Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

F/M, Gen, M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike & Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike, Ruby Pike & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Hayden Pike's Children, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Yuna Hollander

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, emergency contact, Kid Fic, But now how you think, Found Family, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Press and Tabloids, Accidental Outing, still not how you think, everyone's still chill, Outing, Relationship Reveal, Crack Treated Seriously, Media Forced Friendships, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Protective Hayden Pike, Overuse of italics, egregious use of em dash, probably more things I forgot tbh

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of The Mortifying Ordeal

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-23 Words: 24,730 Chapters: 20/20

Mr. Emergency Contact And The Mortifying Ordeal Of Being Outed By A Child

Summary

Everything that happens after Mr. Emergency Contact

Hayden has to release a statement, the kids can't stop talking, the press are asking questions, and Shane and Ilya are very very tired of hiding this.

***GO READ MR. EMERGENCY CONTACT FIRST***

Notes

Welcome to the Unhinged Longer Continuation.

If you have not read "Mr. Emergency Contact" I highly recommend you go read that first. This will make little sense without the starting place.

Some things before we begin: Timeline? What timeline? I don't know her and neither do you. The Metros! Are not as Evil as normal. It's a subdued evil. A hidden Evil. Their homophobia is not extreme. More Hockey Typical chirping. This is a feel good fic, goddammit. Also everyone is very stupid. If there is a logical decision to be made, they have not made it.
Okay, that's all.

Thank you Dani, love of my life, for sticking through this wild process with me. Every send them love here as @the_navistar_carol or on tumblr as @the-navistar-carol

I'm going through and adding this to my notes because apparently this is needed now: FUCK AI. No AI was used in the creation of this fic.

Chapter 1: Shane Hollander’s Realization That His Boyfriend Has Ruby Pike

Shane’s phone buzzed against the bench for the third time since he’d sat down, and he refused to look at it.

He wasn’t supposed to have it out during drills — especially not when Hayd was in the middle of one of his “stop skating like you want me dead” speeches for the rookies. But something in Shane’s chest tightened before he even realized it. Something sharp. Instinctive. 

The way it did with Ilya or the kids. 

It would only take him a second to look, and he was getting water anyway. Odds were, it was his mom sending him emails about the upcoming Gatorade commercial. He was supposed to be doing it with some tennis player he’d yet to learn the name of. Seeing an email would give him some peace of mind. Let him get back on track, if nothing else.

It was not an email. 

It was a dozen text messages from Ilya.

So the tightening anxiety in his chest was now psychic, which was just wonderful. Fantastic, even. Totally not going to cause problems or anything the next time he catastrophized about leaving the stove on even though he hadn’t cooked anything in months. 

Ilya never texted him during practice. Not anymore. Not unless things were catastrophically on fire — metaphorically or literally, since Ilya had once set an oven mitt ablaze and thought texting Shane “small problem” was an adequate summary. 

But this was not that. 

I have Ruby. 

That was it. Three words. No context. Plain. Soft. Terrifying, because it was one in the afternoon and Ruby should have been at school.

Shane felt his lungs freeze in his chest, and he definitely was going to start reading more into his panic attacks after this. Somehow, he’d known — really known — that it was about both Ilya and the kids before he’d even picked up his phone.

A puck clattered at his skates before he could read the other fourteen messages. 

“Hollander!” Hayden whined, making his way across the ice. “If you’re letting me yell at the rookies by myself so you can check fantasy football, so help me I wi–” 

Shane didn’t even let him finish, just shoved the screen between them and focused on Hayden’s face instead of how many people were around. Too many people who could glance over at any second and figure out who Lily really was.

He didn’t fucking care right now.

He watched Hayden’s expression change in real time. The goofy snark he wore to practice, which turned into annoyance when he saw who Shane was talking to, which morphed into confusion as he saw his daughter’s name. 

And then it was just terror. 

“What do you mean he has Ruby?” Hayden asked. His voice came out a little too loud, sharp enough that a few of their teammates glanced over. Neither of them had the presence of mind to care. Notice, maybe, but not care.

Shane didn’t answer the question, mostly because he couldn’t. His brain had gone white-out, thoughts completely wiped clean. He didn’t know what the hell Ilya meant by that. He turned the screen back towards himself and scrolled with numb fingers.  

Ruby is sick. Fever. School called me. 

I am taking her to apartment. 

Please do not panic. 

Which, of course, was the thing that made him panic. Immediately.

Hayden ripped off his gloves as Shane read the messages back to him. “I didn’t get any calls!” he yelled, panic already bleeding into his movements. His jersey was halfway over his head.

“Your phone’s on the bench,” Shane reminded him. His throat felt tight, and his voice sounded so distant in his own ears. 

Hayd swore loudly enough to get the whistle blown at him from across the ice. Neither cared enough to do anything but ignore the shrill noise. They were already on the bench, hands shaking as they tore their skates off.

Coach Theriault skated over to them, halfway through a speech about professionalism before he saw their faces. He’d seen panic before, but never on both of them at the same time. “What’s going on?” he asked. 

“Family emergency. Kids,” Hayden huffed as he pulled off the last of his padding. Shane was only one shin guard behind him. “We need to go. Now.” 

Coach didn’t argue. It helped that Coach knew the Pike kids. Knew their names. Knew their faces. Knew they were impossible not to love. It helped even more that he saw Shane’s reaction — frozen pale, as if someone had scraped him hollow and filled the space with ice.

Maybe that was why they were met with little resistance when they bolted. Maybe Coach thought it was bad, because there was no other reason he’d let both his captain and his alternate literally run away from practice.

Hayden took off for the locker room without even bringing his gear with him. Shane followed, helmet dangling from his fingertips, in a similar state of panic. 

In the hallway, when they finally had a chance to thoroughly check their phones, they were met with a barrage of messages. Each of them had about twenty missed calls. Hayden’s voicemails had stacked to five — three from the school, one from Yuna Hollander, and one from Ilya Rozanov. Shane had a similar resume — one from the school, one from Yuna Hollander, and three from Ilya Rozanov. 

Shane registered the names without processing them. He didn’t press play.

“What did he say in the rest of the texts?” Hayden asked, throwing his car keys at Shane’s head because there was no way he was driving. 

Shane read aloud. 

I am taking her to the store. She needs medicine. 

People are staring. 

Please do not panic. 

There was that line again. Like Ilya thought telling him not to panic was the same as telling him to breathe. Either way, Shane was panicking, and he was decidedly not breathing. 

Ilya wasn’t even supposed to be in Montreal! Ottawa didn’t play here for another month, and now their captain was just… here. Strutting around town with Hayden Pike’s child like that was a completely normal thing to do.

This was a disaster. A multi-layered, career-impacting disaster.

Hayden dragged his hand down his face as he climbed into the passenger side. “Jackie’s gonna kill me,” he mumbled. 

Shane didn’t say what he was thinking, because he knew he would start yelling: you put him as a fucking emergency contact? What the fuck is wrong with you? 

He also didn’t say: thank god you put him as your emergency contact! What would we have done if Ilya wasn’t here? 

Beneath the adrenaline and the dread was something small and almost shamefully warm. Hayden trusted Ilya. He trusted Ilya with the kids more than anyone else in the world. And Shane… Shane trusted Ilya with the kids more than he trusted himself. 

Even so, Shane’s stomach wouldn’t settle. His hands kept tightening around the keys he still hadn’t put in the ignition, like he needed their weight to keep himself from shaking. That, of course, did not stop him from trembling like an old, crusty dog as he finished reading out the messages. 

We are home. She is asleep. 

Tell Pike I did not kidnap her. 

Despite it all, Hayden snorted. “That idiot.” 

Shane’s chest loosened just a bit, and he found himself laughing at the absurdity. The panic hadn’t subsided — that wouldn’t happen until he saw Ruby with his own eyes and the fallout of whatever the hell just happened had passed — but it was a small relief. He’d take it.

Chapter 2: Hayden Pike Writes His Statement (God Help Us All)

Hayden did not wake up intending to threaten arson, but by 9:17 AM he had drafted three separate messages that could, with very little imagination, be used as evidence in court. 

None of this was his fault.

He had played a perfectly normal hockey game last night (two assists). He had tucked his four children into bed. He had gone to sleep. He had woken up. He had eaten a protein bar that tasted like despair. 

And then he checked his phone. 

49 missed calls.

14 texts from Shane. 

12 voicemails. 

A link from his agent that began with “Um… should I know something?” 

And a partridge in a fucking pear tree: 

Ilya Rozanov Carrying Ruby Pike Through Grocery Story Like A Feverish Koala

Front page. Trending hashtag. Fan edits. People tagging him, personally, with is this your secret love child? 

“Oh my god!” Hayden slammed his laptop shut and then immediately reopened it, because unfortunately he needed to fix this disaster. He thought this would die after a day — it had been three. “I’m going to burn down Montreal.” 

From across the kitchen, Jackie took a long sip of her coffee. “Good. Start with the Metros’ PR Office.” 

He loved this woman. He loved her so much it made his teeth ache. 

He fucking hated whatever the hell was happening right now. 

So he opened a Word document and stared at the blinking cursor. It felt like it was mocking him. He needed a statement. A good one. Polished and official and not the version he’d already typed, which read:

STOP ASKING MY CHILDREN ABOUT THEIR UNCLE ILYA OR I SWEAR TO GOD—

Which, okay… strong opening sentiment, but according to his agent, “not professional” and “potentially threatening.” God forbid he approach this like a hockey player would. No, that was “legally concerning” or some other kind of bullshit “not meant for the public.” His family wasn’t meant for the damn public, but here they were anyway. 

He rubbed his face so hard he was fairly certain he’d wiped his stubble clean off. No need to shave today. “Why is this my life?” he asked no one in particular. Maybe the universe, or whichever god was currently laughing at him. 

Jackie snorted and set her cup down, hands warm and steady on his shoulders. “Because you decided to put Ilya as our emergency contact,” she replied, with far too much joy. 

Hayden wanted to shrink into a bug just so he could be deliberately stepped on. “That was a joint decision,” he argued, because it was. He and Jackie were a team. They made decisions about their children together, including — but not limited to — who went on the emergency contact list.

His beautiful, stunning, aggravating wife just hummed and rubbed his shoulders. “Yes,” she agreed. “But you suggested it. And turned in the paperwork.” 

He groaned again and slammed his face down on the table. 

For the next two weeks, Hayden suffered through two steps of PR crisis management. He absolutely refused to admit any of it. 

Step One: Accept the situation. Over his dead body. He refused. 

Step Two: Write the statement anyway. This step nearly killed him. 

After three weeks of near-constant questions, he cracked his knuckles and started writing. He would never ever admit how long it took him. And if he did, it would only be to prove how hard it was to say something nice about Ilya Rozanov.

“In light of recent events–” He deleted that as soon as he typed it. Too formal. Too stiff. Not a single person on the internet would believe he willingly typed and posted that. 

“Regarding the photos circulating–” Nope. Absolutely not. That sounded like someone had leaked his nudes, and he was not interested in adding another rumor on top of whatever the hell people were already saying about Rozanov.

“Ilya Rozanov is NOT the biological father of my children.” He deleted that one so fast he probably sprained his finger. 

Hayden Pike ended up slamming his head onto the counter again, and this time it landed with a thunk. “Oh my god.” This was the worst day of his life. He had broken ribs on the ice, the birth of his last child was almost catastrophic, and this was the worst day of his life. “How do I make people stop being weird?” 

“You don’t,” Jackie said casually, flipping through her magazine like she couldn’t care about his meltdown any less. “You just redirect them.” 

If he didn’t value his life, and if he didn’t love her so damn much, Hayden would have started yelling. “Great. Fantastic. Wonderful.” 

Jackie had also been dealing with this for three weeks, and he knew that. People were making plenty of jokes about him and Rozanov being secret lovers, but people meant it when they speculated about Jackie. They thought she was having an affair. He knew it was worse for her. 

She set her magazine down with a huff, and suddenly Hayden felt really, really bad. “Call Yuna,” she said. 

He shook his head hard enough to count as whiplash. “Absolutely not.” If there was one thing he was not going to do, it was call Yuna Hollander and ask how to make the public stop speculating about him fucking her son’s boyfriend.

Jackie raised a brow — her mom look. “Do you want this done correctly?” 

Hayden resisted for not even five seconds before he caved. He FaceTimed her, because he knew Yuna didn’t answer texts from panicking men. Unless it was her son, but that was predictable and understandable. 

She picked up on the first ring. 

“Hayden,” she greeted with a smile. Her tone, however, suggested she knew exactly what was going on. “Do you need help constructing your alibi?” 

Hayden scoffed at the insinuation. He expected this kind of chirping from Shane or Jackie, but Yuna?

“I do not need an alibi!” he snapped. “It’s a statement.” 

Yuna just hummed, which he hated because it made it feel like she was his mother and not his best friend’s. A line that, after all these years, had blurred in ways he hadn’t expected it to. “And is the goal to convince people that you are not in a throuple with Jackie and Ilya?” she asked. 

He swore he died on the spot. Soul gone and body unfortunately still present. The last thing on earth he wanted to think about was being in any kind of relationship — poly or otherwise — with Ilya Rozanov. And Jackie…

Jackie just laughed at him. She was wheezing. 

“Can we focus, please!” Hayden begged. He didn’t think either of these women were taking this as seriously as they needed to. “My kids are being questioned at school. Reporters won’t stop calling. Someone made an Instagram edit of Ilya Rozanov rocking my child like he was auditioning for fatherhood!” 

Yuna blinked at him with a faint smirk on her lips. “I’ll need the link to that.” 

He was going to lose his mind. He’d already lost his mind. This wasn’t real. It had to be a nightmare. He surely had to wake up soon. 

“No.” 

“Hayden.” It sounded like she was chastising him. Like he was a toddler.

“This is extortion.” It wasn’t his proudest moment — not as a father and not as a man — but Hayden huffed and sucked his teeth like a petulant child. “Fine. I’ll send it.” 

Yuna was already pulling out her laptop on the other side of the screen, a grin lighting up her face. “Good! Now read it out.” 

Well, his night was far from over. He already knew she was going to cut him off after the first sentence. There was a reason he’d called her instead of his agent. There was also a reason his agent was so cheap.

Reluctantly, he opened his draft and read it aloud. He didn’t think he’d been so self-conscious in front of his wife since the first time she’d seen him naked. “Ilya is a friend. We trust him with our children. Please do not harass our kids about this. They are minors.”

He read the whole thing in a painfully flat, monotone voice. It sounded like a fucking hostage script.

There was silence. Jackie wouldn’t look at him. Even Amber had stopped her babbling as if she were silently judging him and wishing that Ilya Rozanov really was her biological father. 

Yuna sighed and rubbed her forehead. “That’s very sweet, dear. Very heartfelt.” She paused as if she was choosing the words that wouldn’t set him off before she realized anything was going to set him off. “It’s also completely useless.” 

“It’s honest!” he argued. 

“You need proximity without implying intimacy,” Yuna told him. Sometimes, Hayden wondered if Hollanders used big words just to fuck with him. Even worse was the fact that Jackie always nodded along like a student taking notes. “Something vague, but warm enough that no one cares to investigate further.” 

Hayden could feel his hair turning gray. He was half convinced he’d be bald after this call. “What the hell does that even mean?” 

“It means you need to say…” Yuna looked upward, exasperated. For not the first time, Hayden realized she kind of was his mother at this point. “You need to say, ‘we’ve been good friends for many years.’ Placate the romantics.” 

The water he’d been drinking went straight into his lungs, and suddenly he was coughing like he’d never get another gasp of oxygen. “Absolutely not!” 

Friends for many years. Hayden was barely friends with Ilya Rozanov even in impolite terms, and he wasn’t going to put that into the world when people were already claiming he was sharing his wife with the motherfucker. 

“You are good friends!” Jackie called over her shoulder as she headed toward the bedroom to put Amber down for the night.

“We’re not—” Maybe death by a thousand cuts wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe this was worse. “Oh my god, we’re colleagues!” 

“Hayden.” Yuna was firm with him now. There was no more room for arguments, and he probably needed her to be firm — he didn’t think he’d get it done if she wasn’t. “You let the man babysit your children. Because of Shane or not, he’s your friend. Unfortunately, you have to tell the world that now, unless you want people to keep thinking he’s sleeping with your wife instead of your best friend.” 

Pissy was not an adequate enough word to describe what Hayden was right now, but he knew she was probably right. She was definitely right, actually. That was proven by the simple, horrifying fact that she was willing to discuss her son’s sex life for the sake of optics.

Ilya Rozanov was Hayden’s friend, and now it was public knowledge. 

They crafted the final draft together. It was mostly Yuna, but Hayden aided in the emotional distress. And it was… 

Well, it was pretty fucking spot on.

Due to a lack of blood-relatives nearby… Good. Objective. Logical. Mr. Rozanov kindly stepped in to pick her up and ensure she received appropriate care. Neutral. Kind. Non-litigious. We ask that the privacy of our children be respected. Threatening. Strong. Further intrusion will be handled appropriately. Ah, yes. The Lawsuit Warning™. 

His ancestors wept as he typed the sentence about being close friends for many years. Yuna said he needed to include it to “calm the shippers.” Hayden actually found a gray hair later that night when Jackie read that part aloud and cackled — again. 

He was never going to hear the end of this. Not from Ilya. Not from Shane. Not from anyone in the locker room in Montreal or any future team, should he not lie down and die in Metros blue. Ever. 

He hated every part of it, and it worked. The blogs calmed down. The press moved on. The secret love child rumors finally died. Most importantly, people stopped asking his daughter if she had two dads now.

He posted it, looked at Jackie, and took a deep, deep breath. “I’m still burning down Montreal.” 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Pike Family Official Statement Regarding Recent Speculation

“With a lack of blood-relatives nearby, our family has always relied on a close circle of trusted friends for support. Among them is long-time family friend and fellow professional hockey player Ilya Rozanov, who was listed as an emergency contact for our children. 

When our daughter fell ill at school and neither parent was immediately reachable, Mr. Rozanov kindly stepped in to pick her up and ensure she received appropriate care. We are grateful for his help and for the attention he gave her until a parent could get to her. 

We want to make it clear that this was a simple matter of logistics and trust. Our children’s well-being remains our highest priority, and we appreciate the respect of our privacy and our children’s privacy during this time. 

We are asking the public and the media to refrain from further speculation and, importantly, not to approach or question our young children about this situation. They love their Uncle Ilya just as they love any other member of their extended family. Any further intrusion will be handled appropriately.” 

– Hayden & Jackie Pike

The internet, predictably, exploded. Millions of posts. Billions by sunset. 

The top post of the day read: “long-time family friend” is the FUNNIEST lie i’ve ever read. 

Chapter 3: The Locker Room Responses

The Metros: 

Hayden walked into hell. He and Shane walked into a room that smelled of sweat and immaturity, and he knew — immediately — that he was not going to survive this. The second he walked in, every conversation stopped. Dead silence. Twenty grown men looked at him like they’d been waiting. 

And then the chirping started. 

It was JJ who started it, because of course it was JJ. “Salut, best friend!” he shouted, with the glee of a man about to ruin someone’s life.  

Hayden stopped dead in his tracks. “No.” 

It was too late. The room exploded. Everyone lost their damn minds. Absolute mayhem.

“Besties!” Drapeau sang. 

“Where was my invite, Pike?” 

“Oh my god, friends for years!” Gagnon hollered. “You guys go way back.” 

Hayden shook his head and tried to fight the sudden heat on his cheeks. Tried to ignore it, mostly. “Don’t.” 

Nobody listened.

“Do you and Rozanov have a secret handshake?” That was from the rookie. The rookie, who had been alive for approximately five minutes and owned exactly zero awards. 

If Hayden’s pride wasn’t hurt before, it certainly was now. Why the hell was the rookie chirping him? Hayden had two goddamn Cups! Two. He had more than earned some respect in this locker room.

“Do we wear suits or jerseys to the wedding?” 

“Is there merch yet?” 

“Does he have a drawer at your place?” 

“Do you exchange friendship bracelets or just children?” 

Hayden snapped because he really didn’t know what else to do. “Shut. Up.” 

“No way you wrote ‘family friend’ with a straight face,” Koch laughed. “Dude, that’s what we called my mom’s boyfriend before the divorce!” 

He dropped his gym bag like he was afraid of throwing it. It hit the floor hard enough to echo. This was hell. This was actually hell. “Do. Not.” 

He could recognize that his voice had gone dangerously low. He’d been on this team for years — long enough to know these guys, and long enough to know exactly what Koch was implying.

It wasn’t just about Hayden. It could just as easily have been about Jackie. Her name wasn’t said because it didn’t have to be.

Shane, who was quietly trying to blend into the drywall, was not spared. JJ slung an arm around him and gave him a violent shake. “So, Capitaine, how does it feel to know your boyfriends are best friends?” 

Shane choked on air so violently that the team medic started to move towards him. “I don’t—he’s not—we’re not—” he sputtered.

Hayden dropped his head into his hands and tried to pretend he wasn’t embarrassed as all hell. Worse, he needed to save his best friend before he could save himself.

The chirping had always placed him and Shane as the team boyfriends, but that was just teasing. They said the same thing about Shane and Roz’s rivalry sometimes. But somehow, this was the closest they had ever gotten to the truth, and Shane was going to crack if Hayden didn’t stop it.

“Please stop talking.” 

“No!” Comeau shouted. “We will never stop talking!”  

The rookie was still at it, wheezing like he had nothing better to do with his time. “You wrote a press statement about your enemy boyfriend and you expect us to ignore it?” 

Drapeau was sprawled face-down on the bench, laughing so hard he was gasping and kicking his skates in the air. “Trusted family friend! Man, you’re in a secret polycule with Rozanov!” 

“The statement was normal!” Hayden tried to defend himself, even though he knew none of this fell into the realm of normal anymore. “And I am not secretly dating Ilya Rozanov!” 

Shane was still trying to blend into the wall, but managed to mutter, “He’s not secretly dating anyone.”

Which wasn’t even slightly suspicious. 

Hayden might actually punch him for his inability to construct a convincing lie. Not now. Later. Privately. More than once. And it wasn’t even Hayden who was secretly dating someone.

Half the room turned to look at Shane. 

“Oooh,” JJ smirked. “So you’re the one who wrote that line.” 

Shane nearly swallowed his fucking tongue. “What? No! I just — No!” 

Olsson clapped Hayden on the back. “Man, if you wanted to come out as Rozanov’s bestie, you could’ve just said so.” 

“I am not—!” Hayden hadn’t felt this flustered in years. He was a well-respected man. He didn’t get flustered. Not like this. “I’m not Rozanov’s anything!” Which, historically, was what people said seconds before they were proven deeply incorrect.

It wasn’t helpful, and wasn’t true. At this point, he was practically Rozanov’s brother-in-law, though no one other than Shane knew that.

The room exploded into another fit of chirping. Someone cupped their hands around their mouth and shouted, “Does Roz know you’re embarrassed of him?” 

Hayden looked about three seconds away from committing manslaughter, and Shane had collapsed back onto the bench in hopes he might actually disappear this time.

“This is why they shouldn’t have let him post it himself,” Shane muttered. 

The Centaurs: 

The Centaurs’ group chat had been on fire for weeks, but that was nothing compared to when the statement dropped. It had been out for five minutes — five minutes — when Ilya walked into the locker room with the grim determination of a man walking into court. 

He was almost immediately tackled into a half-hug, half-intervention, and all of them were chanting “Dad! Dad! Dad!” 

The Ottawa Centaurs did not hold back. At all. 

“Ilya!” Bood sang in a voice that was almost grating on Ilya’s ears. He threw an arm around Ilya’s shoulders, enjoying this too much. “Is there something you want to tell us, bud?” 

“No,” Ilya grumbled, peeling him off. “There is not.” 

LaPointe held his phone up like it was the holy text. “Then why does this statement say that you and Pike are good friends?” 

“We are not,” Ilya snapped. It was bad enough that Shane teased him about warming up to Hayden Pike — he did not need the entire Centaurs roster to weigh in. 

“Bro!” That was Hayes, who always talked too much about things Ilya didn’t want to talk about and always noticed things Ilya very much did not want him to notice. “You picked up his child from school.” 

“Listen!” Ilya pointed to each of them in a fury. “I panicked. She was sick. She clinged. I am victim!” 

“That’s exactly what a stepfather would say,” Bood said under his breath. 

Ilya turned to him and threw his hands up in the air. He wasn’t doing this. Not today. “I do not have children!” he barked, jabbing his finger back into his own chest. “I am not step-anything!” 

LaPointe pushed his phone into Ilya’s face again. “Yeah, but the statement from Pike...” he turned the screen back to himself, and Ilya almost wished he hadn’t, because he hadn’t had the chance to read it himself yet. LaPointe whistled as he reread the statement. “Dude, you’re like, in the family section over there in Montreal.” 

“I did not write that!” Ilya insisted. Russians didn’t blush — but if they did, Ilya was probably doing it right now. As a test of science and definitely not because he was embarrassed.

“What about the part of the statement that says you’ve been friends for many years?” 

Ilya was going to be physically sick. He could handle being called a friend of Jackie. He could handle being Uncle Ilya to the kids. But admitting he was friends with Hayden Pike was a privilege reserved for Shane Hollander only. Not even Pike knew that Ilya considered him a friend. At least, he hadn’t heard it from Ilya’s mouth. “I did not approve the wording.” 

“Oh, we know,” Chouinard said sympathetically. “None of us think you have friends–” 

“Hey!” 

“–but the internet really thinks you do now!” 

Haas clapped his hands together like a kindergarten teacher announcing snack time, and if this were any other situation, Ilya would have applauded him for finally chirping someone. However, he wished it wasn’t this situation. “He’s shy! Like newlyweds!” 

Ilya grabbed a water bottle and considered using it as a weapon. He could handle the teasing about Pike — even if he hated it — but the only player who was ever going to be called his husband was Shane fucking Hollander, and that was not up for debate. “Pike is not my husband!” 

The room erupted into laughter. It might have been the most in-sync Ilya had ever seen his team, and he desperately wished it wasn’t at his expense. Surely there were better team-bonding exercises than watching their captain suffer.

The three babies laughed until they cried. 

“Man said husband, not friend!” That was Holmberg. 

“He skipped five steps to marriage.” And that was LaPointe. 

And that meant the only one left was–

“Dude, you’re cooked! Deep fried.” There was Young. 

Ilya closed his eyes. This was mutiny.

Dykstra flopped onto the floor like a dead fish, clutching his stomach. “I can’t believe you let another man put you on their emergency contact form! You just got hockey-married to Hayden Pike!” 

Oh, if only he knew who was on Ilya’s emergency contact form. He would pass out. As it was, Ilya was pretty sure Coach was the only one who had seen S. Hollander sitting neatly at the top of that list, and he’d strategically not asked many questions. 

“Stop saying we are married!” Ilya shouted. Again, the only player — person — he wanted attached to him with the word marriage was Shane Hollander. Not Hayden fucking Pike. 

“Then stop acting like a husband!” 

More howling. More giggling. Ilya wanted to sink into the floor, and he hadn’t even read the damn thing yet. 

“Bro really went from ‘Pike is enemy’ to ‘Pike is family’ in one school pick up.” 

“Fastest character arc in the NHL.” 

Hayes jumped up on one of the benches, waving his arms around like an idiot. “Gentleman, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of our dear captain, Rozy, and his beloved, long-time family friend–” 

“I will end you!” Ilya snarled. He couldn’t do this. He was going to die. “I am not — I am not his family friend!” 

“Yeah, you’re right,” Young agreed easily. Too easily. Something else was brewing. “You’re more like... family husband.” There it was. 

Ilya threw the water bottle. Consequences be damned. Maybe if he hit someone in the head, Coach would send him home and he wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore. Unfortunately, Hayes caught it without looking, smiled, and threw it back at him. 

LaPointe squinted at his phone. “Wait! Wait!” he called out, holding his hand up until the room quieted. “This says you’ve been good friends for many years. How many is many? You’ve only spoken to Pike without swearing for, like, two months. And that’s a generous estimate.” 

Ilya was going to kill Hayden Pike. It was no longer a question of if, but when. He was going to get in his car after practice today, drive two hours to Montreal, and murder his boyfriend’s best friend in cold blood. And then he would actually be the father figure to those four children. 

“This is slander!” Ilya declared. 

“Slander?” Bood asked incredulously. “Buddy, you signed off on being an emergency contact for the guy.” 

Actually, no, he hadn’t. That was an ongoing argument in the Pike-Hollander-Rozanov group chat, but the team didn’t get to know that. Ever. Especially not after this much teasing. 

“Emergency besties!” 

“Godparent vibes!” Well, technically yes. Not that they knew that. 

“Stepdad energy.” No. 

Ilya lost his shit for exactly one second. He hurled his water bottle again, this time aiming for his cubby, and took a grim sort of satisfaction in how it exploded. “I am not anything!” 

At which point LaPointe turned his phone another infuriating time. Although this time, there was a picture of Ilya and Ruby in that supermarket with the hashtag StepDadRoz splashed across the top of it. 

Ilya turned around and walked out of the locker room. The team cheered as if he’d just scored in the Stanley Cup finals.

Chapter 4: Ilya Reads The Statement And Immediately Loses His Entire Mind

Ilya was glad to find that Shane was already at his home in Ottawa when he returned from practice. He didn’t ask when Shane had gotten there, or how he’d managed the two-hour drive after his own practice without falling asleep at the wheel. None of that mattered. Shane was here. That was enough.

Somehow, Ilya had managed to go all day without reading the actual statement from Hayden in its entirety. He’d taken some truly brutal chirps from his teammates on the ice, but aside from their out of context quotes, Ilya still didn’t know what it said. 

He read it while Shane cooked dinner. The statement itself wasn’t very long, but Ilya must have reread it twenty times before any of it sunk in. Then, when it finally had, he practically hurled his phone across the kitchen. 

Shane frowned at him. “What’s wrong?” 

Ilya sat up at the counter straighter, staring at his boyfriend as if he might as well have slapped him across the face. “He said we are good friends,” he whispered. Very, very quietly. 

Shane blinked and set down the spoon he’d been stirring with. “Yes?” 

It came out as a question — questioning Ilya — and that only irritated him more. How could Shane not see the problem? How could he not understand the implications of this? 

Ilya threw his hands up in the air. “He called me—” he reached over the counter and picked his phone back up, staring at the screen like he might be able to make the wording change if he willed it to be so. “He called me family friend.” 

Shane sighed. “Well, technically, moya ly–” 

“No!” Ilya snapped, disregarding the fact that Shane was about to use a Russian term of endearment. He didn’t snap at Shane often. Chirps, sure, but never snaps. Not serious ones. “No technically. Is slander, Shane! Defamation of character!” 

Shane’s eyes crinkled in the way they did when he tried to hold back a laugh, and Ilya currently hated that he knew what that looked like. “It’s not slander.” 

“He said I am family!” Ilya continued, his voice increasing in volume at a rate he knew he couldn’t control. “Do you understand? Do you know what this means?” 

Somewhere in the chaos, Shane had rounded the kitchen island and wrapped his arms around Ilya from the back — Ilya had barely noticed it happening until Shane’s weight settled against him. The tension very slowly eased from his shoulders at the touch. 

“What does it mean?” Shane asked, and it was almost soothing. 

Ilya lowered his voice, taking a deep breath as he settled back against his boyfriend. At least he had this. If he had nothing else, he had Shane’s weight at his back. “It means people think I like him,” he whispered, voice tight. 

Shane promptly lost the silent battle he’d been fighting. He laughed loudly into the back of Ilya’s neck, which felt more like a betrayal than Hayden outing the Rozanov-Pike (Rozanov would come first in that hyphen, thank you very much) friendship to the world.

“This is not funny,” Ilya insisted with a groan. “People online making edits. Saying we have history. Saying Pike is jealous boyfriend, that he left you for me. That Jackie is co-wife.” 

Shane wheezed. The traitor. The absolute Brutus. “Co-wife?” 

Ilya twisted on his stool and shoved his phone into Shane’s face. Tweets. So many tweets. An endless flood, like they might never stop coming.

@nhlpapertrails · 22min
THE PIKE-ROZANOV LORE GOES CRAZY!!!!

@legallythatsgay · 21min
they hated each other SO MUCH IT WAS LOVE

@haydensstick · 47min
You don’t write “trusted family friend” unless you’re in a queerplatonic soulbond. Sorry that’s just science.

@redstringrink · 2hr
Idk how but somehow Shane Hollander is still a boyfriend in this polycule. 

@i_am_unwell_nhl · 12min
The Pikes calling him UNCLE ILYA???? I’m SORRY????

@metrosfan2435 · 46min
“family friend” is a loaded narrative phrase historically used to signal suppressed intimacy in sports media. who said that?!? ANYWAY—

@rozygirl81 · 17min
NOT ME TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE SHIP NAME
PIKEZANOV? ROZAPIKE? HELP

Shane was laughing so hard he almost cried, and Ilya was doing his very best to not have an aneurysm about it. Or scream something he couldn’t take back. Or run out the door and spend the night at David and Yuna’s. 

Instead, he threw his body forward onto Shane so that he had to focus on holding him up instead of laughing. “I’m ruined,” Ilya whined. “My reputation is gone. No one will ever fear me again.” 

Shane rubbed his back, which would have been comforting if Ilya didn’t know how much of an asshole Shane Hollander really was. “Oh, sweetheart… they didn’t fear you before.” And then he had the audacity to laugh when Ilya made the noise of a small, wounded animal. “Do you want me to call Hayden?” 

Ilya shook his head violently against Shane’s shoulder. “No. Do not call Hayden.” He spat the name with so much venom that even he could admit, privately, that it was dramatic. 

“Why not?” 

“He called me friend,” Ilya repeated for probably the one time too many. Really, it wasn’t that Ilya disliked Pike — he was a great friend to Shane and had done a damn good job so far of tolerating Ilya’s place in their lives — but he did not want to be tied to him in any way publicly. 

Ilya Rozanov was not a friend guy. He certainly was not friends with Montreal’s fifteenth-best player. The only other player he had ever publicly claimed as a friend was Shane Hollander — and that had been a lie they were both comfortable with.

Shane pressed a kiss to the side of Ilya’s head, which did little to ease the tension he felt. “You are friends,” he pointed out. 

Ilya pulled back, staring at him in open horror. Oh, they were about to fight. “Why would you say that to me?” 

And Shane just laughed at him again.

Chapter 5: Ruby Pike Explains Her Situation At School (Second Chaos Bomb)

The day after the statement dropped, Ruby Pike returned to school like normal. Significantly more talkative, and blissfully unaware of what “public relations” meant. 

Her teacher, Mrs. Alder, had been very tuned in to everything that had been happening over the last three and a half weeks. During the first week, she had mostly just been worried about the oldest Pike child. After all, she had been the one to send Ruby to the nurse’s office that fateful day. 

To say that Mrs. Alder hadn’t been… intrigued… would have been a lie. Like most of the population of Montreal, Ottawa, and anyone with even a passing interest in hockey. In hindsight — if she had truly known what was going to happen — she might have waited another two hours before calling Ruby’s parents. At least until the Metros were off the ice.

In the third week after the incident, Ruby had disappeared from school again, along with her siblings. It had been hard to watch, but Mrs. Alder understood. The questions — too many of them — had been coming from places they shouldn’t. From adults who should have known better. From students who had picked up on the bad habit.

Mrs. Alder almost applauded the Pikes for stepping in when they did. For recognizing that their kids needed to be removed from the situation until the adults could get it under control. Pulling the kids had been the right call.

But now Ruby was back, and Mrs. Alder was knelt down in front of her, tying her shoe. “Are you feeling better, dear?” she asked, trying her best to avoid the elephant currently occupying the room. 

Ruby nodded, humming in the cute way she always did. “Yep! Uncle Ilya fixed me.” 

Mrs. Alder froze. Okay. So they weren’t avoiding it. At all. She had seen the statement, sure, but she also knew that famous people made bullshit statements all the time.

“He did?” 

“Uh-huh!” Ruby said proudly, pulling on her backpack straps. “He made me noodle soup, and hot fudge, and he rocked me like this–” She demonstrated by flopping onto Mrs. Alder’s shoulder and swaying back and forth. 

No less than three children gasped behind her. And then there was chaos in her classroom unlike Mrs. Alder had ever seen before. Not because it was loud or frantic, but because she couldn’t stop it any better than she could stop a train from slamming into a stalled car on the tracks.

“My mommy says you can’t have chocolate when you’re sick!” Parker cried out. 

Ruby Pike shrugged her shoulders. “Uncle Ilya said it’s fine as long as you don’t tell Uncle Shane,” she said. 

Mrs. Alder stood up very slowly. “Oh. Okay.” 

It would be easier if she didn’t know who Uncle Ilya and Uncle Shane really were. But she did. Her husband was an avid hockey fan, and even if he wasn’t, the Metros home arena was ten minutes down the road.

Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander weren’t just hockey famous. They were famous famous. Photoshoots, and brand partnerships, and dating movie stars from franchises that Mrs. Alder paid to see in theaters. 

If it was just Hayden Pike, everyone might write Ruby off as just another kid of a professional hockey player. He was exceptional, don’t get her wrong, but Mrs. Alder doubted anyone outside the hockey world would pay much attention to Ruby’s home life. 

But add in the fact that Hayden Pike’s best friends were apparently two of the most famous athletes of their time… 

Well, that was a home life harder to ignore. 

And then Ruby kept talking, and it was difficult for Mrs. Alder to pretend she wasn’t hearing it. Repeat it, no — anything the kids said in her classroom was confidential — but she couldn’t very well pretend she was deaf. 

In line for recess, Ruby’s classmate Arianna asked, “Why did the hockey man take you?” 

Ruby’s face scrunched up. She did that when she was thinking really hard about something. Like addition. “Because I was hot.” 

“Temperature hot?” another kid asked. “Or like what my aunt says Timothée Chalamet is?”

Ruby’s face stayed all scrunched up while she considered it. “Both?” she answered.

Mrs. Alder watched the yard monitor make the sign of the Catholic cross and wondered how much worse this could realistically get.

Then at lunch, the final blow came. The thing Mrs. Alder could no longer keep to herself. Not because she wanted to blab, but because there were enough teachers within earshot that it was going to get out regardless. Ruby said the thing that sent the already-faulty staff group chat straight into DEFCON 1.

Jade Pike pulled her twin and their friend Mia close as if she were about to tell a secret, and then proceeded to whisper loud enough for three classes to hear. “Daddy said only family can be emergency contacts.” Jade’s eyebrows raised significantly. Smugly. “Which means Uncle Ilya is basically kind of our other daddy.” 

There was a hush over the playground, and Mrs. Alder could practically feel her inbox filling up with emails from parents and reporters alike. This was the kind of nightmare that followed someone into retirement. She was going to be old and gray before people stopped asking her about the year she’d taught the Pike twins. 

A boy in Grade Three stopped kicking the ball he’d been preoccupied with and turned his body towards the girls. “You have three parents?” he shouted. 

Ruby Pike looked like she’d been caught, even though she hadn’t been the twin to say it. “I don’t know!” she yelled back. “Maybe!” 

The chaos was equal parts loud and unstoppable. There were teachers involved now. A kindergartener had started crying. Six different kids asked Mrs. Alder if having three parents was “allowed.” A girl in Grade Two loudly proclaimed that Ilya Rozanov was her uncle as well — there was no evidence that her parents had ever known anyone in the hockey world. 

By pickup time, half the school was convinced that Ilya Rozanov was a stepdad. Or a half-dad. Or a secret guardian. Or that someone in the Pike family was polyamorous. One of the older kids suggested that Ruby and Jade Pike had been adopted three times. Some thought it was all of the above. 

Ruby Pike went home happy and healthy as a clam. 

Everyone else wanted to die via woodchipper. Or Zamboni.

Someone from the parent-aide team emailed the administrative board it’s happening again, with no context. No one asked for clarification because no one needed it. When Mrs. Alder got home, her inbox was full, her husband was watching the Metros game, and she strongly considered drinking straight from the bottle for the first time since college.

Chapter 6: Hayden Pike Snaps

The Metros had planned a normal press conference. The abnormal part of it was the fact that Hayden Pike had to be there. Shane was a constant. The captain. The one people usually wanted. 

Except right now. 

Right now, the room belonged to Hayden. Every camera had been angled towards him from the moment he sat down — because of that damn statement he’d made. Or, more accurately, the one that had been written mostly for him and launched onto the internet like a grenade.

That was what the press wanted. Not the game. Not the standings, nor the man beside him. Just that.

The Metros wanted a normal press conference led by their captain and his alternate. They did not get one. 

The second Shane finished his recap of the game and the floor opened for questions, it was a bloodbath. Hayden was sure he’d seen cleaner fights on the ice. The reporters practically trampled each other for the chance to shove a microphone in his face. 

It took several minutes before they could get the room to calm down long enough for Hayden to pick one of the raised hands. “Pike, can you elaborate on your relationship with Ilya Rozanov?” 

Shane, mid-sip of water, instantly inhaled the wrong way and started choking. Hayden’s eye twitched dangerously. 

“No,” he answered. Simple and mostly effective. Probably. 

The reporter looked like he’d expected the pushback. To be fair, he’d been working with hot-headed hockey players almost as long as Hayden had. He probably knew exactly how this was going to go.

“Just to be clear,” the reporter continued. He was from SportsNet, Hayden thought. He’d been there for press conferences before. “To clear up public confusion — since your statement says you have been ‘good friends for many years—’”

“We are not good friends,” Hayden interrupted. His wife was good friends with Ilya Rozanov. His best friend was very good friends with Ilya Rozanov, if you could count fucking as friendship. Hayden Pike tolerated Ilya Rozanov out of necessity, circumstance, and the deeply annoying fact that Rozanov was just a great fucking guy.

Someone off to the right — someone on the media team — had the audacity to snort at his answer. Hayden just lost it. It was the final amount of pressure to make the volcano erupt. 

“We are not friends!” he shouted into the microphone. And even though he knew the volume probably caused the mic to blow out, he steamrolled on. “We are barely acquaintances. We are colleagues at best! We actively dislike each other—”

He should have stopped there. He did not.

“—we have dropped gloves on the ice multiple times. I once threatened to gut him with a skate blade. He told me he hoped my slapshot would break my own ribs!” 

It was too much information. Half of that was chirps from their early games — the ones before Hayden had any inkling that Shane liked him at all. Those chirps were left on the ice for a reason. Hayden was not a violent man outside of the game, and he knew Ilya wasn’t either. 

Fuck, since when was he Ilya instead of Rozanov in Hayden’s head? 

Worse than the outburst was the dead silence that followed. It always seemed like these reporters were prepared for anything a player threw at them. Even when Shane locked up or blushed or tripped over his own incriminating words, someone always had a safety question ready. A reset. A way out.

But right now, with Hayden sitting in front of them breathing heavily, they had nothing. 

A brave woman from the back row — the independent media outlets — was the first to think of something. “So… why did he pick your child up from school?” 

Beside him, Shane made a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously like please don’t say it. But Hayden was an idiot, and he was angry, so he threw his hands in the air and said it anyway. “Because we trust him!” 

Someone dropped a microphone. One of the cameras jerked violently to the side. Marcel, the Metros PR manager, hid his face in his hands. 

A third reporter raised a tentative finger from the middle of the pack. “So, just to summarize: you don’t like him, you’re not friends, and yet, you trust him with your children?” 

“Yes!” Hayden snapped, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. For him, it was. Trusting Ilya with his children wasn’t complicated, it was natural. On particularly bad days, when Hayden was feeling the worst about his parenting, he thought Ilya might even be better with the kids than he was as their father. He didn’t have to like the guy to understand that he was a damn good caretaker. “What’s so hard to understand about this?” 

The conference ended early with a fuming Hayden Pike and a very flustered Shane Hollander. The clip hit 4.3 million views within 18 hours of it going live. It only went more viral after it got quote tweeted: 

@sirthisisahockey  · 1day
Pike describing his relationship with Rozanov is EXACTLY how my cat feels about me

Chapter 7: The Pike Household Explodes

Montreal was playing Ottawa tonight, which meant Jackie had three blessed hours alone to sit her four kids down and fix this before either Hayden and Ilya killed each other or Shane suffered a mental breakdown. The press had been bad enough, but now they were getting emails from school. Fifteen emails, to be specific. All from different members of staff or the parent-aide group. 

The only person who had emailed more than once was Mrs. Alder, who sent daily updates about whatever the hell Ruby and Jade were saying in class. The woman was a godsend — she didn’t ask questions and promised to keep her mouth shut in the faculty group chat unless otherwise unable. 

At this point, the Pikes were going to buy her a private box at the arena for life and invite her to the damn WAG group chat as a thank you. Jackie stopped picking up the kids from school because she was half-convinced she’d kiss their teacher — on the mouth — for being so relentlessly normal about everything. 

Yeah, Jackie had to fucking fix this. 

Now she knelt in front of her four children — Ruby, Jade, and Arthur lined up on the couch, Amber sprawled on the floor — with her hands folded tightly together. “Okay,” she sighed. “We need to talk about Uncle Ilya.” 

Arthur, her sweet, sensitive boy, raised his hand immediately. “Did he die?” 

Jackie paused, her brows knitting together. It was one hell of a leap. She didn’t even know where he could have possibly gotten that from. “No, honey. He didn’t die.” 

Then Jade, her perpetual shit-stirrer, raised her hand next. “Is he moving in with us?” 

What was wrong with her children? Jackie had the occasional doubt — the kind every parent did — about whether she was doing the right thing, but this felt worse than that. This felt structural. Had she and Hayden permanently fucked them up?

Jackie dropped her head and hid her face in her hands. “Also no,” she said. “Uncle Ilya is not moving in.” 

Ruby, her most vocal child, gasped and sprang to her feet on the couch. “Is he in jail?” 

“What? No! Why would he–” Jackie sat down hard on the floor, whatever composure she had left officially gone. She had raised mini-Haydens. It was equal parts endearing and deeply, deeply concerning. “Why would you think he was in jail?” 

Ruby shrugged her shoulders and bounced back down into her seat. “I don’t know,” she answered. “He said the Metros wanted his head.” Ruby frowned. “I think that’s bad.”

Jackie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was already going poorly. The only thing keeping her upright was the knowledge that the hockey players would somehow make it worse. A conversation like this was one they needed to be excluded from, and it wasn’t like Jackie had anyone else she could call for help.

No one knew. 

“Listen,” she began firmly. “Some people are confused about why Uncle Ilya picked Ruby up from school. But we know it’s because he’s a trusted friend.” 

The phrase trusted friend had been repeated in their house about a million times in the last month. For the last week, she had made her three oldest children recite it before they left for school just in case people asked more questions. And every day, they managed to forget that answer before the first bell rang. Every evening, Jackie opened her inbox to another deeply alarming update from Mrs. Alder.

Ruby scrunched her face up and tilted her head to the side. “But Daddy said only family can be emergency contacts.” 

Sometimes Jackie wanted to strangle her husband. Only about half of those times were for sex.

“That’s not exactly what he meant,” she said gently. Honestly, Jackie knew where that had come from, and Hayden wasn’t wrong for telling their children that. 

It had started when Jade asked if the guy who wore the Admirals’ mascot suit could be their emergency contact. She’d asked because the guy had given them lollipops at a Metros-Admirals game. Of course, Jade didn’t know what an emergency contact actually was. All she knew was that it was the person who took care of them if Mommy and Daddy couldn’t.

Much like her husband, all it took to buy the love of Jackie’s kids was sugar. 

So, no, Hayden was not wrong for telling the kids that emergency contacts needed to be family. What he probably should have said was that family could mean a lot of things. 

Jade tilted her head, mirroring her twin like they’d rehearsed the motion. It was honestly a miracle Jackie could tell them apart. “So is he family or not?” she asked. 

“Well…” 

Arthur nodded along beside his sisters. “He’s Uncle Shane’s family.” 

Shit. That was a whole different flavor of family that Jackie did not know how to explain.

Because yes, Ilya was Shane’s family. Yes, Shane and Ilya were Hayden and Jackie’s (and the kids’) family. But no, they were not related. No, they could not talk about it. No, there was nothing wrong about Uncle Ilya and Uncle Shane being each other’s family. 

How the hell was Jackie supposed to explain NHL homophobia and politics to her four small children? 

She just froze. For the first time as a parent, Jackie Pike froze. “What?” 

Jade made an affirming noise in the back of her throat. “Yeah, Uncle Shane likes him more than other people. That makes him family.” 

“And they live together!” Ruby added, nodding along with more confidence than many politicians. 

As it turned out, her children were much more observant than Jackie had given them credit for. And much smarter. They connected dots that grown men hadn’t even managed to notice over the last ten and a half years. 

Jade shook her head at her twin, seemingly oblivious to the way her mother was about to have a panic attack. “No, they don’t. But Uncle Shane is always at Uncle Ilya’s house. And Uncle Ilya is always at Uncle Shane’s.” She paused and seemed to consider her next words before finally turning back to Jackie. “And Daddy said they’re extremely codependent. What does that mean?” 

Arthur raised his hand again as if waiting to be called on. However, he didn’t. Wait, that is. He didn’t wait. “I think it means they’re in love. Like Mommy and Daddy.” 

Jackie had a headache. They needed to stop talking in front of their kids. Immediately. 

“You cannot say that,” Jackie told them. It wasn’t quite a snap, but it was firm. An order spoken in the same tone they had heard both Shane and Ilya use on the ice. And her kids did know hockey, even this young. They knew Shane and Ilya were extra special hockey players. The kind who got to tell other players what to do without getting their teeth knocked out. “You cannot say that to anyone except me and Daddy.” 

“Why?” Jade asked. 

Again, Jackie couldn’t very well explain homophobia to her children. Children who were, at this moment, completely unaware that there was anything different about Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya loving each other. Because there wasn’t — at least not in this house. But outside… 

“Because it’s private,” Jackie decided, softer now. 

“Ohhhhh. I get it,” Ruby said, and Jackie was almost certain she absolutely did not. “Like how Daddy secretly hates the Leafs.”

Well. Jackie had said her kids knew hockey. 

She rubbed circles into her temples and silently reminded herself to make the boys buy her a spa day. Lord knew they could afford it on three professional hockey salaries. “Yes. Exactly like that. Private.” 

Arthur, who was normally so composed, threw his hands up in the air. “But they are in love!” he yelled. 

Jackie pointed at them like a drill sergeant. “You will not repeat that. You will not imply that. You will not suggest that,” she ordered. From the looks on her kids’ faces — even Amber’s — she was pretty sure they were starting to get the point. “You will not use the words love, marriage, boyfriends, parents, or polyamorous triad.” 

The kids stared at her, unblinking. 

Jade leaned over to Ruby. “What’s a triad?” she whispered. 

Ruby leaned right back into her. “Mia told me it’s like a triangle but inappropriate.” 

“Do not use the word triangle either!” Jackie added. And great, now the kids had to stop hanging out with their friend Mia. 

The meeting with the kids did not help. 

It actually made things catastrophically worse.

Chapter 8: Shane Gets Cornered By The Press

It was supposed to be an easy injury report. Drapeau was fine — out for practice tomorrow and back after the weekend. The kind of update Shane had delivered a hundred times without thinking. After a few of the boring questions, he settled back into a rhythm. These were easy. Predictable. Safe. He relaxed. Let his guard down. 

Big fucking mistake. 

A veteran reporter in the front raised her hand. Shane felt comfortable calling on her because he’d done it before. Actually, he thought she might have been working with the league longer than he had. He couldn’t remember a time she hadn’t been there.

“Shane,” she started, using his first name like they were friends. A lot of reporters did that after a few years of consistent interviews. Shane suspected it was less about familiarity and more about posturing — a quiet way to show newer reporters who mattered more. “There’s been a lot of speculation online regarding your closeness with Ilya Rozanov–” 

Shane’s soul exited his body live on air.Whoosh. This was no longer an injury report. Not the easy, boring questions he had prepared for. 

“Also about your closeness with the Pike family,” the reporter continued. “Do you have any comment?” 

He swallowed, leaned towards the mic and then back away from it. “No.” 

“Are you sure?” she asked. Her eyebrows were raised in the way reporters did when they knew they were on to something. “Because you’ve often been spotted with Ruby–” He visibly flinched. His whole body jolted at the mention of his niece. “–and recent pictures show her being comfortably carried by Rozanov. Would you say that you two share a parenting role?” 

“No!” The noise that followed was that of a small, dying animal. “She’s my niece!” 

Even that was too much information. He and Hayden hadn’t ever been quiet about their friendship, but it wasn’t like Shane had been publicly given the title of uncle. Ilya had. Which meant admitting he was an uncle to Ruby Pike was one step too close to admitting he was romantically and sexually entangled with his archrival. Was it too late for the Rapture to start?

God, he knew Ruby and Jade had been talking at school, that some nosy family members had posted those things online, but he didn’t think it had gotten this big. He’d been counting on the fact that no one actually listened to children’s gossip. But now there was a room of reporters leaning forward like they were about to pounce on him. 

If it was just a question about Hayden, he could handle it. Hayden was his best friend. Had been for years. Nothing about that was suspicious.

But Rozanov was another topic entirely.

Sure, people had noticed over the years that their rivalry had calmed down off the ice, that Hayden and Ilya were friendly now too, but that didn’t mean Shane could stand there and admit to… whatever it was that they clearly wanted him to admit to.

They weren’t coming out yet. Not like this.

He could feel the sweat beading behind his ears. That meant he was probably blushing. In front of everyone. 

A second reporter raised their hand from the back of the pack. “So you deny having a co-parenting dynamic with Ilya Rozanov?” 

Shane could barely breathe. The room felt smaller. Hotter. Like it was actively closing in on him. He was a terrible fucking liar, and everyone knew it. “I deny everything.” Which was objectively the worst possible answer.

The reporters could smell his panic. He was sure of it. The second he started to lose his grasp on sanity, they were circling like vultures waiting for him to drop dead. 

“Are you living with him?” someone asked. 

“No.” That wasn’t technically a lie. He was certainly staying with Ilya, but they lived two hours apart and worked in different cities for most of the year. They did not share a house. 

“Are you dating him?” 

Perfect! He didn’t have to lie about this either. Ilya was his fiancé, not his boyfriend. They were no longer dating. “No.” 

“Are you in love with him?” Well, fuck. 

The air punched out of his lungs in one pathetic whimper. “N-no comment!” he shouted, only to realize how colossally he’d fucked up. “Wait! I — I mean—” 

There was a flurry of camera flashes and murmured questions. Shane didn’t hear a single one of them. His entire body had locked up and frozen in place. His hands wouldn’t move. His mouth wouldn’t close. Even breathing felt optional.

He said the one thing that should never be said. In the corner, Marcel wouldn’t meet his eye. Part of Shane wanted to be pissed off that the man hadn’t stopped this as soon as the topic switched off of Drapeau — wasn’t media his job here? — but truly, he couldn’t blame Marcel for a situation he’d gotten himself into. 

“So, just to clarify…” This reporter and their damn clarification. It was the same one who’d tried to clarify with Hayden a few weeks ago. They really needed to stop letting this guy in the building. “You cannot deny being in love with Ilya Rozanov?” 

Shane felt his eye twitch. He was never setting foot in front of a camera again. “I deny everything!” he repeated desperately. “All things. Every single thing. I deny the past, present, and future.” 

Somewhere to his left, he heard a reporter whisper, “Oh yeah, he’s in love.” And Shane briefly considered swatting at a microphone and fleeing to the mountains to take a vow of silence.

In the end, he stopped the postgame interviews early with the unbelievable excuse that he needed to hydrate. He fled via panic-induced speed walking, which did not help his case. The clip was trending by the time he got back to the locker room. 

@lockerroomleaks_  · 2min
#DenyingEverythingIsAConfession

Chapter 9: Ruby Pike Talks To Reporters (And Reveals She Has “Other Parents”)

It happened so fast that no one could stop it. 

ESPN was running a rare feel-good segment with the Pike kids before a charity skate. It had been months since the incident, and no one thought it would still be a problem. The cycle had moved on. The outrage had burned itself out. The world, predictably, had found something else to look at.

They all thought it was fine for Ruby to be doing this interview. 

The reporter crouched down to Ruby and Jade’s height to talk to them, a sweet smile on her face as she asked them questions. She mentioned, casually, that she was a mother too. “You must be so excited!” she said brightly in response to whatever answer the twins had just given her. “Who came with you today?” 

Ruby beamed. She loved being the center of attention — especially if it meant she could be on the ice with Hayden. “Daddy and Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya!” 

Hayden felt a flicker of pride before he could talk himself out of it. He wasn’t conceited enough to say he could compete with the two hockey prodigies beside him, but he was a little cocky about his kids coming from hockey royalty. They were surrounded by it all the time. It was rewarding, almost, to know his kids had something like that to brag about. 

The reporter laughed as she looked at the three hockey players behind the twins. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot of grownups looking out for you.” 

Ruby hummed, nodding like a bobblehead. “Yep!” She popped the p, hands tucked neatly behind her back. “My parents and my other parents.”

Well.

Shit. 

Six months of damage control wiped out in a single sentence. They’d just scrubbed the internet clean of the polyamorous speculation, and now they were going to be dropped right back in it. 

Hayden’s mouth dropped open, somewhere between shock and betrayal as his pride collapsed within him. Shane turned so red he could have been a stop sign. Ilya froze like a damn statue.

Why, Ruby? Why? 

The reporter blinked, shifting her gaze between the children and the adults, who were now trying to look anywhere but at her. “Your… other parents?” she asked. 

Ruby seemed undeterred by everyone else’s discomfort. “Mommy and Daddy are my first parents. Uncle Ilya and Uncle Shane are my other parents,” she explained with a smile. “They do cuddles and cartoons and medicine and ‘don’t tell Dad’ snacks.” 

Every adult in the room suffered a simultaneous cardiac event. Hayden was glaring at Shane and Ilya. Shane and Ilya, in turn, were both staring dumbfounded at the camera. The reporter stumbled through her follow-up questions. Ruby and Jade were just giggling with each other like they didn’t know the severity of what was happening. 

Because they didn’t. 

The reporter stood and extended the microphone to Hayden. “Mr. Pike… would you like to make a comment?” she asked hesitantly. 

Hayden stared her down for a long second before mumbling, “Not a word.” 

Shane stepped forward to defend himself, but only managed a few words. “We’re not—! She meant mentors. We’re mentors!” 

“I am not parent!” Ilya shouted, visibly panicked for the first time in years. It took a lot to rattle Rozanov. “I do not even water plants!” 

Ruby tugged at his sleeve with an exaggerated frown. “Yes, you do,” she argued, and had there been even one more drop of conviction in her little body, she would have stomped her foot to make the point. “You water Uncle Shane.” 

Shane went a shade of red that could have been considered a medical emergency. “He brings me water!” he clarified quickly. “At — at events. When he — when he goes inside to—” 

He never finished the lie. There was no version of this he could talk his way out of, and everyone knew it. The cameraman gave the three adult men the most sympathetic smile he could, but never stopped filming. Of course he didn’t. This was gold. 

The interview aired on ESPN later that evening. It understandably went viral again. 

@hollanderhabits  · 43min
Hollanov didn’t come out, Ruby came out FOR them

@cryingonthebench   · 1hr
“you water shane” SHUT THE INTERNET DOWN

Chapter 10: Hayden Loses His Mind and Jackie Laughs So Hard She Cries

The moment the interview aired, Hayden’s phone started buzzing like it was trying to run off the table. By the time he worked up the courage to look, the clip had already been reposted about three hundred times.

He tapped one at random and watched as Ruby called her uncles her other parents. Then he pressed the replay button and watched Shane choke behind her. And then a third time to watch Ilya short-circuit like a Roomba hitting a wall. Then again, to see the reporter glare at him like he’d personally invented polyamory during this interview — they were not poly, had never been poly, would never be poly. Hayden was starting to feel like he needed a lawyer to prove it.

“Jackie!” he shouted from the kitchen table. He needed his wife. His wife always knew what to do. And if she didn’t, she would pretend she did. 

Jackie rushed into the room, holding a legless Barbie in one hand and a bottle of superglue in the other. “What happened?” 

Hayden shoved his phone at her and pointed. “Our daughter just outed a secret relationship!” As much as he wanted to pretend he had no responsibility for this, Ruby had absolutely gotten her blabbing mouth from his passed down genes. He dragged a hand down his face like he was trying to peel himself out of his own skin. “Other parents! Do you know how many interpretations there are of that? Do you know how many blogs that will spawn? I’m in three ships I didn’t consent to, and one of them has fanart!” 

He pushed back from the table and started pacing. Every hall in the house felt too small somehow. Suddenly he knew how the lions felt in the zoo — endless space but nowhere to go.

“We just recovered from the emergency contact thing,” he groaned. The last six months had been a complete shitstorm. Every day he regretted the choice of putting Ilya on the paperwork more and more. And worse was that part of him still knew it was the best option and he was never going to change it. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone else with Ruby that day. “We just fixed the PR disaster. I just convinced my teammates I’m not in a polycule with Rozanov!” 

Not that there was anything wrong with that.

He would like that on record.

Hayden was a progressive man. He would campaign for poly rights if he had to. He believed in love in all its forms. He believed in choice. He believed in freedom.

He was also deeply, intimately certain that Ilya Rozanov was a possessive asshole designed for exactly one person — and Hayden had no interest in being romantically entangled with him in any capacity whatsoever.

Hayden threw his hands in the air and then reached for a beer. He was not drunk enough for this yet. “And now Ruby has invented a family structure we do not have!” 

Jackie thought about it for a second, setting the Barbie and the glue down on the table. “I mean…” she began slowly. “Technically, we kind of do.” 

For a second, Hayden just stared at his wife, feeling every sense of the word betrayal. “Don’t start with me,” he begged. “God did not build me for this. He built me for hockey and mild taxes. Not this.” He collapsed back onto his chair, hiding his face in his hands. “These idiots were supposed to be a secret, Jackie,” he said, voice muffled. “Do you know what secret means? Whispers! NDAs! It means not having our seven-year-old announce on ESPN that she has four parents!”  

Jackie did her very best to keep it together, but she couldn’t. Not when her husband was being so dramatic. She started laughing, even at his expense. And she kept laughing at his expense when he looked so upset about it. 

She laughed for eight straight minutes. She wheezed, doubled over, clutched the table to keep herself on her feet. By the time she managed to get ahold of herself, her stomach hurt and there were tears in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m sorry, I just — I can’t—” 

“It’s not funny,” Hayden said, glaring at her. He looked so much like Arthur trying not to have a tantrum that it just began another wave of laughter. 

She slid down to the floor, tears now streaming down her cheeks. “It’s… so funny. Oh my god!” 

Objectively, it was. This was the funniest thing that had ever happened to them. To anyone, maybe. Deeply unfortunate. Catastrophic, even. But undeniably extremely hilarious.

Hayden threw a wadded napkin at her. She didn’t even try to dodge it. “You’re not taking this seriously!” he snapped. 

Jackie nearly choked on her words. “I’m taking this very seriously,” she said honestly. She knew it was a problem — that they would be dealing with it later — but right now, all she could think about was the sheer absurdity of their situation. “But I’ll stop laughing when you stop being so dramatic about our daughter calling two grown men her extra parents.” 

“This is a definitional nightmare, Jackie!” he insisted, leaning over to grab yet another napkin to hurl at her. “There are tax implications!” 

Jackie lost it again.

Chapter 11: Ruby Pike’s Pokémon

It was time to sit down with Ruby.

It had to be done. Jackie and Hayden had put it off long enough, and at some point they needed to suck it up and ask their oldest why she thought she had four parents. 

Jackie took a steadying breath and rested her hand on Ruby’s knee. “Honey,” she said gently. “When you said ‘other parents,’ what did you mean?” 

Ruby swung her legs over the edge of the couch, kicking her heels together as she considered her answer very seriously. It would have been nice if she’d put this much thought into her answers when talking to ESPN, but that ship had sailed. “You and Daddy are my regular parents,” she answered. 

Hayden nodded beside her. “That’s correct.” 

“Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya are my extra parents,” she continued, as if that was a totally normal thing to say. 

It wasn’t until this exact moment that Jackie started to suspect that maybe this wasn’t about the emergency contact thing. Maybe it was already a thing before, and Ruby just hadn’t had confirmation of those feelings until Ilya showed up to take care of her when she was sick.

And maybe all of their kids felt this way. 

“Why are they your extra parents?” Jackie asked carefully. She spared a quick glance at her husband, expecting to tell him not to say anything. She was pleasantly surprised to see that he was on the same page. He was seeing it too. Whatever this was, it wasn’t new.

Ruby pointed at Jackie. “You’re Mommy,” she declared. “You do meals, cuddles, and the hair detangler.” 

Fair. Jackie did a lot more than that, but Ruby was seven, and those were the things that mattered to her. Those were the things she noticed.

Then Ruby turned and pointed at Hayden. “Daddy does the driving, the yelling, and the snacks.” 

Hayden did his best not to seem offended, but a scoff slipped past his lips anyway. He had always prided himself on being a cool dad. And he was, for the most part.

He was also gone a lot, always on the road with the team. And when he was home, life was louder. He filled space — raised his voice without meaning to, even when it wasn’t directed at the kids.

He was a loud man. He loved them loudly. And apparently, Ruby had noticed that too.

Still, he wondered, not for the first time, how much of himself his kids were learning from the worst moments instead of the best ones.

Ruby leaned back on the couch with a sigh. “Uncle Shane is the one who worries and gives good hugs,” she said.

Yes. That was very much who Shane was.

Around the kids, he worried about everything — toys becoming choking hazards, coats being forgotten, water bottles not being full enough. He cut their food into smaller pieces, double-checked seatbelts, and hovered just enough to be reassuring instead of annoying. And when someone got hurt, he was the one who hugged them immediately.

“And Uncle Ilya is the one for noodles, secret chocolate, and sleeping on top of.” Ruby made jazz hands and looked at her parents as if they were the ones being outrageous. “Four parents, because they all have different jobs.” 

Shane worried. Ilya indulged. Ruby had sorted them accordingly. Leave it to their daughter to emotionally adopt two professional hockey players without consulting them first.

Hayden did his very best to not show how absolutely insane he thought this all was. “Oh,” he sighed, filling the silence while giving himself more time to process. He didn’t really know what to say to that. “So this isn’t emotional or relational for you. You’re just… sorting us?” 

Ruby nodded again. “Like Pokémon.” 

Jackie made a mental note to go get her tested.

Chapter 12: Shane and Ilya Cannot Survive This

They had headed over to the Pikes’ for dinner after Hayden and Jackie’s talk with Ruby. Neither of them knew how to process being sorted like Pokémon in Ruby’s list of parental figures, but it was best if they talked about it at some point. 

Dinner did not go well. It was awkward between the adults, and the kids were already overtired by the time the food hit the table. Not to mention that Ruby picked one too many fights with her father. It ended, predictably, with Hayden confiscating story time and Ruby storming off toward the stairs.

Now, Shane and Ilya were curled up on the couch together, Jackie muttering into a pillow on the armchair, and Hayden was upstairs loudly bickering with the twins about pajamas and toothbrushes. 

“She called us her other parents,” Shane whispered eventually, glancing up at Ilya, who was still staring at the wall in stunned silence. Shane reached for his hand and laced their fingers together. “She thinks we’re a unit.” 

“She is… not wrong,” Ilya said after letting out a slow breath. He swallowed hard and squeezed Shane’s hand back. “She sees what we do, even when we try to hide. She knows I take care of you, and you take care of me, and we take care of them.” 

Shane looked at him, and something in his chest tightened. They were a unit, maybe they always had been, and it felt so hard to keep hiding it. Especially when their niece kept talking about it on the news. 

Suddenly, it felt real, and fragile, and all at once visible.

“Does it bother you?” he asked quietly. 

Ilya didn’t answer right away. He looked down at the way Shane was tucked under his arm, their hands clasped together — and Ruby Pike thought they were her extra parents. It was ridiculous. It was absurd. It was domestic. 

“No. And that is why is a problem, yes?” Ilya whispered. His mouth quirked, just barely. Just enough for Shane to notice. “Makes me want babies with you now. Not later.” 

And, yeah, that was the problem. That was Shane’s problem too. It was never being called other parents. It was the fact that the title gave room to ideas that weren’t feasible right now. 

Shane turned his head and pressed a soft kiss to Ilya’s shoulder. “We’re not ready to come out,” he mumbled, though his voice wavering despite his best efforts. He was uncomfortably close to tears, and from the way Ilya’s breath stuttered beneath him, he could tell he wasn’t alone.

“No,” Ilya agreed. “But we are already family.” 

Not ready to be seen.

Already home.

“Uncle Ilya is the best parent!” Ruby’s voice echoed from upstairs. She was still arguing with Hayden, who definitely said something back, but it was too low to make it out. That had to sting. 

Ilya groaned and hid his face in Shane’s hair. Tried to. “We cannot survive this.”

And no, they couldn’t. Not in the same way they used to. 

They used to survive it by keeping Ilya separate, at least in the press. He was the aloof, foreign player who was sometimes spotted chatting with Hayden Pike at events. Nothing more. Certainly not a regular presence. Definitely not an emergency contact.

And now… 

Well, now they were all friends. They had to be, if they wanted to avoid a scandal. It was different like this. They’d gotten along behind closed doors for years, but this was public. Visible. Real. It felt like everyone was getting far too close to the truth. 

Shane found it wasn’t as scary as it used to be. The speculation, the questions. They were still annoying, like a finger poked into an almost healed bruise, but not as terrifying and bone-chilling as they once were. The fear had softened into something that looked a lot like happiness.

“It’s kind of… nice,” Shane said. “Right?” 

Ilya just hummed, but after so long, Shane knew what it meant — it was nice. So nice that the idea of Ruby Pike outing them didn’t seem horrifying anymore.

Chapter 13: The Locker Room Responses (Again)

The Metros: 

The locker room was loud in the way it always was before practice — blaring music, sticks hitting against cubby walls, someone laughing too loudly about something that definitely wasn’t that funny. Chaos, but a familiar chaos.

And then Shane walked in, and someone pulled up Twitter. 

Ruby’s voice filled the space, and Hayden lunged for the phone, but it was already too late. He didn’t even make it halfway there before her cheerful voice proclaimed on ESPN that she had other parents — and that those parents were Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. 

There was a beat of silence — the kind like waiting for a puck to drop. Shane blushed like he always did. No one spoke. Hell, no one breathed. 

Then… 

“Capitaine is a dad?” JJ yelled. Of course it was JJ. It was always fucking JJ. The man never met a silence he didn’t want to ruin.

Shane’s head snapped in the direction of his teammate — his friend who just betrayed him like Judas — and opened his mouth to argue. Nothing came out. No words came to mind. His eyes were wide, horrified. This was bad. 

“No, no,” Gagnon cut in, waving a hand like that might fix it. “She said other parent. That’s different.” 

“Is it?” Comeau asked. “Because that sounded like full-dad energy to me.” 

Shane was going to die. This was hell.

He looked over to Hayden, searching for support, only to find him in a similar state of distress. His daughter had caused this; the least he could do was not freeze in the face of a confrontation. And yet, somehow, both of them were lost causes.

“What does it mean, then?” one of the rookies asked, his face scrunched up like he was genuinely distressed. “Like… dad-in-law?”

“That’s not a thing!” Comeau scoffed. 

“That’s totally a thing,” Koch argued. “We just usually call it father-in-law, moron.” No one pointed out that father-in-law was a completely different title.

JJ squinted at his phone as if hoping it would give him answers. They all knew it wouldn’t. They’d watched the clip a hundred times by now. There was nothing left to squeeze out of it unless Shane started talking — which he absolutely would not. “What’s the word for half-dad, half-boyfriend?”

“Rozanov’s or Pike’s?” Drapeau called out from his locker, which made Shane tense every single one of his muscles.

It took him longer than he cared to admit to convince himself that no one actually knew and remember how to breathe. The team was teasing. Chirping. The same shit they’d pulled with Hayden a few months ago. They didn’t actually know about him and Ilya — they couldn’t.

Coach Theriault had been standing in the corner with his arms crossed over his chest. He dragged a hand down his face, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he said carefully. “Can we focus on hockey for five seco—?” 

“No!” It was the most unified the team had been in months. Almost impressive in their ability to shout the word at the same time, in the same cadence. Flawless execution. Perfect agreement.

A traitorous part of Shane was quietly delighted that his misery had finally gotten everyone back on the same page. Another part of him had never been more mortified in his life, and he was fairly sure he was blushing hard enough that he’d get lightheaded on the comedown. 

Olsson leaned back on the bench, grinning like the mouse who finally figured out how to get the damn cheese. “She said you and Rozanov give cuddles and snacks.” 

“He’s a mom!” 

Laughter exploded, someone wheezed, a locker was slammed. Shane was already halfway to the door, grumbling about why Rozanov got to be the dad and he had to be the mom. Then he was equally humiliated when he realized no one had actually said anything at all about Rozanov being the dad, and he had just come to that conclusion on his own. Goddammit.

No one stopped him when he left the locker room. No one could. Not even Hayden, who did put in a valiant effort until the door slammed in his face. 

Shane had made a terrible mistake by walking into practice that morning. He found the nearest recycling bin and screamed into it. 

The Centaurs: 

The second Ruby said other parents, the room detonated. 

It wasn’t laughter at first — just a collective wheeze, which somehow made it worse. Twenty grown men realized simultaneously that a PR nightmare had been aired on ESPN, and Ilya instantly knew he was trapped in it.

He couldn’t escape it like he had last time. This time, it wasn’t just a statement that mentioned him. No, this time he was on screen, very obviously panicking in the background while standing beside the other man she’d named.

Young slapped his stall door. Barrett bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, choking. Everyone else was in a similar state of complete, unhelpful amusement. 

“Ilya!” Bood sang from across the room, holding out the name like a Broadway finale. “You’re a daddy now. It’s official. The little girl said so.” 

Ilya didn’t even look, he just reached blindly into his stall and hurled the first thing he could grab straight across the room. Pure instinct. Half because of the chirp, and half because someone calling his niece the little girl made him see red for no discernable reason.

The water bottle missed Bood’s face by inches and smacked into the lockers behind him, spraying cold water over a handful of unsuspecting teammates. And while it hadn’t been Ilya’s goal, he took a small, bitter satisfaction in seeing them look even half as distressed as he felt.

But it only made things worse. 

Hayes, already crying with laughter, wiped his eyes and rested his hand on Ilya’s shoulder like he was actually going to say something thoughtful. “Okay, but…” He only managed the two words before he had to gasp for breath. “If Rozy’s the dad, what does that make Hollander? A mommy?” 

“The Hot Mom! The MILF! The DILF!” Young called out. 

The second water bottle came faster — where the hell had he gotten a second water bottle? Oh, that was LaPointe’s. Oh well.

This one hit its target — square in the middle of Young’s chest. It knocked him back with a startled oof that immediately dissolved into hysterical laughter.

No one got to call Hollander hot. Even if it was objectively true. Ilya hated that it was true. Hated that he could not publicly claim that hot as his, and he didn’t want to hear other people talking about it — about him. Ilya didn’t share. The attention on Shane’s hotness was not for public consumption.

“Oh my god,” Barrett wheezed. “He’s so violent about it!” 

LaPointe, who had been too engrossed in his phone to realize his water bottle had been used as a weapon, suddenly held the device up in the air. “Guys! Guys, look!” he shouted. “The reporter tagged Roz in the post!” 

The room gravitated towards him, a chorus of oh no and no fucking way rippled through the space. Each of them reached for the phone that none of them were going to wrestle from LaPointe’s grasp — he held onto that thing like he’d die without it. 

“Block her,” Ilya snapped. He never wanted to see that woman again. He was never speaking to ESPN for as long as he lived. He couldn’t. The humiliation would never ease.

Bood laughed louder this time. “Roz, she works for a national news network. We can’t—” 

“Block. Her.”

Coach Wiebe appeared in the doorway. “You can’t block ESPN.” 

Ilya recognized he shouldn’t snap at his coach. That knowledge did absolutely nothing to stop him. “Watch me.” 

Haas leaned back against the bench, too calm for the chaos around him. Luca Haas was always too calm in these situations. It unsettled them. “I mean, Ruby’s not wrong,” he said. 

Ilya froze in place. It took him a full ten seconds before he found the courage to very slowly turn over his shoulder. Of course, he knew that Ruby wasn’t wrong — that he and Shane had been in a relationship for a long time and had taken a role in raising the Pike kids, whether they meant to or not — but how the hell did Haas know that? 

He shouldn’t have known that. No one should have.

Haas shrugged noncommittally. “You and Hollander do kind of act like co-parents sometimes. Especially with the charity.” 

Ilya made a sound that could not adequately be described by modern language. Something embarrassed, and furious, and deeply Slavic. And then he released a string of Russian profanities so aggressive it could have stripped the paint off the walls. He grabbed his duffel off the bench, flung it over his shoulder, and stormed out of the room like the building itself had betrayed him. 

Fifteen minutes later, Roz returned in full gear after changing in the bathroom. No one skated near him. Not only because he was pissed, but because none of them could keep it together long enough to look him in the eye and were visibly failing to be professional. 

Chapter 14: Ilya Rozanov Is The Strict Parent

It happened after Ruby and Jade told their class that Uncle Ilya and Uncle Shane share custody of the snacks (and Arthur confirmed it). For the most part, they had avoided press questions about the whole “other parents” thing, but this—

They could not ignore this. Because it wasn’t stopping. It was getting worse.

Jackie invited Ilya and Shane over for dinner and then declared a family meeting before they could escape. In hindsight, they all should have seen it coming — she was being too nice. 

But then everyone was sitting on the living room rug, each more uncomfortable than whoever was sitting next to them. It felt like a standoff. Kids on one side. Parents on the other. Even Amber had chosen her loyalties, electing to sit between Jade’s legs instead of on Jackie’s lap like she normally did. 

Oh. So this was serious. 

Jackie clasped her hands in front of her. “Okay, kids. We have to talk about something you said at school again.” This was becoming a depressingly frequent conversation. 

Jade nodded very seriously. “We understand,” she said, and the adults in the room were very much under the impression that she did not. 

“We made a list,” Arthur added. 

“A list?” Shane repeated. He was doing his best to not feel betrayed by his favorite child. He knew he wasn’t supposed to have one. Adults weren’t allowed to admit to favorites, but Arthur was his mini-me — and also a traitor, apparently. Shane had not expected his favorite to defect to the dark side so easily.

Ruby flipped open a notebook that she seemed to have conjured out of thin air. She turned it around so the adults could see how she’d scrawled the words Parents 1 and Parents 2 on the top of the page in uneven marker. Underneath each heading were their names, though she’d spelled “Ilya” wrong. 

“Okay,” Hayden whispered, his throat tight. “No more of this. You’re mixing things up.” Not to mention the implications this would have if someone ever got their hands on that godforsaken notebook. They would all be deeply, catastrophically screwed.

“We know!” Arthur exclaimed, throwing himself backwards like this was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It was strange to see him look genuinely distressed about this — about anything, really. “That’s why we need you to tell us who the strict parent is.” 

“The what?” Shane squeaked. 

Ruby pointed her pencil at the adults. “Everyone has a strict parent. Mommy is the soft one. Daddy is the strict one.” 

“I’m the strict one?” Hayden asked, clearly offended. Possibly also surprised. Everyone knew that Hayden Pike was not the strict adult in that house. Jackie ran things more efficiently than the military. 

The kids, however, were not on the same page. They just laughed. Fully laughed at him. As if he was the one being weird right now. 

“Daddy, you yell when the dishwasher makes noise,” Jade pointed out. 

And Hayden didn’t really have a response for that. He did yell at the dishwasher. Often. Enough that Jackie had suggested just getting a new one, despite their current one being so new that it was still under warranty. 

Ruby turned back to Shane and Ilya, pointing at the Parents 2 column on her paper. “So, which of you is the strict one?” she asked. “We think we know, but not for sure.” 

Shane opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Because what the hell was he supposed to say to that? 

Ilya, on the other hand, looked deeply offended. “Why are you asking us?” He threw his hands up, exasperated. They had been dealing with this same situation for so long. “Is not real! We are not parents.” 

“But you act like it!” Arthur shot back. And it must have been serious if Arthur was arguing. That kid barely spoke as it was, and he never picked a fight. Especially not with adults. 

Ruby turned the page and traced the lines as she read. “Uncle Shane hugs too much, worries all the time, took Arthur’s slime ‘for safety reasons’ and never lets us go outside without a coat.” She barely paused for breath. The kids had been taking notes about them. Was that a thing they did now? Jackie silently amended her thought from before: that testing appointment needed to be moved up. And maybe expanded. Immediately. “Uncle Ilya says ‘no’ too loudly sometimes, makes us take medicine, will only carry us if we behave, and sneaks us cookies when Daddy isn’t looking.” 

Hayden picked up a pillow and hurled it at Ilya’s head. The cookie thing had gotten out of hand last year, which is why they stopped letting Ilya decide when the kids could have sugar. Apparently, Ilya had never agreed to the terms of his punishment. 

“Obviously, Uncle Ilya is the strict one,” Jade announced.

And that was what caught the attention of the adults. 

Everyone looked at Ilya, and Ilya stared at the kids like they had betrayed him. “I am not strict,” he protested. Between him and Shane, babysitting with Ilya was a walk in the damn park. “I am cool! I am fun! Children love me!” 

Arthur shuffled across the carpet and wrapped his arms around Ilya’s shoulders. “We love you just as much as the other parents,” he whispered. 

Jackie lost it. She had been so good throughout this entire meeting. She had let her kids give their weird presentation and hadn’t interrupted. She hadn’t scolded her husband for his act of pillow-based violence. She had been so good. 

But this was just too much. 

She wheezed, grasping her husband’s arm to keep herself from folding in half. “This is better than TV.”

Chapter 15: Ilya Fails At Explaining Why You Can’t Out Adults

Ilya sat Ruby down at the dining room table like he was about to negotiate international diplomacy. 

It shouldn’t have been this serious — it never should have gotten to this point — but no one else was getting through to her. It was time to bring in the big-guns. And the big-guns were Ilya Rozanov with glittery pink nail polish and fake princess earrings dangling from his earlobes. 

He pulled out her chair and waited until she climbed into it, then adjusted the napkin they both knew she would be neglecting in favor of her t-shirt. Then, he took the seat across from her, folded his hands, and pulled an expression serious enough to belong in a press briefing. 

This was business. Ruby, to her credit, matched his energy. 

“Ruby,” he said carefully. “We must talk.” 

She swung her legs under the table and reached for one of the crackers he had set out for her. “About what?” 

Ilya took a deep breath. This was fine. He had handled aggressive reporters, contract disputes, and one extremely hostile customs agent in Prague. This was a child. A very small one. Not nearly as intimidating as the men who tried to body-check him for a living.

“You cannot tell things about adults if adults have not said them first,” he said slowly. Carefully. He knew his accent and overall grip on the English language could be hard to understand, especially when he was stressed. He needed her to hear him. “You understand?” 

Ruby blinked at him, legs still swinging under the table, cracker hanging from her mouth. “Like what?” she asked. 

This was going poorly. He could already tell. At least, if nothing else, this was an opening.

“Like who is in a relationship. Or who lives where. Or who is whose…” he hesitated, trying not to let the word get caught in his throat. It got caught anyway, coming out more strained than he would have liked. “Parent.” 

Ruby seemed to consider the word, as if trying to remember what could have possibly ended them up at this dining room table. Then she nodded, which only made Ilya’s stomach drop. “So, no telling people that you and Uncle Shane love each other?” 

Ilya choked so hard he slapped his own chest. It wasn’t dignified. Not even close. It was a full, violent betrayal of his lungs. His eyes watered as he struggled for air. 

“No! No, that is — that is not—!” He sucked a deep breath, wishing it did more to calm him. If anything, it just made his blood run cold. It didn’t feel like he’d actually inhaled any oxygen at all. “That is true, but you cannot say it.” 

This time, when Ruby nodded, it was very serious. She had matched his energy — this was a conversation that belonged on the United Nations floor. “Okay.” 

Very briefly, he felt relieved. Sweet, refreshing relief through his veins that hit so hard he considered this must have been what drugs felt like. 

And then Ruby Pike kept talking.

“So I’ll just tell them you’re family, but not explain how.” 

“No!” Ilya shouted, then lowered his voice as soon as he realized he’d raised it. “No, Ruby, that is worse.” 

She looked up at him, wide-eyed and innocent and entirely unhelpful. “So I can’t say you’re parents?” she asked. 

Ilya shook his head vehemently. “No.” 

“Can I say you’re best friends?” 

“No.” 

She considered for a long moment (five seconds) and tapped her chin. “Roommates?” 

“Absolutely not!” 

Ruby tilted her head, genuinely puzzled, and stopped swinging her legs. She shoved the plate of crackers away from her. “Then what are you?” she demanded.

Ilya opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again. Nothing came out. 

He just stared at the table like it had personally voted against him on the United Nations floor. Like the treaty had failed. Like history would judge him for this moment.

He stared at the water-ring from his glass, at the reflection of a man who had survived playoffs overtime and still did not know how to define his life to a seven-year-old. She was younger than his history with Shane. He felt like a goldfish grappling with its own existence. 

Finally, after far too long and another plate-shove from Ruby, he accepted defeat. “We are two people who mind our own business.” 

The kid nodded as if accepting the answer as a profound truth of the universe. She had always been odd, but Ilya was beginning to wonder if the adults in her life were making it worse. 

“Is that what I tell the reporters?” she asked. 

Ilya dropped forward and banged his forehead against the surface of the table. He felt his water cup jump from the thud. This was his match — after years in the NHL, after countless trips to Moscow, after being hounded by reporters about his promiscuous ways — Ilya Rozanov’s match was a seven-year-old girl. 

Shane emerged from the kitchen and replaced Ilya’s water with a glass of vodka. “How bad did it go?” he asked. 

Ilya just whined into the wood of the table.

Chapter 16: Hayden Accepts Reality

It happened quietly, not quickly. 

The house was still, the kids asleep. Everything had settled into that late-night ease Hayden cared for more than he ever admitted — he cared for it because silence meant his kids were resting, that they felt safe to rest. They always had. They’d never known any different.

And neither had Hayden, really. He’d grown up with great parents. Most of his friends had too. There had been sleepovers and crowded living rooms, nights spent on other people’s couches and nights with friends sprawled across his own floor. When he moved out, he’d moved into his own house, paid for with NHL money. And then he met Jackie. And then started a family. And at no point in his life had rest ever felt dangerous.

He hadn’t realized it was a luxury for a long, long time. Too long, maybe. Not until someone — Ilya — had said it out loud. Had told him he was a good father. That safety lived in small things, like quiet houses and sleeping children.

That had been one of the first conversations where Hayden stopped thinking of him as Rozanov and started thinking of him as Ilya.

So now, when that stillness washed over him, Hayden felt it in his chest — felt so fucking grateful for it. 

Shane and Ilya were curled together on the couch in the way they did when very pointedly not acknowledging what they were doing. Shane had dozed off halfway through the movie, head tipped back against Ilya’s shoulder, mouth slack. Ilya sat pliant beside him, fingers absentminded as they combed through Shane’s hair.

Jackie sat on the armchair with a book, legs tucked up beneath her. It was exactly how Hayden had left her when he promised to take care of the whole bedtime routine for the night. She had been handling it alone for the last three weeks while he was on the road. 

Taking over the routine for the night hadn’t been about making things even — it had been a show of appreciation. An attempt to say thank you in a way that mattered. An attempt to say I see you.

He thought she knew that. He hoped she did. 

Hayden loved his wife so goddamn much it ached. 

He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching the three of them rest easily in each other’s presence. They were the most chaotic, needy cluster of people he had accidentally collected — and he felt something inside of him finally give up. 

Not with anger, or sadness. Not even resignation. 

It was just… relief. 

He crossed the room and planted himself on the arm of Jackie’s chair, careful not to disturb the peace that had wrapped around them. She leaned into his side like she didn’t even have to think about it. 

And he found, not surprisingly, that he didn’t have to think about his next words either. “I think we’re a blended family,” he whispered. 

Jackie didn’t look up from the page. She just reached over and squeezed his hand. “We’ve been one for years, babe.” 

She had always been the smarter one between them, unless it was hockey, so it wasn’t a surprise when he looked around the room and realized she was right. Shane, dead asleep, trusting the environment he was in for the first time in weeks. Ilya, relaxed and pretending not to notice every time the nightlight flickered on the stairs. Jackie, steady, leaning against him like she had nowhere else in the world she wanted to be. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, this was family. 

Hayden sighed, mostly to himself. It still wasn’t angry, even if deep down he wished it was. “Fine,” he muttered, though there was no heat behind it. “But I’m not calling them extra parents.” 

Jackie laughed to herself and finally closed her book. “Okay.” 

“And I’m not saying we’re friends.” Even if that was exactly what they were, he wouldn’t admit it. Trusting Ilya Rozanov had been a long and stressful journey, and most of the time, they wanted to yell at each other anyway. It just… well, it wasn’t so real anymore. 

But Jackie always humored him, even if she knew the fighting was fond. “Of course not.” 

“And I’m definitely not saying we’re in a polycule.” 

She snorted at that, which made Hayden smile. “Well, that’s because we’re not,” she said, running the back of her fingers over his cheek. “And if you ever suggest we are, I’ll cut off your dick.” 

He huffed a laugh and shifted onto the seat of the chair, pulling her legs over his lap. He didn’t doubt her for a second. Jackie never liked to share.

“Also, we’re not paying for their wedding,” he said, motioning to the tangle of limbs that currently lived on their couch. They would probably stay the night, because Hayden knew better than to wake Shane from his first decent sleep after a string of away-games. 

Jackie smiled privately to herself, but Hayden caught it anyway. “Sure.” 

There was a conspiratorial lilt to her voice, as if she’d already set aside money for that specific event. As if Shane didn’t have parents of his own to pay for it. As if Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov weren’t the two best-paid players in the league, who could pay for their own damn wedding a hundred times over. 

Hayden groaned and hid his face in Jackie’s hair, resigned to stay there for a moment and breathe her in. But he pulled back anyway, lowering his voice. “But… I hope I get to give a speech,” he whispered.

It was a confession, and they both knew it. Hayden liked Ilya. And more than that, he liked Ilya for Shane.

Jackie, of course, could not let that slide. She leaned over and pressed a wet kiss to his cheek. “I knew you loved him!” 

“I do not love—” he started to argue, a primal instinct kicking in. But even as he tried, he couldn’t force the words out. Not anymore. It wasn’t as easy as it once was. 

He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. Of all the ways he imagined his life turning out, this had never been a thought that crossed his mind. Why would it have? 

This was better. It was so much better than anything he could have imagined. 

After a long minute, Hayden let out the breath he’d been convincing himself to hold. “Maybe,” he admitted quietly. “But only because I love my family.” 

And for once, no one argued.

Chapter 17: A Very Confused Hockey Player and Two Men Dying On The Spot

It was supposed to be a harmless charity-skate. They always were — kids wobbling in borrowed helmets, retired players taking selfies, current players skating laps and pretending they weren’t competing with each other — the normal things. Cameras everywhere, yes, but that was normal too. Manageable. 

Shane Hollander was halfway through a lazy glide when he heard a damn reporter introducing themselves to the Pike kids. Again. After being told repeatedly that they’d be removed from the rink if they so much as looked at those four kids. 

He inhaled sharply. Unfortunately, he inhaled a piece of the ice he’d just shaved off the rink when he came to a sharp stop. He started coughing immediately, hacking like his lungs were trying to exit his body, as another NHL player skated to the Pike kids’ rescue. 

Tom Henderson, a big, friendly guy from Seattle, knelt down in front of Hayden’s kids with a warm, easy smile. The players had also been informed about the strict no-reporters policy with the Pikes, so Shane wasn’t surprised to see Henderson angle his body just right, quietly blocking the cameras from view. 

The reporters were, naturally, pissed about this, but they were about to be escorted away from the ice anyway. And while NHL players loved nothing more than tearing into each other, they tended to close ranks when it came to families. At least at charity-skates. 

“Well, hey there,” Henderson said cheerfully. “You must be the Pikes!” 

Ruby beamed like she’d just been complimented by the sun, and Shane already knew that meant trouble. “Yep!” she announced. “We have four parents!” 

There it was. Because it always came. This time, it didn’t take long at all.

Shane had long since given up hope that the kids might keep their mouths shut. It had been a battle every day since Ilya picked Ruby up from school almost a year ago — including negotiations, pleading, and outright bribery — and at this point the only way to stop it was to just keep anyone with a camera as far away from the four small Pikes as possible. 

Tom Henderson blinked too many times to count. His eyelids fluttered rapidly like his brain was trying to catch up. “Oh, um… okay, bud,” he mumbled, almost in a daze. “Uh… who are they?” 

From twenty feet away, Shane felt the moment his entire life began to collapse under the weight of his own lies. 

Ruby pointed across the rink. “Those two,” she said, gesturing toward Hayden and Jackie — mid-conversation with a reporter, and definitely not paying attention to their children. Then she spun back around. “And those two!” 

Her finger landed on its target. Shane didn’t need to see it — he could feel it.

He froze mid-stride, one skate lifted in the air. Ilya, who had been gliding peacefully behind him, skated directly into the boards with an oof. 

Henderson followed the line of Ruby’s finger, and Shane could see the exact moment his confusion turned into dawning horror. Then, as if he’d finally worked his way through all five stages of grief, Henderson let out the long, slow oh of a man who uncovered a secret he desperately wished he hadn’t. 

“Oh. Oh,” Tom repeated as Shane and Ilya finally regrouped enough to reach the children. “So… you two are, like… together.” 

Jade nodded happily before either Shane or Ilya could come up with a convincing denial. “They’re very in love,” she said. “Daddy says they’re codependent.” 

Arthur, always wanting to be helpful, chimed in next. “And Mommy says they’re the worst kept secret in hockey!” 

The double-attack knocked Shane off balance so hard that his skate nearly slid out from under him. Ilya pinched the bridge of his nose and threatened — in Russian, to spare their nieces and nephew — to kill Hayden Pike again. 

Henderson, bless him, lowered his voice in a doomed attempt at discretion. Which, of course, only made it worse. “I mean, uh… congrats? I didn’t know it was serious,” he whispered. He was drafted only a few years after them, but they’d rarely seen him outside of games — he didn’t know them at all, let alone if anything about them was serious. “I think we all kind of figured out you’d, like, hooked up at All-Stars a few years ago, but I didn’t know you were public.” 

Shane’s voice hit an octave previously reserved for dogs and shattered glass. “We’re not!” 

“We are private,” Ilya corrected, before his beloved fiancé could make this any worse for them. “Extremely private. Completely not public.” 

Just… just publicly raising four children with their best friends, because one of those four children had the audacity to spike a fever eleven months ago. 

That child who never stopped talking. 

“Uncle Ilya lives with Uncle Shane sometimes. Especially in the summers,” Ruby said, as if all of this was public knowledge. As if she weren’t spilling the biggest scandal in the NHL right on Montreal’s home-ice. “They cook together, and tuck us in, and Jade says they kiss in the kitchen when—” 

“No I didn’t!” Jade yelled, hitting her twin so hard it almost knocked them both over. Ilya lunged forward just in time to keep them upright. “I said they look like they’re about to kiss!” 

Tom Henderson — a man who previously had no idea the two of them had any history outside of an (apparently) poorly hidden hookup and a decade’s long rivalry — looked up with so much surprise that his eyebrows nearly lifted off his damn face. 

As quiet as they’d tried to keep this conversation, as much as Henderson had done them a solid by blocking the cameras with his broad back, nothing could stop the reporters from closing in on them. They were pack animals, and Shane and Ilya’s relationship had just become a wounded, easy catch. 

“No,” Shane insisted, voice breaking as he turned a truly alarming shade of red. “No, absolutely not.” 

“Hayden will pay for this one,” Ilya groaned. The despair was evident in his voice. It was even more evident in the way his accent had thickened into something almost entirely unintelligible. 

Arthur, who could feel the shift in the tension, delivered the final blow. He had been the best at keeping his mouth shut about all this — aside from Amber, who was still finding her grasp on language. It was the quietest child who ended them. “They’re getting married after hockey retires!” 

“No we are not!” They shouted it in perfect unison. The same tone. The same emphasis on the same words. Same panic. Like a married couple loudly denying a vow renewal. 

Henderson stood frozen for a second, collecting himself, before he just nodded and patted their shoulders. “Well,” he began kindly, “congrats anyway.” 

The internet, of course, had a fucking field day.

@rinksidechaos  · 12min
that was NOT a coming out that was a drive-by outing

@wronggroupchatnhl · 58min
new handle bc Seattle’s Tom Henderson just discovered a secret relationship like he opened the wrong group chat

> @goalietherapy · 50m
  he said “ohhh” out loud lmao

@fourthlineprophet · 3min
“We’re extremely private,” says the man currently being outed by an 8yo. 

@stanleycupcake_  · 39min
The synchronized ‘we are not’ is what convinced me actually 

@hollanovtruther  · just now
“they’re getting married after hockey retires” ARTHUR PIKE YOU WILL PAY FOR MY THERAPY SOMEDAY

@sticktapss  · 28min
shane hollander choking on ice he kicked up while his life flashes before his eyes is my roman empire 

@81_never_lies  ·  21min
Ilya Rozanov skated into a WALL the moment her finger pointed. Your honor, I love him.

@nhlclips_  · 17min
those reporters knew damn well what they were doing… 

> @pikes_pucks_35  · 15min
    and it was GROSS. they are GROSS for that.  

@pike_roz_familyunit  · 13min
worst-kept secret in hockey is now kept by children  

@cup_bound_delusion  · 55min
They didn’t come out. The kids simply released a director’s cut.

Chapter 18: Twitter Is Convinced Hollanov Is Already Married

For the first time since… well, since ever — it was Shane who was noticing the social media trends about them.

Normally, that was Ilya’s domain. Ilya scoured the internet for hours at a time, cataloguing every mention, every theory, every stray comment.

Shane didn’t do that. He didn’t track trends. He didn’t know usernames or inside jokes or which accounts mattered. So if he was the one noticing, it meant things were bad.

It started with people sharing clips from the charity-skate event. Objectively, it was a funny clip. A few weeks removed, even Shane and Ilya could admit that. Even though they were panicked about it, the way they had frozen in place and then spoken in unison was just ridiculous. There was no getting around that. 

But then it started trending. And people started over-analyzing the parts of the clip they couldn’t fully make out in the audio. After enough amateur audio enhancement from teenage girls with too much time, they managed to pull one word from Henderson’s whispering. 

All-Stars.

So people started looking back at All-Stars games. Sure enough, people found 2017 to be more interesting than the other years. Because of course they did. Because it was significant, just not for the reasons people thought.

It wasn’t a getting together.

It had been a back together.

Vaughn had let them know — after enough pleading for answers — that the Rozanov-Hollander “hookup” of 2017 was somewhat of an open-secret among the east-coast NHL players. The knowledge trickled west through trades and locker rooms, though plenty of guys didn’t buy it.

No one ever brought it up. They’d gone right back to being rivals afterward, and that was that. Most considered it a drunken mistake, and people who knew Shane didn’t drink chalked it up to years of frustration finally boiling over destructively. If Shane Hollander did something reckless, people assumed it was because he’d finally had enough.

None of their colleagues thought more might come of it until the Irina Foundation. Even then, most assumed the hookup was what led to the friendship. 

After the All-Stars clips made their rounds on the internet, people went back to the clip for more information. They didn’t find anything else out of the whispered conversation, but they noticed something else. Something worse. 

It started the way all fires do: one spark. 

Someone noticed the rings. Ilya’s on the gold necklace around his neck. Shane’s tucked against his chest on a silver one. Hidden, but close enough to feel.

@stuckon_teenwolf  · 4d
I don’t even go here (what even is hockey fr) but ARE THEY WEARING MATCHING RINGS? AND THEY WEAR IT AROUND THEIR NECKS LIKE IT’S SACRED? HELLO???? I MIGHT START WATCHING HOCKEY

After that, it just exploded. The spark produced another, and then another, and then it was an uncontrollable forest fire not even Harris could get ahead of. Of course, Ilya hadn’t helped matters by refusing to tell Harris the truth about the rumors, leaving him to fight smoke with no idea where the flames actually were.

Shane watched as thousands upon thousands of people picked apart every single interaction between the two of them going back ten years. Every glance. Every half-step closer. Every time one of them had spoken for the other.

The most incriminating moment seemed to be… pretty much any time the two of them had ever had to share a press conference. Because every single time, Shane jumped in to save Ilya from questions he didn’t understand. He didn’t even know he was doing it, he just did.

@icouldbeconvinced · 5h
Those aren’t bros. Those are tax-filing partners.

Someone posted a thread breaking down every time they’d said something simultaneously. It happened a few times throughout their early careers, but it became very obvious after the Irina Foundation. 

@roz_puckbunny  · 1hr
UNISON RESPONSES = MARRIED

That. That single tweet was what made everything fall apart.

At first, it read like a joke. Most of the people replying to it were starting their half-formed theories with “imagine if…” and that was fine. No one was getting even close to the truth, and it wasn’t like anyone was taking it seriously. The thing about those kinds of jokes was that they were only funny until they were close enough to land.

Someone screenshotted that tweet. It got reposted on Twitter, on Instagram, on Tumblr. Anywhere it would stick, really. Each repost came with longer threads attached, careful analyses outlining what their relationship might actually be. And those ended up getting far, far closer to the truth. Close enough to scare Shane shitless. 

That was when he started paying attention. It was also when the internet stopped speculating and started concluding. They became absolutely convinced that Shane and Ilya (whom they had decided would be called Hollanov) were already married. Someone even suggested that they’d been married since 2010. 

@24_81lore · 9hr
Some of you forget Ruby Pike literally called them her “other parents.” Like??? The kids KNOW.

> @_pucksforpike · 7hr
  Jade saw them hug and went ‘yep’ 

>> @_goalielove66 · 7hr
      What is a marriage if not co-parenting four children you aren’t related to?

At some point, clips of Ilya after a game last season started to circulate. Those made Shane sick to his stomach.

In the video, he could clearly see that Ilya was exhausted, not on top of his answers in the way he normally was. If memory served him right, Ilya had played through a fever that night. He’d come home and almost immediately passed out. In the morning, he’d apologized into Shane’s shoulder. Over and over. For not being more careful. For not being subtle enough.

Shane remembered letting him apologize. Letting him think he’d done something wrong.

The worst part was that he hadn’t even been mad. No one paid much attention to it at the time anyway — and even if they had, no one had suspected them at that point. Or, well, no one except half the East Coast NHL players, apparently. 

One of the reporters from ESPN — it was always fucking ESPN — had asked Ilya what he did after a particularly stressful game. 

Ilya, probably high on his fever and exhausted from taking so many hits during an especially brutal game, had still given a normal answer. “I go home. I cook. I watch movie.” 

Normal. It had been such a normal answer.

But it hadn’t been a normal game.

It was Ilya’s first game against Boston since being traded to Ottawa, and the rumors about it had only grown louder every time he dodged questions about why. The most persistent theory — the one that only had legs because the guys in Boston wouldn’t let it die — was that Ilya had gone to Ottawa for a girl.

For some reason, the reporter didn’t let it go that night. “Alone?”

That was the part where Ilya stumbled. In the clip making the rounds now, Shane could see the exact moment Ilya panicked. The way he froze. “Uh, no comment.” 

It made Shane sick to see it circulating now. To see his own name attached to it, when he knew that was Ilya’s biggest fear in the months following. He had even suggested that they postpone their plans for the Irina Foundation, just in case people started… 

In case people started doing exactly what they were doing now. 

@hollanovtruther · 2hr
he meant to say “i go home to my husband”

But the final straw was when a particularly vocal fan posted a link to their YouTube video titled “A Pike Number of Reasons (35) that Hollanov is Already Married.” It was thorough in a way that made Shane’s skin crawl. He had, of course, watched the four-hour-long video and kept track of the inaccuracies in all 35 of the points. 

It included timelines — inaccurate; they only guessed at a five-year relationship. Cohabitation theories — mostly accurate. Identical kitchen backsplash in two separate Instagram stories — accurate, with the small but important caveat that it was Yuna and David’s kitchen, not either of their own.

The video went into detail about Ruby’s “other parents” comment to the media. Lists of supposed secret celebrity marriages. An analysis of Ilya’s fucking voice — comparing how he spoke to Shane on the ice versus how he spoke to other players. There was a spreadsheet of every time Ilya had defended Shane in an interview, every brand deal or appearance they’d done together, every moment Shane had looked at Ilya a second too long before stepping in to supply an English word he couldn’t quite find.

They went into detail about the when, where and how of the alleged “secret wedding.” Reasons they thought Hayden and Jackie were the witnesses. Reasons they thought the kids were involved with flowers and rings and the fucking dessert menu. 

They brought up David and Yuna. Dug up footage of Shane’s parents at Centaurs games. Footage of them walking into the hospital after Ilya went down too hard on the ice. Paparazzi shots of Ilya out to dinner with them — at the time, it had been neatly rebranded as “foundation business.”

It was thorough. Nothing was private if it could be time-stamped. The entire video had points so convincing that Shane half-forgot to log the inaccuracies.

It had everything short of a marriage certificate. 

They weren’t married. Not yet. If they were, there would be public record of it, which was why they hadn’t done it already. They were waiting until later that summer, which was still longer than they would have liked. 

In the end, it didn’t really matter what they would have liked. The fandom had already decided for them. “Hollander and Rozanov are married until proven otherwise.” And it felt like nothing could undo that. Not even the truth. 

“You are thinking too loudly, moya lyubov,” Ilya whispered. He pressed a kiss to Shane’s shoulder as he shifted upright in their bed. Their bed.

Shane grumbled at the phone, trying his best to think of the words he wanted to say in Russian so Ilya wouldn’t have to translate them half-asleep. It probably wasn’t perfect, but he tried anyway. He always did. “Go back to bed. I didn’t mean to keep you up.” 

But Ilya just sighed, wrapping his arms around Shane and hooking his chin over his shoulder. “Does it bother you?” he asked. “That they figure it out?” 

Shane shrugged, but locked his phone and melted back against his fiancé. “Not really,” he admitted. The anxiety used to be so constant that the absence of it almost made him more uneasy. “We were going to tell everyone in a month anyway. I just hate that they think they’re owed the whole story.” 

“Let them think,” Ilya said quietly. He kissed Shane’s shoulder again, familiar, as if it was the only way he knew how to wake up. “We know the truth.”

The truth existed.

It just didn’t belong to them anymore. 

Chapter 19: The Least Convincing Denial In History (Hayden Makes It Worse Again)

The press conference was supposed to be about the playoffs. Hayden knew that. The PR manager knew that. The little placard with his name in front of him definitely knew that. 

None of it mattered. 

Hayden was doing the press conference because Shane, in no uncertain terms, was not allowed to talk to the press. Not while the internet was still dissecting every corner of both his professional and personal life. Not while Hayden’s children were the ones responsible for it. 

Part of Hayden knew this was a punishment from management. His kids caused the scandal, so now he got to deal with the mess. He got to sit in front of a bunch of reporters and answer questions while Shane stood in the back corner, glaring at him every time he said so much as one word that had not been approved by committee. 

Yeah, Hayden deserved this. 

The moment he sat down, a reporter in the front row raised her hand with the kind of confidence that suggested she already knew the answer. Hayden hadn’t even had time to adjust his microphone yet. He called on her anyway. 

“Pike,” she addressed him brightly. He would have guessed it was her first time in this room — she hadn’t used his first name to assert dominance, and wasn’t jaded enough to assume the worst from him yet. “Can you comment on the belief among fans that Metros Captain Shane Hollander and Centaurs Captain Ilya Rozanov are married?” 

He bit his lip so hard he bled. “That doesn’t sound like a question about hockey,” he grumbled. In the back of the room, he could see Shane removing his shoulders from his damn ears. “Does anyone have a question about playoffs?” 

It redirected the conversation, if only briefly, and for a second Hayden thought he might get out of this unscathed. Even Marcel looked like he was proud — which never happened, because Hayden Pike was widely considered a walking PR disaster. 

But then, like all good things, that ended. 

“So you have no comment on the Rozanov-Hollander rumors?” one of them asked. 

Hayden blinked. Then again.

How the hell did we end up back here? He was just talking about fucking Vegas! About hockey. Numbers. There wasn’t even a connection there — the Centaurs weren’t playing Vegas. Only the Metros were. Where the hell had the question even come from? 

He leaned back in his chair, glancing at Shane, who was tense again. Then he looked up at the ceiling as if waiting for divine intervention. A lightning strike would do. Maybe it would take him out. He didn’t care as long as it hit the cameras too.

“They’re not married,” he said flatly. Because it was the truth. They weren’t. 

The room fell silent, which only unsettled Hayden more. They’d gotten what they wanted. They had gotten an answer that wasn’t just moving on or no comment. And he could tell, with a certainty, that they were plotting how to misuse it. He didn’t know what else they fucking wanted from him, but he was starting to lose his mind. 

The reporter from the beginning of the press conference tilted her head to the side. She nodded in the way people did when placating a child who had just said something deeply unconvincing. He knew that look. He wore it often because his kids were menaces — they probably learned that from Ilya, honestly. 

“So you’re saying they’re not married yet,” she pushed. 

All these reporters were so damn pushy. They always were. And in the back of the room, Hayden could see the way Shane stiffened, the way his eyes went cartoonishly wide. Because that…

That was a different question entirely. 

“No,” Hayden snapped, this time more out of anger than panic. He was sick of these people, and he was particularly sick of them picking on his family for fun or for soundbites. “Not ever. They are not married at all.” 

Somewhere behind the cameras, someone laughed.

Hayden had always told his children not to lie, but fuck it. He was a goddamn liar for a good goddamn reason. He would lie if it meant starving these people of something to chew on. He would keep lying if it meant Shane fucking relaxed, and he would keep lying to these stupid reporters if it meant they stopped talking to his children, for Christ’s sake.

Another reporter from the middle of the pack raised his hand. “Mr. Pike, fans have noticed that Hollander and Rozanov wear matching rings,” he said. “If not indicative of a relationship, then…” 

He didn’t bother to finish the question. He didn’t need to.

When the hell had this become about Shane and Ilya and not about hockey? But Hayden knew the answer before the thought finished forming.

It had always been about Shane and Ilya. Since their rookie season. Since the minute those two stepped onto the same ice, before either of them had ever been drafted, and sucked the oxygen right out of the room. It had always been about them. 

Even when no one knew it was anything more than a rivalry, those two had made the game look fucking romantic. 

“Lots of people have matching rings,” Hayden concluded, flicking his hand dismissively. But he could hear the strain creeping into his own voice, and he knew they could too. If they stayed quiet long enough, Hayden would just— “That does not mean marriage. It’s — it’s just, like — it means they’re friends.” 

The room had the audacity to chuckle at him. In the back, Hayden could see that Shane had hung his head in defeat. Contrary to popular belief, Hayden Pike was not an idiot, nor was he unreasonable. 

But these fucking reporters—

“Matching rings, identical kitchen tiles.” One of the reporters smirked at him, too smug for Hayden’s liking. “Four children calling them extra parents—” 

“That was a misunderstanding!” Hayden snapped. He shot to his feet, which probably only made him look more guilty than he was. It wasn’t his secret relationship, for fuck’s sake. “Ruby invents things!” 

At the side of the room, Marcel slowly lowered himself in his chair and pressed his fingertips to his temples. He was probably accepting the reality that he’d be working late that evening. This was a PR nightmare. Hayden was aware. 

A reporter from NBC raised his hand. This one, Hayden knew, was a constant fixture at these conferences. He was one of the guys who had been around longer than Hayden had, and was willing to be casual with them. “Hayden—” fuck, it was a first-name question—“you have previously confirmed that you trust Hollander and Rozanov with your children. And that they act as co-parents.” 

“I never said that!” Hayden barked, still on his feet. He probably needed to sit back down at some point — he wouldn’t. “I never said the word co-parent.” 

The NBC reporter — Steve! His name was Steve — turned his tablet around to show Hayden a tweet he’d made. It was damning. 

‘Shane and Ilya? Yeah, they basically raise my kids.’

Well, shit. There it was. Plain as day in unforgiving font. Hayden actually had said that. 

Now, he stammered through excuses for it that didn’t make sense. Every time he tried one, it felt wrong in his mouth, and he was back at square one. 

“That’s taken out of context,” he said after a while. Because it was. That tweet had been a snarky response to a Dallas Kent fan. He hadn’t meant it. Or at least, he hadn’t meant it the way these reporters were so eager to hear it.

Another hand went up, way in the back. The low-ball reporters. The ones who didn’t get to ask many questions of their own. “Mr. Pike… are you denying they are together?” 

“Yes.” 

“Are you denying they have ever been romantically involved?” she pressed.

He could have gotten away with a cheeky reply. He could have borrowed one of Rozanov’s old moves — winked at the camera, tossed them a sound bite, walked away clean.

But somewhere in the back of the room, Hayden could hear Shane squeak at the question, and there was heat crawling up his own neck. Something sharp and ugly formed just below his skull. “That is private,” he answered. 

“So, you’re not denying it.” It wasn’t a question. It didn’t have to be. 

Still on his feet, Hayden rested his hand on the table and leaned into the microphone. He was just fucking angry at this point. “Stop asking me that.” 

Pens scratched furiously against paper. Those who wouldn’t look at him were looking at each other. They seemed to hear the exact thing he wouldn’t say — that he was a man protecting a secret. A man who knew more than he was allowed to say.

“They are not married,” he repeated, slightly louder, when the pause in questions lasted too long. He was fucking desperate now. 

“But if they were—” 

“They’re not!” he shouted. 

“—would you support it?” 

What the fuck kind of question was that? Would he support his two best friends getting married?

Of course he would. Of course he would. Even if they weren’t his best friends, it wouldn’t have been any of his business. His opinion, or blessing, or support didn’t matter here. It never had, and it never would. 

Before he’d fully processed the question, he realized he’d been frozen for a beat too long. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a question he could dodge with a diplomatic no comment. If he did that, he’d be painted as a homophobe. That wouldn’t do well for his already failing reputation. 

Finally, with the bone-deep exhaustion of a man who had survived thirty-seven PR disasters this week, Hayden leaned back towards the mic. “Yes,” he said. “I would support it.” 

The room exploded. For a second, Hayden thought a bomb had gone off. His ears were ringing, the cameras were flashing bright enough to blind him, voices piled over one another, incoherent and hungry. Someone from the back shouted, “Pike confirms support for Hollander-Rozanov wedding!” 

Hayden slammed both of his hands back down on the table, finally getting some of their attention. “I confirm nothing! They aren’t getting married.” He pulled back from the microphone and lowered his voice to a mutter. He didn’t know they could still hear him, that they were still listening. He didn’t know they would hear him whisper the word “yet.” 

He only realized it had been picked up when he saw Marcel slide out of his chair and onto the floor. And when he made eye contact with Shane, Hayden knew with a sickening clarity that he’d fucked up again. 

By the time the conference feed ended, the clip was already everywhere. Not just twitter. Not just blogs. Everywhere. Every major news site ran the same fucking title: 

THE MOST VIRAL NHL PRESS MOMENT OF THE DECADE

And Twitter… well, Twitter did the thing that Twitter always fucking did. 

@pressboxeyes · 8min
Hayden Pike denies Hollander/Rozanov wedding while knowing the color arrangements. 

@creaseintel_ · 3min
the way he says “yet” ?????

> @redstringrink   · 2min
    NO BECAUSE WHY ADD YET

@pikes_press_manager   · 14min
Cannot believe they sent this man to deal with this and not, like, a professional.

@hollander_s_24  · 5min
I can practically hear Shane yelling ‘this is why we don’t tell him things’ 

@81hockeytape  · 23min
Anyone checked on the Ottawa locker room? Where is Roz?

> @ilyas_leftskate_   · 15min
    he’s obviously killing Pike. 

>> @81hockeytape   · 13min
     You’re absolutely right. Let me rephrase: Anyone checked on Pike? Has Roz got him yet?

Chapter 20: Shane And Ilya Come Out (Without Ruby’s Help)

They hadn’t planned it for weeks, like they originally thought they would. 

They planned it for twenty hours. 

That was how long it took after the press conference for Shane to stop pacing, and for Ilya to stop opening and closing his phone like it might explode in his hand.

The apartment felt quiet in a way that felt deliberate, and maybe it was. Maybe the world had finally stepped back to give them room — let them decide, for once, what they wanted to do with this. Ilya had driven from Ottawa in the middle of the night to make sure they could figure it out face-to-face. 

Shane sat at the kitchen counter, fingers wrapped around a mug that had long gone cold. Ilya leaned against the counter, arms crossed, jaw set tight enough to ache. They just watched each other. Carefully. Cautiously. Both of them were waiting for something, and neither of them knew what.

“You do not have to do this,” Ilya said for the fourth time. 

Shane looked up, taking a moment to really let it all sink in. They both knew this was going to happen eventually — that eventually they were going to tell people they were together — but that didn’t make any of it less overwhelming. “I know.” 

Ilya swallowed, rolling his shoulders back. But Shane already recognized it for what it was — the moment Ilya began folding himself smaller to make room for Shane’s wants. “We could wait. Another year. Two. Retirement is not—” 

“I don’t want to wait,” Shane said. It came out so quiet it barely counted as sound, but it didn’t matter. That didn’t make it any less true, and they both knew it. Shane was not a good liar, and he wasn’t going to start now, at the biggest decision of their lives.

The words landed hard in Ilya’s chest, like he’d stepped off the edge of something without knowing how far the drop was. Not because he didn’t know it was true, but because Shane so rarely said things like that out loud. He’d never been good at that part. Neither of them had. 

“I don’t want to hide you,” Shane continued, voice slightly louder now. It was still soft, unbearably gentle in a way that Ilya could have recognized in his sleep. “I don’t want to flinch when someone says your name, or when the kids talk about us like they’re not supposed to know.” 

They loved each other. Somewhere deep down, they knew they always had, even back when they didn’t know anything about each other aside from hockey stats. But what they had been doing was bullshit.  

It was unfair to the kids. Unfair to Hayden. Unfair to Jackie. Unfair to David and Yuna and fucking Henderson from Seattle, and everyone else who had figured them out and been forced into silence on their behalf.

Mostly, it was unfair to them. To each other. It was not fair to expect one another to live like that and call it love.

“I’m scared,” Shane admitted. For once, that wasn’t an excuse, just a fact. He was scared, and he was going to fucking do it anyway. For Ilya. For himself. 

Ilya crossed the room in two strides and dropped to his knees in front of Shane, hands firm on his legs. “I know,” he said softly. “Is scary. I am scared too. But we are together.”

They stayed that way for a long time. Ilya’s hands stayed warm and solid on Shane’s legs; Shane’s grip on Ilya’s shoulders never loosened. That was a language they had figured out how to speak to each other a long, long time ago. Words, as important as they were, weren’t always necessary. 

Then Shane nodded. “Okay,” he whispered, and the word between them was a promise. 

There was no press conference. They didn’t release a statement through PR. None of it was flashy in the way the internet and the league seemed to expect of them. 

They sat together on the couch, thighs pressed together. Shane’s knee bounced as he typed, pausing every few words as Ilya read over his shoulder. Every draft seemed too stiff, too vague, too apologetic. 

“No sorry,” Ilya murmured into Shane’s ear. 

Shane nodded and proceeded to delete the entire draft. Ilya was right — there was nothing to be sorry about. They hadn’t done anything wrong. Honesty wasn’t a failure. Anyone who thought otherwise didn’t get an opinion.

“Once we post, that’s it,” Shane said, staring at his screen. “No taking it back.” 

Ilya hummed and reached out his hand, lacing their fingers together. “Good.” 

The posts went live at the exact same time. 

@officialrozanov81 · just now
I am a private person. Always have been with people who matter. But there is someone in my life I will not be private about anymore.
Shane Hollander is my partner. Has been for a long time. We did not hide because we are ashamed. We hid because we are careful. But we are done being careful about each other.
This is our life. Be respectful. 

@shanehollanderhockeyplayer · just now
I don’t usually share my personal life, but this feels important.
Ilya is my partner. He’s been my home for many years. We didn’t plan for it to come out the way it did, but we’re grateful for it anyway.
We’re happy. We’re solid. We’re not going anywhere.
Thanks to the people who already knew, supported us, and protected our bonus-kids when things got too loud.

They turned both phones down on the coffee table like an act of faith. Nothing bad was going to happen. The world was not going to end. They were too good at their jobs for the league to touch them — and, apparently, this had been an open-secret for years. 

Shane leaned into Ilya’s shoulder and laughed, breathless and a little hysterical. The kind that came too close to crying to bother telling the difference. “Well… we did it,” he said. 

Ilya pressed a kiss to the top of his head and held him there, the way he did every time things came a little too close to overwhelming. “Yes,” he agreed. “We did.” 

A minute passed. Then five. Then fifteen. 

Shane’s phone buzzed, and they ignored it. Then Ilya’s did too, and they ignored that as well. None of it was important. At least not as important as the two of them soaking in this moment together. They came out, and nothing shattered. No sirens. No sudden end of the world. Just the two of them, still breathing, still together, still fine.

Twenty minutes after they posted, the front door opened, and the alarm beeped. They didn’t bother getting up to check who it was — only two people had the spare key. 

Small footsteps padded down the hallway towards the living room. Ruby and Jade appeared first, shoes still on, eyes bright with excitement as they spoke over each other. Arthur followed less than a second later, skidding to a stop just before he plowed into the coffee table. 

“Daddy said you told everyone!” Ruby shouted. Her tone hovered somewhere between glee and disbelief, and Shane couldn’t blame her. He felt the same way.

“He showed you already?” Ilya asked, suddenly picturing the Pikes bolting for the door the second the notification hit.

Jade nodded, grinning like she’d just won her first Cup. “Yep!” 

“Good,” Ruby sighed, as if the weight of the world had just been lifted off her tiny shoulders. It was a strange noise to hear from an eight-year-old. “Now we don’t have to be quiet.” 

Something in Shane’s chest finally — finally — unclenched, and he found himself laughing again. “You were never very quiet, kiddo,” he teased. 

The three kids climbed onto the couch without asking, wedging themselves in between Shane and Ilya and leaning back like this was exactly where they belonged. Hayden appeared in the doorway a second later with Amber balanced on his hip. 

“You’re really our extra-parents now,” Arthur said matter-of-factly, shoving his face into Shane’s hoodie. “Everyone knows.’ 

Shane looked at Ilya, and Ilya looked back, and for the first time they weren’t bracing for the worst. They let themselves enjoy it. Let themselves smile about it. 

“Yeah,” Shane said softly, his hand rubbing gently at the back of Arthur’s head. He was so fond of these kids it was crazy. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to feel when they finally had kids of their own. “They know.” 

Outside, the world was reacting. Twitter had almost crashed. That one person from the YouTube video proclaimed that they were the smartest person currently alive. But inside, everything was calm for once. 

And they didn’t need to ask Ruby Pike to keep her damn mouth shut.