Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Original Male Character(s), Shane Hollander & Original Male Character(s)

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Original Male Character(s), Rose Landry, Original Female Character(s)

Additional Tags:

Royalty, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Shane Hollander, Break Up, Post-Break Up, Boys Kissing, Eventual Smut, Inspired by Heated Rivalry (TV), Shane Hollander Has A Plan, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Break Up, Cat Owner Shane Hollander, Alternate Ending, Sequel, Explicit Sexual Content, Shane Hollander-centric, Good Friend Rose Landry, Mutual Pining, Miscommunication, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Shane Hollander Has a Praise Kink, Light Dom/sub, Non-Canon Relationship, POV Original Character, Gay Sex, Oral Sex, Work in Progress, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rimming

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of Advantage, Hollander

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-22 Updated: 2026-10-18 Words: 27,269 Chapters: 5/?

lightning is five times hotter than the sun

Summary

A year ago Shane Hollander met a Swedish prince and had the hottest summer of his life. Then he walked away.

Now he knows what he wants. Getting it is going to be harder.

Or: What if Break Point ended differently?

Notes

This is a sequel and part of a series that started with Break Point. It features Shane and an original male character.

It picks up just before the end of Break Point, takes a different turn, and follows what happens next for Shane and Alex. Thank you to everyone who supported the idea of writing this!

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Notes

Welcome back. So... Break Point ended with Shane and Ilya together. They work through their issues and live HEA! Happy with that? Great. Nothing to see here!

Still with me?

This is the other ending.

This picks up at the end of Chapter 7 of Break Point, except this time Shane says no. That's all I'm going to say right now other than I'm incapable of starting a fic without a bit of angst.

If you spent most of Break Point hoping Shane and Alex would stay together, you're in the right place.

After London, there was the cottage. His mother came twice a week with groceries he didn't need, and his father turned up unannounced with coffee and newspapers. Shane trained in the mornings, ran the trails, swam until his lungs burned, then lay on the dock and let the water dry on him. He read five books, more than he'd read in the previous two years combined.

In the evenings he sat by the firepit and listened to the loons on the lake, and he thought. Not about hockey, much. The London story had burned itself out in a week and people had stopped asking, but he still thought about it. About London, and Alex, and Ilya. Some days his thoughts got too much and he had to go and work it off in the gym. Most days he just sat with it and watched the flames. He slept better than he had in years, Henry curled up on the bed beside him.

Shane messaged Alex once, in the second week. A photograph of the lake from the end of the dock, no caption.

Alex had replied, That's very beautiful. Is the water cold?

Freezing.

You'd survive a Swedish summer then.

Shane had followed Alex on Instagram, and got a follow back. And then nothing.

Rozanov, on the other hand, had been a constant over the summer, since London. Not pressuring him. Just small things. You home safe? The first one had said. Shane had looked at it for a long time before replying, Yes. The next day, another message. Back in Boston today. Shane hadn't answered. The next day, Boston is too hot. This is why I go to Russia every summer. The messages kept coming, a slow trickle, every day or two. Pictures of a dog, the gym, asking if he'd watched some sport event or show on television.

Shane answered some of them, but not all.

By the time the emails started to roll in from the Metros about training and the schedule for the new season, from his mom about potential new brand partnerships, Shane was feeling more comfortable with himself than he had in a long time. Whatever happened next season, he was at peace with it.

Now he was back in his kitchen in Montreal, making a protein shake, Henry under his feet, meowing to be fed. Shane's body ached from pre-season training. He was in the best shape of his career and he knew it, and he also knew he could be even better this season. He wanted another cup win. He picked Henry up and held him to his chest. Shane had missed the structure of the season and having a routine back grounded him.

The buzzer rang.

Shane put Henry down and walked to the intercom by the door. He wasn't expecting anyone. He pressed the button. "Yes?"

"It's me." Ilya Rozanov's voice, rough and uncertain, came through the speaker.

He hesitated, finger hovering over the button. He could hang up. He could tell Rozanov to go away. He could say he didn't want to talk. He could say he was busy.

Shane buzzed him in.

Rozanov had never been to his apartment. All of their hookups had been in hotels, on the road, and once in Rozanov's Boston house. Shane had never asked him to come. Too scared of being seen, too scared of letting someone in. And then what he dreaded had happened, and Shane had been photographed with a man's hand on his back, leaving his apartment in London, and it had been fine. And then Shane had let himself be photographed holding hands with the man, at one of the biggest sporting events in the world. And it had been—mostly—fine.

Rozanov stepped inside Shane's apartment, and looked around, taking it in, cautious, like he thought he might break something.

"You have a cat." Rozanov observed, seeing Henry.

“Yes. His name is Henry.”

“Of course. A very Hollander name for a cat." Ilya set the bag down by the wall and stood in Shane's living room like he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Ilya. Why are you here? I told you in London I'm not— I don't know how I feel any more."

"I didn't say everything. In London," Ilya said quietly. "I was jealous, true. But I did not say those things because I was jealous. I wanted to say it before. In Boston. You remember Boston."

"Yes."

"I ask you to stay." Ilya was looking down at his feet. "I wanted to talk. Not fuck. I wanted to tell you everything. But then you looked at me like I did something wrong. And you left."

"I didn't know. It felt different, but I didn't know. And I was scared. I told you in Tampa, I panicked. And I am sorry about that."

"I know." Ilya nodded slowly. "Maybe. I think about that too. But I did not know that then. I only knew that I tried, and you left."

Shane opened his mouth but nothing came out.

"Then in Tampa you want to talk," Ilya went on. "You want to talk about what we are. And I said it is nothing." He looked up. "I said it was nothing because I was frightened too, Shane. Of that. Of you doing that again. And of Russia too, but that was not why."

"You said it was nothing for seven years. Even if you didn't say it out loud, you said it every time you didn't text me for months, every time you left the second we finished, every time you pretended you hate me."

"Yes."

"Do you know what that did to me?"

"Yes," Ilya said. "I know."

Shane looked at him. The light through the window caught the gold in his curls, the line of his jaw. Shane wanted to hit him and hold him in the same breath. He said nothing.

"I want to stop pretending, Shane. I want you. I want us. I am asking you now. I even want cat. I want to be your—whatever you will call me. Boyfriend. Partner. I do not care. I can move to Canada. Next year I will be a free agent."

Shane's eyes spilled over. He wiped at them with the back of his hand, hard, and then Ilya was holding him, kissing his cheek, his forehead, his hand warm on Shane's neck. He didn't say anything, just held him and let Shane cry.

When Shane finally lifted his head, Ilya's eyes were wet too.

“I am sorry,” Ilya said. “I am so sorry. For all of it.”

Shane closed his eyes and tipped his head to Ilya's and for a long time, he didn't move. He could feel the heat off Ilya’s body, hear his unsteady breathing, feel the roughness of his hands.

Say yes, Shane thought. This is what you wanted. You've got what you wanted.

And Shane's body knew it. That was the problem. His body was already leaning in, already saying yes, the way it had said yes in hotel rooms in a dozen cities before his brain had caught up.

He let it. He turned his face to Ilya's and kissed him.

Ilya made a sound low in his throat, and his hands slid back into Shane’s hair, and the kiss went deep almost immediately, the way it always had between them. It was so familiar it hurt. Shane's body lit up in all the old places, and for a few seconds Shane let himself be back in it.

Then he noticed the other thing. Underneath the want, there was a stillness in his chest that hadn't been there before. Before—in Tampa, in Boston, every time—kissing Ilya had felt like something opening. A door swinging wide. Now it felt like standing in a doorway of a room he didn't live in any more. Everything was the same. He knew where everything was. But he didn't live there any more.

He broke the kiss.

“Sit down,” Shane said. “Please.”

Something crossed Ilya’s face. He was not stupid. He heard the please. But he let go of Shane, and stepped back, and sat down on the sofa, and waited.

In January, Shane would have got on his knees for this. The Shane who’d stood in Tampa wanting to talk about what they were, the Shane who'd spent seven years waiting to be told it meant something—that Shane had wanted exactly this, and wanted it badly.

"I hear you," Shane said. He tried to keep his voice steady. “I hear everything you’re saying. And I believe it."

Ilya’s face didn’t change.

“But I don’t know if I want it anymore,” Shane continued. “Not like this. Not as a promise that we’ll be different. I spent half the summer trying to figure out what I actually feel, when I'm alone and there's no one waiting for me. I'm glad you said it all. I needed to hear it. I needed to know I didn't invent all of it, that it was real for you too." He made himself look up. "But Ilya. The things you're offering me now—boyfriend, moving to Canada—they are things for the old me. And he's not here."

“And I am one of the things,” Ilya said tiredly.

Shane pulled the armchair closer and sat, near enough that their knees almost touched. He shook his head. "It isn't like that."

Ilya's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Is it the prince?"

"No. I haven't spoken to him since London. It's not him." Shane made himself keep looking at him. "Most of the summer I was on my own. Actually on my own. This isn’t about him. I need you to believe that, because if you walk out of here thinking you lost me to him, you’ll have understood nothing. I don’t want anyone right now. Not him. Not—” He made himself finish. “Not you. I want my home, and my cat, and another fucking Cup, and to find out what I’m like when the wanting stops running my whole life. I’ve never had that. I’ve wanted you since I was nineteen years old.”

“Eighteen,” Ilya said. He was smiling now. “Night I got picked first in the draft.”

“Whatever.” It almost got a smile out of Shane too. “You see? Even that. Even you saying that is the old us. I loved it, Ilya. I loved it so much. And it was killing me and I didn’t notice because when we got together—when we played together—it was so good."

"So I wait. I can wait."

"Don't." It came out harder than he meant. "Please don't wait."

Shane’s whole body braced—for argument, for the cocky deflection, for the Ilya Rozanov who talked his way out of everything. Shane braced for it and some tired part of him even wanted it, because it would be easier to say okay. To say, let's see in a few months.

It didn’t come.

“Okay,” Ilya said.

Shane stared at him. “Okay?”

“You say no. So. Okay.” Ilya's voice was rough and he was crying openly now, and he didn’t look away. "I thought it would always be us. But in Tampa, I was not ready. And now I left it too late. We are very bad at this."

A wet laugh got out of Shane, and then he was crying too, properly, the second time that day, and he pressed his hand against his eyes.

“Shut up.”

Ilya’s mouth twitched. It was almost the old Rozanov grin. “You tell me no, Hollander, and somehow I respect you more. This is not fair.”

"And I want you to be okay." Shane added. "Without me. I think you need that more than you need me."

Ilya went quiet. Then he laughed, a short, unhappy sound. "You are very annoying when you are right."

"I know."

"You will still hate me on ice?"

"Every game. But maybe off the ice—maybe we can be friends?"

“Friends.” Ilya said it like a foreign word. “We are friends. Who sometimes cry together. Very normal friendship.”

Shane laughed and it turned into a sob halfway. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Ilya’s voice gentled. He put his hand flat against Shane’s face one more time, briefly, then took it away. “You have cat to feed. You have training. Go be boring. Be happy.”

“Ilya.”

Ilya stood up and got the bag. At the door, he turned back. “Goodbye, Shane.” He looked at Henry. "Goodbye, cat."

The door closed behind him.

Shane sat there until Henry came and nudged his head against Shane's leg, and then he got up and went back to the kitchen and finished making the shake.

The season started three weeks after Rozanov had turned up at his apartment, and Shane went into it the way he went into most things: with a plan.

He'd written it out at the cottage in August, in the notebook he kept just for hockey. Pages of it. Sleep targets, nutrition targets, on-ice goals broken down by month. At the top of the first page he'd written: best season of my career. When the notebook was filled, he'd put it in his bag and driven back to Montreal.

Training began and his body took over. The training staff noticed something had changed. You're flying, one of them told him, after sprints. Whatever you did this summer, do it again.

Everyone knew what he'd done in the summer, or thought they did. It had been all over the news. On the first day back, J.J. walked into the locker room, saw him, and bowed. "Your Highness." It went on for about a week. They wanted to know whether he'd had to curtsy, whether the prince had a castle, and what the fuck had been going on with Rozanov in London. Shane said no, yes, sort of, and that Rozanov had been in London for his own reasons and they'd run into each other, and Rozanov couldn't resist giving him shit about the upcoming season. Which was true enough, and eventually they got bored and moved on. There was no denying the prince. What they didn't know was the rest; that he'd ended a seven-year situationship. And he'd come back to Montreal feeling freer than he'd been since he was nineteen.

Then October came, and the season with it, and Shane Hollander played the best hockey of his life.

He knew it, without anyone saying a word, without needing the numbers. But people did say it, and the numbers were there. He scored twice in the home opener. He had twenty-seven points in October. He won faceoffs at a rate he’d never sustained before. Inside Shane, something very calm said: this is mine. Nobody can take this. By December, there was talk of a third Cup, of scoring records, and later, talk of the awards, but it didn't touch him. Every night he went home to Henry and his meal plan and his ten-thirty bedtime, and the routine held him like someone holding his hand.

After one of the games, a reporter asked him if he felt different this year, and Shane gave his usual answer about teamwork, and then, surprising himself, added: "I'm having fun." It was the most honest thing he’d ever said in an interview, and nobody noticed, because it sounded like a cliché too.

The first Boston game of the season was in November, in Montreal. There had been a pre-season exhibition game, but Rozanov had not played, and Shane had not asked. Shane had known about the fixture date since August. He told himself it was one game. He slept fine the night before. He ate the same pre-game meal at the same time. He taped his stick the same way. Then they were warming up, and he did a lap, and Rozanov was on the other side of the red line doing his own lap. For one second their eyes met and neither of them looked away first.

Ilya nodded. Once. A hockey nod, the kind you give a man you’ve played a hundred times.

Shane nodded back.

Shane scored in the second period, and Rozanov scored too, in the third, and when they bent in the face-off circle late in the game Rozanov leaned in and said, “Good goal.”

“Thanks,” Shane said. “Yours too.”

“I know.” The puck dropped. Rozanov won it clean.

Another thing was, the edges of Shane's life widened that season. Slowly, and on his own terms, but they widened. This was also part of his plan.

He said yes to things. Team dinners on the road, when he would once have ordered room service and gone to bed at ten. J.J.'s birthday at a bar in Nashville, where he stayed until midnight and had three beers and laughed more than he had at anything in years. A charity poker night that he’d have ducked any other year. His teammates noticed before anyone else did. “Who are you,“ one of them said, grinning, shoving him on the bus, and Shane shoved back and said, “Fuck you,” and that was the whole conversation, which was how hockey players said they’d seen you change and they thought it was a good thing. For the first time in his adult life, he had no secret to protect. That was a kind of freedom.

In November, he'd gone out with teammates to a bar in Philadelphia. Dark, loud, not a hockey bar. A man had talked to him near the end of the night. Late twenties, dark hair, a paramedic just off shift with his friends. He didn't seem to know who Shane was, or didn't care. He touched Shane’s forearm when he laughed, and Shane looked at the hand on his arm and thought: I can just do this now.

He didn’t go home with him. But he took his number, and the next time the team was in Philadelphia, in January, he texted him, and they got dinner, and afterward Shane went back to the man’s apartment and slept with him, and it was good—no room numbers sent in advance, no one checking the hallway before the door closed. The man asked afterward if he wanted to stay, and Shane said no, thank you, I have an early flight, and the man said that’s a shame and kissed him at the door, and Shane walked back to the hotel through the cold and felt fine.

There were others, over the winter. Not many. He was still Shane Hollander, still careful, still incapable of treating sex casually in the way some of his teammates seemed to. But there was a lawyer he met in a bar in Raleigh, and a trainer he met in a hotel gym in New York, and both times he reminded himself: he was twenty-six years old, he was single, he was allowed, and he owed nobody an explanation. The only person whose permission he’d ever needed had been his own, and he’d given it. Each time it was fine, and fine was enough. He wasn't looking for more than fine.

The winter passed. Road trips blurred together—planes, hotels, rinks. He slept better than he had in years. When it got cold, Henry learned to sleep on Shane’s chest. Shane would lie there in the dark with twelve pounds of warm, purring weight rising and falling on him and think: this is okay. This is good.

All in all, Shane Hollander was doing well. Better than well. He was playing the best hockey of his life. Everyone said so. The broadcasters said it, the pundits said it, his coach said it in a press conference in February, unprompted: Shane’s on another level this year. He remained first in scoring for the rest of the season.

He saw Ilya again in February, in Boston this time.

It was the same as November, and not the same. The nod in warmups. A good game from both of them. In the third period, they ended up near each other at the benches, and Ilya looked straight at him and said, “You are playing very good this year. Is annoying.”

“So are you.”

“Yes.” A pause. The old smirk, faint, gone as fast as it came. “I am always very good.”

Shane huffed a laugh.

“Your cat,” Ilya said. “He is good?”

“He got bigger.”

“Good,” Ilya said, seriously, and that was all.

He saw a clip of them talking, later, after it went mildly viral, two captains being friendly, the rivalry softening with age. Shane watched the clip once, on his phone in the hotel, and then put the phone away. He felt fine.

Alex was different.

He had set the rule about Alex early, before the season started. He didn’t look at the Wimbledon photographs. He'd seen one again by accident in August, a sidebar on some sports site, his own face in the Royal Box with his hand over Alex's, and he'd closed the page so fast he nearly dropped his phone. Then, on one of his first nights back in Montreal, he had opened a search bar and started typing before he caught himself. He'd closed the app and set the phone on the kitchen counter, and stood there for a while, thinking. He lay awake for a long time that night.

After that he was strict. No searching. He did not text him. He drafted one message. Once. In February, after a bad game in Detroit, and the hotel room was too quiet and Henry was six hundred miles away. He lay on his bed with his phone and opened the message thread. It was still there. That’s very beautiful. Is the water cold? He read it all again, and then typed: Hi. I know it's been a while. How are you? He deleted it and typed: Was it real? Do you still— He left the words sitting there in the message field, and he looked at them for a long time, because he did not know how to finish it. Then he deleted the words one at a time, slowly, and put the phone on the other side of the room, and got back into bed.

He never asked himself why it was so hard. That was part of the rule too, though he couldn’t have said when he’d made that part. He had reasons, and they were good ones—Alex had let it go, had let him go, had said take care, Shane and meant it, and a man who let you go that easily didn’t want to be chased. And Shane had made his choice too. It wouldn't have worked. He had to focus on hockey. The distance was too far. The best thing to do was to leave the summer in London where it belonged. Shane had all the reasons organised neatly, and he didn't look at them too closely, because if he did he might notice that none of them were the real reason.

The real reason was that if he sent the message and Alex answered the way Alex answered things—warm, direct, immediate—Shane didn’t know what he’d do. And if he sent it and Alex didn’t answer, he knew exactly what he’d do, and it would undo nine months of work. So he didn’t send it. It was easier to keep a rule than to want something.

They'd walked away. They'd both done it. Deliberately, eyes open, because it would never work—two careers, two continents, and two weeks of something good could not survive a year of absence. That had been the right decision. He still believed it was the right decision. But the rightness of a decision didn’t stop it from hurting. And things didn't hurt less because you'd chosen it.

Some nights, in the big bed, Henry asleep against him, Shane would let himself think about Stockholm for exactly as long as it took to fall asleep. Just the thought: he’s there. It’s summer there soon.

He let the memories come and then he let them go. It hurt less after the first few months. By March, it was more like describing something that had happened to someone else. He thought about Alex and then he went back to his life.

April came, and with it the end of the regular season. Montreal had clinched their playoff berth first in the conference, and his mother called him the morning after.

He was standing in the kitchen in sweats and a t-shirt, his hair wet from the shower, drinking something green that his nutritionist swore by.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said. “I know you probably don't want to think about this now, but I need ten minutes of your time. It’s about June.”

Shane sat down at the kitchen counter. Henry was in front of him. Shane had given up trying to get him to stay on the floor. “Okay.”

She switched to her business voice. "And before you say no, you can't say no, so save us both time."

"Okay," Shane repeated, wary. "What is it."

“Rolex called. They want you in Europe in June. Charity awards event. It's their flagship event for the year." She paused, and he could hear her choosing the next sentence. "It's an important invitation. You said you wanted to do more with charity— Well, this is the opportunity. It could make a difference to your portfolio for the next ten years. I've told them yes."

“You already told them—”

“Because you would have said you needed to think about it, and there's nothing to think about."

"But—"

She cut him off. "It's after the playoffs."

He didn’t want to go. He had the playoffs in front of him and the possibility of another Cup. He'd planned to go to the cottage in June—

Something yanked in his chest.

Rolex. Europe. Charity.

"Shane? Are you still there?"

He stood up. “Where in Europe?”

“Copenhagen, I think. I’ll get you the details.” A pause. "Shane, honey, are you okay?"

"Yes." He put the glass down on the counter, too hard. "Who else is going?"

“Athletes. Some film people. I can get you the list.” A pause. “Why?”

“No reason,” Shane said. “Put it in the calendar.”

Alex would be there.

He had kept the rule for nine months, and he had kept it because he had discipline and could always choose not to look. Close the page. Put the phone on the other side of the room. Go to bed. In Copenhagen there would be nothing to close. He would be in the same room, and Shane would look, because even Shane Hollander's legendary discipline would not save him if Alex was in front of him.

His heart was going fast. It was April. The event was in June. He had eight weeks and the playoffs, and he shouldn't be thinking about any of this, and he was thinking about all of it. Dark blond hair and grey-blue eyes. The tattoos. Alex's hands, and every place they'd been. Take care, Shane, and how easily he'd said it.

Shane didn't want to keep the rule. He wanted to see him.

He picked up his phone. Henry was watching him from the counter. He opened the thread, and there it was, still at the bottom where it had been since the summer.

Is the water cold?

Chapter 2: Shane

Chapter Summary

I never thought of doing a recap, but heard some people like it! If you appreciate the previously on... let me know in the comments and I can carry on doing them.

Previously on...
After the tuna meltdown, Shane and Ilya did not get back together in Tampa. Instead, Shane went to London for Wimbledon, met Alex, a Swedish prince. For two weeks Shane was someone he didn't know he could be. Photos were leaked, and instead of running away, Shane held Alex's hand in the Royal Box. Then the two weeks ended and Shane and Alex said goodbye. In Break Point, Ilya saw the photos and came to London to win Shane back and they eventually reunited back in Montreal. This story takes a different road from the end of Break Point. When Ilya turned up in Montreal and offered Shane everything he'd once wanted, Shane said no. Not Ilya, not Alex, not anyone. Ilya and Shane parted as friends. In the prologue, Shane spent the next nine months single, playing the best hockey of his life, and absolutely not looking Alex up. Then, in April, his mother calls. The Rolex Awards are in Copenhagen in June, Shane is obliged to go. And, of course, Alex is going to be there too.

Chapter Notes

Shane was up before his alarm. He lay in bed for half a minute, then swung his legs out and stood, feet flat on the cold floor. Henry, sensing movement, jumped up and arched against Shane’s shin. Shane lifted the cat with one hand, set him on the bed, and headed for the kitchen. The apartment was silent except for Henry, who followed him, complaining.

He fed Henry, mixed a protein shake, and stood at the kitchen island with his laptop open to the playoff prep schedule. He'd created the spreadsheet himself, colour-coded by day. Blue for ice time. Green for gym. Yellow for film. Red for travel. He scrolled through the sheet, double-checked his notes from last night, and then minimized the window so the team’s training block was visible on the desktop. He had printed the block and taped it to the fridge, held by a Metros magnet. The rest of the fridge was bare.

Henry wound between Shane's feet while he drank the shake, tail brushing his shins.

Shane opened the email app on his phone. Overnight, a calendar notification and a new message from his mother. The subject was "Copenhagen (JUNE 22-travel details to follow)." He opened the calendar and scrolled to June. His mother had already put the event there: Rolex Awards, Copenhagen, 18:30. Black tie.

He tapped the link in the calendar, which led to a website for the 2018 Rolex Awards. He scrolled through the site, looking for Alex’s name or photograph, but didn't find it. He switched tabs and searched for the previous year’s event. There hadn't been one. It ran every two years. He searched again and found a gallery of photographs from the 2016 awards. Some actors he recognized, conservationists holding glass trophies, a handful of athletes.

Alex was in one of them, wearing a dinner jacket. Beside him, a man Shane didn't recognize with dark hair, about Shane's height. The two of them were posed side by side for the camera, not touching, not looking at each other. It was impossible to say whether they were together or whether it was just a photo and nothing more.

He closed the tab and scrolled back to the invite on his phone. He took a screenshot, then sent it to Rose with no message.

He hadn't even finished his protein shake when Rose called. Video. Shane answered and propped the phone against the blender. She was in a makeup chair somewhere bright, draped in a black cape, someone working on her hair from behind.

"Rolex," she said, instead of hello. "Are you going to text him?"

“Good morning to you too.”

“Shane.”

“It’s a work thing.”

"Uh-huh." Rose leaned toward the camera and the stylist behind her made a small sound and tilted her head back by two fingers. "Since when do you screenshot work things to me?"

Shane didn't answer that.

"You're going right?" Rose said. "Tell me you're not gonna bail."

“My mom says I have to go. She's already RSVP'd.” Shane paused. "I'm pretty sure he's going to be there."

Rose did not look surprised. "Of course he's going to be there. You gonna text him?" She repeated.

"I don't know."

The stylist pulled a section of Rose’s hair back. Rose held still, her eyes on the camera.

“You’re a grown man,” Rose said. “If you want to see him, say it. If you don’t, also fine. But it’s been almost a year.”

“Nine months,” Shane said. He was not sure why he corrected her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, nine months. Whatever.” Rose looked off-camera and then back. “Do you want to see him?”

“I don’t know what I want,” he said.

Rose said, “That’s a lie.” She said it calmly, without judgement.

“I don’t—” Shane started, but the words stopped there.

"You’ve been not texting him for nine months,” she said. “How’s that been going?”

Shane moved to the window. The city was grey and wet, cars splashing through the puddles.

“It’s been fine.”

“Liar."

"It's been—" He stopped. "I think about him, alright? I think about him at weird times. In the gym. Doing dishes. I think about him and then I go back to what I’m doing. That’s how it’s going.”

 Rose was quiet for a second, which for Rose was a long time. “Okay,” she said, and her voice had changed, the edge off it. “So text him. You want me to write it for you?”

“No.”

“Text him today, Shaney," Rose said. "You’ll think about it too much if you wait. I have to go. I’m due on set in twenty.”

She hung up without waiting for a reply.

Shane stood at the counter for a long minute, staring at the phone. Henry was back at Shane's feet, looking up, because Shane was still in the kitchen, and Shane in the kitchen meant there might be more food. Shane put his phone face down, rinsed the shaker and set it in the drying rack.

He refilled Henry’s water bowl at the sink. The bowl did not need refilling. He dumped the old water, rinsed it, filled it to the line he always filled it to, and set it back on its mat. Henry inspected it and walked away.

He went into the living room. The books on the coffee table were already in a straight stack, but he straightened them anyway, lining the bottom edges up. Then he got down on the floor and did ten minutes of hip flexor stretching, the same sequence he did every morning, left side then right, counting his breaths.

The whole time the phone sat on the kitchen counter, face-down, twelve feet away.

When he finished the routine, he walked back to the kitchen and picked up his phone. He opened the text thread with Alex and stared at it. The photograph from the dock last summer, three messages, then silence.

He'd spent nine months finding out he didn't need this. He'd had the best season of his life. He'd gone to J.J.'s birthday and stayed until midnight. He'd slept with other men and each time he'd walked back to his hotel feeling fine. None of that had needed Alex. But it had all started in London. He'd spent two weeks with a man who put his hand on Shane's back in the street, and he'd held his hand in the Royal Box, with the cameras on them, and the world hadn't ended. Since he was eighteen he had assumed he couldn't be that person. Alex had never asked him to be. He had just acted as though it was normal, and so it was. That was what Shane kept coming back to, in the gym, at the sink. Not the sex, though he thought about that too. He had liked who he was for those two weeks. He'd managed to stay that person since, mostly, on his own. He could keep doing it on his own. He just didn't want to.

He started typing.

The first attempt was three sentences. He said he'd been invited to the Rolex Awards, and he knew Alex was probably involved with the foundation, and that he had thought about London a lot, and that he hoped Alex was well. He read it back. Too much. Like he was trying to fit nine months into a text message. He deleted it.

The second was one sentence. I will be attending the Rolex Awards in June. It sounded like a press release. He deleted it.

The third draft started, I've been thinking about you. It was true and he deleted it faster than the others. Then he put his phone face down and stood there for a long moment, breathing. Four counts in. Six counts out.

He picked the phone up again. He typed:

I’ve been invited to the Rolex Awards in June. Will you be there?

He read it once. Then he hit send before he could think about it too much.

Shane left the phone on the counter and walked away, out of the kitchen and into the hallway, as if distance could put it out of his mind. He paced the length of the apartment twice. Then he set a timer on his watch for four minutes. He would not check the phone before then. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched the seconds count down. At 7:58 he walked back to the kitchen and picked up the phone.

Nothing.

He put the phone down and looked out of the window, and told himself it was fine. He could wait.

The message arrived two hours later when Shane was fastening his skates. His phone was next to him on the bench, face up, screen dark. The dressing room was filling up around him. Someone had a speaker on, playing something with a heavy bassline. Shane had been through the drills in his head twice already. It kept him from counting the minutes since the message had gone through. He was trying not to check the phone. He wasn't the kind of person who checked their phone every three seconds, not when they were at practice, the week before the playoffs, but he looked anyway. Nothing.

Shane finished fastening his skates and looked down again.

The screen was lit: new message.

Alex.

He reached for the phone with a hand that was definitely not shaking and unlocked it.

Yes I'll be there. It's good to hear from you, Shane. I wasn't sure I would.

"Oh my God." J.J. was two stalls down with one skate on. "He's smiling at his phone."

Shane put the phone down again. "I'm not."

"Guys. Guys." J.J. put both hands up. "Hollander's got a boyfriend."

"Fuck off."

J.J. stage-whispered at a volume that carried anyway: "Who is it? Give me a name. I will be so cool about it." Shane knew he would not be cool about it.

"There's nobody," Shane said, and then: "It's my mom," and J.J. said something about Shane's mother that got a bigger laugh than it deserved, and then somebody turned the music up and they moved on.

Shane finished dressing. Shoulder pads, elbow pads, practice jersey. Then he sat back down, phone in hand. His first message felt like nothing now. It had felt like a small move, cautious. Next to Alex's answer it looked like what it was—someone who had waited nine months to say anything, saying as little as he could.

He stood up. Full gear, skates on, laces tight, and started typing: I should have written this in August.

He looked at it. Then somebody banged a stick on the door frame and shouted that they were going out. Shane locked the phone, put it in his stall, and went out onto the ice. The message would have to wait.

He did a slow lap around the rink, letting his mind go blank. It didn't stay blank. He skated the drills, and every time they stopped for a breath or a drink he had the next line he would say to Alex, and then a better one, and then he'd lost the first one. He was the first one back in the dressing room. He sat in front of his stall and opened the draft. One line. He added a second, read it, deleted it. He showered and dressed fast, then walked to his car with his head down, phone in his hand.

Shane went to bed early that night. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, the phone face down on the nightstand, and tried not to think about time zones, about what Alex was doing right now, about the one line sitting there unsent.

At 4:12 a.m. he gave up. He rolled over and reached for the phone, and the draft was where he'd left it. He typed the rest lying on his side in the dark, fast, before he could change his mind.

I should have written this in August. I'm still single. Nothing happened with Ilya—that's finished, properly. I know I'm nine months late but I had to work out what I want and it's the same thing I wanted in London. Playoffs start next week. Can I see you before the awards? I don't want to do this in a room full of people.

He hit send and put the phone face down. It was late morning in Sweden.

He lay awake for a while, then drifted off. When the alarm went off at 6:30, he checked his messages.Nothing.

He went through the morning routine—protein shake, news, emails, cat feeding, stretches. At 8:12 he checked the phone again. Still nothing.

By the time he got to morning skate, he could feel the edge in his mood. He knew what game-day nerves felt like. This wasn't that. He fumbled a puck during warmups and missed two easy passes. Halfway through, the coach asked him if he was all right. Shane said he was fine.

He drove home, made the same meal he always made before a game, chicken and brown rice. Henry sat on the counter and watched him. He checked the phone twice while he ate, and once more while he rinsed the plate.

He tried to tell himself it was fine. That he was being ridiculous. That people had lives, and maybe Alex was traveling, or in meetings.

He thought about sending another message, something self-deprecating—Sorry, that was a lot, you don’t have to reply. Or: No pressure. But that felt worse, and so he didn’t.

The game that night was the easiest part of the day. It always was. Once the puck dropped there was no phone and no Copenhagen, only the ice and the shift in front of him, and he was very good at that. He scored in the first period and set up another in the third. They won 3–1. Then there was the press, and he said all the things he was supposed to say a week ahead of the playoffs. It was past eleven by the time he got home. Henry came to the door. Shane stood in the kitchen with his bag still on his shoulder and took out his phone. No messages.

He should have been exhausted, but instead he lay on his back in bed, phone next to him, screen dark. At midnight he checked the phone again. Nothing. He was aware he was acting like a teenager, but it didn’t matter. He wanted to know.

He fell asleep with the phone on the nightstand. At 5:30 a.m., the vibration woke him. He opened the message before his eyes had finished focusing.

I'm seeing someone, Shane. I'm sorry. I wish things were different. I'll see you in June.

That was all.

It hurt more than he expected it to.

It was 11:30 in Sweden. Alex had waited until the next day to answer, and even then, he’d kept it short and clean.

Shane read it twice. Then he got up, because it was 5:30 and he was awake, and he knew he was not going back to sleep.

He did his morning routine. Henry, coffee machine, shake, the water bowl that didn't need refilling. Outside it was still dark.

He got down on the living room floor and did the hip flexor sequence, left side then right, counting his breaths.

Of course Alex was seeing someone. Alex was the kind of man who was easy to love, who was open, who was wanted and wanted back and said so out loud, and nine months was a long time to expect a man like that to stand still.

He lost the count twice and started again both times.

At six he picked up the phone and typed: Understood. See you in June.

He sent it. He did not ask who. He did not ask how long, or how serious, or whether it would have changed anything if he'd messaged six months ago, or what would happen when they were standing in the same room as each other. He had told Ilya once—it felt like a different life—that he wasn't spending another seven years working out what someone meant. He intended to keep that promise.

Shane changed into shorts and a t-shirt, put his phone in his pocket, and left the apartment.

The gym in his building was empty. He took the treadmill second from the end, the one he always used. He set a pace faster than his usual warm-up and started running.

For the first ten minutes his head wouldn’t stop. I’m seeing someone, Shane. The words ran with him, steady as his footfalls. I wish things were different. He pushed the speed up. At fifteen minutes his lungs started to burn and his legs found the rhythm, and the words got quieter. At twenty they were gone. There was only the belt and his breathing and the sweat soaking through his shirt.

He ran forty minutes.

Rose called that night. He was on the sofa with Henry on his chest and the TV on mute.

“Well?”

“He’s seeing someone.”

“Oh, Shane.” Silence on the line. Then: "What did you tell him?"

"I told him— I told him I'm single. And I wish I'd messaged him sooner. And that I want to see him." He put Henry down and sat up. "He was nice about it. He said he's sorry and he wishes things were different. But he's seeing someone else and he'll see me in June."

“What did you say back?”

“Understood. See you in June.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Shane.” Her voice had gone soft. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Playoffs start in six days.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

"Okay. I'm not fine. But I will be." Shane said.

"For what it's worth," Rose said, "A man who's happy with somebody else doesn't tell you he wishes it was different."

"Rose."

"I'm just saying."

"He said he's seeing someone. That's it." Shane smoothed Henry's fur. "I'm not doing this again. I'm not taking one word out of a message and making something big out of it."

Rose was quiet.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I'm sorry, babe."

"It's fine."

"It isn't, but okay." She paused. "Are you going to be alright? For the playoffs?"

"Yes," Shane said, and meant it. They talked about other things for a few minutes—her new movie, an event she was going to in Toronto—and then she had to go.

Shane put the phone on the arm of the sofa and lay back down. Henry got back on top of him. Shane had a season to finish. He had promised himself the best season of his career, and that was another promise he intended to keep.

Chapter End Notes

I forgot to add a note to say next chapter is gonna be Alex POV!

Chapter 3: Alex

Chapter Summary

Previously on Lightning is five times hotter than the sun...

Shane Hollander has had a great year. Newly single, playing the best hockey of his life. The Metros are heading for the playoffs. Then in April, an invitation arrives from Rolex, to attend their charity awards in Copenhagen in June. Shane knows without asking that Alex is going to be there. He hasn't been able to stop thinking about him since London. Shane texts him: I want to see you. The response he gets isn't the one that he wants— Alex is seeing someone. This is Alex's POV of the same week.

Chapter Notes

Alex is an idiot. But to be honest it's something I would do too. He's just a complicated, not-perfect human being with rejection sensitivity. He'll redeem himself.

The coffee had gone cold on the windowsill. Alex didn't notice until he reached for it, and he drank it anyway, standing, looking out at the street. It was just after one, and the sun was high and the sky clear. The days were getting longer, and he was grateful to be out of winter, when it was dark by three.

His laptop was open on the kitchen table behind him. The foundation's annual review, forty pages, due for comment by Friday. He'd read the same page twice. He'd gotten to the bottom and realised he had no idea what it said, so he'd gone back to the top and read it again. Got to the bottom again, and still couldn't have said what was in it. He had run the foundation for six years and the report wasn't the problem. He was the problem. None of it was going in. 

He went back to the table and tried again. The same paragraph sat in front of him, something about programme reach in the archipelago, numbers he was supposed to form an opinion about. 

He finished the cold coffee and set the cup down. He was thinking about whether to make another one, or accept that he was not going to read the report and go for a run instead, when his phone lit up beside him.

He looked over without thinking and the name on the screen made his hand stop halfway to the keyboard.

Shane Hollander.

The preview read:

I've been invited to the Rolex Awards in June. Will you be there?

He was on his feet, his chair scraping back, before he'd realised he was doing it. One moment he was leaning over the laptop and the next he was walking, phone in his hand, back over to the window, his heart going too fast.

He opened his messages and read it again. That was the whole message.

He read it a third time, even though it was short and there was nothing to miss, but he read it again anyway, as if a third reading might give some insight the first two hadn't. It didn't.

Nine months.

Nine months of nothing except a photo from the dock in August. Nothing in the holidays. Nothing when the Metros clinched their playoff spot, which he had watched happen on a stream at two in the morning, alone. 

And now, two sentences. There was nothing in it about Shane himself, nothing about how he was. Nothing about London. No hello, no how are you, no I miss you. It was almost businesslike. He knew that tone. He'd watched clips of Shane in press conferences saying things like we just have to take it one game at a time. This was the same voice, every word checked and analysed before it was sent.

But… It was still a question. And Shane Hollander didn't ask things for the sake of it. Two weeks in London had taught Alex that much. If Shane had asked, he wanted an answer.

And the invitations had only gone out two days before. So another thing Alex knew was that Shane had messaged him almost as soon as he got it. Shane could have waited. If he didn't care, he could have said hello beside a champagne table in Copenhagen, with a room full of people around them, and risked nothing at all. Instead, he had written first, and quickly.

Had Shane been thinking about him, maybe, before today. Like Alex had thought about Shane. Like Alex had been thinking about him ten minutes ago when he was supposed to be reading the report. He pictured it without being able to stop himself, Shane in some apartment he'd never seen, in Montreal, deciding to send the message.

Alex let himself hold onto that for a moment. He stood in his kitchen in front of the window and his report open and unread on his laptop behind him and let himself think: he thought about me. The feeling went through him like warmth spreading, and he didn't argue with himself about it for once. For about ten seconds he let himself be simply, stupidly, happy, the way he had been for two weeks the previous summer, in a way he had not been since.

Then he tried to answer, and the whole thing fell away from under him.

He could not type.

He knew how he felt. He knew what he wanted to say. Every version of it was some form of I've thought about you every day. He tried.

Shane. It’s good to hear from you. I haven’t— Delete.

I’ve wondered about you. More than I’ve wanted to admit. When you said— Delete. Too much.

Of course I’ll be there. I’d— He stopped with his thumbs over the keys. I’d what. I’d have written a hundred times if I thought you wanted to hear from me. True, and unsendable. I’d come to Montreal tomorrow if you asked. Also true, and worse.

He put the phone down on the counter. He picked it up. Put it down again.

It was ridiculous. He was twenty-nine years old. He had addressed rooms of four hundred people without notes. He had been photographed since birth; he had been trained, expensively, for years, in exactly the art of saying the right thing in the right way at the right time, and he was standing there with his hands not quite steady because of a text a man had sent him. He wanted to laugh, except it wasn't funny.

He put the phone face down on the counter and went to get changed. He would go for the run, and then he would answer.

Alex checked the phone once more on the way out the door. He opened the message, thumb hovering over the reply box as he laced his shoes. He typed nothing. It had been seven minutes. Montreal was six hours behind; it was morning there and Shane would be starting his day now, heading to practice probably, or already there. He wouldn't be looking at his phone. Alex had time; nothing needed answering in the next hour.

He ran. He took the route along the canal, pushing harder than he needed to, thinking about as little as possible. The rhythm of his feet on the pavement was a steadier beat than the one in his chest. He came back sweating, lungs burning. It was only after he'd showered and was standing with a towel around his waist, hair dripping, water pooling on the tiles, that he let himself pick up the phone again. The message was still there. The reply box underneath it was still empty.

He dressed in sweats and made more coffee. He filled the base of the moka pot, packed the basket, screwed it shut, and put it on the hob. It would take a few minutes, and that was a few minutes in which he didn't need to decide anything. He stood and waited for it to start gurgling.

He thought about Shane reading whatever he sent. Reading it twice, probably. Shane would read it twice, and take it seriously, because that's what Shane did. That was the thing about him that Alex never got used to and liked more than anything. Shane didn't do subtext. If he said I want to see you he meant I want to see you. If Alex wrote something careless, Shane would believe it. If Alex wrote something honest, Shane would believe that too, and then it would be out and real, and there would be no taking it back.

He poured the coffee. He didn’t drink it. He picked up the phone instead.

In the end, what he said was: Yes I’ll be there. It’s good to hear from you, Shane.

He looked at it. Two sentences’ worth of nothing. Safe. Friendly. The sort of message you could show anyone.

Then, before he could think better of it, he added the other line, I wasn’t sure I would.

The last line was too much. He knew it immediately. It told Shane everything. It said: I waited. I wanted to hear from you and I didn’t know if I would and I felt every one of the nine months. It opened a door and you didn't write that to a man unless you were prepared for him to walk through it. And Alex did not know if he was prepared. There were reasons he didn't want to think about right now, and one of them was in Madrid, and had a toothbrush in his bathroom at that moment, and that was as much as he was willing to give it right then.

He deleted the last line.

He looked at the message without it. Yes I’ll be there. It’s good to hear from you, Shane. Fine. Correct. The door closed.

He looked at the space where the line had been.

The cursor blinked.

He typed the line again.

I wasn’t sure I would.

He looked at it. His thumb hovered. His coffee sat on the counter cooling toward the same state as the last cup, and he pressed send before he could lose his nerve.

Alex sat back down at the kitchen table and opened the laptop. He set his phone face up on the table beside him, where he could see it, which he knew was a bad idea, but he left it there anyway.

He went back to the report.

Page one. Grant allocation, Baltic coast. He read the first paragraph, and then he read it again. It’s good to hear from you, Shane. I wasn’t sure I would. The words were sent now, in Shane's pocket somewhere, and Shane would read it at some point today and he would reply— Would he though? Alex had not asked a question, he realised, and he had given Shane no reason to reply. He glanced at the phone. Nothing. The screen stayed dark for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Alex got to the foundation office just after nine. He had taken the long way, walking along the water instead of catching the bus, because he needed the air. The phone was in his inside pocket. It had buzzed once during the walk and he had stopped dead in the middle of the pavement to look at it. It was a text from his sister about dinner. He had replied with a thumbs up and kept walking.

The office sat on the sixth floor of a new building in central Stockholm. Alex had a desk by the window in the large open plan, but today was the monthly review, in one of the glass-walled rooms, at nine. Three colleagues were already there, from finance, from communications and from projects. Papers were spread on the table and a pot of coffee between them.

Alex said good morning and sat down at the head of the table. He had chaired this meeting every month for six years, and usually he could do it without thinking.

Alex had read the agenda. A fisheries project that was over budget. An update from a reforestation project. The finance director said something about an audit. He tried to listen but his focus wouldn't hold. He watched the movement of traffic in the street below, the way the rain had left streaks on the glass. He nodded when someone said his name, murmured assent, then let the conversation drift away again.

At 10:14, his phone vibrated twice. Alex waited. He counted to ten. Then he shifted in his chair, one hand dropping below the table, and slid the phone out of his pocket just far enough to see the screen.

Shane Hollander.

He moved his thumb over the notification and opened the message. He kept the phone low, against his thigh, and he read.

I should have written this in August. I'm still single. Nothing happened with Ilya—that's finished, properly. I know I'm nine months late but I had to work out what I want and it's the same thing I wanted in London. Playoffs start next week. Can I see you before the awards? I don't want to do this in a room full of people.

He read it a second time, slower. On the third read, his heart started to hurt in a way he had not expected.

The people in the room were still talking. No one was looking at him.

“Alex?”

He looked up. The whole room was looking at him, in the mild way of people waiting for an answer to a question he had not heard. He put his phone back into his pocket.

“Sorry,” he said. “Miles away. Say it again?”

“The auditing contract,” the finance director said patiently. “Whether we extend them or put it out to tender.”

Can I see you before the awards?

“Tender,” Alex said. “They’re fine, but we’ve used them four years running and the board will ask why we didn’t test the market. Put it out.”

The finance director nodded and made a note. The meeting moved on. Alex’s heart was still going.

I don’t want to do this in a room full of people.

The meeting ended at eleven. He stayed sitting while the others stood up, gathered papers, put laptop chargers away, said their goodbyes. One of them, the communications officer, paused at the door.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Fine,” Alex said. “Just thinking. You go. I've got a couple of emails to send so I'll close up.”

He sat for a moment. Then he took his phone out and opened the message and read it for the fourth time.

I should have written this in August.

So should I, Alex thought. So should I.

He had thought about writing in August. He had drafted messages in his head on the boat, on the plane, in bed. He had not written any of them, because Shane had said not to. And then there had been David.

He had met David just before Christmas, at a party. David was Spanish, and played for Stockholm FF, in the Swedish football league, and had been there and it had been easy to fall into something with him. He had things in common with David, and found him easy to talk to. David was attractive, and more than that, he was safe, and safe had felt like a luxury. But David was not Shane.

And now Alex had a message from Shane, saying everything he wanted to hear. He wanted to answer Shane immediately. His hands wanted to type yes, wanted to type name the day, wanted it with a force that surprised him even though he had known for nine months that this was in him somewhere.

He did not type anything.

Because there was David, and David’s phone charger was still by the bed in his flat and David’s toothbrush was still in his bathroom, and whatever David was or wasn’t anymore, Alex had been with him for four months and he had to resolve that before he could say anything, because the version of this where Alex answered Shane's message now made him someone he didn't want to be. And—if he was honest with himself—that version scared the shit out of him.

So he sat with it. Then he locked the phone and put it back in his pocket. He gathered up his things and closed up the glass room. He said goodbye to the receptionist and smiled, and no one looking at him would have known anything at all had happened since he walked into the office that morning.

He walked home the long way, and did not answer the message, because he could not, not yet, and he thought about it all afternoon, and it felt like he was holding his breath.

That evening the flat felt quieter than usual.

David had gone home to Madrid on Sunday for what he said was a family event. Maybe it was. Alex suspected it was also a way of getting out of Stockholm for a week. They had argued before he left, and Alex couldn't remember what started it.

Maybe argued was too strong a word for it. Small disagreements were always flaring up, circling the same ground, over nothing, until one of them left the room. Then they would come back and sit down and pretend everything was fine again.

Four months. And they both knew it was ending. David was due back on Friday, and they needed to talk, and Alex had said as much, when he said goodbye to David. We need to talk, he'd said. And David had agreed, Yes. When I get back. It had been five days since then and they had not spoken.

He was still all over Alex's flat. Not in any dramatic way. They didn't live together. David didn't leave clothes on the floor or books open on chairs. Small things. A toothbrush for when he stayed over, next to Alex's in the bathroom. A phone charger plugged in by the bed on the side David slept on. Half a packet of Spanish cigarettes near the balcony, which Alex hated.

Now he was standing in his kitchen, phone in his hand, and Shane—the man he had spent nine months trying not to think about—had asked to see him.

He took the phone into the living room and sat on the sofa. No new messages. He opened Instagram, scrolled through some stories, closed it. He checked the foundation's Slack channel, muted the notification.

He opened the message thread. Shane’s name. The long message from the morning, which he had now read so many times he knew it by heart.

Playoffs start next week. Can I see you before the awards? I don't want to do this in a room full of people.

He started typing.

Yes. He looked at the word, and added: Tell me when and I’ll be wherever you are. It was too much. He deleted it.

Then: Yes. Just tell me when.

Delete.

I can come to Canada now.

It was true. He could. The foundation had staff, good people who could run things for a week without him, and a calendar he could clear with three phone calls, and there was a direct flight. He could be there in twelve hours. He imagined it—the arrivals hall, Shane’s face, the surprise on it—and the desire for it came up so hard he nearly sent it out of pure reflex.

He deleted that one as well.

He went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth. He splashed cold water over his face and stood there with the towel pressed against his eyes for a long moment. Then he went to bed.

He lay there and thought about London, and Shane's hands on him, and the way Shane looked at Alex like he was something special. He thought about how easy it would be to end things with David tonight, how he should have already ended things with him. He would say yes to Shane, he would fly anywhere for even a chance at that feeling again.

But there was something else that he didn't want to think about. If he said yes and went, what if the whole thing had been two weeks and nothing more? A summer fling. Just June, and tennis, and London, and novelty, and a time limit attached. The intoxication of a man like Shane, so beautiful, who had never been allowed to want things out loud, who wanting him. What if he flew somewhere and Shane looked at him and felt nothing at all any more? Or, worse, what if it was real, and Shane gave him everything, and Alex was the one who couldn't see it through? Shane had waited nine months to say what he wanted. Alex had never stuck with anything long enough to be sure he wouldn't let him down.

He could not do that to Shane.

And part of him didn’t want to know. London was the best thing that had happened to him in years and it was perfect and he wanted it to stay perfect, and the only way to keep a thing perfect was to never put it to a test.

Say no, on the other hand, and nothing could go wrong, because in a room full of people, nothing could happen at all.

And there was the other thing, the uglier thing, the thing he turned over and couldn’t put down.

Shane had only messaged because of the awards. Nine months of silence and what broke it was a date in the calendar. Rolex, Copenhagen, June. They were going to be in the same room whether they liked it or not. And Alex could not tell—no matter how many times he read the message—whether Shane would have messaged him at all otherwise. Perhaps it was just the event forcing the issue, and Shane, disciplined, practical Shane, was getting ahead of an awkward public moment. Managing it, the way Shane managed everything.

Alex knew it wasn’t fair to think that. Shane was not that kind of person. Shane was careful, and he was decent, and he had never once in London been anything other than honest, even when it had been hard. The message said I should have written this in August. It said I know I’m nine months late. It did not read like a man trying to avoid a situation. But Alex couldn't stop the thoughts coming.

He knew what he should do. He should call David. He should be honest with Shane.

But in the end, he didn't do either of those things.

He chose the room full of people. And he told himself he was choosing it because of David. That was the easiest version. David was in Madrid, and they hadn’t spoken, and Alex was, technically, still in a relationship, and you didn’t fly to Montreal to see a man you’d fallen for in the space of two weeks just because he asked while your boyfriend was in another country. That was a rule. He had rules.

So he wrote a draft of his own. Not the one he wanted to write. The other one.

I'm seeing someone.

He looked at the words. They were true and they were not true. Both things at once.

He didn’t send it yet. But he didn’t delete it either. He left the phone on the nightstand, face up, the screen glowing in the dark, and he went to get a glass of water.

When he came back, the screen had locked. The draft was still there behind it, waiting.

He lay down and tried to sleep and didn't do anything about it.

He slept badly and woke before seven, and the first thing he thought was that he still had not answered. Shane would be asleep now. It was one in the morning in Montreal and Shane slept on a schedule, and that schedule would not include lying awake thinking about a man in Sweden.

He got up without looking at his phone.

He showered, let the water run over him until it went cold, then dressed and sat at the end of the sofa, phone in his hand. He finished the message he'd decided on, no edits, no second guessing:

I'm seeing someone, Shane. I'm sorry. I wish things were different. I'll see you in June.

He didn't send it. He put the phone on the table and opened the laptop, and answered emails he could have left until tomorrow, and made coffee, and let it go cold. Twice he picked the phone up and put it down again. At half past eleven he picked it up again. Reading the draft made his chest feel tight.

He thought about Shane in Montreal, five-thirty in the morning over there, the message arriving on his nightstand in the dark. He thought about Shane reading it. He thought: he will believe this. He will believe every word of it at face value and he will not ask one question, because that is who he is.

That was the thought that should have stopped him, but it didn't. He pressed send.

I don’t want to do this in a room full of people, Shane had written.

He read it again now and realised what he had done. He had just made certain that was exactly where it would happen. Shane had asked for the opposite of that and Alex had been selfish.

He set the phone face down on the table.

Half an hour later it buzzed and he picked it up immediately.

Shane. Understood. See you in June.

He didn't even know what he'd expected. If he was honest, he had hoped. Some part of him had wanted Shane to push, to say no, to ask who, to ask whether it was serious, to say he was coming to Stockholm anyway. Alex had put up the wall and then, secretly, shamefully, he had hoped Shane would break it down. That Shane would say: I don’t accept that. I’ll be on the next flight. Tell me you still want me.

And Alex would have crumbled. He would have explained everything—David, why he hadn't replied right away, the fear that London wasn't real. He would have gotten on a plane.

But Shane hadn't pushed. Because that was what a decent person did when you told them you were not free. They stepped back. They respected the boundary. They did not argue with you when you told them things like that. Shane was a decent person. So now Alex was sitting in his kitchen with the response he had asked for, and there was no one to be angry with but himself.

It was a terrible thing to know about yourself. He had written I’m seeing someone and meant tell me again how much you want me, and had given Shane nothing in return, and Shane—decent, literal Shane—had done exactly what Alex had asked and accepted it without protest.

The flat was very quiet around him. He sat with the phone in his hands, and realised he had no fucking idea what he was doing. He did not know why he had done it. He had a reason for every part of it, and none of them added up. He had protected himself and broken his own heart, and he had done it on purpose, and now there was no one left to blame. David was in Madrid. Shane was in Montreal, probably putting his phone away and going back to whatever he did at six in the morning in the week before the playoffs. Probably going for a run. Probably not thinking about Stockholm.

Alex always said he didn't know how to finish things, and now he had finished something more thoroughly than he imagined possible.

He sat down at the table and opened the laptop, to the annual review, to page one. He read the first paragraph, and then he read it again, and the phone stayed where it was, face down on the table.

See you in June.

Chapter End Notes

Good news, I've got a week off work and no plans beyond writing and some boring shit like going to the dentist. Hoping to write a few chapters at least and I'm working on another WIP (uh-oh). But bad news ugh I'm really sick (not the reason for being off work, just bad timing). I've had flu and now laryngitis and literally can't talk at all. So I guess that's a good thing for writing since I don't want to leave the house and can't speak to anyone 🥹 But equally my head feels like it's full of cotton wool instead of actual brain matter so I'm not even sure if what I'm writing is any good, don't judge 🥴

During Break Point, some people commented that they hoped Alex would find someone else perfect for him when he and Shane broke up... I don't think this is what you meant though is it 😇. David is hot but he's no Shane Hollander.

Chapter 4: Shane

Chapter Summary

Previously on...

Shane Hollander has had the best season of his career. Then, just as the Metros are about to start the playoffs, an invitation comes to the Rolex enterprise awards. Shane knows Alex - Alexander Bergström, the Swedish prince who was responsible for the hottest summer of Shane's life - is going to be there. So Shane does something he's never done before. He goes first. He tells Alex he's single and he still wants everything he wanted in London the year before. It takes Alex a day to answer and then the bombshell arrives: He's seeing someone. Now it's June and Shane is on his way to Copenhagen for whatever comes next...

Chapter Notes

I'm sorry for what Alex did in the last chapter. But the course of true love never did run smooth. It would be BORING if they just got back together right? Right?? (Maybe that's where I've been going wrong)
Are things going to smooth themselves out? I'm sure they will.
Will it happen in this chapter? *Cough* no comment ............

The aircraft cabin lights were out, all the shades drawn, most of the people around him asleep. Shane had given up on sleep hours ago, and was now watching the small plane icon on the flight tracker in the screen in front of him. They were sitting somewhere over the Atlantic, three hours to Copenhagen.

He took his phone out of the seat pocket and unlocked it, his thumb moving across the screen scrolling through the hundreds of messages from the last few weeks. The team group chat was still active, memes and photos and a running thread about the Cup party. The last message was from a trainer about exit physicals. Lines of congratulations from other players, from his agent, from some kid he played juniors with in Ottawa. One from his mom, a few days old: a photo of Henry asleep on the back of the couch, already settled in at his parents' for the summer as though he'd never lived anywhere else. Under it: Don't forget your Rolex! He'd replied, I'm wearing it. He scrolled up and found her message from the night they'd won: We're so proud of you. Love you. He'd already read it three times but he read it again.

He scrolled further. Alex's message was at the bottom, a single line: Congratulations, you were magnificent. It had come in the night they won. Shane's phone had been going off continuously for hours and he'd stopped looking at it, and then at some point past three in the morning, the quiet of his hotel room in Detroit, finally alone, ears still ringing from the arena, he had sat on the bed and gone through the notifications, and there it had been in the middle of them all.

Four words. He had read them maybe twenty times that night. He had read them sitting on the bed and while brushing his teeth and while lying in the dark not sleeping. You were magnificent. You. Alex had watched. Alex had watched him play. Somewhere in Sweden, in the middle of the night, Alex had been watching him, and thought he was magnificent, and had sent it.

His own reply sat underneath.

Thanks.

He looked at it now, in the dark of the plane, and felt the same uneasy drop of his stomach he’d felt every time he’d looked at it for two weeks.

It hadn't been the first thing he typed. He'd typed Thank you, that means a lot. He'd typed Did you watch the whole game? He'd typed, at his weakest, at four in the morning, I wish you'd been there, and that he had looked at for a long time before he deleted it, because you did not send a message like that to a man who had a boyfriend. So in the end he sent Thanks, because that was the smallest thing he felt he could say, and he'd stared at it afterward thinking how cold it sounded.  

He scrolled up further, to April. He didn't need to read it again. He knew what was there. His own message, sent at 4:12 in the morning from his apartment in Montreal, saying he was single and he wanted to see Alex, and not just at the awards. Then a full day of nothing, during which he'd checked his phone forty times between practice and the game and bed. He had lain there with the phone on his chest and replayed the exact wording of his message. Maybe it was too much. Maybe his memory was betraying him and it had just been two weeks of fun. Maybe Alex's speech back in London about not asking him for more had just been an excuse. Then he got the reply: I'm seeing someone Shane, I'm sorry. I wish things were different. I'll see you in June. And underneath, his own reply: Understood. See you in June.

He had read it in bed in Montreal, on the bus before Game 1, in a hotel room in New York. He'd read it so many times he no longer had a reaction to it.

He had not moved on. He had won the Cup instead, which should have been enough. The Cup was in Montreal now, making its rounds through the city, and he was on a plane to Copenhagen for another fucking Rolex event, to shake hands and pretend that two weeks in London had meant the same to him as it had to Alex.

Of course Alex was seeing someone. Because Alex was the kind of man you would be lucky to get, and anyone who got Alex—and wasn't a complete idiot—would keep him. Shane had had Alex for two weeks and had spent nine months afterwards trying to decide whether those two weeks had been the best thing that had ever happened to him or the worst, and in the meantime Alex had gone back to his life, which probably included boats and a huge family and now a man who was almost definitely easier to be around than Shane Hollander.

He had searched for him, once, at two in the morning. There was nothing. No photos, no name. That was worse, because it left him to make the details up, and what he made up was a man who was taller than him and had never once told Alex not to text.

He scrolled back through the thread one more time. Magnificent. Thanks. I’m seeing someone. Understood. The whole thing read like an exchange between colleagues. There was nothing he could do about it now, so he locked the phone and put it back in the seat pocket. He looked back at the screen in front of him. The plane icon had moved and they were close to Ireland now.

He was on a plane, flying back towards Prince Alexander Bergström and he had no idea what he was going to say when he saw him.

The plane began its descent into Copenhagen a little after ten in the morning, local time. The seat-belt sign dinged, and Shane put his seat upright. He hadn't slept at all. He went through the schedule in his head. Check-in from two, but they said his room would be available earlier. The welcome drinks and dinner were at seven. Twenty-four hours after that, the awards themselves. And somewhere within that window, he would see Alex, either alone or—the thought made his chest feel tight—with someone. Shane would see him, shake his hand, be polite and friendly. It was the exact thing Shane had wanted to avoid. But he was the one who had told Alex not to text him, almost a year ago, and he'd lost the right to ask for anything now.

The airport was quiet and clean and he cleared customs quickly. There was a driver waiting with his name and a small Rolex logo on the card. The drive into the city took half an hour, the streets busy with cyclists, wide lanes of them, which still surprised him every time he came to Europe.

The hotel stood near the water. His room was on the seventeenth floor, a suite overlooking the harbour, dark water with a boat moving across it, rooftops on the other side. He stood looking out of the window for a long time before unpacking.

He took a shower and changed, and then he didn't know what to after that, so he sat on the end of the bed and opened his phone. His parents would still be sleeping, so he sent a message to Rose instead, who was filming in Budapest. Landed. He attached a photo from the hotel window. The response came before he even put the phone down: Seen him yet?

No, he typed back. Then he added: There's a dinner tonight. He'll probably be there.

Her reply came back fast again: You ok?

He typed: Tired. Didn’t sleep on the plane. I’m fine.

He looked out of the window again. It was 12:17. Alex was somewhere in the city, maybe thinking about that evening, maybe not. He checked the phone again. Nothing else from Rose. A couple of emails and that was it. He set the phone on the nightstand and lay down on the bed. The mattress was soft. Too soft. His eyes closed.

He slept for four hours in the end, and regretted it when he woke up because he knew the jet lag would get him later. He showered again to wake himself up, and shaved, though he had shaved the morning before and didn't really need to.

The suit was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, where he'd put it to let the creases drop: the light grey one his stylist had selected, with a white shirt and a note that said no tie. He dressed carefully. He did the shirt up to the top button, then undid two buttons, then did one back up again. He set the Rolex six hours forward and fastened it on his wrist. He spent longer on his hair than he had before the parade.

He looked at himself in the mirror. It was a dinner. He had been to dozens of them.

He checked his phone before leaving. Rose, an hour ago: Photo or it didn't happen. He took a picture of himself in the mirror, suit and all, expression flat on purpose, and sent it. She replied with a row of clapping hands and then: Behave yourself. Then, a second later: Actually don't.

He put the phone in his inside pocket and went down at twenty to seven. The venue was only ten minutes away along the water but Rolex had sent a car anyway.

The reception room ran the length of the building’s upper floor, floor-to-ceiling windows facing the harbour, and outside it was still bright. When Shane got there, the room was already half filled. People stood along the windows with glasses in hand, talking, backlit. He took a breath and did what he always did at these things. He gave his name to the person at the doorway with the clipboard, who was already smiling and nodding their welcome. Next, drinks table. He took a glass of sparkling water, and moved through the clusters of conversation, looking for people he recognized. There were a couple: a Rolex exec, an actor, both of whom he'd met in London the year before.

The conversations all ran much the same: greeting, quick compliment, something about the awards. Shane answered with the lines he had rehearsed in every city: “Great to be here,” “Looking forward to the weekend,” “Yeah, crazy year for us.” He was getting better at this now and could have said the words in his sleep. He smiled for photos, shaking hands with whoever was standing next to him.

He did not think about London. He thought about the next handshake, the next introduction, the next photograph.

One of the Rolex reps introduced him to some of the award nominees—a scientist from Chile who had been researching glacier microbiology, and an engineer from Nairobi who had designed a portable device for detecting malaria. Shane shook hands, asked questions he'd prepared after reading the briefing notes. His role as an ambassador was mentioned, and he deflected with his trademark modesty.

The photographer arranged them near the windows, the harbour visible behind them. Shane stood where he was told to stand, angled his body to show the watch, smiled with the closed-mouth expression that photographed well. The flash went off. The photographer checked his screen, nodded, moved on. Shane was released to circulate again.

He got another glass of water at the bar and drank it slowly. He'd already decided alcohol was not advisable for a number of reasons, not least the unknown quantity—whether Alex would be present, whether they would speak, what he would say—which Shane had packed away at the back of his mind. He had rules for tonight, decided in the taxi, in his hotel room lying on the bed, re-decided in the shower. He would not search the room. If Alex was here, he would see him and they would be polite. But he would not search for him. It turned out not searching for him was exhausting in itself.

When people started drifting toward the tables, Shane was relieved, because sitting down meant he only had to talk to whoever was on his left and right. On his left was a British woman he half recognised, an actress it turned out, though he couldn't have said what he'd seen her in. She held out her hand before he'd finished pulling his chair in.

"Emma. I'm a friend of Rose's. She told me you'd be here." She looked him over. "She said you play hockey?"

They talked. She started on a story about the first time she'd come to Copenhagen, something about trying to figure out the shared bicycles, and Shane began to relax and enjoy himself. The water had been poured and the bread had come round, and he had started to think that Alex wasn't coming at all.

Then Alex was in the doorway, and Shane realised in that instant there was an empty seat across the table from him. Fuck.

Alex moved through the room, greeting people, a hand on a shoulder here, leaning in to hear something there, smiling at everyone. Until he saw Shane. And then, for a half-second, his smile dropped.

Shane turned back to Emma and tried to focus on the story about the bicycles.

And then Alex was beside him.

"Shane." His voice was pleasant and even and held nothing of the way Alex had spoken to him in London. He offered his hand. "Congratulations on the Cup. It was well deserved."

"Thank you," Shane said, shaking it dumbly. "Good to see you."

He wanted to say something else, but that was all that would come out. His throat felt tight. He looked up at Alex’s face, and Alex held his eyes for a moment longer than necessary, and then he was gone, moving on to the next person before sitting down in the seat opposite.

A waiter came round with the wine. Shane put his hand over his glass and shook his head and the waiter moved on.

The first course arrived, something cold with fish on a small plate. Shane wasn't hungry. He picked at it. Emma finished the story about the bicycles. It was funny and he laughed in the right places.

Across the table, Alex was talking to the woman beside him, his hands on the table, one resting near his wine glass. He nodded when she spoke, then laughed at something she said. It was the easy laugh Shane remembered from London. He had been the one making Alex laugh like that, for two weeks.

The waiter was coming back along the table with the bottle. Shane caught his eye and nodded at his glass. He'd drunk a third of it before the waiter got to the next seat.

Once, their eyes met across the table. It was an accident, or near enough. Alex’s face gave nothing away. It wasn't cold—just composed. Neutral. Shane could not read what was underneath. Alex held his eyes and then Shane looked down at his plate, and the moment was over. Shane could hear Alex's voice occasionally, though not enough to make out every word. He kept his attention on Emma as the next course was served.

Shane ate a little more. The food was good, but he couldn’t taste it. The jet lag was starting to settle in his head like a dull weight. He could feel himself flushing from the wine. Everything felt uncomfortable. The collar of his shirt. The bright light from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Emma was asking him about Montreal. She'd been there once, filming, in the winter and it had been unbearably cold, and she wanted to know what it was like in the summer. She was easy to talk to. She knew nothing about hockey, but asked about it anyway: "Is your team good?"

He told her about the Cup. She didn't know what it was, so he got his phone out and found a photo, him on the ice with it over his head.

"God, it's huge," she said. "Is it heavy?"

"Yes."

"Were you afraid of dropping it?"

"Yes."

"And I thought the hard part was winning, not braining yourself with the trophy."

"The winning part was over by then."

She laughed. Shane reached for his wine and found the glass nearly empty. He accepted a refill when it was offered.

The plates were cleared. There was a short speech from someone about the awards, thanking everyone for coming, and Shane listened, applauded with everyone else. Another round of conversations had just begun when Alex pushed back his chair. He stood and said something to the guests beside him. He shook one person's hand, then another's. He stopped near the end of the table to speak to two people who had risen when he approached. Shane tried to make himself turn back to Emma, and when he looked again Alex was near the entrance. He did not glance over. He spoke briefly to someone there and left.

Dessert had not been served.

Someone was waiting for Alex, then. Upstairs, or on the end of a phone. Shane thought about Alex taking his shirt off in a hotel room for somebody else.

Emma lifted the wine bottle and tilted it over his glass. "Would you like more?"

Shane looked at his glass. He had finished the second pour. "Sure."

She poured, set the bottle down. "What do you do in the summers? Apart from things like this."

Shane kept his eyes on her and told her about the cottage. Across from him, the chair stayed empty.

“Right,” Emma said, when the tables started to empty. She drained the last of her wine and turned to Shane. “It’s nine o’clock and the sun is still up and I’m not ready to go and sit in a hotel room. Come and have a drink with me.”

“I should—” Shane started, and then stopped, because—what? He should go back to his room? He should get an early night? Going back to his hotel meant lying awake, looking at his phone, and the text thread he'd read dozens of times already. And the only thing different about it was the new detail that Alex had shaken his hand like a stranger and left dinner early.

“Should what?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Yes. One drink.”

“That’s the spirit,” she said. “Rose said you’d be a hard sell.”

They walked in the direction of his hotel. Hers was in the other direction but she said she didn't care, she wanted to walk along the water. It was still light. Half past nine and the sky was still a pale, even blue, the sun low but not yet set. It did something to Shane’s sense of time and was definitely not helping his jet lag.

She knew of a bar nearby and it turned out to be two streets from his hotel, a narrow place with dark wood and small lamps lit on the tables even though it wasn’t dark outside. Bookshelves lined the walls and some of the bottles behind the bar looked like they'd been there a hundred years.

"It used to be a bookshop," Emma explained, as they were shown to their table.

She ordered a gin and tonic and he ordered a beer. She told him about the film she'd just finished shooting and he told her about the parade in Montreal. She was easy to talk to, which he never expected of anyone at these things.

He finished his beer. When she suggested another, he said yes, and the second went down faster than the first. There was a version of him that was in his room right now, showered, in bed, reading a text thread from April. This was better. He was in a bar in Copenhagen that used to be a bookshop, and Emma was telling him how she and Rose had met, on a film neither of them would admit to now, and at some point he had unwound himself a little more and undone the second button of his shirt again.

"So who is he?" she said.

Shane looked up. “Who?”

"The man at the dinner," she said, stirring her drink. "You spent half the time looking at him, and the other half watching the door after he left. I'm an actress. I spend a lot of time observing people."

Shane was quiet for a moment. A year ago he would have shut the conversation down, politely. A lot had changed in a year, and the drinks were doing the rest of the work lowering his guard.

“Someone I met last summer,” he said. “It was a couple of weeks and then it ended.”

“Mm,” she said. “Did it, though.”

“We don’t—” He stopped. He looked at his glass, which was almost empty again. “He’s seeing someone.”

“Is he,” she said, in the same tone, and then she looked at him for a second longer. “Well. He’s an idiot and you’re beautiful and the Danes have lovely gin.” She raised her glass. “To summer.”

He smiled and drank.

They stayed for a nightcap because she insisted, one more, just one, you’re on holiday whether you like it or not. He had a whisky. He hadn't had whisky since that night in London with Alex, and as soon as he'd drunk it, he realised it was probably one more drink than he needed. He checked himself: speech—normal. Hands—steady. Balance—fine. He was just a bit… loose. His edges had gone soft.

He paid for the drinks. She argued with him and lost. Out on the pavement the sky had finally gone a deep, dusk blue, though it still wasn’t properly dark, and the air off the harbour was cooler. He flagged a taxi for her and opened the door.

“I had a lovely time,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. “Rose was right about you.”

“What did she say?”

“That you’re one of the good ones,” she said, and got in, and the taxi pulled away.

Shane stood on the pavement for a moment. One of the good ones. He put his hands in his pockets and walked the two streets back to his hotel, and the pavement was steady under him, and he was fine. He realised he had enjoyed himself, and he had not expected that after seeing Alex at dinner.

The lobby was quiet. He crossed it nodding at the man at the desk, pressed the button for the elevator, and waited with his eyes on the floor indicator. The doors opened, and he was relieved to find it empty. He stepped in and pressed his floor and leaned back against the mirrored wall. He looked at himself in the one opposite. He looked tired and his hair was no longer in place. He looked like he’d been drinking, in a way he never let himself look normally, but he was alone, so he didn't try to correct it, just closed his eyes for a second.

On the third floor, the elevator slowed. The doors opened, and there, in front of him, Alex.

It took Shane a moment to register that Alex was actually standing there and it wasn't just the product of three glasses of wine, two beers and a whisky. Alex was wearing gym clothes. Black shorts, a fitted t-shirt, dark grey, sweat darkening the middle of his chest. His hair was pushed back and was damp. He was flushed, skin pink across his cheekbones. A sheen on his forearms. He had a phone in one hand and a room key in the other and he was looking down at the phone, and then he looked up.

For a second neither of them moved.

“Shane,” Alex said.

“Alex.”

Alex stepped in and reached across Shane to press the button for the nineteenth floor, two above Shane's, and Shane caught the smell of him. Cologne—that specific cologne—and sweat. It was the smell of Alex's neck in his bed in London, the smell of the sheets, afterwards, and Shane's body remembered all of it, all at once, the weight of Alex on top of him, the heat of his skin, his mouth, and it hit Shane low in his stomach.He tried not to inhale too deeply, but it felt like oxygen and he'd been holding his breath for a year.

The doors slid shut and the elevator started going up again. Shane didn't move. Alex was standing just inside the door, half facing away, and Shane stared at him and could not look away. He looked—unfairly, Shane thought—even better than he'd looked last June. He was more tanned and the t-shirt showed his biceps and the line of his shoulders, and he was more muscular than Shane remembered, or maybe Shane had just forgotten, and then his mind went to the thought of Alex with his shirt off in his bedroom in London, the planes of his stomach and his hands gripping Shane's wrists, holding them above his head. Alex was so fucking beautiful and so easy in his own skin and so—there. Just there. Standing there.

Somebody else had been getting that all winter. Alex's boyfriend. Whoever he was, in that moment Shane hated him with an intensity he hadn't known he was capable of. The thought that followed next was that all he wanted was to get on his knees right there in front of Alex on the carpeted floor of the elevator, and pull those shorts down, and make Alex say his name again the way he had in London, make him forget anyone else existed.

Shane was hyper-aware of every inch of his own body—of the heat rising in his face, the fact that his hair was a mess and he'd undone too many buttons of his shirt, and he imagined he looked exactly like someone who would do something as slutty as what he was thinking about. Why did Alex have to be so fucking sexy.

Those were the words in his head, but what came out was: “Thanks for the message. About the Cup. That was—” His voice came out a little slurred. “You didn’t have to do that. I’ve been thinking about you. Since London. A lot.” He swallowed. “But I’m glad. That you’re happy. With someone. I’m glad.” The last part came out flat. He didn't sound remotely glad.

Alex turned his head. Their eyes met, and Shane knew he was exposed, the wanting must have been all over his face and he wasn't hiding it, not even close. Later, he would think how humiliating that was—how obvious it must have been, and how he couldn't help it.

Alex was silent for a beat, regarding Shane steadily, and then he spoke, his voice quiet and low.

“It’s over,” he said. “With the guy I was seeing.”

Shane looked at him. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

Alex watched him. “A while ago. April.”

The elevator hummed. Floor numbers kept ticking over.

Shane didn’t think. He pushed off from the mirrored wall and closed the distance between him and Alex. And leaned in to kiss him.

Alex lifted a hand and placed it flat against Shane’s chest, holding him there. Shane felt the heat of Alex's palm through his shirt, felt his own heart going hard under it, and for half a second he thought Alex was going to pull him in.

They stayed that way for a second, their eyes locked.

Shane's eyes dropped to Alex's mouth, and he could see the corner of it moving, like he was trying very hard not to smile. Alex's eyes moved over Shane's face like he was memorizing it, the drunk eyes, the lean in, all of it.

“Go to bed, Shane,” Alex said finally. The small smile was gone and he suddenly looked very tired and very serious.

The elevator reached Shane’s floor with a small chime. The doors opened. Alex's hand stayed where it was for one more second, steady, and then dropped. Shane stood there for a moment, then straightened, steadied himself and stepped into the corridor. He didn't turn round. He walked to his room, put the key card against the lock and pushed the door open. The room was dark—finally—except for the glow from the harbour coming through the window.

Shane slipped his shoes off and stood there for a moment with the feeling of Alex's hand still on his chest, the smell of Alex's cologne still in his nose.

He put his key card on the desk, drank a glass of water from the tap, and then lay down on top of the covers, fully dressed.

It's over, Alex had said. But also, Go to bed, Shane.

Shane looked at the ceiling. His heart was still going, and he put his hand over it, where Alex's had been, until it settled and he finally slept.

Chapter End Notes

Look I know we all want them to get back together but Shane is a lil bit drunk and you know Alex is a consent king and he is not playing around here. And we all need more men like Alex.

ETA: I realised after writing this there wouldn't be any hotels with 19 floors on the waterfront in copenhagen 😢 but I'll have to ask for forgiveness because making the hotel a more realistic number of floors would just not give them enough time in the lift together 😅. Sometimes it's more important to alter the entire architecture of a city in the name of sexual tension 😅

Chapter 5: Shane

Chapter Summary

Previously on... Shane is in Copenhagen. Alex is in Copenhagen. Shane gets a lil drunk. There's an elevator, a confession (it's over with the guy I was seeing), an attempted kiss, and a "go to bed Shane".

Chapter Notes

Oh hey there readers, if I haven't said this already, I am fully aware that there are something like 50,000 heated rivalry fics out there and thinking about how many people have chosen to read the one(s) I wrote makes my head spin. I mean maybe you've read all of the other 49,999 and mine is the only fic left on earth, but I'm guessing no one has read all of them (??) I personally have 200+ on my TBR. So a million kudos back to everyone who's followed this series, you're all incredible. Petitioning AO3 to let authors give kudos on all the amazing comments we get! Love ya.

Now go on and read what happens next. I'm so impatient— sorry if you were hoping for chapters and chapters of yearning.....

SATURDAY

Shane woke the next morning on top of the covers with his shoes off and everything else still on. His face was pressed into the comforter and his watch was digging into his wrist. The room was quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioning. He was in Copenhagen. The awards were that night. The time on the bedside clock read 8:47.

He lay still for a moment, taking stock. His mouth was dry and tasted of whisky. His shirt was twisted around his torso, the collar tight against his throat. His belt was still on. He hadn't closed the curtains and the room was too bright. His head throbbed. It wasn't terrible—he'd been worse, once or twice—but it was bad enough.

He rolled onto his back and put his hand flat on his chest without knowing why. He had a vague memory of getting back to his room and lying down on top of the covers, telling himself it would just be for a minute.

He had a less vague memory of what happened before that. The elevator.

The doors opening on the third floor. Alex standing there in his gym clothes, the grey t-shirt clinging to his chest, sweat beading at his neck, his hair damp and pushed back. The smell of him when he reached across to press the button.

The words Shane had said, slurred at the edges. I’ve been thinking about you. Since London. A lot. He winced, alone in the bright room, and put his forearm over his eyes. He’d said it out loud. And then he'd said I’m glad that you’re happy with someone in a tone that was a million miles from being glad.

And Alex had said—

Shane stopped.

He went back over it. Alex had looked straight at him then, and said, quietly, It's over. With the guy I was seeing. And Shane had said oh, like an idiot, and then he'd pushed off the wall and tried to kiss him. It clearly hadn’t been an invitation, because Alex had put his hand on Shane’s chest and stopped him and told him to go to bed. Alex hadn’t pushed him. Just held him there.

He could remember the words, but what Alex's face had looked like as he said it, less so. Shane had been drunk and jet-lagged, but he thought there had been a smile. Something soft, maybe tired. He could still feel exactly where Alex's hand had been, on his left side. He wondered if Alex had been able to feel his heart pounding.

Shane took his arm off his face and looked at the ceiling. Then he sat up slowly and put his feet on the carpeted floor. The room didn't tilt, which he counted as a good sign. He undid his watch and set it on the nightstand next to his phone. He tapped the screen and the phone lit up. The battery was down to eleven percent. There were messages—five from Rose.

Rose: Well???

Rose: Did u see him?

Rose: Emma says you went DRINKING

Rose: U ok?

Rose: Text me when u get up

Below those was one from Emma. Alive?

He answered Rose first: I'm ok. I'll text you later.

Rose would want the full story. She'd want to know what Alex had looked like, and what he'd said, and what Shane had said. She would know immediately if he left anything out, especially the part where he'd tried to kiss Alex in an elevator while drunk, and he couldn't bear to talk about that yet. Because he wasn't even too sure himself what it had been.

Emma was easier to answer. He typed: Alive. Head hurts. The whisky was a mistake. Then: Thank you for last night. It was fun.

Emma replied fast enough that she must have been awake and on her phone. It’s never a mistake if you had fun. The morning after is just the price you pay. Then: Drink water. See u tonight—you owe me a dance. He did not remember saying that.

He got up, went to the bathroom and drank two glasses of water straight from the tap, leaning on the sink, and looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was going in all different directions. His eyes were bloodshot. He took two painkillers from his toiletry bag, then undressed and got under the shower. He kept the water cool and stood there longer than he needed to, the heels of his hands pressed against his closed eyes.

When he got out, he dried off and wrapped the towel around his waist. He stood at the window and looked down at the water. There were already boats out, crossing from one side of the harbour to the other. He felt jumpy, like he needed to do something with his body. He’d planned to go to the gym. He always went after a flight, because it got rid of any stiffness in his back and it gave him some sense of routine. He’d had the schedule for the day in his head since Montreal: gym, breakfast, quiet afternoon, maybe a walk around the city, rest before the ceremony. Black tie. Car pickup at six.

He dressed in his gym clothes and stood in the middle of the room with his shoes in his hand.

The hotel gym was on the third floor. And when he thought of the hotel gym, he thought of Alex, coming out of it, flushed, sweating, beautiful, phone in his hand. What if Alex had decided to go to the gym again this morning. He could picture it: Alex with his towel over his shoulder, looking up as Shane came through the door. And Shane would have to say something, or not, and he was not ready to see Alex again.

He put his shoes on and took the stairs instead of the elevator, all seventeen floors, and went out through the lobby and past the desk without looking at anyone. At home he ran along the river. He'd found a route in Copenhagen that went from his hotel along the waterways, past the opera house. He didn't have to go to the gym, or hold his breath standing in the elevator.

It was cool outside, the sky a pale blue, the sun bright on the water. The first kilometre he felt like shit. His legs were heavy and his head pulsed with every footfall. But then his hangover began to recede and he found his rhythm. He tried to think about nothing. Usually a run helped with that—his mind went quiet and there was just the breathing and the next hundred metres. This morning it didn't work. His mind kept going back to the elevator, replaying it on a loop. Every time he replayed it he heard it's over.

And then he remembered the rest. Shane had asked When? and Alex had said: A while ago. In April.

April. April was when Shane had texted Alex. April was when Alex had said I'm seeing someone, Shane. I'm sorry. Had it even been true? And why had Alex let him go on believing it for the last two months? He'd sent Shane a text congratulating him on the Cup win, but nothing else. And Shane had said thanks and nothing more, because as far as he knew there was a boyfriend. And you did not pursue things with a man who had a boyfriend.

Shane turned around at the five kilometre mark and started to head back. He was faster going back; his head had stopped hurting and his breathing had evened out. He ran the last stretch along the quay with the hotel visible ahead, glass and clean lines against the sky, and he slowed to a walk a hundred metres out and let his heart rate come down, hands on his hips, chest heaving, sweat through his shirt.

He took the elevator up this time. It was empty and did not stop on the way up. It was the same elevator as the night before, and he stood where Alex had stood, near the door, and he looked at the mirrored wall he had pushed off from.

Go to bed, Shane.

He took his phone out of his pocket and checked it. Nothing from Alex. No call, no text. Just his lock screen with the picture of Henry, sleeping on the back of the couch.

In his room he stripped off his running gear and showered again, hot and then cold at the end. He shaved. He drank more water. He ordered breakfast from room service because the alternative was the hotel restaurant and the hotel restaurant might contain Alex, and the one thing he'd settled on that morning was that he was not seeing Alex until he had to.

He ate at the little table by the window, coffee and some kind of porridge with apples and almonds, looking out at the harbour. He could see the route of his run from where he sat. His phone was on the table beside his bowl, face up now, because there was no point pretending he wasn’t watching it.

He checked it while he ate. Rose, again: SHANE what happened last night. I’m serious. He sent back: I’ll call you. Emma had sent a photo of a hotel breakfast with the caption i needed this. He sent back a photo of his porridge.

Still nothing from Alex. Not that he had expected anything. Alex had told him to go to bed. He had said it’s over, and then he had not let Shane kiss him, had not said anything else, had not called or sent anything. Maybe it didn’t mean what Shane had wanted it to mean. Maybe it had changed nothing. Things had ended in London because they both knew it wouldn’t work, and really, nothing was different now. Maybe Alex was just being the more realistic of the two of them.

The rest of the day went slowly. He answered some emails. He called his parents and talked to his mother about Henry, who had apparently learned how to open cupboard doors. Later, he did some breathing exercises, which helped, and he slept for a while. At five he started getting dressed. He followed his stylist’s instructions for the bow tie, fastened his Rolex, and looked at himself in the mirror. He wondered what Alex would look like in black tie.

The venue was a ten-minute drive. The car came at six.

It sat on the waterfront, and Shane realised as soon as the car pulled up why it was called the Black Diamond. It was all black glass and angles, joined on to the old library behind it. There was a red carpet out front and an official photographer, no paparazzi. He stopped where the Rolex people indicated, made sure his watch was visible, smiled.

Inside, the atrium rose the full height of the building, slanting glass cutting right through its centre, flooding the interior with light. There were more photographs inside, and he posed with two of the laureates—a marine biologist, and the glaciologist he'd met the night before. He shook hands with people, asked about their research, and gave polite answers to polite questions about hockey.

He saw Alex twenty minutes in, across the atrium, in his tuxedo. Of course he wore it perfectly, immaculate apart from his hair which looked like he'd run his hand through it a few too many times. Shane looked away and found a Rolex executive in front of him asking whether he’d had a chance to see the city.

The awards ceremony took place in an auditorium, the lights low, the harbour visible through tall windows. His seat was further back, on an aisle, next to a man who worked for Rolex. They shook hands, and Shane sat with his programme on his knee. Classical music played as people took their seats. The room filled. Shane watched the stage and the musicians and the water outside.

Shane knew when Alex came in. He didn’t know if everyone could tell when Alex walked into a room, or if it was just him. The energy shifted. He kept his eyes on the programme, turning the pages without reading them. When he did look up, Alex was standing near the front row talking to the head of Rolex. He laughed at something, shook the man's hand, and then moved down the row and sat. Shane couldn’t see him any more except as a dark shape in the second row, the back of his head, the line of his shoulder.

The ceremony began. Lights came up on the stage. A woman spoke in Danish, then English, about the awards. Shane made himself listen. The first laureate went up: the glaciologist, who talked about dark-pigmented ice microbes and accelerating glacial melting. Shane thought about the questions he would ask later, at the reception. Maybe he would learn something new about ice that he could use in hockey. Another laureate—the marine biologist—talked about her research on heat-resistant corals and getting more women into science. Shane did not let himself look down to where Alex was sitting. He clapped when he was supposed to, and when the ceremony ended and the lights came up, he waited until the aisle was clear before standing and going back to the atrium for the reception. It was nine in the evening and the sky was only just starting to turn a darker shade of blue.

Shane took a glass of sparkling water from a tray and resolved that tonight would not be like last night. He'd done enough to make Rolex happy for one weekend and found a spot near the wall and stayed there.

Emma found him ten minutes later. She was in a dark blue dress, holding what looked like a gin and tonic.

“There you are,” she said. “I was beginning to think you’d bailed.”

“Thinking about it,” Shane said.

“So what did you get up to after I left you?”

“Nothing,” Shane said. “I went straight to bed.”

“Mm,” she said, in a tone that said she didn’t believe a word of it but would let it go, and Shane liked her a great deal in that moment. She told him about the laureate she’d been seated beside, a man who, deadpan, told her he was extraordinarily impressed by her work, and when she asked which film he'd seen, had said he had not watched a film since 1992. Shane laughed out loud, and Emma looked pleased with herself.

But while they talked, his eyes kept going to the far side of the room, where Alex was standing. It was the same as at dinner the night before. Shane made himself look away, and counted the seconds before he looked again.

Emma touched his arm. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Staring. At your idiot ex-boyfriend."

"He's not my—"

"He's been looking at you all evening," she said. "Look, I'm going outside for a smoke. Come with me if you want to get away from the party for a bit. No one will miss us for ten minutes."

He followed her out. The terrace was narrow, behind the glass doors, and the air off the harbour was cooling. The water lay flat and dark below them. Shane put his glass down and stood with his hands on the railing. The noise of the reception dropped to a low buzz. Emma smoked her cigarette and neither of them said anything for a while.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she said eventually.

Shane shifted his grip on the railing. For a moment he thought about saying no.

“I saw him last night,” he said finally. "On the way back to my hotel room."

“What did he say?”

"He said it's over with the guy he was seeing."

"Okay. And how do you feel about that?"

"I tried to kiss him. And he stopped me."

"Oh Shane."

"Yeah. And then he told me to go to bed."

Emma waited. "That's it?"

"That's it." Shane rubbed his thumb across the railing. "So."

"So you don't know what it meant."

"I know what it meant."

"Do you, though?" She bumped his shoulder with hers. "You were pretty drunk. I was there."

He almost laughed. "Maybe," he said.

"I'm going back inside," she said, stubbing out her cigarette. "I need another drink. Coming?"

"I'm going to stay here for a few more minutes," Shane said. "You go."

"Okay." She squeezed his arm.

The door shut behind her, and the noise of the party swelled and then dropped again. He watched the water, and the sky darkening at the edges, and loosened his grip on the railing. He picked up his glass, found it empty, and put it back down again.

The door opened behind him. He didn’t turn. He knew who it was. Alex came to stand beside him at the railing, not touching. They stood there for a while without speaking. The lights on the far side had started to come on.

“Emma told me you were out here,” Alex said.

“Is it true?” Shane said, not looking at him. “What you said last night. You broke up with him.”

“Yes.”

"In April."

Alex was quiet for a second. “Yes.”

“In April,” Shane said again. “Before or after I texted you?”

“After,” Alex said. “A few days after.”

Shane nodded slowly and turned toward him. He could feel something building in his chest, hot. "So let me get this straight. I text you in April, telling you how I feel. Telling you I'm single and I want to see you. And you say you're seeing someone." Alex opened his mouth to speak, and Shane held up a hand. "No. Let me finish. Then you break up with him—a few days later—and you don't tell me. And you've been—" He stopped. His words were short, clipped. "You let me sit through that dinner. You let me watch you leave early. You didn’t say anything.”

 Alex turned, leaning against the railing so he was facing Shane. “I know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

 “I know. I’m sorry.”

“You could have told me.”

“I’m sorry, Shane.” It came out rough and too fast, nothing like his usual easy manner, and Alex looked down at his hand on the railing. “I wanted to tell you. I started writing it so many times. I had a draft in my phone for six weeks and I never sent it.”

“Why not?”

“Because what we said last year— You told me not to text you.” Alex said. “In London. You said don’t, and I didn’t. For a year. And I was seeing someone, and then I wasn't, and I didn’t know what would be different this time. Of course I wanted to see you. But we’d said it wouldn’t work, and it hurt to walk away from you. If I’d told you I’d ended things with David, and we’d seen each other before now, what would have happened, Shane? What would we have done differently?” He paused. “Would you even have texted me if you hadn’t been invited to the awards?”

"I didn’t text because the timing was good.” Shane’s voice had an edge to it now. “I wrote because I've thought about you all year and I wanted to see you.”

Alex flinched, just slightly. “I'm sorry. I’m sorry I made you sit through that dinner. I’m sorry I made you think—” He didn’t finish. “I’m not good at this when it matters. And I told you once I wouldn’t ask for more. I was trying to be good. At first I couldn’t tell you because I was still with him, and that wasn’t fair on him or on you.” He looked away. "And then I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know what would happen, and I wasn’t brave enough to find out. You sent me that text, and I still didn’t know if you meant you wanted more, or if you’d still mean it in a month.”

The heat was spreading up the back of Shane’s neck. “So you decided for me. You decided I didn’t mean it.”

“I decided I couldn’t find out that you didn’t.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It isn’t,” Alex said. For once there was nothing calm or easy on his face at all. “but I can see how it looks from where you’re standing.”

He pushed off the railing and stepped in, close enough that Shane could feel the heat of him in the cool air.

“No,” Shane said.

Alex stopped.

“Don’t do that. Don’t just—” Shane shook his head. “What was last night? In the lift. You tell me it’s over with him, and then you stop me and send me to bed. What was that?”

"Couldn’t you tell I wanted to?” Alex said quietly.

“Then why—”

“Because I knew you’d been drinking,” Alex said. “I’ve thought about kissing you every day since London, and I wasn’t going to do it for the first time in a hotel lift when you weren’t fully in control. I didn’t want it like that. Not after waiting that long.” He stopped. “I wanted you to be sure you knew exactly what you were saying.”

Shane stared at him. Some of the heat went out of him, and what was left underneath was worse.

Alex had thought about it every day since London. Alex had ended a relationship a few days after Shane's text and sat with it for two months and written messages he’d never sent, and Shane had spent those same two months reading his texts and hating a boyfriend Alex didn’t even have any more. They had been in the same place the whole time and neither of them had known, because neither of them had said it. And Alex was the one who said things. That was what made him different. He'd always said what he was thinking. Until now.

Shane turned back to the water, because he didn’t trust his face. “I knew what I was saying. And you should have told me in April.” It came out small. He heard how he sounded, and he didn’t care.

“Shane—”

He pushed back from the railing and went toward the glass doors without looking at Alex. The noise from inside swelled as he pulled one open, and Alex said his name again behind him. Shane didn’t stop. He went back into the light and the crowd, and didn’t look back at the figure standing at the railing above the dark water.

Shane found the Rolex partnership manager by the stairs and told him he was exhausted, which was easy to make convincing. He declined the offer of a car back to the hotel and walked along the waterfront. The city was still busy. People sat along the edge of the quay with their legs over the water, drinking. Back at the hotel, he nodded to the doorman and the man at the desk, and stood in the elevator alone, not looking at the mirror.

The room was dark. He didn’t turn on the lights. The glow from the harbour came in through the windows, and in it he slipped off his shoes by the door. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. He undid the bow tie and dropped it on the desk, put his watch on the nightstand. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, still in his shirt and trousers, his hands hanging between his knees.

Shane had thought he was past crying. The first tear ran down before he noticed. It reached the corner of his mouth and he tasted salt. Another one followed, faster. He swore under his breath and wiped hard at his face with the back of his hand. This was not how tonight was supposed to go.

He got up, went to the bathroom, ran the cold tap, splashed his face and held his wrists under the water. The knock came while the water was still running. Two short raps on the door. Shane turned off the tap and dried his face. He crossed the room and looked through the peephole, and his stomach lurched. It was Alex. Alex, still in his tuxedo jacket, tie undone and his hair a mess, damp at the temples like he'd been running.

Shane opened the door.

“Shane,” Alex said.

Shane’s throat closed.

Alex looked at him steadily. “If you tell me to go, I’ll go. One word. But I just need to be sure.”

Shane’s hand was on the door. He looked at Alex’s open collar, the line of his chest, his fingers gripping the doorframe. The air from the corridor was cool and smelt of Alex’s cologne. He said the first thing he thought of: "Are you drunk?"

“No. Are you?”

Shane shook his head. His head was clear and his heart was going hard against his ribs, and he wanted exactly one thing, and it was standing in front of him. He said: "I don't want you to go."

Neither of them moved. Alex met Shane’s gaze and held it. Then Shane stepped back and opened the door wider.

“Come in,” he said.

 Alex stepped past him into the dark room, and the door swung shut behind him. He stopped just inside, close enough that Shane could see the rise and fall of his breathing. He didn’t reach for him. “Are you sure?” Alex said.

Shane didn’t answer. He lifted his hand and laid it flat against Alex’s chest. He could feel the warmth of him through his shirt, and his heart going almost as fast as Shane’s own. Then he leant in and kissed him.

It was soft. He pressed his mouth to Alex’s and held it. Alex’s lips parted, and for a second they stayed like that, warm and still. Alex made a small sound at the back of his throat. His hand came up and cupped the side of Shane’s face, thumb resting just below his cheekbone, and he kissed him back just as gently, so slowly that Shane’s knees almost went.

They stopped, foreheads together. Shane could feel Alex’s breath on his lips. He opened his eyes. Alex was looking straight at him, very close and very steady. Then Shane looked at his mouth, and something went through him that did not feel gentle at all. He grabbed a fistful of Alex’s shirt and pulled. He heard a button go and he didn’t care, because Alex was kissing him back hard, his mouth hot and open, and they moved backwards until Shane’s shoulders hit the door. Alex was pressed all along the front of him, and Shane could feel how hard he was already through his trousers. He made a sound into Alex’s mouth and held him there.

“Shane,” Alex said into his mouth.

“Don’t talk.”

Shane kissed him deeper, his hand on the back of Alex's neck, tilting his head down. A year. It had been a year. His body remembered all of it. The way Alex's tongue slid against his, the little drag of stubble, the way Alex breathed through his nose when he was trying to slow down and couldn't.

They came off the door and moved into the room, kissing, tripping over each other’s feet. He didn’t know who was leading. All he knew was Alex’s mouth on his, and their clothes coming off. Alex shrugged out of his jacket and let it fall, kicked off his shoes, got Shane’s belt open. Shane yanked Alex’s shirt out of his waistband and started on the rest of the buttons.

They crossed the room like that in clumsy steps, Alex’s shirt half open, Shane’s trousers undone, and Shane’s hip hit the edge of the desk. The glass of water he’d left there wobbled and tipped over the edge. Alex’s hand shot out and caught it as it fell, and held it up between them.

They froze. Alex set the glass back on the desk, very precisely, and then they both laughed—helplessly, foreheads together, breathing hard, the laughter shaking through them where their bodies touched.

“Nice catch,” Shane said.

“I could have been a goalie,” Alex said, and Shane laughed again.

When it faded, Shane reached up and put his hand on the side of Alex’s face. “I missed you,” he said. “Every day.”

“I know.” Alex smiled. “I did too.”

Alex covered Shane’s hand with his own for a second, then let go. “Now. Are you going to finish taking my clothes off, or am I going to have to do everything myself?”

Shane kissed him again, slowly this time, and then finished undressing him. He undid the last buttons and pushed the shirt off Alex’s shoulders and down his arms and let it drop. He unbuckled Alex’s belt and unzipped his trousers, and eased them down with his briefs, kneeling to get them over his feet. Alex stepped out of them and Shane looked up at him. He put his mouth against Alex’s hip bone as he got to his feet, and felt Alex’s stomach tighten.

Alex was standing there naked, hard, and Shane had to take half a step back to look. His body was as Shane remembered and better. Shane ran his hands over his chest, his stomach, the cut lines of him, tanned and warm under his palms. When he looked up, Alex was watching him, half amused, half something more serious.

“Come to bed,” Alex said, and kissed him.

He walked Shane backward the last two steps to the bed, and Shane sat down on the edge of it. Alex stood between his legs and started undoing the buttons of his shirt, watching Shane’s face as he did it. By the third button, Shane reached up to help, and Alex caught his wrist, gently, and put his hand back on the bed.

“You could go a bit faster.”

“You've waited a year,” Alex said, undoing another button, maddeningly slowly. “Surely you can manage another minute.”

“It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

“It’s exactly the same. You’re just out of practice.” He undid the last one and pushed the shirt off Shane’s shoulders, then bent and kissed the bare skin below his collarbone. Shane’s head fell back. “Patience,” Alex murmured against his neck. “You used to be so good at being told what to do.”

“I’m still good at it.”

“Mm. We’ll see.”

Shane laughed, short and impatient. “You’re such an asshole.”

“Probably.” Alex pushed him back gently onto the bed. “You like it.”

He pulled Shane’s trousers down, then his boxers, and then Shane was naked on the bed, the air cool on his skin. Alex looked at him for a long moment, then climbed over him, and Shane pulled him in, skin to skin along the whole length of them. They kissed for a long time. Alex worked his way down Shane’s throat and across his chest and back up, taking his time, his hands moving over Shane’s ribs, his hips, the inside of his thighs, never exactly where Shane wanted them, and Shane made a frustrated sound.

He twisted out from underneath Alex and flipped him, pressing him down into the pillows, and Alex went easily, grinning up at him. Shane kissed down his chest, the light blond hair, the ridges of his stomach, the hip bones, and heard Alex’s breathing change. And then he took him in his mouth. It was hard, hot, familiar and new at once. Alex groaned and his hand came to the back of Shane’s head, holding him there.

Shane worked him slowly, using his tongue the way he remembered Alex liking, his hand around the base. He looked up through his lashes and found Alex watching him, lip caught in his teeth, colour high in his face. It went straight to Shane’s own cock, that look. He’d thought about it on planes, in hotel rooms, in the shower, for a year. He drew back, circled the head with his tongue, went back down again, deep. He kept it slow—the taste and feel of him, the sounds Alex made in his throat, Swedish slipping in once and then gone. Alex's fingers tightened in his hair and his hips lifted. Shane loved this. He had always loved this, the control of it, the way he could take someone apart with his mouth.

“Fuck, Shane,” Alex said. “You have no idea how long I’ve thought about this. Your mouth. I— fuck, slow down, I’m—” He pressed a hand to Shane's shoulder. “Stop. Stop, stop.”

Shane pulled off and looked up at him, lips wet, breathing hard. “You okay?”

“If you keep doing that this is over in ninety seconds and I have plans.”

“What plans.”

“So many plans.” Alex hauled him up the bed and kissed him, sloppy, breathless, and rolled them over so Shane was under him. “My turn. Lie still.”

He moved down Shane’s body, kissing as he went, collarbone, ribs, the soft skin under his navel. Shane was hard and aching and leaking against his stomach. Alex took him in his mouth and Shane’s hand gripped the sheet. It had been so long. Alex’s mouth was hot and wet and perfect, and he was doing it exactly how Shane liked. Shane felt himself start to tighten and knew he wasn’t going to last long.  

But Alex didn’t let him. He eased off, and Shane whined. Alex kissed the inside of his thigh. His hand cupped Shane’s balls, rolling them gently, then slid lower, stroking behind them, and pressed one thumb against his rim.

Alex looked up at him, his mouth wet. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Shane said. “Yes, don’t stop.”

Alex’s other hand went under his thigh and lifted, and Shane let his leg fall open. Alex’s thumb moved, circling the rim, light, teasing, not pushing. Shane’s hips jerked. He spread his legs wider without being told to, and Alex made an approving sound and ducked his head.

Shane felt the first touch of his tongue and cried out. He couldn’t help it. It was wet and warm and so slow, a long flat stroke and then a flick. Then Alex pushed the tip of his tongue inside and took Shane’s cock in his free hand, long strokes that matched the movement of his tongue, and Shane’s head tipped back and his arm went across his face.

“Alex,” he said. “Oh, fuck. Fuck.”

Shane could feel himself winding tighter and tighter. His thighs shook. He couldn’t think. He could only feel it, the wet pressure of Alex’s tongue pushing inside him, the firm slide of his hand, the heat building. He thought he was going to come like this, lose it completely, and then he found enough sense to say, “Stop. Wait. I can’t—” His voice broke. “Alex— I need you inside me.”

Alex stopped. He looked up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, flushed, eyes dark, his hair a mess, the most beautiful thing Shane had ever seen.

“I want you to fuck me. Please.”

Alex pressed a kiss to Shane’s knee and sat back on his heels. He was hard, breathing fast. “Yes?”

“Please.”

“Do you have anything?"

“Wait.”

Shane was off the bed before he finished the word. He crossed the room at a near-run and dug through his toiletry bag on the bathroom counter—condoms, the small bottle of lube, packed by a version of himself who had sworn he was only being prepared, prepared for nothing, because nothing was going to happen.

He came back and Alex was lying propped against the headboard, naked and hard and smiling at him like he’d won something.

“What,” Shane said.

“Nothing,” Alex said. “Come here.”

Shane lay back down beside him. Alex took the lube from him and moved between his legs. Shane pulled his knees back, hands hooked behind his thighs, and watched Alex’s face while he slicked his fingers. He should have felt exposed like this but he didn’t. Alex’s expression was open, close to reverent, a little dazed. “Shane,” was all he said.

His finger pressed in, and Shane let out his breath. It had been a while. It stung for a moment and then eased, and Alex waited, watching his face, until he nodded. Then a second finger, and the slow scissoring stretch of it, and Alex’s other hand rubbing circles on the inside of his thigh. Shane’s head dropped back on the pillow. He was gasping a little. Alex crooked his fingers and found the spot, and Shane’s hips jumped. Alex did it again.

“More,” Shane said, and Alex added a third finger, pushing deep, until Shane was shaking and pulling at him. “Enough. Enough, I’m ready, I’ve been ready for a year—”

"Okay," Alex said softly. "Okay, hjärtat."

Alex rolled the condom on and slicked himself. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

Shane nodded.

Alex pushed in. It was slow, so slow, an inch and a pause, and another inch. Shane felt himself open around him. The stretch of it. The fullness. Alex’s eyes on his face. Shane let out a shaky, drawn-out sound, and Alex bent over him and held still, all the way in, trembling slightly.

“Okay?” Alex said, strained.

“Move,” Shane said. “Please.”

He did. Alex set the pace, and it was steady and deep, not fast. He drew out almost all the way and pushed back in, and each time Shane felt it through his whole body. Shane kept his eyes open. He wanted to see. The muscles of Alex’s arms, the sweat starting at his temples, his face, his extraordinary face, intent and fixed on Shane.

“You’re so beautiful,” Alex said. “I think about this. I think about you like this.”

Shane’s throat was tight. He reached up and cupped the back of Alex’s neck and drew him down. They kissed, and the angle changed, and Alex’s next thrust hit something that made Shane gasp into his mouth. Alex rolled his hips and did it again. “There? Right there?”

“Yes. God. There.”

Alex did it again, and again, the same angle, the same rhythm. Shane’s cock was trapped between them and with every slide it dragged against Alex’s stomach. He was close. The heat between his thighs had gathered into a knot. He felt Alex’s pace falter, just slightly, and knew Alex was struggling to hold on too.

“Yes— yes, don’t stop—”

“I’m not stopping. You always— God, I’ve missed this. Missed you. Nobody—” Alex lost whatever he was going to say and kept moving.

“Alex, I’m going to— I need—”

“Go on,” Alex said. He angled deeper, faster now, his own control starting to fray. “I want to feel it. Come for me.”

It built and built, and Shane reached down and closed his hand around himself and stroked, three times, four. He came with Alex’s name in his mouth, over and over, hot across his stomach and his own fist, his whole body arching off the bed and tightening around Alex. Alex thrust through it and followed him over, his face pressed into Shane’s neck, saying something in Swedish that Shane didn’t understand and didn’t need to.

For a while neither of them could speak and the room stayed quiet except for their breathing. Alex’s forehead rested against Shane’s collarbone. His weight was a warm, welcome pressure, and Shane’s hand, shaking, found its way to the back of Alex's head and held him there.

Eventually Alex eased out and sat back. Shane let his knees fall to the bed. He was too wrung out to move. Alex went to the bathroom and came back with a warm washcloth and a bottle of water from the minibar. “Sit up. Drink.”

Shane sat up. The room tilted once. He drank half the bottle and handed it back. Alex took a sip, then put it on the nightstand. He wiped Shane’s stomach with slow, careful strokes, then between his legs.

“Better?” Alex asked.

Shane nodded. “Better.” He lay back. Alex lay down beside him and drew the covers over them, then turned onto his side and pulled Shane in, Shane’s back against his chest, an arm around his waist. He fit around Shane exactly the way he had a year ago.

“Stay,” Shane said. He was already half gone.

“Obviously,” Alex murmured, and pressed his lips to Shane’s hair. The arm around Shane’s waist tightened a little. As Shane drifted, he thought about London, and April, and the terrace, and what would happen next, and decided it could all wait until morning.

His eyes closed. He was asleep within minutes, tucked against Alex, and he didn’t dream at all.

SUNDAY

Shane woke with the sun full on his face and for a moment he didn't know where he was. The curtains were open and the sheets were twisted around him and there was a weight across his waist. Then he saw the curve of a bare shoulder, the back of a head with dark blond hair, and he remembered. Copenhagen. The awards. Last night.

Alex was asleep on his front, his face turned away into the pillow, one arm thrown across Shane’s waist, his breathing slow and even. The sheets had slipped down to his hips, and Shane could see the length of his back, the tan line at his waist. The tattoo across his shoulder blades: a wolf, jaws open around a sun. There were faint scratch marks beside it that Shane didn’t remember making. The snake tattoo wound around Alex’s bicep and down the back of the arm that lay across him.

Shane lay very still and listened to Alex breathe. From outside came the faint sound of traffic, a boat horn on the harbour, a gull crying somewhere. All the normal sounds of a city morning, going on as though nothing had happened. As though Shane’s life hadn’t shifted on its axis once again in the last twelve hours.

He didn’t move for a long time. Not because he thought he’d wake Alex—Alex slept like a dead man, he remembered that from London—but because he wasn’t ready for it to be morning. As long as he lay there, with Alex’s arm across him and the smell of sex and sleep still in the sheets, he didn’t have to think about anything else. His flight home at six. The questions he still hadn’t asked. The things Alex had said on the terrace, the things Shane had said back. All of it could still wait.

There was a pleasant soreness in his body, an ache in his hips and thighs when he shifted his weight, and between his legs a tenderness he hadn’t felt in a long while. His cock wasn’t hard, but he was aware of it against his thigh, and if he thought about it he could still feel where Alex had been. He let himself think about it for a moment, and then he made himself stop, because thinking about it while lying next to Alex’s sleeping body was going to lead somewhere he wasn’t ready to go this early in the morning. Not before they'd talked.

He lifted Alex’s arm carefully and slid out from under it, and set it down on the mattress. Alex murmured something and turned his head on the pillow, but didn’t wake. Shane stood at the side of the bed and looked down at him. His hair was a mess, his face was flushed and his lips were slightly parted. Even like that, he was beautiful.

Shane found his boxers on the floor near the bed under his tuxedo pants and pulled them on. He crossed to the window and stood with his arms crossed over his chest and looked out. It was Sunday and the waterfront was quiet. A boat was going across the harbour, and someone on a paddleboard was moving slowly down the waterway. The sky was clear. Below him Shane could see the quay where he’d run the morning before, hungover and replaying the elevator, counting the kilometres.

He stood there for a while, thinking about what would happen next. His flight. Six o’clock. Car at four thirty. He’d be home before midnight, Montreal time, and the next day he’d pack for the rest of the summer and drive to his parents’ in Ottawa, pick up Henry, and then go to the cottage. Alone. The way it always was.

Shane turned around and looked at the room. The glass Alex had caught, on the desk, with Shane’s bow tie beside it. Their clothes were all over the floor. Shane’s trousers by the bed. His belt in the middle of the room. Alex’s shirt halfway between the door and the bed, with a gap where the button had torn off when Shane grabbed the shirt and pulled. He remembered Alex’s mouth on his as he did it.

The button was on the carpet by Shane’s foot, mother-of-pearl, catching the light. He bent and picked it up.

He could have gone back to bed. He had nowhere to be until the afternoon, and Alex was right there, warm, the man he’d wanted since last summer. But his mind was running ahead of him again, so he went back to the window instead and stood there with the button in his hand.

After a while he heard movement behind him. A long exhale, the bed shifting.

“You’re up,” Alex said, his voice rough with sleep.

Alex pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed for a second, then got up, found his briefs on the floor and pulled them on. He crossed the room barefoot and came to stand beside Shane at the window, and put his hand on the small of Shane’s back, warm, and let it rest there for a moment. Then it fell away.

Shane opened his hand and held out the button. “Sorry about your shirt.”

Alex looked at it and laughed under his breath. “I’m not.” He took Shane's hand and closed his fingers back over the button. They stood there a while longer, looking out, Alex’s shoulder against his.

“Are you hungry?” Alex said after a while. 

Shane thought about it. “I could eat.”

Alex went back to the bed, picked up the phone and spoke to someone on the other end in Danish. When he hung up, Shane said, “You speak Danish?”

“Enough to order breakfast,” Alex said. “It’s not too different from Swedish, and I had a Danish boyfriend, a while ago." He smiled. "I got very good at apologising in Danish too.”

“A while ago.”

“Years. Long before you.” Alex climbed back into bed and held out an arm, and Shane came and lay down against him, his head on Alex’s chest. He could hear Alex’s heartbeat under his ear, steady. Alex’s thumb traced a line behind his ear. “Shower first, or wait?”

Shane didn’t want to move. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll just wash my face.”

He sat up and looked at his watch on the nightstand. It was just after nine. His phone was next to it, face down. He didn’t pick it up.

“I’ll be here,” Alex said.

 Shane got up and walked to the bathroom. In the mirror, he looked rough—hair sticking up, a red mark on his collarbone from Alex’s mouth. He ran the cold tap and splashed water on his face, then brushed his teeth. When he came back, Alex was still in bed, propped against the headboard, watching him.

“You look even better than you did last night,” Alex said.

“I feel better than I did last night.”

“Come here,” Alex said. He held out a hand.

Shane took it, and Alex pulled him back onto the bed beside him, so they were lying facing each other, close. Neither of them spoke. Alex’s thumb brushed over Shane’s cheekbone. “What are you thinking?”

Shane thought about saying nothing. He thought about deflecting. It would be easy. He was tired of easy. “I don't know what happens after today,” he said.

Alex nodded slowly. “Neither do I.”

Shane had expected something smooth, Alex telling him everything was fine. But Alex just lay there, his hand still on Shane’s face.

“What do we do about that?” Shane asked.

“We eat breakfast,” Alex said. “We talk. We see how far we get before one of us ruins it.”

Shane almost laughed. “You’re very fatalistic for nine in the morning.”

“I haven’t had coffee yet. I’m much more optimistic after coffee.”

There was a knock at the door. Alex sat up, picked his shirt up off the floor, looked at the gap where the button had been, and dropped it again. He took a hotel robe from the wardrobe instead and went to the door. There was a brief exchange in Danish, and then Alex came back carrying a tray with both hands.

He set it on the end of the bed and pushed it toward Shane. The tray was wide and heavy, covered with white plates. The coffee came in a silver pot, steam rising from the spout. There was a basket of bread, a small dish of butter, a plate of cheese cut into pale slices, two cups, and two bowls of the same porridge Shane had had yesterday.

Alex climbed back onto the bed and settled against the headboard. The smell of coffee filled the room. Shane pulled the covers up over his lap and reached for the tray.

At first they ate without talking. Alex poured coffee into both cups and handed one to Shane. The first sip was too hot, but Shane drank it anyway and felt it burn the back of his throat. Alex broke a piece of bread in half, buttered it and put cheese on it. Shane ate some of the porridge, but he wasn’t hungry. His stomach felt tight.

“What time is your flight?” Shane asked.

“Four,” Alex said. “The Rolex people booked a car for two.”

“Mine’s at six.”

“So we have until two,” Alex said, and then neither of them said anything for a while.

Four and a half hours. Shane thought about London, their last morning, their goodbye in the car, how reasonable they’d been about everything.

Shane went first. He put his cup down on the tray. “You asked me something last night.”

Alex looked up.

“Whether I’d have texted you. Without the awards.”

“Yes,” Alex said. Careful now.

Shane looked down at his coffee. “Probably not,” he said. “I thought about it for months. I wrote it a lot of times. In my notes app, mostly. And I deleted every one.” He picked up his cup again and took a sip. “Then the invitation came, and I thought, well, if he says no, it’s fine, we’ll see each other there anyway, and it won’t be as awkward.” He shrugged. “So I had a reason. In case.”

“In case.”

“In case it went badly.”

Alex was quiet. Shane put his cup back on the tray and made himself look up.

“That’s what I did with David,” Alex said finally.

Shane held his gaze for a moment. “I know.”

Alex put his own cup down and moved the tray to the floor.

“I didn’t say all of it on the terrace,” he said. “I told you I was sorry. I told you about the message I never sent. But there’s more.”

Shane turned sideways on the bed to face him. “Okay.” He waited.

"London was two weeks," Alex said. "A lot of that was in bed. And at the end of it you told me not to text and I understood why. We’d agreed it couldn’t work. The distance. My life. Your life. So I didn’t text. I went home and I tried to be sensible about it. But it felt so real, Shane. I told myself it meant something. I was so sure."

Shane didn’t interrupt. He could see Alex forcing himself to keep his hands still, to keep his voice level.

"But after we'd been apart a few months I stopped being sure. I didn’t know if you wanted me, or if you just wanted what we had in that room, with the door shut, away from everything. Away from your life.” He was looking down, and Shane could see his eyes welling up. “When you wrote in April, I still wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to find out. If it was only that, I’d rather have kept London as it was.”

He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t being charming, or funny, or light. He looked the most real Shane had ever seen him.

Shane swallowed. “It wasn’t only that. And you could have asked.”

“I know that now.”

“I went on a date,” Shane said. “In January.”

Alex looked at him.

“In Philadelphia. A man I met in a bar. We had dinner. In a restaurant, in public, at a table by the window. I could never have done that before you. I wouldn’t have known how. I’d have thought about the cameras the whole time, and I’d have said no. But I’d done it with you in London, and in the end it was all okay. So I went. I didn’t see him again after that. But I went.” He said the next part fast, before he could stop. “You changed things. You made me better, I think. We might have been good for each other, if we’d let ourselves. I thought that then and I still do. I think that’s what I’m saying.”

Alex was very still. After a moment he said, quietly, “I think so too.”

He slid down the bed until he was lying beside Shane, his head on the pillow, his body turned toward him. Shane lay down too. They faced each other, close but not touching.

“What’s different now?” Alex asked. “It’s the same situation. I fly back to Stockholm today. You go back to Montreal. We’re a plane ride apart. We still have our careers.”

“I know,” Shane said. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Then what do we do?”

Shane looked at Alex’s face in the morning light. The pillow crease still on his cheek. His eyes still a little red. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but he didn’t. Not yet.

“I don’t know,” Shane said. “But I know I want you. Not just for two weeks. I want this to be real. It is real. I want it to work.”

Alex let out a breath. “I want that too,” he said. “I’ve wanted it since London. I just didn’t believe you could want it with me.”

“I can,” Shane said. “I do.”

It resolved nothing. Shane’s flight was still at six, Alex’s car still at two, Montreal and Stockholm still on opposite sides of an ocean. But Shane moved closer and put his head against Alex’s shoulder, and Alex’s arm came around him, his hand moving slowly through Shane’s hair. They stayed like that for a long while.

Shane thought he might have dozed. When he opened his eyes, the sun had moved across the bed.

“What are you doing this summer?” he asked.

“My office closes in July,” Alex said. “The whole foundation. Sweden shuts down. Everyone goes to a house on a lake and doesn’t answer emails.”

“That sounds nice.”

Alex was quiet for a moment. Shane felt him shift, adjusting the arm around his shoulders. “What about you? What does your summer look like?”

Shane thought about it. “Nothing until training camp. That’s September. I usually go back to Montreal a week or two before. Other than that, my summer’s open.”

“I asked you last summer,” Alex said. “To come to Sweden. Do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“I’ve thought about it since. About how I asked it.” He turned his head on the pillow and looked at Shane. “I said it like it was nothing. Come to Sweden sometime. Like I was suggesting a movie. And you said no, sensibly, and I let it go, sensibly, and then I spent a year thinking about it.” He shifted onto his side, facing Shane, propped on one elbow. “So I’m going to ask properly this time. I have a stuga. A summer house, on a lake, up north. It’s not really like yours—it's small and old, but there’s a sauna and a jetty, and the water is cold but not too cold to swim, and there’s nobody around for kilometres. Come with me. For July. Or part of it. Or a week. Whatever you can—”

“How do you know about my cottage?”

Alex stopped. “What?”

“You said—” Shane sat up a little. “You said ‘it’s not really like yours.’ How do you know I have a cottage?”

Alex opened his mouth, and closed it. He looked caught. “I watched the documentary,” he said. “About you. The one from two years ago. There’s a section at the lake.” He paused. “I’ve seen it twice.”

“Twice.”

"Maybe more." Alex flushed. “I watched it in the autumn. After London. Once to see if it was any good.” Another pause. “Then three more times, to look at the lake.”

“You watched a hockey documentary four times to look at a lake.”

“I watched it four times to look at the lake and the dock and the, ah, the architecture, and the part where you're doing yoga. You're very flexible.” He put his hand over his eyes. “I was not at my best in October. I’d like that on the record.”

Shane felt a laugh come up in him. He tried to hold it and couldn’t. It came out through his nose, and then he was laughing properly, face pressed into the pillow, shaking with it, and Alex said, “It isn’t that funny,” and began to laugh too, and pulled Shane in against his chest.

The laughter ran out slowly. Shane let his head rest where it was and felt Alex’s heartbeat against his ear, steady, a bit fast. He thought about a lake in Sweden, a different cottage, a different dock. Alex swimming. Late, light nights, and Alex barefoot on the jetty. It was not hard to think about at all. He had been thinking about it, he realised, since the word stuga.

Shane lifted his head and looked at him. Alex was waiting, very still, the way he’d waited at the door last night. Shane didn’t need to think about it any longer than that.

“Yes,” he said.

Alex didn’t move. “Yes?”

“Yes. I’ll come."

“Shane—” Alex stopped, and started again, careful. “You don’t have to answer now. You can talk to your agent, or your parents, or look at your calendar. You can think about it. I’ll be perfectly fine if you say—”

“I don’t need to look at my calendar,” Shane said. “I just told you. It’s empty. July. All of it, if you want.”

Alex’s face did something Shane had never seen it do. It went completely still, and then he smiled, slowly, like he didn't trust it yet, and said, “Oh,” very softly, as if he had only just caught up.

“Yes,” Shane said again, in case he’d missed it.

“Okay,” Alex said. “Okay.”

Shane reached for his phone on the nightstand. The screen lit up. Eleven messages, Rose at the top. He opened the airline app to change his flight—he could fly home from Stockholm at the end of the summer, there was nothing in Montreal that couldn’t wait—

He stopped. It was just after ten. Changing it could wait. Everything could wait, for once. He put the phone face down, took Alex’s hand, and pulled him down.

“Come here,” Shane said, and kissed him. His free hand came up to the back of Alex’s head, fingers threading into his hair. Alex’s weight pressed him into the mattress, and for a moment there was nothing in the room but the sound of their breathing.

It wasn’t urgent the way it had been the night before. It was slower, and they settled into each other. Shane broke the kiss. Alex was looking at him, close, his eyes clear now. Shane drew him down again, and Alex’s mouth found his throat, then his collarbone, and Shane let his head fall back against the pillow.

Then there was just this—the two of them, and the whole open summer ahead.

Chapter End Notes

Ahhhhhh I love the mutual pining as much as the next HR fan but turns out I suck at slow burn. I couldn't keep them apart a minute longer.

Where to next? The summer is stretching ahead, I could just leave it all to your imagination and end the story here but I've got more if you want to read more 💝💝💝