hayden turning beet red and making an affronted noise and indignantly replying I’m texting her about the kids!

It’s so normal. It’s so painfully fucking normal. Ilya scores another goal—a sick rebound he catches on his backhand and slaps past the goalie’s hip. That was fucking nasty, Hayden says, reluctantly impressed, and this time, when Shane mimes catching Ilya’s kiss, he just smiles, and shakes his head, and pops another fry in his mouth. And Shane wonders if this is what things could’ve been like, if he’d told Hayden about Ilya years ago, before they got married. If he was a little braver, and found some sort of halfway compromise with Ilya, and came out to his parents and his closest friends but still kept their marriage from the public. Maybe he and Ilya would’ve had dinners with Jackie and Hayden during the off-season; maybe Ilya would’ve been Uncle Ilya, and Shane would still be Uncle Shane, and they would’ve been better prepared, when something inevitably leaked and shit hit the fan.

Or maybe that little bubble would’ve made them careless. Maybe they get caught sooner, before Ilya’s PR application is accepted, and Ilya is stuck scrambling for asylum before he gets fucking deported. Maybe he does get deported, and Shane never sees him again. Maybe Shane tells Hayden, and Hayden still hates Ilya’s fucking guts, and he never gets over it. Maybe he and Ilya would’ve still found a way to be miserable together. Maybe the what-ifs and whyfores don’t really matter—Shane kept them safe as best he could, all those years they spent hiding from everyone except each other.

So why the fuck should he have regrets? What’s the fucking point? The hiding kept them safe until it didn’t. And they’ve neatly dodged every worst-case scenario so far: they’re still in the game, they’re still alive, Ilya got his citizenship and somehow ended up on a team where the worst thing he has to worry about is Troy motherfucking Barrett’s sad-as-fuck gay love life. And if it’s Shane’s turn to suffer for a few years, he’ll take it. He’ll take it all. Ilya’s had it so hard for so long. Shane is fresh off the bench by comparison. He’ll be fine. He’ll be perfectly fucking fine. And in the meantime, at least he has this: early-morning phone calls and late-night facetime sessions and kisses passed through rinkside cameras; secondhand gossip and ill-timed dick pics; passing glimpses of the soft landing Ilya found for himself in fucking Ottawa, of all places.

_____

The boards in Bridgestone Arena are canary yellow, just like the dish gloves Shane uses back home. It’s a nice color, but the logos ruin it—they’ve pasted white-backed ads for Geico and Nissan and fucking Remington rifles every few feet, so the only place Shane can see the yellow color is a thin little inch-high strip down where the ice meets the boards. Shane follows that yellow line, and does a lap to get the lay of the land. The ice is fresh and picturesque. The crowd has a couple of rainbows scattered here and there, but most are wearing really unfortunate bright yellow shirts covered in various permutations of NASHVILLE PREDATORS.

Shane does a hockey stop when he’s approaching the center line to get a feel for how fast he can stop with these skates, on this ice. It feels pretty good—the lace burn cleared up in the two weeks he was out, and the bruise on his hip has faded to an ugly yellow-green. His shoulder still feels a little stiff, but his wrist feels less like it’s about to shatter every time he snaps a wrister, and the buddy splint on his finger is finally off, just in time for Shane to fucking thrash these losers.

Shane skates over to the rest of the team, scattered in a clump, stretching out their hips. He picks a spot next to Hayden, near the center line, and gets to work, levering his knees out wide and then pulling them in tight, over and over, until his joints feel loose and his thighs feel warm and buzzy.

A player peels off from the pack of yellow-sweatered Predators—number nineteen, last name Colby. He skates up to the center line and stands next to where Shane is still stretching, awkward as anything, nervously tapping the butt of his stick against the ice. Shane glances over and god, he can’t be older than nineteen. He’s still pimple-faced and gangly, and a little skinny under his pads, like he’s got more filling out to do.

“Hey, Hollander?”

Shane stands and skates over. Hayden follows close behind, like a lapdog, or a lackey. “What’s up?” Shane says, real casual. Behind him, he can practically feel Hayden glowering.

“I uh,” Colby stutters. “I just wanted to say, I hope things work out for you.” He stares down at the ice and flushes red, which is impressive, considering all the pimples. God, Shane does not miss being a teenager. “And I think you’re like, brave and stuff. And sorry about Barnes. He’s gonna be a dick.”

Shane smiles—a real one, that shows his teeth and everything. “Thanks. And I’m sorry, too,” he says, and looks at Colby, all serious and shit. “We’re gonna fucking destroy you guys.”

Colby snorts. “You fucking wish, dude. You fucking wish.” And with that, he’s off, hightailing it back to his bench with his head down and his shoulders rounded.

Back at his own bench, Coach Theriault sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles, high and sharp. “Listen up!” he shouts, with a glance at the other team to make sure no one is obviously eavesdropping. “I want it tight, I want it clean. I do not want to see a single fucking injury tonight,” he pauses, and stares pointedly at Shane. “I want to see perfection. I want to see a fucking goal-scoring machine. We are slipping too far in the standings for a team of this calibre.” He turns to Drapeau, then, and outright glares. “Monsieur Sieve is on thin fucking ice tonight,” he announces. “I will be tallying his save percentage. If it dips below naught-point-nine-oh-three, I will sub him out with Bergy. Do not,” he says, with one last glare at all of them, “disappoint me.”

Shane nods, and focuses on checking his tape job one last time before they stand for the national anthem. He rubs over the knob he’s built at the top, the tiny Yuna and David he’s written just under the swell. On impulse, he leans over and whispers hey, you got a sharpie, in Hayden’s ear, and patiently waits as Hayden passes the request down the line, and the guys pass a fine-tipped sharpie back up. Shane flips his stick around and writes ILYA in tiny, barely-legible letters, up the shaft towards the top, where he normally holds his stick. He pops the cap back on just in time to hear the announcer say all rise for our national anthem, and hurries to stand up and take off his helmet.

Coach motions, as the final notes of the star spangled banner ring out across the ice, and Shane hops the boards to take the first faceoff. He bends, low. Across from him, Barnes does the same.

“You bend like that for your boytoy?” Barnes drawls, and impatiently taps his stick against he ice.

“Yep,” Shane replies, and pops the P as loud and obnoxiously as he can. He tightens his grip, right over the spot where he wrote Ilya’s name, the way he’s wanted to, deep down, for years and years and years. The puck drops. Shane watches it fall, and sinks right down with it, until there’s nothing in his head but the puck, his skates, the frost on his breath.

The puck hits the ice. Shane swipes it away from Barnes and doesn’t even bother passing—he drops back and circles around, comes up the left side of the boards, cycling the puck back and forth, back and forth. Barnes tries to cut him off; Shane shoots the puck between his legs, neatly dodges around him, and picks it back up on the other side. He keeps going, charging up the left-hand side of the rink, clocks a d-man racing to cut him off before he can circle around behind the goal. Shane puts his head down, charges towards the guy, and then dekes in the opposite direction at the last possible second, back towards the crease. The other d-man tries to pincer Shane from behind, so Shane pops the puck in the cradle and does a wide pirouette. The d-men crash into each other like bowling pins and tip over like dominoes, and Shane watches in his periphery as the two downed d-men skid into the goalie, like divine fucking providence or something, and so, Shane finishes his pirouette, grins to himself, and winds up a nasty fucking slapshot. It’s not the best choice—he should probably snap it, or shoot off a wrister—but it’s the showiest, the meanest, the type of thing Ilya would probably do. The sound echoes through the arena; a sharp crack that the jeering crowd can’t possibly drown out. The puck sails over one d-man’s head, the other’s hip, past the goalie’s desperate outstretched hand. And then, there’s the beautiful swoosh as the puck hits the back of the net, the bellowing goal horn, confused and scattered applause from the crowd.

Hayden skates into him and all but tackles him. “Holy fucking shit!” he cries, fucking ecstatic. “Holy fucking shit. What a fucking beaut. They’re gonna be playing that on Sportsnet for years.”

“Where’s the fucking camera?” Shane shouts. Hayden glances around the arena, then points at a spot across from the visitor’s tunnel. Shane loops past, close as he can, and blows a kiss directly down the lens.

Hayden lightly slaps at his shoulder and the back of his helmet. “You’re a fucking menace, dude,” he says, as they skid to a stop in front of the bench and hop the boards. And then, he turns to the camera, which is still following them, and blows a kiss, too.

Shane laughs, then, and grabs the back of Hayden’s jersey, and yanks him down to sit. And they watch, together, as the second lines file out. Marty, their second-line center, loses the faceoff, and chases after the puck. The guy handling it dumps it, and Grammy gets there first, slaps it to Walkman, and they’re off, battling back and forth and back and forth, turning the puck over and over as Coach cycles out the second line and waves out the third, then cycles out the third and waves on the fourth.

The puck is deep in their offensive zone when Coach waves the first line back out onto the ice—they’ve been circling the goal for a while, now, playing keepaway, but can’t fight through to score. Shane hops the boards and sprints down, tags out Horkoff and takes possession. The second he touches the puck, someone checks him from behind, hard enough that Shane goes sprawling and manages to give himself a fat lip on the way down, when his stick gets caught at an awkward angle and the butt end jams into his mouth. The ref blows his whistle and calls a major on Barnes.

Shane picks himself up and spits. It comes out pink. Coach waves Walkman out for the power play. Shane takes the faceoff, wins it, and passes to Walkman, who passes right back to him and closes in on the net. Shane looks, but he doesn’t see an open shot, so he passes to Guigui and camps out in the crease. Guigui takes it around behind the goal and passes to Hayden, just seconds after he tags in and takes over for Stouffer. Hayden shoots, but the puck bounces off the goalie’s knee. For a split second, Shane and the goalie make eye contact, and then they’re in a mad scramble; the goalie fumbling back upright, Shane racing to catch the rebound before a d-man can sweep it up and dump it.

Shane gets there first, and for a brief, shining second, there’s nothing between him and the goalie at all; just a smooth stretch of ice. So, Shane does the Rozanov. Skates in close, fakes right-left-right, and then, when he’s got the goalie leaning slightly to the left and squatting down to block with his leg pads, he passes the puck between his legs like he’s dribbling a fucking basketball, and shoots a wrister off his backhand. The goalie lunges, but not fast enough. The puck pings off the crossbar and deflects down into the net.

The goal horn sounds again. Shane whips towards the camera and blows another kiss. Hayden rams into him from behind and yells “what the fuck, dude, what the fuck, put it in the goddamn Louvre, you’re fucking insane.”

Back on the bench, Coach Theriault fixes Shane with a piercing, searching look. Eventually, he nods, just once. “Good job, Hollander. Keep it up.”

And so it goes. Shane spends the first intermission of the game swishing and spitting until the water in his mouth runs clear. Nashville’s managed to tie it up by the end of the first, but Coach makes good on his promise to swap Bergy in after intermission, and Hayden gets a goal just three-and-a-half minutes into the second—a clean breakaway just after the shift change with a fuck-ton of room to really play. Hayden dekes, and dangles, and shoots the puck right between the goalie’s legs. On their next shift, Guigui swoops up behind the goal right after the goalie blocks Shane’s shot, hooks his stick around the corner and pokes it in before the goalie even clocks he’s there.

Bergy lets in a shot at the tail end of the second—there’s a messy scrum in the crease, and then Mickie D gets tripped up and knocks Bergy a little off balance, and fucking pimple-faced Colby gets a perfect flip shot that sails right over Bergy’s head and clatters against the ice at the back of the net.

Just keep pace, Coach says, during the second intermission, while Shane is poking at his fat lip, scarfing down a protein bar, and guzzling lemon-lime Gatorade from a green squeezy bottle. He’s staring hard at Shane; why, Shane couldn’t possible say. He’s on fucking fire tonight. Focus on defense, Coach continues, maintain our lead, play smart. Play fucking smart. Shane nods, but he doesn’t really bother listening too close. He’s sunk down deep, deep; lost in that particular headspace where time moves a little slower, and he’s seeing things where they’ll be in a few seconds instead of where they are right now, and he hardly needs to think at all—he’s completely hollowed out, nothing left but instinct and drive and muscle memory.

Shane comes blasting out of the faceoff at the top of the third. He slaps Barnes’ stick away and chips the puck to Hayden, and they charge up the ice and crowd around the goal, playing keepaway for a while; never quite lining up a good shot but still refusing to turn the puck over. Coach signals the shift change, but just as Marty’s coming up to relieve him, Shane spots an opening—shoots from the blue line, and neatly threads the puck between the d-men and a passing winger, and buries it top-shelf. The goal horn sounds; hats fly over the glass and rain down on the ice. Shane blows another kiss to the camera and takes a bow. Hayden jumps on his back and hoots like an animal on their way back to the bench, screaming a fucking hattie? a fucking hattie?

Their next shift, Shane sets Hayden up for a textbook perfect goal; Guigui takes it around behind the goal and passes to Shane, Shane dodges around an overeager d-man and passes to Hayden, and Hayden snaps a one-timer past the d-man on him and buries it over the goalie’s shoulder.

And then, on his last shift, with less than a minute left on the clock, Shane gets possession and races for the goal, tearing ahead of everyone else. He hears a frustrated scream behind him, and then, when Shane is in the middle of a pirouette around one of the d-men, a stick hooks behind his ankle and pulls. His leg goes out from under him, and his other leg follows. He hits the ice on his back, but he keeps his head up, just like he was taught when he was a kid. He flips onto his belly and sees the puck right there, inexplicably still glued to his stick. And, so, he swipes his stick across the ice, one-handed, while he’s still careening towards the goal himself, and somehow, against all odds, manages to slip the puck just behind the goalie’s leg.

The goal horn sounds. Hayden skates over and hauls Shane to his feet, and shouts “a fucking dick trick? A fucking dick trick? You’re fucking crazy, what the fuck!” Shane just grins at him, wild, and knocks their helmets together, forehead to forehead. The rest of their teammates pour onto the ice and surround Shane, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder pad or slap at his back, begrudgingly muttering shit like you animal and fucking beautician and nasty, Hollander, that was fucking nasty.

Shane just tips his head back, rips off his helmet and drops it to the ice and stares up, past the jumbotron, at the harsh white lights overhead. And he basks in it—the jealousy, the adoration, the screaming applause from fans of the team he’d just eviscerated—until Hayden scoops up his helmet, and the whole team herds him off the ice and into the tunnel.

______

At the post-game presser, Shane sits sandwiched between Coach Theriault and Marcel, their PR guy, grinning ear to ear. He tries to reign it in, but he can’t fucking help it. He just played the best fucking game of his life—maybe the best game of his entire goddamn career.

Marcel leans in and lightly taps the mic. “We will begin taking questions now,” he says. The crowd of reporters clamors; Shane! Shane! Shane! Marcel points towards a middle-aged man wearing a smart-looking polo and slightly wrinkled slacks.

“Tim Dyer, The Athletic. Incredible game, Shane.” Shane nods; his smile gets just a little wider. “My question is, how did you manage to maintain focus on the game? Weren’t you worried about your husband?”

And just like that, Shane’s smile dies, and his brow furrows, and the riding-high, top-of-the-world feeling he was carrying around in his chest curdles and drops right down to his churning stomach. “What? Why would I be worried about Ilya?”

“The Centaurs’ plane crashed on the runway halfway through the first period,” the reporter—Tim Dyer—says. “It… caught fire. Half a dozen people were carried out unconscious. You—” Tim pauses, then, and visibly swallows. “You didn’t know?”

Shane’s heartrate skyrockets. He turns to Coach, mouth hanging open, breathing a little hard. “Is that true?” he asks, low, his hand pressing hard into the tabletop. Coach studiously avoids Shane’s eye. “I said,” Shane repeats, hard as iron. “Is that true.”

Coach doesn’t say shit, but he doesn’t need to. Shane whips out his phone and googles Ottawa centaurs plane crash. The top results are all articles from this afternoon, titled shit like Plane Crash Takes Down Hockey Team and At Least 5 Injured In Ottawa Plane Crash.

“No, no, no,” Shane mutters, and taps play on the first video he finds. It’s grainy and difficult to see. Shot from the control tower, maybe. It looks like its snowing. The camera follows the plane in, and it looks fine, it looks normal, until, all of a sudden, just as the plane is about to touch down, it gets jerked skyward, like an invisible hand reached out and yanked it thirty feet in the air. It wobbles dangerously, but levels out just before the landing gear touches the ground. It looks like it hits hard, and then the plane bounces, a little, touches down again, and careens down the runway, whipping past the control tower and fading into the distance. And then, it looks like the plane hits a bump or a snowbank at the end of the runway, and the fucking landing gear gets ripped off, and the plane disappears behind a white wall of kicked-up snow and debris.

“Oh my god,” Shane whispers. He covers his mouth with his hand and keeps watching, heart in his throat, but there’s nothing. A faint flashing light and a red blob that could be EMS racing up the runway. It’s hard to see through all the snow. He scrubs forward through the footage, and there, about three minutes in—a bright orange flare kicking high, a plume of black smoke creeping up towards the sky.

Shane’s stomach twists. God, he’s gonna be sick. When did this happen? When Shane was busy scoring his second goal? His third? Was Ilya—was Ilya laying in a hospital, fucking dying, while Shane blew him all those kisses?

“When did you find out?” Shane says, small. Coach looks over at Marcel, Marcel looks back at Coach. Neither one of them will fucking look at him. “Fucking when,” Shane shouts, loud enough that the microphone screams with earsplitting feedback.

Coach finally looks at Shane, and there is absolutely nothing on his face. He shrugs, like they’re talking about the weather, instead of Shane’s husband in a plane crash, maybe injured, maybe dying. “We should discuss this in private,” he says, calm, into the mic.

And Shane sees red. Actually, physically sees red. Ilya could be—he could be—they were up the whole fucking game. Shane could’ve left and it would’ve been fine, and even if it wouldn’t, even if they would’ve lost, it shouldn’t fucking matter, because Ilya could be fucking dead. Jesus fucking christ, a couple months back Coach got pissed over a locker-room spat that was barely anything, nobody even got hurt, and he sent his two best d-men home in the middle of the fucking season opener. And just like that, something inside of Shane cracks right in two, and that ugly thing he’s been tamping down for as long as he can remember rises up and swallows him whole. Fuck this sport. Fuck everything. What the fuck does any of it matter, if Ilya isn’t here to share it with? All this time, he’s been putting himself through hell, tearing himself to fucking pieces, and for what? His name engraved on a trophy he’s already won three times before? His number hung in the rafters of the same building where his fucking teammates wrote a slur on his locker? Performing perfection for a bunch of Japanese-Canadian and gay children; pretending that he made it all the way to the MLH unscathed so that, when they’re getting tortured by their teammates in juniors, they’ve got a light at the end of the tunnel? Fuck that. Fuck that.

“Fuck you,” Shane spits. “Fuck you.” He shoves himself back from the table hard enough that the whole thing tips over. The table falls with an almighty crash, and the microphones shriek and scatter across the floor. “I hope it was worth it,” Shane hisses, and stands up so fast his chair nearly tips over backwards, too. “Because that’s the last hockey game I’m ever fucking playing for you people. I’m fucking done.”

Coach scrambles up, catches at Shane’s arm. “Hollander, hold on—”

“I fucking quit,” Shane yells. “You hear me? I fucking quit.” Shane pulls, but Coach won’t fucking let go. And, so, Shane winds back, and drives a haymaker into Theriault’s face. There’s a sick, crunching sound. Something in Shane’s already-fractured finger pops, then snaps. He barely feels it. He’s already gone, out the door, ducking past security and running down the hall. Please, Shane mutters, through hitching breaths. Praying to whoever will listen. Please, please, please.

Please, please, please.

Chapter End Notes

i would say sorry. but i am not sorry :) NOW we've just about hit rock bottom :)

UPDATE: menty b hit the towers so the next chapter may take. A while. Genuine apologies I was expecting to be able to post the new one in like a week

Chapter 10: december (part 2)

Chapter Summary

If this was a fairytale, or a shitty lifetime movie, Shane would sweep into Ilya’s hospital room, teary-eyed, and lay a tender, careful kiss on the corner of his mouth, next to the breathing tube, and Ilya would gasp awake like a golden-haired princess. But this isn’t a fucking movie, and Shane isn’t a fucking prince. The machine monitoring Ilya’s heartbeat keeps on beeping at the same, steady pace, and the ventilator hisses low, and Ilya doesn’t so much as twitch. He could be dead already; his body still breathing but the best parts, the parts Shane loves most, already gone. It’s not fair, a part of Shane wails. It’s not fucking fair.

Chapter Notes

Shane dials the hospital one-handed and strips off his tie with the other. He tosses it somewhere behind him, takes a corner too fast, and gets a leg up to push off the white-painted cinderblock wall and propel himself around the corner even faster. His shoes click against the floor. His breath comes in jagged, airless gasps. He holds the phone to the side of his face, against the sweat and the salt, and listens to it ring and ring.

The woman who finally answers is chipper. Annoyingly chipper. But when Shane asks about Ilya, she clams up and says I’m sorry sir, I can’t share any information about that, and only caves when Shane cries wait, wait, I’m married to him, I’m his husband, and then she asks for his SIN and his insurance info, so Shane has to stop moving and dig his health card out of his fucking wallet and rattle off his ID number, full name, and date of birth. The woman on the other end of the line says sorry, could he please hold a minute? When she comes back, she apologizes and says gosh, the phone’s been ringing off the hook with reporters trying to get a scoop, can’t be too careful with a patient as high-profile as this.

She tells him that Ilya came into the ER unconscious, with injuries to his face and his lower legs, and a possible TBI. She tells him that Ilya’s kneecaps are shattered into a million pieces, and his nose and his eye socket are both broken. She says that Ilya was unconscious for almost thirty minutes, and then, barely five minutes after he woke up, he had a seizure, and then another, and another, until the doctors pumped him full of diazepam and sedated him and shoved a breathing tube down his throat in the hope that a fucking medically induced coma would finally make the seizures stop. She tells him that the doctors are going through his MRI and CT results right now, looking for brain bleeds, or swelling, or epilepsy markers. Shane sinks into a crouch, then, and breathes, shaky, and chews at the same strip on skin on his lower lip, peels it away in layers until it finally splits open and bleeds and floods his mouth with iron-sharp wet.

She asks if Ilya had a history of seizures—no, no—and if Ilya was on any medications—just Wellbutrin, he thinks—and whether Shane can act as his proxy—I don’t know, I’m stuck in Nashville, I’ll be on a plane for a few hours. She asks whether Ilya has some sort of advanced directive on file, and Shane tells her no, I don’t think so, he’s never mentioned anything to me, yes the intubation is fine, yes resuscitation is fine, anything to keep him alive, I don’t give a shit. It’s probably not the answer Ilya wants—he once told Shane that he would rather be put down like a dog than die like his papa—but it’s not like he can object. He’s in a fucking medically induced coma because he keeps seizing, and every time he seizes he makes the mess of shattered bone in his knees even worse.

Shane asks if Ilya will be okay. She tells him it’s impossible to say at the moment. He asks if Ilya will ever wake up, she says she doesn’t know. Fuck, fuck. He sinks down to sitting, back to the fucking wall, and knocks his head against it once, twice, until the sharp burst of pain clears the tears out of his eyes.

He calls his mom next. She picks up on the first ring, and cries, “Shane? Oh, thank god. I called McKenna already, she’s got a plane waiting for you at BNA. You’re flying into Gatineau—Ottawa International is closed, obviously, and there’ll be a car waiting for you when you land.”

Footsteps echo down the hall ahead of him. Shane hauls himself to his feet and tenses; gearing up for a fight, or something. He doesn’t know what. He glances around him, but there’s nothing there—just white-painted walls and a little piece of paper taped to the wall that says conference room, with an arrow pointing back the way Shane came.

And then, Hayden comes running around the corner and shoulder-checks the far wall. He’s got two duffel bags strapped over his chest, and his phone in hand, and he’s muttering come on, come on as he careens down the hall. He looks up, clocks Shane, and gasps out, “thank fuck, holy shit.”

“—careful, the weather up here is pretty bad.”

“Okay,” Shane replies, and walks over to Hayden. He passes Shane his duffel and jerks his head back towards the way he came. Shane nods, and follows, and just like that, they’re jogging one after the other, weaving through narrow concrete hallways towards an exit, presumably. Shane doesn’t actually know where he’s going. “Is there a car to BNA?”

“I’ve got a car,” Hayden says. Shane looks over at him and furrows his brow. “I heard about the crash,” he explains. “I called one while I was running up here. I can’t fucking believe they made you do press.”

“Shane, who was that?”

“Hayden,” he replies. “He says he’s got a car.”

“Okay, okay, good. You’ll call when you land?”

And for a moment, Shane is blindingly, bafflingly pissed off. The fuck kind of question is that, he almost says, but catches it at the last minute and swallows it back down. “Yeah, I will,” he says instead.

“I’ll text you if I hear anything, but they’re keeping pretty quiet around here. It’s probably a good idea. The whole hospital’s crawling with press.” Shane hums, distracted. He’s got no clue where he is—the walls all look the same, this deep in the facility, but Hayden looks like he knows where he’s going. “I’ve started working on a statement for you,” Mom continues, and oh, that pisses Shane off too. Who gives a shit about a fucking statement. Who gives a shit about anything, when the love of his life is lying in a hospital bed in Queensway Carlton with a fucking breathing tube down his neck. We can go over it later, when Ilya is feeling better. It’s nothing too crazy—just a boilerplate thing asking for privacy during this difficult time, et cetera, et cetera.”

They round the corner, and there, at the end of a long hall—a pair of glass double doors with privacy film pasted over the windows. The door has a glowing EXIT sign above it; Shane could fucking cry. He pushes himself through and is almost immediately blasted in the face by a wall of sound; traffic noise and drunken shouting and honky-tonk garbage played at ear-splitting volume. Shane looks around, and there, just there; a sleek black SUV parked on a side street off Broadway, the exact make and model that the Metros’ car service always uses.

“Shane?” She prompts, and fuck, she’s using her manager voice—the same exact tone she took when Shane was twelve and complaining about the endless flashcards and media training, or thirteen and scared the other kids would make fun of him for doing an interview on the news, or seventeen and terrified of shooting his first ever commercial.

“Are you mad at me?” Shane blurts, breathless and sore, as he makes his way down the street. He’s ducking around and between clumps of people in black-and-yellow jerseys, his hand clamped tight around Hayden’s wrist. He hears a whisper—hey, is that Shane Hollander? Oh my god, it is—ripple through the crowd, and he ducks his head down, squares his shoulders like he’s bracing for a check, and starts elbowing his way around thrust-out phones and outstretched hands. He glances up, and good fucking god, he’s barely halfway there.

“Mad? Shane, I’m proud of you. So fucking proud. Honestly, I wish I could’ve done that to the assholes at Rolex years ago. And hey,” she says, light. A flash of rainbow catches Shane’s eye through the crowd—a teenaged girl wearing a Metros pride jersey. Shane sees her lips move—oh-my-god---and then her phone comes up, and Shane looks away and pretends not to see. “After that game you just played? You’ll have teams beating down your door. You can sign anywhere you want.”

Shane stops dead. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Shane—”

“My husband is in the fucking hospital,” Shane spits, “unconscious, maybe dying, and you want to talk about my fucking career?”

Behind him, Hayden mutters jesus fucking christ and yanks Shane forward. He nearly knocks the teenager in the rainbow jersey flat on her ass. When that gets him nowhere, he lets go of Shane, cups his hands around his mouth, and starts yelling clear a fucking space, we’re trying to get to the fucking hospital.

“Shane, I’m just trying to find a silver lining.”

“I don’t care!” Shane cries. God, they’ve been talking about nothing but Shane’s career for eighteen goddamn years. Just once. Just once, he wants his mom, not his fucking manager.

“I’m just trying to plan ahead,” Mom says, weakly, and for a moment, Shane pictures it—the planned-ahead life she thinks he should have, because he quit the Metros, yeah, but there are thirty-one other teams out there. So, maybe Ilya makes a full, miraculous recovery, and Shane signs with Ottawa, and spends the rest of his career absolutely fucking terrified that Ilya will get injured on the ice and their coaches will make Shane finish out the game without knowing whether he lived or died. Maybe Ilya wakes up different, stuck in a wheelchair or missing huge chunks of memory or with a completely different personality, and he’s forced to retire, and Shane signs with Ottawa, and leaves Ilya home alone for most of the year, and the fucking guilt eats Shane alive. Maybe Ilya never wakes up, and he spends years in the hospital with a tube to keep him breathing, and Shane signs with Ottawa, and drops by to visit whenever he has a home game, until eventually even he can’t justify keeping Ilya alive anymore, and pulls the fucking plug, and donates Ilya’s organs to half a dozen strangers he’ll never get to meet. Maybe Ilya dies, and Shane takes a year off to grieve, and then he signs with Ottawa, and plays Canadian Tire Center with Ilya’s number on his back because that’s the only way they can be together, and spends every hockey game hoping and praying that someone, anyone, will hit him hard enough to kill him this time. He can picture it so clearly; Crowell looming in the back like the devil himself, some faceless GM stood next to Shane and grinning ear to ear; the weight of the pen in his hand, the drag of the tip across the thick creamy paper, the cameras flashing while he loops the double L’s in Hollander. And it fucking disgusts him. It exhausts him. He can’t do this shit anymore.

 “Fuck my career,” Shane spits. “I don’t fucking want it anymore, Mom! I’m not playing their game, I’m not doing any more pap walks for fucking Rolex, I’m not just taking a year off, I’m fucking done.” Around Shane, the crowd gasps, stupid and slow. He elbows his way through the last couple people and wrestles with the car door. “Retired. From everything. Never going back. I fucking quit.”

“Okay,” Mom replies, low and slow, like she’s trying to soothe a wild animal. “Okay. We can talk about this later. Right now, you need to get on that plane, yeah?”

Shane tosses his duffel between the seats, boosts himself inside the car, and slams the door shut—probably harder than he should’ve. He hopes he caught a few fingers. “Yeah, okay,” he says, into the relative silence inside. And then, he hangs up, and punches the back of the passenger seat. It hurts. God, it fucking hurts. There’s something wrong with his hand—broken finger, maybe—but he doesn’t mind so much. The pain feels good. Pulls him back down to earth just when he was convinced he was about to fly the fuck apart.

“Where to, sir?” the driver asks.

“Airport,” Hayden replies, and looks over at Shane, all concerned and shit. “Fast as you can.” And just like that, they’re off, tearing down Sixth Avenue, down the street towards that one building that looks a bit like a sideways guitar, and Shane lets out a breath he’s been holding in ever since he ran out of that post-game presser. Hayden looks like he wants to say something, but for once, thank god, he keeps quiet. Please, he mouths. Please, baby. I’m on my way. Just a little longer.

_____

The jet is small. The ceiling is so narrow he has to stoop to fit, and he’s not sure how the fuck anyone could manage to get to the cluster of four seats in the back. The aisle is so tiny he has to slip in sideways, and even then, he just barely fits. Shane collapses into the seat closest to the door, and Hayden claims the seat across from him—he’d insisted on walking Shane to his gate, and then he’d refused to stay behind. Shane could fucking cry.

And, so. The plane takes off. Shane and Hayden both white-knuckle the edges of their seats, and desperately pretend they aren’t. Hayden sets up the fold-out table between them, and digs two partially-squashed protein bars out of his bag. He slides one across the table to Shane and peels open the other; stuffs half of it in his mouth in one bite and bugs his eyes out, a little, when he realizes it’s way too fucking dry and he doesn’t have any water. Shane, for his part, picks up his protein bar and cradles it between his hands, and he just—he just stares at it for a long, long time.

There was a moment, a couple years back, where Ilya scared the shit out of Shane. His first season with the cens, as April loomed closer and playoffs stretched further and further out of reach, Ilya started playing like he wanted to die out there. His shift times crept up from one minute, to two, to three. He gave up on passing to his wingers and fought his way up through the center every time the puck hit his stick; run after run at the goal that inevitably ended with him bowled over by an enthusiastic d-man. When Shane saw him after their last game, that year, it was impossible to bask in victory, or second-year-married bliss—Ilya was bruised practically head to toe. He looked like an apple that fell off the back of the truck and rolled all the way down Mount Everest. Fresh purple on his ribs, his shins, his thigh; healing yellow-green splotched over his cheek, his back, his forearms and the points of his shoulders. There was a cut in his lip, a gash in his brow. He was missing a toenail and another molar.

And Shane isn’t some blushing, shrinking violet. He knows exactly how violent the sport is. He knows what it costs. Hell, he’d had seasons like that of his own; playoff runs he powered through with cortisone shots and k-tape and double doses of ibuprofen, games he spent swallowing down puke, goals he’d scored with broken fingers. So, the bruises looked bad, but they weren’t what worried him. What worried Shane was everything else: how Ilya was tired and dull and mean; how he shoved Shane up against the foyer wall so hard he knocked the art right down to the floor and kissed Shane so hard he tasted blood; how Ilya had scowled, after Shane pulled away, and hissed oh, I see, you don’t want to fuck a loser. Shane had looked at him later that night, angrily scrubbing at his purpling skin in the shower, and thought, if he doesn’t win his next game he’s gonna fucking kill himself.

It wasn’t until later, when they were lying in bed next to each other, the atmosphere tense and awkward, that Shane checked the date and fucking kicked himself. March seventeenth. Ilya’s dad had died on the sixteenth. So, while Ilya was laid facing away from Shane and scrolling through Instagram, Shane googled Russian funerary practices. At ass-o’clock in the morning, Shane snuck out of bed and drove around Ottawa like a maniac, looking for pomegranates and wheat berries. When Ilya finally came down, two hours before Shane was due to bus back to Montreal, he stared at Shane, completely fucking baffled, while Shane frantically boiled the wheat berries on the stove and toasted walnuts in a skillet.

The fuck are you doing, Ilya had asked. Making kolyva, Shane had replied. For, uh. For your dad. And Ilya stared at him for a long, long time. Papa wasn’t religious, Ilya finally said, slow and uncertain. Shane had just shrugged and asked whether Ilya wanted to eat the kolyva or not.

It was shit, Shane remembers. He didn’t have time to soak the berries, or dry them properly, and he could tell. They were somehow too wet and too crunchy all at once. The pomegranate seeds he bought—packaged in a plastic container because he didn’t have time to peel one—tasted off, like they were about to go bad. He’d added too much sugar. Ilya took one bite and started crying; great, heaving sobs that Shane had never, ever seen from him before. I never got to say goodbye, Ilya had said, practically wailed, and Shane abandoned his shitty kolyva to pull Ilya close into his chest and rock him there, back and forth, until he finally calmed down.

 And that’s what’s stuck in Shane’s head, as he stares at that stupid fucking protein bar and tries not to cry. He thinks about making himself kolyva, alone in the house that used to be theirs, and eating it on Irina’s fine china because he’d do everything, anything to get just a little closer to Ilya after he—after he fucking died and left Shane all alone, and twin tears slip down his cheeks. What if I don’t get to say goodbye, Shane thinks, and a soft, hurt noise slips out of his mouth, and he leans in to press his forehead to that flimsy airplane table and cup his hands over the back of his neck, and god, he can’t do this. He can’t fucking do this. He doesn’t know how.

“Shane,” Hayden says. “Come on, man. You just played a six-point game. You gotta eat.”

“I can’t,” Shane mumbles, wet. He’s too busy trying to stop crying—swallowing down these big, heaving sobs that feel dragged up from the depths of his stomach; like viscera, like vomit. They’re gonna be in the air for two fucking hours, and anything could happen the entire time. Ilya could—he could—

“Feels like you’re gonna puke, right?” Hayden says, sympathetically, and lays a careful hand over top of Shane’s, and tries to gently pry it away from Shane’s hair. “I get it. But he’s gonna need you at your best, and you aren’t gonna be at your best if you get there half-starved and dead on your feet.”

And there’s the anger again, white-hot and incandescent. Shane raises his head and yanks his hand out of Hayden’s grasp. “Fuck off,” he spits. “What the fuck are you even doing here, anyway? It’s not like we’re really friends.”

Hayden rears back. “What the fuck? Where the hell did you get that idea?”

“I dunno,” Shane replies, sharp and acidic. “Maybe when I got fucking outed, and you didn’t say shit? Or when Ilya and I got fucking benched by the goddamn commissioner for almost three fucking months, and you didn’t ever ask me if I was okay—you just left me a voicemail about how fucking busy you were after the MLH’s bullshit investigation was finally over? Or maybe,” he says, and some long-buried vicious and cruel part of him crows at the hangdog look on Hayden’s face, “I stopped thinking we were friends when you invited yourself to my house and couldn’t even make it to the highway before you called me a liar on the car ride over.” Shane leans in, then, and goes for the fucking kill. “What kind of friend sits back and watches what our fucking teammates were doing to me this season without intervening? Where the fuck were you, Hayden? Did you not fucking care? Why the fuck did I have to get a fucking concussion before you talked to me again?”

For a long time, Hayden just sits there, some dumb, animal look on his face. And Shane feels how he imagines that girl in The Exorcist did after she projectile vomited all over the room; so fucking relieved, emptied out like a burst cyst, vaguely disgusted with himself. The tears haven’t stopped—they’re still streaming down his face, soundless and wordless, the way Ilya cried, sometimes, when he got home from therapy.

Hayden nods to himself. He taps his thumb on the narrow tabletop between them, nervous and frantic. “You’re right,” he says, after a long, long time. “I haven’t been a very good friend to you. But you were always a pretty good friend to me, even if you felt like you couldn’t tell me everything. You—” Hayden sniffs, and nods again, over and over, and rubs the back of his hand under his nose. “You kept me sane when Jackie had that emergency c-section with Arthur and almost died on the table. And I want to be a good friend, Shane. So, I’m here to return the favor.”

Shane’s eyes well up again, and he buries his face in his hands and cries for real. And just like that, Hayden is undoing his seatbelt and hunching next to Shane and pulling him into his arms at an awkward angle; Shane’s knees digging hard into Hayden’s thigh, Shane’s torso cranked around far enough that his spine pops, his face buried in Hayden’s chest. God, he’d had no idea. He missed Hayden so fucking much, these past months: like a lost limb; like a dead relative. And so, Shane cries for a long time. Salt stains Hayden’s navy-blue blazer and snot drips onto his pressed white dress shirt—the same walk-on outfit he’s been wearing for nine fucking years. And maybe that’s why they were friends for so long. Not because Hayden was some sort of planetary body or hanger-on, but because they were the same sort of person, deep down. Fucking boring people, who bought six identical shirts in slightly different colors because it was easier than picking out a whole wardrobe, and who didn’t really like going out because there was way more interesting shit to do at home, and who would probably get into way too into some ridiculously boring hobby after they retired, like mowing the grass or competitive hedge trimming. Shane hiccups a little wet laugh, just picturing it. Him and Hayden, years from now, poking at a dead patch in Hayden’s lawn with a screwdriver like that one crazy lawn guy Shane sees online sometimes. Ilya and Jackie would be there, laughing at them, sipping at ridiculous cocktails on the porch. At least, Shane hopes Ilya would be there. Please, god. Please, please.

Eventually, Shane runs out of tears. “Sorry,” he sniffs, and slowly peels himself off Hayden’s shirt. The fabric sticks to his face. He tugs his sleeve up over his hand and tries, futilely, to wipe away the nasty wad of snot smeared all over Hayden’s front.

“Shut up,” Hayden says, fiercely, into Shane’s hair. “Don’t apologize.”

“Everyone is gonna be so mad at you,” Shane says, quiet. “You could lose your job.”

Hayden huffs. He pulls Shane back in and squeezes him so tight it hurts. “I don’t give a fuck,” he promises. The plane vibrates, just a little; the intercom crackles to life and the pilot says we’re experiencing some light turbulence, if you aren’t already seated, please return to your seat and fasten your seatbelt until otherwise instructed. Hayden ratchets his grip tighter, for just a second, and then lets Shane go, and settles back into his seat. He slides the protein bar back across the table, and says, “okay, you’re okay. Eat your goddamn protein bar.”

Shane picks it up and peels off the wrapper. And it says it’s supposed to taste like cookies and cream, but Shane can’t really remember what Oreos taste like, and the protein bar just kind of tastes like chocolate-flavored whey powder. The texture is awful, too. Dense and sticky and dry. Shane barely manages to eat half before his stomach churns dangerously. And it doesn’t fix anything—Ilya is still lying in a hospital bed in Ottawa, intubated and sedated to the fucking gills, and Shane is still stuck on a plane that won’t be landing for another hour and a half—but his hands are shaking a little less, at least.

“C’mon, you should finish it,” Hayden says, and pushes the half-eaten protein bar across the table towards Shane, still partially clothed in its bright blue wrapper.

“I can’t,” Shane replies. The bit he’s had isn’t sitting right—his stomach makes an ominous burbling noise, and inside, his guts are twisting, turning; bubbling like fucking soup. He feels sweaty, a little, and dizzy, and sore, deep in his belly. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

“Okay, well, don’t do that,” Hayden says, faux-cheerfully, and just like that, Shane is tearing up again, and he can’t hold it back, and he’s fucking crying again, wailing like Ilya is already dead. Hayden blanches, and then Shane burps between awful, wretched sobs, and Hayden goes scrabbling through his bag, his pockets, the space under his seat. “Hey, hey, you can puke if you want, I was just joking. Here,” he says, triumphantly, and holds out a little paper barf bag. “Puke in this.”

And, so. Shane pukes in the barf bag. The protein bar tastes just as bad on the way back up. And then he goes right back to crying hard enough he can barely breathe, until he makes himself sick again, and the vomit level in the bag creeps dangerously high, and Shane’s face is so covered in mucus and bile and sweat that he feels disgusting, like a fucking animal. Hayden just leans in and rubs his back in careful, measured circles.

“Okay, you’re okay,” Hayden mutters, soothingly, nonsensically. “Hey, tell me something about Rozanov. Something you’ve never told anybody before.”

“He’s—” Shane breathes in, sharp, and his breath hitches, and he grasps, wildly, for the first thing he can possibly think of. “He’s scared of spiders? Like,” he sniffs, and wipes futilely at the mess on his face, and swallows down another mouthful of vomit. “He screams whenever he sees one,” Shane sniffs again, and feels something rising inside of him—tears or puke, he’s not sure which. “But he won’t let me kill them. I gotta get a cup—” Shane’s voice breaks, and his breath stutters, “—and take them outside. For him. Oh, god, what if I never get to take a spider out for him again?” Shane wails. “What if—”

“Hey, hey. You’ll get to take the spiders out for him again,” Hayden says, in that same, soothing tone, and keeps rubbing circles on Shane’s back like nothing is wrong. “You’ll be taking care of spiders for that man for the next fifty years, minimum.”

“But what if—”

“You’ve just gotta have faith, okay?” Hayden cuts in. “Don’t go mourning something you haven’t lost yet.”

“I don’t think I can do this without him,” Shane confesses, between bitter, shallow breaths.

“I’m telling you, dude, you don’t have to. He’s not dead yet. He’s just in the hospital.”

“He’s just in the hospital,” Shane echoes. And something in him eases, just a little. God, what a fucking mess. Shane peels off his blazer and uses it to wipe away the mass of spit and snot and fuck knows what else streaking down his chin. He takes deep, shuddering breaths, in and out, in and out. Hayden hands him a water bottle; Shane takes it, sips, and swishes the water around his mouth. He spits it out into the almost-full vomit bag and grimaces. He nods to himself, over and over, while Hayden rubs at his back. It’s gonna be okay, he thinks to himself. He’s not dead, he’s just in the hospital. Don’t go mourning something you haven’t lost yet.

_____

And so it goes. Shane rides the same cycle for the entire plane ride—they hit some spot of turbulence and he thinks to himself is this how Ilya felt when his plane went down? and then from there he convinces himself that Ilya is dying, or already dead, and then his heart feels like it’s about to burst out of his chest, and he’s crying so hard he can’t fucking breathe, and then the crying abruptly switches to a bitterness in his mouth and a queasiness he can’t shake, and then he pukes, and he pukes, and he pukes. Through it all, Hayden is right there, wiping Shane’s chin with his disgusting, crusty blazer, rubbing careful circles on whatever part of Shane he can reach, babbling on and on until he hits on something reassuring or out-of-pocket enough that Shane stops crying for a minute or two. And then, inevitably, Shane thinks to himself, what if Ilya is already dead? and the cycle starts anew.

He’s never, ever felt something like this before. He’s been scared, sure, but this feeling—the prey animal too-quick beat of his heart in his chest, the churning in his gut, the tears and the vomit, the intense urge to curl into a little ball like a baby still in the womb, the fucking shaking in his hands, the vague I-need-to-shit feeling that never goes away no matter how many times he sits on the tiny airplane toilet—it’s intolerable. It feels like he’s fucking dying. It’s more than Shane can possibly bear.

And then the plane touches down, and Shane jiggles his leg, frantic, while the pilot runs through the landing procedure. It feels like it takes years, decades, an entire goddamn century. He checks his phone while he waits, and he’s got so many texts and emails piling up; from Farah, from Coach, from the goddamn GM. Mom texted, too—the hospital kicked us out, we’ll be at home if you need anything. The door finally pops open and Shane tears out of the airport like a bat out of hell; Hayden chasing after him and muttering jesus fucking christ, how can you still run this fast after you barfed up literally everything in your stomach.

The car is there, just like Mom promised, and it takes them to Queensway Carlton, just like she promised. The press are circling the fucking building; in their shitty vans with channel numbers painted on the side, across the street in front of bulky cameras, prowling the parking lot with their phones clutched in their hands. Jesus fucking christ. Shane is going to find whoever leaked this shit and hang the body from the rafters at Canadian Tire Center like it’s a fucking cup banner.

The car drops them right at the door; he hears a couple distant calls of Shane! Shane! but he ignores it, and nobody is brave enough to try and follow him through. Inside, Queensway Carlton is quiet and eerie. It smells like rubbing alcohol and fresh laundry and lemon. The lights seem too bright. The floor squeaks under his shoes. It makes Shane think, inexplicably, of walking through an airport in the wee hours of the morning. To his left, a long countertop stretches, divvied up with frosted glass partitions. Each one has a chair and a computer behind it, but most of them are empty—the only person in the long row of check-in desks is a woman wearing plastic-framed glasses and drab dark blue scrubs.

For a long moment, Shane stands in front of this woman, tapping his heel against the floor and twisting his hands together. He stares—her hair looks a little greasy, or maybe sweaty, and her lips are a little chapped, and she looks bored, tapping away on her computer. Her name tag says Marie in block, bold letters.

“How can I help you?” she finally says, after a long, awkward moment, and pushes her glasses up higher on her nose. She peers up at him, and there’s that familiar spark of recognition there, but she doesn’t really do anything—just sits there and waits for Shane to reply. Thank fucking god. If anyone asks him for an autograph right now, he’s gonna break another finger on their face.

“I’m here to see Ilya Rozanov,” Shane replies. “I’m—” he fishes his wallet out of his pocket and hands over his marriage license, which is a little creased and worn after riding around in his back pocket for the better part of almost four years. “I’m his husband,” Shane finishes, lamely, as Marie takes his marriage license and peers at it.

“Visiting hours ended at nine,” she says, blithely, and hands him back his marriage license. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“Please,” Shane bursts out. Tears well up in his eyes, again, and his knees go a little weak; preemptively ready to get down on the floor and beg. “I’m married to him. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Marie hesitates for a long moment. “Can I see your marriage license again? And a copy of your ID?” Shane hands them over; she takes them and holds them about six inches from the end of her nose. “Are you his care partner?” she asks, eventually.

“I—” Shane swallows. Behind him, Hayden steps in closer and steadies Shane with a careful hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a person that a patient designates as especially important to their recovery. If you’re one of Mr. Rozanov’s care partners, you would be able to stay with him 24 hours a day. In fact, we encourage care partners to stay with patients as much as possible. Especially in the ICU.”

“I don’t know if I’m Ilya’s care partner or not,” Shane replies, and his voice goes all wobbly and wet. A rising swell of shame and guilt and intense, awful regret creeps up the back of his throat. “We, um. We never really talked about medical stuff. I don’t know if he ever updated it after we got married.”

“That’s okay,” she replies, and smiles at him, reassuring. “Since you’re married, I think it’s a safe bet that Mr. Rozanov would want you to be one of his care partners.” She gives Shane his ID and his marriage license back, then taps at her computer and clicks a few things. A printer somewhere to his left shudders and comes to life; she stands and plucks out a single sheet of paper. It’s still warm when she hands it over. “Here. Fill this form out for me, and I’ll get you added in our system.”

So. Shane finds a chair upholstered in scratchy, worn teal fabric, and steals a pen from Marie—she keeps them in an ivory coffee mug that just says UGH in big black letters. He fills in the form by rote; name, date of birth, relation to the patient, and on and on. Hayden just stands next to him, holding both of their duffels, not saying shit.

The big ball of feeling in Shane’s gut winds tighter and tighter. He doesn’t know what to do with it all, doesn’t know whether he’s more scared of finally getting in to see Ilya tonight, or bouncing off the hospital’s clunky bureaucratic system and having to wait until tomorrow. He wonders what Ilya looks like right now—probably bad, he thinks, but he can’t fucking picture it. The closest he can come is Ilya’s smirking face, circa 2015, younger and meaner, sporting a fresh shiner and a missing front tooth when they hooked up after one of the most intense hockey games Shane has ever played. He’d been laughing, then. He’d felt Shane tonguing at the missing tooth when they kissed, and he’d pulled back and smiled wide and said so this is what does it for you? Men with no teeth? Maybe Scott Hunter will fuck you if you ask him very nice. This Ilya, here in the ICU, won’t be like that. He’ll be—be—fuck.

“Perfect,” Marie says, when Shane gives her the paper back. She sets it on the desk next to her, and starts typing something on her computer. “You can head up to the ICU, it’s on the third floor. Head straight down this hall, hang a left, and head up the stairs just past the Tim Hortons. It’s a closed ward, so you’ll need to use the phone outside the door to call and ask to be let in. Let the charge nurse know you’re Mr. Rozanov’s care partner, and she should let you in.” She stops typing, briefly, and looks up at Shane, some sympathetic look splashed across her face. “Your friend won’t be able to come with, though. I’m sorry about that.”

“No big deal,” Hayden says, before Shane can reply. “I figure I can head over to your house and grab some stuff. New clothes, blankets, pillows, that kind of thing.”

“Thank you,” Shane replies, barely above a whisper.

Hayden shakes his head. He claps Shane on the shoulder. “It’s the least I can do, dude. Go check on your man.”

And with that, Hayden turns and leaves, back out the way they came. Shane hears him, briefly; the crowd of reporters outside shouting was that Hollander with you, any word on Rozanov, and Shane hears Hayden yell will you fucking vultures get the fuck—before the door closes behind him, and the noise fades out, and the only thing Shane can hear is the gentle hum of the air conditioning and a faint ringing in his ears.

Shane’s hands are fucking shaking. He’s sweating through his socks, his boxers, his crisp white undershirt. He kind of feels like he needs to shit again, even though, by this point, he knows there’s nothing in him to shit. He turns, and he starts down the white-painted hallway, towards the Tim Hortons. Towards Ilya, wherever he is. God, god. He hasn’t even gotten in to see Ilya yet, and he’s already falling to fucking pieces.  

_____

The ICU isn’t nearly as welcoming as Marie’s floor when Shane finally gets there. There are no chairs, no couches, no helpful desk with frosted glass partitions. It’s just a double set of beige doors, with teeny tiny slit-like windows in each. There’s a sign on the left-hand door that says STOP! No Food Or Drink Beyond This Point. Next to the door is an off-white old-school phone—the kind with a bulky receiver and a curlicue cord. Shane picks it up with trembling hands and clutches it to his ear. For a long moment, all Shane hears is dial tone. The phone rings and rings and rings. And then, just when Shane feels like he’s about to cry again, the line picks up.

“Nurse Lavoie with the critical care department,” the voice on the other end says. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“Shane Hollander. I’m Ilya Rozanov’s care partner? I’m here to see him.”

“I’m sorry,” Nurse Lavoie says, but she doesn’t really sound all that sorry. “He already has a care partner with him, and we only allow one at a time after hours. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

“What?” Shane clutches the phone so tight his knuckles go white and bloodless, and the old, careworn plastic creaks beneath his fingers. His breath picks up, harsh and rabbit-quick. “Who the fuck is in there with him?”

“Let me see.” There’s a shuffling noise on the other end of the line. “The other care partner we have on file for Mr. Rozanov is a Svetlana? Svetlana Vetrova?”

Shane’s heart stops for a long moment, then restarts at double his usual resting rate. What the fuck is she doing here? She’s made it pretty fucking clear that she wants nothing to do with Ilya over the years. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Nurse Lavoie sounds colder when she replies. Meaner. “That’s the name I have listed here.”

“Can’t you kick her out?”

“Mr. Rozanov is a man in critical condition, not a toy to fight over like immature schoolchildren,” Nurse Lavoie snaps. “Miss Vetrova has just as much right to be here as you.”

“Please,” Shane begs. The tears pooled at the corner of his eyes finally well over and drip down the sides of his nose. “I need to see him. I just—he’s the love of my life.” Nurse Lavoie says nothing. God, Shane feels fucking unhinged, wild, so goddamn desperate. Like a wild animal willing to chew its own leg off to get out of the bear trap. “I’ll do anything,” he tries again. “I—” he bites his lip and sniffs, “I’ll give you a million dollars cash.” He waits, but Nurse Lavoie still says nothing. “Two million? Please, I just—” Shane’s voice pitches up, higher and higher, and goes all wobbly and wet. “I’m losing my fucking mind. I need to see him. Please. Please, please.”

Nurse Lavoie sighs; a loud, gusty, impatient thing. “Tell you what,” Nurse Lavoie says. “Why don’t I have her meet you in the exterior visitor’s room? I’m sure the two of you can work things out between yourselves.”

“Yes, yes, I can do that,” Shane blubbers. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Don’t thank me. If I hear so much as a whiff of trouble, I’ll have security escort both of you out.” And with that, the line goes dead in his hands. Shane peers around him, and spots a glass door to his left. The sign overhead says EXTERIOR WAITING ROOM, and there’s a piece of paper that says this room is for ICU visitors only taped right below the slit-like window. Inside, the baby-blue room is stuffed full with two scratchy dark blue couches. Tables are crammed wherever they’ll fit—on the tables, Shane spots piles of brochures, random assortments of magazines, half-empty bottles of hand sanitizer, and a spray of pink roses in a tall glass vase. Distantly, he wonders if they’re leftover from a patient, or donated from a funeral home or something.

Shane sits on one of the scratchy couches, and he hunches over; elbows on knees, clasped hands pressed tight to his mouth, leg bouncing up and down, up and down, in time with his rabbit-quick heartbeat. He wonders how close Ilya is—whether his room is pressed just on the other side of the wall, or secreted away deeper inside. He wonders if Ilya knows what’s happening to him. If he can hear the doctors talking over his lax body. He wonders what Ilya would think about Svetlana being here, seeing him like that, talking to the doctors on his behalf. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know shit. All he knows about Svetlana are a handful of childhood stories he’d pried out of Ilya when he was fuck-drunk in the wee hours of the morning; how they’d met when their mothers signed them up for the same figure skating class when they were children; a bubblegum contest that Svetlana won, and then got the gum in her hair, and roped Ilya into trying to wash it out for hours and hours before they gave up and cut her hair so badly that Svetlana’s mother screamed when she saw what they’d done; misspent teenage summers sneaking into clubs and doing lines in the bathroom when they needed a break from the dance floor; Ilya escaping to Svetlana’s house whenever his parents got into it, or later, after Irina died, whenever his dad or his brother got mean. She’d been his first kiss, but not his first fuck. She’d followed him out to Boston. She was there for both of Ilya’s parents’ funerals. And then Ilya moved to Ottawa, and Svetlana never really forgave him for it.

He’s not sure how long he’s waiting. Could be ten minutes, could be ten fucking years. And then, like a bad fucking penny, there she is, wearing what looks like her version of work clothes—a high-necked gray dress and shiny black heels. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her mascara is hopelessly smudged, and she looks angry, Shane thinks. Tired, and scared, and so fucking angry. And, well. Two can play at that fucking game.

“The fuck are you doing here?” Shane spits, despite himself. He knows he should be politer, at least—Mom always used to say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar—but Shane feels like he’s got nothing left to hold himself together. He’s so fucking angry, and so fucking tired. Too fucking tired for manners.

“I was listed as an emergency contact,” she replies, cool as anything, and crosses her arms. She’s got goosebumps, Shane notices. He doesn’t particularly give a shit. “I came as soon as I got the call. Someone had to be here.” Svetlana eyes Shane up and down, clocks Shane’s rumpled walk-on suit and the angry set to his mouth that he can’t be bothered to hide, and her nostrils flare. “And now here you are, wanting to kick me out.”

“I’m his fucking husband,” Shane hisses, over-loud, and then catches himself, and furiously whispers, “and it’s not my fucking fault the ICU will only let one of us back there at a time!”

For a long moment, Svetlana stares him down. And then, her chin drops, and her shoulders come up, and she sighs, soft and sad. “I know. I just—” She runs a hand through her hair and scratches at the back of her head—the same way Ilya does, sometimes, when he’s about to say something serious and is trying to play it off as casual. “I don’t want to leave him.”

Shane laughs, despite himself, bitter and mean. “Seriously?” He stands, then, and gestures towards her with open palms in a universal what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about motion. “You haven’t actually talked to him in over a year.”

Svetlana just raises an eyebrow, and cocks her head to the side. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

Shane blinks. Blinks again. “You called me a car crash.”

She looks confused for a moment, then briefly closes her eyes and mouths something to herself. “He told you about that?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, flat. “He did.”

Shane remembers it so fucking clearly. It’d been right after Ilya’s trade became public knowledge. He’d gone over, to Ilya’s place in Boston, and found Ilya laying in bed, the shades drawn, empty bottles of Green Mark on his nightstand, his ashtray full of cigarette butts. He’d peeled it out of Ilya in pieces—Svetlana had come over the second the news hit and said are you fucking serious? Throwing your entire career away and moving to a whole new country for some mystery man? Who the fuck is this fucking guy? And Ilya just said he’s the love of my life and left it at that, which pissed Svetlana off even more. How many fucking times, she’d said, have you tried to throw your life away? How many times have you called me at two in the morning, on your way home from the club, because you were about to hit Longfellow Bridge and needed me to talk you out of driving your car into the fucking Charles? You think he will put up with it when you get low and need him to stay on the phone until dawn? You are throwing your entire life away for this man, she’d said, and you won’t even tell me his fucking name. You let me find out you were leaving Boston from fucking Twitter. And Ilya had yelled, wordless, and pitched his half-full glass across the room. The fuck does it matter, he’d cried, it’s my fucking life, and I’m not throwing it away, I’m just, fucking, prioritizing different things! And Svetlana told him, no, you are on the highway, and you are staring at the bridge, and you are driving your fucking car off a cliff because some mystery man asked you to do it. He is a fucking car crash waiting to happen, Ilya. And Ilya had snarled don’t fucking talk about him like that, and Svetlana replied, I will say whatever I like, and the fight went on and on, until Svetlana said fine. Go to Ottawa. Throw away your career for some enterprising gold-digger who breaks your heart and leaves you with nothing, see if I give a shit.

She’d left, after that. And for a week, Ilya smoked, and he drank, and he cried himself to sleep every night, and Shane did his best to pick up the pieces, but he doesn’t think he ever really put them back right. Ilya and Svetlana never really made up, either. Last Shane heard, Ilya texted to wish her a happy birthday, and she left him on read. It tore Ilya up, of course, but secretly, Shane hoped they’d never make up. He’d already been predisposed to dislike Svetlana, because she’d had Ilya first, she’d fucked Ilya first, and then when he heard about that fight, he fucking hated her. How dare she? How dare she? Ilya was too soft-hearted and forgiving to hate her for long, so Shane carried it for him; a burning and abiding thing that Shane knew would linger until the day he died.

“In my defense,” Svetlana is saying, “Ilya is… oh, how do I say this.” She pauses and bites at her lip, and something about it pisses Shane off for no goddamn reason. “He likes to take care of people, no? You know, he sent his brother two, three hundred thousand dollars a month, like clockwork, right up until his papa died. And he is the same with the people he fucks.”

Shane scoffs. “You broke his fucking heart,” he snaps, “and then you ghosted him for years, and your only defense is that you were trying to keep him from spending his own fucking money?”

Svetlana levels him with a look. “I was trying to protect him,” she snaps back. “Maybe not how a nice Canadian boy like you would’ve done it, but then, I am not a nice Canadian boy.” She eyes him up again, head to toe, and that single manicured eyebrow creeps back up her forehead. “You don’t believe me,” she says, incredulous. “You know what he was like when we were children? He would do anything I asked. Anything at all. I mention some boy calling me a name I don’t like, the next day Ilya breaks his nose after school. I say Papa cut off my credit card, he takes cash from his brother’s wallet and gives it to me. And it is the same,” she says again, “for everyone he loves. He whined and moaned and cried about it, but he still bought Alexei his drugs. His papa wanted him to play hockey, and here he is. So, when he starts talking about this mysterious Jane, who he loves more than anything, and then he is telling me he has no money, and then he is saying he will move to Ottawa less than a year later…”

Shane huffs out a breath, somewhere between outrage and an incredulous, voiceless laugh. “What the fuck are you even implying?”

“I thought you were using him,” she says, simply. “It wasn’t about the money. I thought you convinced him to give everything to you, and it scared me. He’s generous, our Ilya,” she continues, and something in Shane rankles at that, at our Ilya coming from her mouth. “And he is sad, deep down, and very lonely. It makes him vulnerable to a certain kind of manipulation. For years, my biggest nightmare was some bottle-blonde bitch showing up with a baby on her hip demanding marriage. So yes, I thought maybe Jane was a bloodsucking leech, and I was honest about it. It’s hardly my fault that he didn’t want to hear it.”

And what the fuck is Shane supposed to say to that? Nothing good. Nothing that will get him into that room with Ilya. If she’d really thought that, and she really loved Ilya, why the fuck did she abandon him like that? Shane would’ve followed Ilya to Ottawa, if he was in her shoes. He would’ve wormed his way between Ilya and whatever gold-digger latched onto him, and done his damnedest to pry them off like plucking ticks after a long hike in the summer. And she just fucking gave up. Cut the ties between the two of them like it was nothing and left him. God, if he’d been marrying someone other than Shane, someone like the bottle-blonde bitch from Svetlana’s nightmares…

“For what it’s worth,” Svetlana continues, “I’m glad I was wrong about you, and I do regret leaving things the way I did. And now,” she says, teary-eyed, “I might never get to tell him how sorry I am.”

Seeing her cry should provoke some sympathy within Shane, but it doesn’t. It just pisses him off even more, and he’s run out of patience. “I’m sure that sucks,” he says, coolly, “but I don’t really care. I’m going to go see him. I’m going to stay with him the entire night. Are you going to make me call security or not?”

For a long, tense moment, they just stare at each other, the two of them; their eyes rimmed red and sore, mouths pressed flat and trembling. And then, Svetlana slumps, and collapses down onto the ugly blue couch with her head cradled in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I am being selfish. And very stupid.” She breathes in, deep, and then lets it out in a big loud whoosh. “He is in room 310A. All I ask,” she says, her voice wobbling right on the edge of tears, “is that you let me back in to see him again.”

“I will,” Shane promises, but he’s not even looking at her anymore. He’s throwing the words over his shoulder, already on his way to the phone mounted on the wall, picking up and calling Nurse Lavoie to beg, again, to be let in to see Ilya. Only this time, the door opens. This time, Nurse Lavoie meets him at the entrance and demands that he wash his hands, and watches him with hawkish, beady eyes while he scrubs up to his elbows in the bathroom sink. This time, Nurse Lavoie leads him back through the half-darkened halls until she gets to a room, indistinguishable from the rest, and gestures Shane inside.

There’s a little glass window in the door, in the same slit-like shape as before. The glass has wire embedded inside in a grid pattern for some reason. Shane’s not really sure why. And then he catches a glimpse of Ilya’s golden curls through the narrow window, and his body moves before he even thinks to tell it to go. He watches, as his hand reaches out for the handle, and pushes down on the lever, and he feels simultaneously like he can feel every tiny imperfection in the metal beneath his fingertips and like he’s watching his hand move from very far away. The door yawns open, and there he is. Finally. Oh, god. Shane crosses the room in three big strides and swallows, over and over, around the hideous lump in his throat.

He’s breaking out, is Shane’s first, inexplicable thought. He’s got acne low on his jaw. And the rest of him—god. His mouth is open around a clear tube, his lips pale and chapped, his chest rising and falling in time with a low whoosh from the ventilator next to the bed. He’s got two black eyes and his nose has a crooked bent that wasn’t there before. There’s an ugly bruise on his forehead, an IV taped to the back of his hand, a clothespin-like heartrate monitor clipped to his index finger. His hair is a fucking mess—dark with sweat near his hairline, wild and frizzy towards the ends. Shane lifts a shaking hand and carefully combs his fingers through it.

“Hi, baby,” he says, trembling, and moves his hand down to cup Ilya’s cheek. He traces the line of his lower lip, right where it meets the breathing tube, and then he leans forward and presses a kiss there, at the cracked corner of his mouth.

If this was a fairytale, or a shitty lifetime movie, Shane would sweep into Ilya’s hospital room, teary-eyed, and lay a tender, careful kiss on the corner of his mouth, next to the breathing tube, and Ilya would gasp awake like a golden-haired princess. But this isn’t a fucking movie, and Shane isn’t a fucking prince. The machine monitoring Ilya’s heartbeat keeps on beeping at the same, steady pace, and the ventilator hisses low, and Ilya doesn’t so much as twitch. He could be dead already; his body still breathing but the best parts, the parts Shane loves most, already gone. It’s not fair, a part of Shane wails. It’s not fucking fair.

“I love you,” Shane says, thick and wet. He takes Ilya’s hand in his, oh-so-careful, and sinks to his knees beside Ilya’s bed, his forehead pressed to Ilya’s limp fingertips. It feels like he should say something else, but his eyes are welling up again, and his throat feels thick and heavy, and the words slip away like sand through a sieve. So, he just kneels there, like a kid saying their bedtime prayers, clutching tight to the only god he’s ever known, and he curls into himself, and he cries until he’s got no more tears left to give.

Chapter End Notes

i did say he wouldnt be dead :) only one more chapter to go (and maybe an epilogue) and that one will actually be niceys i promise. might take a bit longer than usual tho bc while the menty b has somewhat resolved, i now have to relearn math for reasons, which will take up. a lot of free time.