Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry

Characters:

Rose Landry, Miles (Heated Rivalry), Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Friendship, Humor, technically ilya isn't in this but he sure is haunting the narrative, and shane's phone, POV Outsider

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of The Lily Files

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-17 Words: 9,496 Chapters: 1/1

Rose Landry, Noted Detective

Summary

“That man has a boyfriend,” Rose says, certain.

“He does,” Rae agrees easily, their voice equally certain.

“He’s never gonna tell me who it is,” Rose says.

“Definitely not,” they agree.

“I’m gonna figure it out,” Rose says.

Rae doesn’t comment on that, just dips their sponge back into the blue paint. Silently begins to layer it over the back of Rose’s hand, carefully dabbing to make sure that it fills the creases of her knuckles, the dips between each finger.

It’s impressive, really, how much doubt Rae manages to communicate though the gentle press of a sponge.

Whatever. Rose figured out Shane’s sexuality before he did. It shouldn’t be that much more difficult for her to figure out who his boyfriend was. She does have excellent gaydar after all. Though she really wishes it would more frequently kick in before she started sleeping with yet another gay man.

 

Or, Shane Hollander has a boyfriend. Rose is going to find out who it is, one way or another.

Notes

cw: couple of uses of the f-slur, but like, in a fun, gay-on-gay hostility way, not in a homophobia way

It starts with a phone call in early May.

“How's jerking off?” Rose asks.

“Ma’am,” Shane says, voice sharp with shocked amusement. “I’m at my parent’s house,” he continues, “so…”

“So, constant?” Rose teases. “Endless?”

Laughter, easy and soft, echoes through Rose’s trailer.

“Pretty much,” Shane says, laughter still tracing the edges of his words. 

Rose smiles at nothing in particular. It was just so… nice, how much lighter Shane had seemed lately. Since their breakup, sure, but something else had shifted in early February. Rose had her suspicions about the reason behind Shane’s change in demeanour, but she had been waiting for Shane to bring it up. She figured it was only fair, after she’d been the one to initiate the conversation that had led to him coming out to her. 

On the other hand, she’d had to be the one to initiate that conversation. 

Rose interrupts Shane’s question about reshoots—which she didn’t really want to talk about anyways, Jesus Christ this movie was a disaster—with a question of her own. 

“So,” she starts, “jerking off to thoughts of anyone in particular these days?”

“Rose!” Shane says, laughing. It has the same shocked amusement that he’d said ma’am with, but something else too. Something a little too jagged, a little too real. 

Gotcha, Rose thinks. 

“Well?” Rose prompts when Shane doesn’t say anything else. “Are you? Some pretty Montréal boy catch your eye? Maybe a hot nurse, brought in to clean and bandage your war wounds?” 

“Oh my god, Rose,” Shane says. “No, no nurses. No bandages either—it was a concussion and a broken collarbone. All I’ve got is a sling.” 

Always so literal, Rose thinks. That’s okay—she’s always been good at taking notes.

“Sexy radiologist?” she guesses instead. “Oooh, or, sexy physiotherapist?” 

“I am nowhere close to seeing a physio,” Shane laughs. “I’m still in a sling, what would I even be seeing a physiotherapist about?” 

“I don’t know,” Rose says. “I thought you always just had like, a dozen hanging around, just in case.” 

“Yeah, with the team,” Shane says. “Not at my parent’s.”

“Hmmm,” Rose says. “Sexy boy next door?” 

“Oh my god Rose, there isn’t anyone, okay? No sexy anything,” Shane says, clearly trying to make his voice as firm and stern as possible. 

Rose isn’t buying it for a second. 

“Sexy barista?” she tries. “Sexy librarian? Sexy sex store worker?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Sexy bus driver? Sexy road worker? Sexy mailman?”

“The mailman is like 50. And a woman,” Shane says through laughter.

“Okay, so probably not that one,” Rose concedes. There’s a pause as she tries to think of other people that Shane might be seeing frequently, now that he is back at his parent’s place in Ottawa. 

Though, that wasn’t quite right, was it? The change had come early February, weeks before he was injured. It had been right after the All-Star Weekend—Shane hadn’t replied to her texts that whole weekend, and the next time they’d spoken on the phone after that, he’d seemed weirdly distracted, like he was—

Oh, Rose thinks. 

Oh shit.

“Sexy hockey player?” she says before she can think better of it.

It’s barely anything—a slight stuttering in Shane’s breathing before he’s laughing it off the same way that he’s been laughing off all of her other guesses.

It’s enough. 

Gotcha, Rose thinks again. 

“It is,” she presses. “Who is it? Someone else in the NHL, right? Someone who was at All-Stars with you?”

Her tone is questioning, but they’re not really questions—she’s certain she’s right, made more certain by the pause before Shane speaks again, voice slow, deliberate. Like he’s thinking through each word before saying it, mapping out all their possible repercussions before speaking it aloud. 

Which, knowing Shane, is probably exactly what he’s doing. 

“You can’t tell anyone,” he says. 

“Of course,” Rose says, quickly. “Shane. Obviously.”

“And I can’t tell you who it is,” he continues. 

“What?” Rose says, not bothering to try and keep the whine from her voice. “Why not?” 

How could Shane deprive her of gossip like this? 

“He’s not out,” Shane says, voice flat, abrupt. Like it should be obvious, which— yeah, duh. It is obvious. That had been a part of her whole strategy the day they’d broken up. The opening volley in her less-than-subtle attempt to prod Shane into admitting he was gay. 

Rose knows. There are no out NHL players. There never have been. 

Fuck. 

“I would never tell anyone,” Rose says. Swears, really.

“I know,” Shane says, some of his familiar warmth seeping back into his tone. “It’s just— it’s not just my career, y’know? It’s his too.” 

“I get that,” Rose says. 

“Besides,” Shane continues with an edge of laughter, “it wouldn’t even be— the whole gay thing would honestly probably be the least of the scandal.”

“Okay, now that’s just rude,” Rose says. 

Shane gives up the act, openly laughing at her in reply. 

Somewhere in the background, a woman’s voice interrupts Shane’s laughter, too far from the speaker for Rose to tell what is being said. 

“Coming!” Shane says from a distance, like he’s holding the phone away from himself, and then, closer: “Okay, I gotta go. But let me know what you decide about Labour Day weekend, seriously. My parents will not let it go.” 

“Of course they won’t,” Rose says. “I’m a wonderful beard-in-law.”

It startles another laugh from Shane, the sound lingering in his voice, undermining his attempt at sounding exasperated as he replies, “You are not my— we broke up. Publicly. They know we’re just friends.”

“Yes, and now I’m all the way out here in LA,” Rose says. “Lonely. Pining. Despondent. Yearning for the touch of my gay ex-boyfriend.” 

“Good-bye Rose,” Shane says, clearly fighting not to laugh.

“Love you!” she says. 

“Love you too,” he replies, and she can hear the smile in his voice. Can picture, perfectly, the way he’s probably shaking his head at her—equal parts irked and fondly amused. 

The call ends with a beep, and Rose drops the phone in her lap. She looks over at her make-up artist, who is looking back at her with a raised eyebrow even as they continue patting more blue makeup onto her arm. 

“That man has a boyfriend,” Rose says, certain.

“He does,” Rae agrees easily, their voice equally certain.

“He’s never gonna tell me who it is,” Rose says.

“Definitely not,” they agree.

“I’m gonna figure it out,” Rose says.

Rae doesn’t comment on that, just dips their sponge back into the blue paint. Silently begins to layer it over the back of Rose’s hand, carefully dabbing to make sure that it fills the creases of her knuckles, the dips between each finger.

It’s impressive, really, how much doubt Rae manages to communicate though the gentle press of a sponge.

Whatever. Rose figured out Shane’s sexuality before he did. It shouldn’t be that much more difficult for her to figure out who his boyfriend was. She does have excellent gaydar after all. Though she really wishes it would more frequently kick in before she started sleeping with yet another gay man. 

The lack of orgasms really wore a girl down.

“Hey, so, there was actually something I wanted to ask you about,” Rose says as casually as she can manage.

“Uh-oh,” John says, already laughing, “I should have known you wouldn’t just call me without some sort of ulterior motive.”

“Shut up, what, I’m not allowed to call to catch up with my brother now?” Rose demands. 

It’s quick, and way too defensive. Shit.

“Sure,” John slowly replies, clearly humouring her, “I mean, you never have before, but I suppose that is theoretically something you could do.” 

“I call! I’m great at calling!” Rose says, indignant, because seriously. That’s not even a little bit true and John knows it. “I’m a big movie star now, you know,” she continues, “I could just ignore all of you for the rest of forever and it wouldn’t affect my life at all.” 

“Awwww, you know you’d miss us,” John says, teasing. 

Rose opens her mouth to inform him that no, she really, really wouldn’t, but John keeps going, speaking over the silence.

“Fine, fine, you call,” John concedes, tone turning conciliatory. “You’re a wonderful, caring sister and daughter. We’re all very lucky that you still so graciously deign to grant us the privilege of taking up a small sliver of your very important time.” 

“Thank you,” Rose says with a put-on sniff, making John laugh again. 

“And it was very kind of you to pretend to care about my life for twenty minutes first,” John continues, “but clearly you’ve got some sort of agenda here, so. Spit it out.”  

“Okay, one: see if I ever ask you anything about yourself ever again,” Rose says. “And two…” 

She trails off, frowning out at the view of the LA skyline that lays outside of her window. The sky is all burnt orange and purple as the sun continues to sink towards the ocean, the water below forming a choppy, white-cut mirror. This has not been the casual lead-in she was hoping for, and she’s honestly still not sure if this is a good idea. 

Rose had known, even before she’d called, that there would be no way that she could ask John what she wanted to without him reaching the obvious—and unfortunately, very accurate—conclusions. 

She trusts her brother, but this isn’t her secret to tell. 

Rose needs to know though—needs to understand. And these are questions that she can’t ask Shane. It wouldn’t be fair, to make him answer them. Wouldn’t be worth it, not with the hurt it would almost certainly cause.

“Hey,” John says, interrupting her thoughts. His voice is far softer, free of any of its earlier teasing. “Rosie. You can talk to me about anything, you know that.”

“I do,” Rose agrees. “It’s just— it’s not about me.”

“Okay,” John says slowly, carefully. “Who’s it about then?” 

Rose sighs. “You’re going to make assumptions, if I tell you. There’s— there’s some pretty obvious dots that you’re going to connect.” 

“And you don’t want me to connect them,” John says, a guess that sounds more like a statement.

“No,” Rose says. 

“Okay, then I won’t,” John says—promises—easily.

“Seriously John,” Rose says, pouring as much gravity into the words as she can. “You can’t connect them. And you can’t tell anyone anything about any of the dots, even unconnected.” 

“I feel like this metaphor is getting away from us,” John says. There’s still an edge of humour in his voice, but it disappears entirely as he continues, his tone shifting to match her own seriousness. “Rose. C’mon. Just tell me. You know you can trust me. I won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want me to.” 

“Not even Kenzie?” Rose challenges.

“Not even Kenzie,” John replies easily, apparently utterly unconcerned at the prospect of promising to keep something, sight-unseen, from his wife.

“Not even Mom and Dad?” 

“Not even Mom and Dad,” John repeats. “And before you ask, I won’t tell Peter or Cole either.”

“Okay,” Rose says, feeling some of the tension leave her shoulders. “Okay. Tha—”

“As long as you’re safe!” John quickly interrupts. “And— and anyone else is safe. If you’re about to tell me something dangerous, that might change my answer Rosie, I’m not gonna lie to you.” 

Rose lets out a laugh, sharp and humourless.

“Honestly, I think the only way it becomes dangerous is if you don’t keep it a secret.”

There’s a moment of silence from the other side of the line, cut through by the faint sound of her brother’s breathing as he thinks that over. 

“Okay,” John says. “Well, now I’m really curious. And extra won’t tell anyone, if it’ll be putting someone in danger. Seriously Rose, what’s going on? This sounds… this is a pretty intense lead-up.” 

“Yeah,” Rose agrees. Admits, “I was really aiming for casual too.” 

John laughs. “Yeah, I think that ship’s kinda sailed.” 

“Yeah,” Rose agrees again. 

She takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Reminds herself of the shards of a vase, still lying undiscovered where she and John had buried them in their parent’s backyard. Of the gentle touch of a cool washcloth, wiping away smeared mascara in the middle of the night, hours past her curfew. Of a guileless voice offering up that he’d seen a skunk lurking around the yard while the offending joint was still floating, unflushed, in the toilet bowel of her en-suit.

“I wanted to ask you,” she begins, speaking slowly, carefully, “what you think the reaction would be, if a hockey player came out.” 

There’s a long pause. 

“Came out, like… as gay?” John asks, his voice just as careful as hers.

“Yeah,” Rose says.

“In the NHL?” John asks, and he’s connected the dots, just like she knew he would. 

She closes her eyes, blocking out the rest of the world as she admits, “Yeah.”

The pause is longer this time. Rose waits, keeping her eyes shut. Focuses on keeping her breathing steady and even. Thinks, not for the first time, about how impossibly brave it had been for Shane to share that piece of himself with her, as terrifying and precious as it was. Something as equally treacherous as it was delicate. 

Something he’d never told anyone before.

“I’m not going to lie Rosie,” John finally starts, still speaking so fucking carefully. “I don’t think it’d be great. There’s a reason no one’s done it, even though like, statistically…”

“Yeah,” Rose agrees on an exhale, opening her eyes, staring back out over the ocean. Shane had said as much—or at least, had implied it, but Rose had been hoping… whatever. 

It was dumb. She’d known that even before she’d asked. Foolishly hopeful. Naive to the point of stupidity.

“That’s not to say— I don’t think it would be all bad,” John continues after another moment of silence passes, and Rose appreciates how much thought he’s clearly putting into his answer. “Certainly not like it would have been ten, hell, even five years ago. I mean, Edmonton even did that whole pride tape thing last season, and I’ve heard a few other teams are planning on joining them this year.”

“Really?” Rose asks, surprised. 

She hadn’t followed that story very closely—she’d been busy, at the time, getting kidnapped for the fourth time—but she remembered that the reactions had been… mixed, regardless of how supportive the party line of the NHL and NHLPA had been.

“Yeah,” John says, “which isn’t to say— I mean, there’s publicity and then there’s real change, and the latter tends to lag pretty far behind the former, but… I do think things have changed. Are changing.”

“There’d probably be a lot of fans that would be pissed off,” Rose argues. Not that she doesn’t think things have changed—gay marriage was now legal in the whole country, after all, something that would have sounded impossible when they were kids—but she’s not so blind as to think that that progress has been evenly spread across all of society. And hockey is a notoriously white, old-school, conservative sport, with the fans to match. 

“Probably,” John agrees easily. “But there’d be a lot that would be thrilled, and probably more people who would become fans of the game because of it, if— if a player came out.”

Rose knew that John had already guessed. She feels her breath stop in her throat for just a second at the stutter anyways. The unspoken name hanging heavy in the following silence.

“What about— what about the league? The teams?” Rose eventually asks, brushing past the truth without acknowledging it.

John lets her, humming as he thinks it over. 

“The league… the league would probably be supportive,” he finally says. “At least publicly. It’d be terrible optics, if they weren’t. And there’d be— any sort of— of punishment they might want to level against the player would be way too obvious, and way too public for them to get away with it. Fuck, they’d probably get sued for discrimination if they tried. Same with the NHLPA.”

Rose lets herself feel some small measure of relief at John’s words. That wasn’t— it wasn’t nothing. 

“And the teams?” she asks.

“It would… depend. On the team,” John replies, back to speaking carefully.

“Right,” Rose says.

“For— for uh, example,” John says, “Montréal—” another breath snares itself in Rose’s throat, and she has to force herself to release it, slow and steady, “—it’s… it’s hard to say. They’re an Original Six team, so there’s a lot of tradition there. It lends itself to a lot of conservativeness, in every sense of the word. It is a Canadian team though, which would probably help… soften the reaction, somewhat, at least locally. And they’d have to do the same balancing act with the optics as the league would.”

“The players aren’t all Canadian though,” Rose says, and John sighs.

“No, they’re not,” he says. “And that’s honestly where— where it’d probably get the most… tense. Or— where it could get the most tense. Depending on how individual players react, which… there isn’t necessarily any good way to judge that in advance. Most players know better than to be loudly homophobic, regardless of personal opinion, so it’d be… it’s hard to say for sure, either way, how it’d go.” 

“So a trade…”

“Definitely a possibility,” John finishes without hesitation, though his tone is apologetic even in its certainty. “A buyout wouldn’t be worth it, with how much it’d cost. Not to mention that it’d be terrible optics, especially for a player of— especially for a star player. So that’d be off the table at least. But a trade… I could see a trade happening—” there’s a pause, and John’s tone shifts again as he continues, turning dry, sardonic, “—even if I personally think that’d be fucking insanely stupid.” 

It has its intended effect. Rose laughs.

The sound comes out a bit choked though, and it’s only then that Rose realizes how close she is to crying. She takes a few steadying breaths, trying to time them with the distant rise and fall of the ocean—the crests shining brilliantly even as the troughs have sunken into a deep, inky blue. One reaching for the sun, now nearly level with the horizon, the other hiding in the increasingly heavy shadows.

“Did that— did that answer your question?” John asks, when Rose doesn’t follow her brief laughter with any further questions.

“Yeah,” Rose says, voice carefully even. “Yeah, I think it— it did. Thank you.”

“Yeah, no— no problem Rosie.” There’s a pause, a second of silent hesitation, before John continues. “Was that why…?” 

He doesn’t actually put his question to words, letting the sentence trail off, leaving her to fill in the blanks herself, and Rose is so, incredibly, indescribably thankful for her brother.

“Yeah,” she says. 

“Shit,” John says, so blunt that it startles another laugh from Rose. “Well,” he continues, “better than most other reasons, right? Like, it for sure wasn’t you.”

Rose laughs again. “Please,” she says. “Like it ever is.”

“True,” John says. “Not gonna lie Rose, your track record at this point is… pretty rough.”

“I was in theatre school!” Rose defends. 

“And yet you somehow managed to do the same thing while dating a man playing in the world’s straightest sport,” John says.

“Oh, fuck off,” Rose says, fighting not to laugh and spoil the offense she’s attempting to project.

There’s another pause, but this one is easier—far less heavy than any of the previous silences. 

“I meant it,” John says. “I won’t tell anyone, Rose. Not about any of this.”

“I know,” Rose says. “Thank you. For— for listening. And answering my questions.”

“Of course,” John says easily. “What else are big brothers for?”

“Whatever,” Rose says. “I’m only talking to you because of your hockey connections.”

“Don’t even try to front,” John says. “If you were just looking for pure hockey, you’d have asked Peter instead. You value my wisdom. My sage insights.”

“I’m hanging up now,” Rose says. 

John is still laughing when she hits the button to end the call, the sound cutting off abruptly as her phone screen goes dark.

Rose looks back out over the ocean just in time to catch the moment that the sun finally kisses the water below, sending orange and yellow streaking out across the waves in long, brilliant stripes. 

At least he has me now, she reminds herself. And whoever this mystery boyfriend was. 

He wasn’t alone. Not anymore. 

The reshoots are maybe, possibly, getting to Rose. 

It’s a flimsy excuse, but it’s the only one that she has. That, and the fact that none of what she’s doing will ever be shared with anyone. It won’t even leave her house. 

The ancient printer that she’s had since her theatre school days whirrs with effort, the scent of what might be slightly burnt ink filling the air as it slowly, reluctantly, pushes out another grainy, streaky sheet of headshots. Rose pulls it free of the tray, adding it to the pile sitting next to her left knee before turning her attention back to carefully cutting out another headshot from the sheet she’s currently working on.

Done, she tosses the leftover scraps of paper to the growing pile next to her right knee before flipping the headshot over. Bending over, she grabs the glue stick next, rubbing it across the back and ignoring the fact that she is definitely getting glue all over the floorboards as well. Once she’s satisfied that the back is fully glue-ified, she flips it back over, reaching forward and carefully pressing it to the top left-corner of the blank page of the notepad in front of her. 

On the opposing page, Cliff Marleau’s streaky, black-and-white face stares back at her.

Carter Vaughn, she writes next to the freshly pasted headshot. Turning to the next set of pages, Rose picks up the next sheet of headshots, sparing a glance at the printer when it makes another concerning noise. After a second the steady chug of it struggling through another page resumes though, and Rose allows herself to refocus on cutting out Riley Asper’s beaming face.

She’s just gotta get through the last of these fucking reshoots. 

She can be normal again after that.

Rose: so…

Shane: No.

Rose: :(((

Shane: Not happening Rose! No matter how many sad faces you make!!

Rose: not even a hint?? 

Rose: eye colour??

Rose: nationality??

Rose: inches??

Shane: Inches of what?

Rose: dealer’s choice 😜

Rose waits, but her phone screen goes dark with still no response from Shane.

Sighing, she tosses her phone to the side. Whatever. It was a long shot anyways, and she’s about to get called back onto set any minute now. Where hopefully the six hundredth time would be the charm. 

Fucking reshoots. She was starting to think that they might actually be planning on keeping her here until September.

“What the fuck is this?” Miles asks, eyebrows threatening to fly right off his forehead with how high they’re raised.

“Shit,” Rose hisses, scrambling to grab the notebook out of Miles’ hands. “Don’t look at that!”

Miles raises both of his arms, tilting his head back so he can continue reading even as he keeps the notebook out of her reach. 

“Adrian Preston,” he reads. “Pros. One, terrible WAR.”

“No, stop, don’t—” Rose says, throwing one arm over Miles’ shoulder as she attempts to bodily scramble up his arm to grab the notebook. The sudden weight is enough to make Miles stumble, shoulders dropping enough that her fingers manage to graze the edge of the notebook. She doesn’t get a chance to get a proper grip on it before he recovers though, straightening back up, the notebook once again hovering just outside of her reach. 

“Two, hairline receding faster than he can skate. Three, weak slapshot. Cons. None of that is interesting to anyone who isn’t insane.” 

Miles finally looks away from the notebook, tilting his head down to give Rose a judgemental look. 

“Rose,” he says. “Did you make a notebook listing the pros and cons of hockey players to figure out who your next boyfriend should be?”

“Oh my god, no—”

“Though I’m not sure how a receding hairline is a pro? But hey, go off girl, get your bald king. Who am I to ju—” 

“Bald—? Shut up, it’s not— I’m not— give it back.”

“I thought you said you were the one who broke up with Hollander?” Miles asks, shuffling backwards as he attempts to dislodge her grip around his shoulders. “And something about how you were never dating another hockey player again?”

“I said it was mutual,” Rose says. “And I am not looking for another hockey player to date.”

“Really?” Miles asks. “Not even…” He trails off, looking back upwards, clumsily sliding his thumb across the paper until he’s able to turn it to the next page. “Arseniy Larionovich and his rumoured dick pierc— wait, is this real?” 

Rose takes advantage of Miles’ temporary distraction by what was honestly one of the least weird sex-related rumours she was able to unearth. Tightening her grip on his shoulder, she leaps upwards, shouting in triumph as her hand closes around the notebook. There’s a brief second when she lands where she thinks Miles might still get it back from her, so she kicks him in the shin, wrenching it from his grip the second his fingers slacken with pain and surprise.

“Bitch, what the fuck,” Miles says, looking between his leg and Rose with an expression of exaggerated shock and outrage. “You kicked me.”

“Bitch,” Rose mimics, “you’re lucky I didn’t bite you.” She backs away as she speaks, notebook now held protectively behind her back. 

Miles at least does both their dignities the favour of not chasing after her, though the look he’s now giving her is somehow twice as judgemental as the previous one.

“So, what is it then?” he asks. “Just a recreational burn book for the NHL?”

“Yes,” Rose says, because yeah, sure, whatever. Good enough. She’s having trouble thinking of any other lie through the sheer wave of panic that was still rushing over her. 

She really should have remembered what a shameless snoop Miles was before she invited him over. She should have put the notebook in her fucking safe.

Rose silently vows to herself to do exactly that the second Miles leaves. 

That, or just burn the whole thing.

Across the room, Miles crosses his arms, eyes narrowing as he attempts to stare her down. 

Rose narrows her eyes right back at him. She takes another pre-emptive, protective step backwards. Just in case.

“Rose,” Miles says.

“Miles,” Rose replies. 

Miles waits, expectant, but there’s absolutely no way he’s getting more out of Rose than he already has. Rose presses her lips tightly together, and keeps staring him down. 

Finally, Miles lets out an exaggerated sigh, far heavier than this situation could possibly warrant. “Fine,” he says. “Keep your secrets.” 

“Thank you,” Rose says. “I will.” 

She knows better, of course, than to trust Miles’ feigned show of indifference, but it only needed to last until the end of the day. 

After that, the next time Miles came over, the notebook would either be in her safe or be ash. 

Rose: eastern or western conference

Shane: Rose.

Rose: defenseman or forward

Shane: 😑

Rose: omg 

Rose: 👀

Rose: goalie???

Shane: I’m blocking you.

“I’ve figured it out,” Miles says, voice suspiciously casual. 

Rose pauses with her wine glass halfway to her mouth, looking over at where Miles is sprawled across the poolside lounger next to hers. It’s difficult to tell for sure with his sunglasses, but she’s pretty sure that he’s going for something along the lines of bored or maybe unthreatening.

“Figured what out?” Rose finally cautiously asks when it becomes clear that Miles isn’t about to offer any further context.

“The notebook,” Miles says, and Rose thanks every power out there that she’s an actress, and is like, 99% sure that the way her heart has abruptly started beating double time isn’t showing on her face.

“Oh?” Rose asks, raising her glass the rest of the way to her mouth. She takes a casual, unaffected sip. Continues, disinterested. “What have you figured out?”

It’s a convincing performance, she thinks. Or, it would be, if she hadn’t quite so openly freaked out at Miles when he’d discovered the notebook in the first place. As it is, even with the sunglasses there’s no mistaking the bitch, please clearly written across Miles’ face.

“You’re trying to figure out who your gay ex-boyfriend’s boyfriend is,” he says. 

Rose frowns, puzzled. “None of my ex-boyfriends care about hockey,” she says. “Well, Shane, I guess, but he’s straight.” 

Miles pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead, to make sure she gets the full effect of the look that he shoots at her in reply to her—again, in her opinion, quite convincing—performance. 

“At first I thought you were maybe trying to get him a boyfriend,” Miles says, blatantly dismissing her words with an airy wave of his hand. “But that didn’t really make sense—why would you be putting stuff like receding hairlines in the pros column? So, I figure it must be that you found out that he has a boyfriend who’s another hockey player, but he won’t tell you who it is. So, you’re trying to figure it out based on who would cause the biggest scandal.” 

Miles wraps up his monologue with a smug sip of his cocktail. It’s not unearned—Rose would honestly probably be pretty impressed, if she wasn’t too busy freaking the fuck out about Miles having figured out Shane’s secret. 

Fuck. 

Fuck fuck fucking fuck. 

First she’d outright all-but told John that Shane was gay—which, he really wouldn’t tell anyone, she wasn’t actually worried about him—but now Miles had figured it out too, also because of her. Because she was insane and nosey and had made the world’s most invasive arts and crafts project while half-delusional with sleep deprivation and probably some sort of skin poisoning from all the blue makeup. And while she loved Miles with all of her heart, he was not someone that she would really call subtle at the best of times. 

He’d openly been kissing her boyfriend’s neck while they’d been dancing together, after all. Which— 

Actually, that had been a lot, even for Miles. Almost like—

“Oh,” Rose says, staring blankly over the smooth, green-blue surface of her pool. “Fuck.”

“Take your time,” Miles says, condescending. 

Rose leans over to grab one of her flip-flops off the concrete. She throws it at him, but he doesn’t even have the decency to look wounded or even just startled when it smacks him in the leg before tumbling uselessly to the ground. Instead, he just smiles at her before taking another long, satisfied sip of his cocktail. 

“I hate you,” she says. 

“No, you don’t,” Miles says serenely. 

“I do,” Rose says, pointing viciously towards him with the hand holding her wine glass, which only barely manages not to spill everywhere with the force of the gesture. “You’re the worst. I don’t know why we’re even friends.”

“Because I’m delightful,” Miles says, “and I’m the only gay man you know that you haven’t slept with.” 

“Oh my god, shut up,” Rose says, but she can feel herself softening despite herself, a smile creeping into the edges of her voice even if it hasn’t yet made it onto her face. It’s a losing battle, one that she’s doomed to fall to sooner rather than later. 

Rose decides that she’ll at least allow herself to go down with some of her pride intact. 

“When did you know?” she asks.

“Oh baby, from the first second he opened his mouth in front of me,” Miles says. 

Well. So much for her pride.

“You did not,” Rose says. 

“Okay, maybe not the first second,” Miles says. “But there is no straight man on the planet that would have such a… nothing reaction to meeting the Rose Landry.” 

“He had a reaction!” Rose protests. “We were flirting!”

“Baby boy was queening out,” Miles says. “Common mistake for the closeted crowd.”

“You are terrible,” Rose says, with feeling. “So your plan was to, what? Try and seduce my boyfriend to let me know that he was gay? You couldn’t have just, y’know, given me a heads-up directly?” 

“I didn’t want to crush your hopes,” Miles says. “Like, I love you babe but your stats are getting to be a bit embarrassing. I was worried you might start to develop a complex.”

The second flip-flop is about as effective as the first, which is to say, it hits Miles in the arm with a gentle slapping sound before falling harmlessly to the cushion. Miles pushes it the rest of the way off the edge of the lounge with a single finger, nose wrinkled. 

“Okay, now that you’re out of projectiles…” Miles trails off, making a grabbing-gesture with his free hand that is clearly meant to communicate… something. 

Rose stares at him, blankly. 

Miles rolls his eyes, dramatic and exaggerated. “Oh my god,” he says. “Go get the notebook! C’mon, let’s see what we’re working with here.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Rose says. “I am not— I have not and will not confirm anything.”

The look Miles gives her is deeply unimpressed, but it doesn’t last for long—he relents with a put-upon sigh after only a few seconds. “Fine,” he says, “we can pretend it’s all just a hypothetical conversation about whose latent faggotry would cause the biggest scandal in the NHL, were there any fags in the league. Which, of course, there are not.”

“Of course not,” Rose says, again failing to keep the smile out of her voice even as she shakes her head disapprovingly. She hesitates, then again points at Miles—about a hundred times less violently, and about a hundred times more seriously. “I am not fucking kidding Miles,” she says. “I’m not confirming any part of what you just said. And you cannot tell anyone about what I’m not confirming.” 

Miles holds up both of his hands in surrender. 

“I swear,” he says. He meets her eyes, his own gaze steady, equally serious—free of any of the usual flippant bullshit that so often characterized the exaggerated persona he loved to put on. “You know I know what it feels like to be outed when you’re not ready.”

She does. There was a reason that Miles spent a lot of their last few years of high school living on her parent’s couch, and it wasn’t because it was an incredibly comfortable piece of furniture or something. 

“Okay, I’ll be right back,” Rose says, pushing herself to her feet. She rolls her eyes at the excited noise that Miles lets out in response to her acquiescence, sitting up so fast he nearly spills his own drink as she retrieves her scattered flipflops.

“Wait,” he calls before she can get more than a few steps away from the loungers. “Where did you put it? I looked everywhere I could think of when I was inside earlier.” 

Rose turns around, continuing to walk backwards towards the patio doors. “Oh, you mean when you went to ‘pee’?” she asks, raising both hands to make scare quotes around the word pee. “Sorry to tell you this babe, but you’re getting a bit predictable. I put it in the safe.” 

“Oh my god, you paranoid hag,” Miles shouts, sounding delighted. Rose blows him a kiss, grinning, then turns back around to walk the rest of the way into the house like a normal person. 

The last thing she needed was some tabloid story about how a heart-broken and despondent Rose Landry cracked her head open on her own patio while getting drunk in a misguided attempt to forget her hockey player ex.

Scott Hunter

Pros: age difference, tragic backstory, was also at the all stars weekend

Cons: too boring to do something as interesting as sleep with another player

Wyatt Hayes

Pros: goalie, divisional rival

Cons: goalie??? honestly who knows what this guy’s deal is

Ilya Rozanov

Pros: was at all star weekend, the Rivalry™, the Russia of it all, Shane’s team hates him, Shane’s mom hates him

Cons: Shane also hates him 

J.J. Dagenais

Pros: same team (locker room drama times two!), Québécois

Cons: Québécois (Montréal would probably completely forgive him for being gay if he was fucking a hometown boy)

Vincent Lemaire

Pros: was also at the all star weekend, was the third best rookie of Shane’s draft class

Cons: too good at hockey for Shane to find him embarrassing, not even in the same conference

On June 14, Rose loses feeling in her fingers from how tightly she and Miles are squeezing each other’s hands. On the TV, Scott Hunter stops kissing the man he’d called down from the crowd just long enough to smile, huge and beaming and almost as bright as all the lights shining down on them from the rafters. Then, they’re kissing again and again and again, before finally collapsing into a hug that is so full of joy and relief that Rose can feel it through the screen. 

“Oh my god,” Miles whispers. 

“Did— did he just—” Rose stumbles over her words, tongue clumsy in her mouth in a way it rarely was. Too overwhelmed by what they’d just watched to think them through before the words begin to trip their way out into the open air. 

On the screen, the rest of the Admirals begin to converge on Hunter and his—boyfriend? husband?—screaming and laughing. Celebrating, still, with barely so much as a pause to take note of history being made on the ice alongside them. 

“Yeah,” Miles says, and Rose can hear the smile in his voice before she even turns to look at them. His eyes are wide and wet, and he grins back at her with a manic sort of joy that she knows is perfectly reflected on her own face. “Yeah, it did.” 

“Holy shit,” Rose says. “Miles. Holy shit.” 

“He wouldn’t have to be the first anymore,” Miles says, stunned and delirious. “They wouldn’t have to be the first.”

“Holy shit.”

The long, slow months of the summer prove her brother right. 

Some fans are furious. More are joyful, Rose thinks or maybe just hopes. There’s a spike in videos posted on social media of people burning their Scott Hunter jerseys, followed by a huge spike in sales for new jerseys. Slurs hurled on social media—by fans towards Scott, towards other fans, towards other players, towards the league itself—are matched by articles and think pieces and long, painfully sincere Twitter threads about how brave what Hunter had done was. 

Rose blocks anyone she sees saying anything cruel, so as the days go by the hate begins to be steadily filtered out of her line of sight, leaving behind only the positive—the messages that make her feel light, that make her believe that Shane can find his own way to the light. To the kind of happiness that glows from Hunter’s face in every post-Cup interview. 

She hopes that Hunter is able to block out all the rest as well, though she knows that it’s harder to ignore the things that are said in person, whether shouted on the street or hissed across the ice. 

Rose would hope the same for Shane, but she’s 90% sure that his mom is the only one who actually opens or posts on his social media, so he’s probably not seeing any of it either way. Not that she can confirm it for herself—Shane texted her a week after the final to tell her that he was going to be mostly off-grid for the next few weeks doing a “silent retreat”. 

Which, truly, if Shane didn’t need hockey like he needed oxygen, he could have a great second career as an LA influencer.

It takes the better part of a month, but eventually the NHL and NHLPA publicly express their support for Hunter—optics, John had said, and the tone of the statements, which somehow manage to come across as begrudging even in writing, says that that had been what it had come down to, in the end. 

The Admirals are more enthusiastic, both in their initial post and in the slew of images that spread across the internet a few weeks later, of the majority of the Admirals doing a remix of their Cup parade—barely dressed and absolutely hammered, atop a firetruck in the midst of the NYC Pride Parade. The Cup, shining in the sunshine, front and centre when Hunter once again pulls his boyfriend—Kip, according to the article about their relationship in The Athletic—into a second kiss in front of the whole world.

Hunter then attempts to dip Kip, drops him, and there’s a frantic scramble as Carter Vaughn nearly tips right off the back of the truck because he’s laughing too hard to keep himself upright.

It’s probably easier for him in some ways, Rose thinks. Hunter isn’t at the end of his career, but he’s closer than Shane is. He’s got over a decade of taking the Admirals into the playoffs to vouch for his ability to play hockey while gay. He’s just won a Cup. He was drafted an Admiral, and at this point, was all but guaranteed to retire an Admiral—no trade, no buyout. 

Rose wishes she could somehow know for certain whether the same would be true in Montréal. She wishes she could talk to Shane about it, ask him how he’s feeling, but true to his word, Shane starts his summer by dropping off the face of the earth. By the time he starts replying to her texts again, she’s on media tour for this stupid fucking movie, answering the same six tired questions about how naked she was under all that blue paint over and over again. 

It was fine though—she’d been right. They couldn’t keep her locked up until September.

In a few weeks she would be in Québec, pretending that she’d never even heard of shapeshifting. 

Scott Hunter

Pros: age difference, tragic backstory, was also at the all stars weekend, would be cheating on his super nice grad student boyfriend

Cons: too boring to do something as interesting as sleep with another player

Rose was seriously considering re-opening the whole beard conversation with Shane. Sure, it’d be fraught and terrible and probably emotionally damaging for both of them, but it would also maybe be worth it to have Yuna Hollander as her mother-in-law. 

“So, I’m kinda obsessed with your mom,” Rose says as Shane crosses the patio towards her, two matching glasses of iced tea in his hands, already sweating in the early fall heat. 

Shane groans exaggeratedly, tossing his head back. “Not you too,” he complains, handing her her glass before throwing himself carelessly into the patio seat next to hers.

“Me too?” Rose asks. “Who too?”

Shane waves her off, dismissive. “No one,” he says. 

Or rather, he tries to wave her off. 

It’s too casual. Deliberate, in a way that turns it stiff instead.

Rose narrows her eyes at him. 

Shane ignores her, taking a long sip of his tea, stretching his legs out in front of him. The motion makes the edges of his cargo shorts ride up, making it obvious how much time he’d spent in them this summer—the tan line less obvious on him than it would be on her, but visible nonetheless. 

Cargo shorts. Christ. No wonder he’d been so successful at passing as straight for all these years. 

Rose considers the possibilities, but really, there’s only one option, for who could be obsessed with Shane’s mom, whose identity Shane would also want to try to obfuscate. 

“Oh my god,” Rose whisper-shouts, leaning so far over she nearly tips out of her chair. “Your parents met your boyfriend? When? How? Why wasn’t I invited?” 

“I don’t hav—” Shane starts, then looks at her, cutting himself off with an exaggeratedly pained sigh when he sees how far she’s leaned into his space. “It wasn’t on purpose,” he says instead. 

Rose feels her eyes go wide, and she swings her body fully towards Shane, drawing her legs up to sit cross-legged, focusing all of her attention on Shane. 

“What does that mean?” she asks. “Wait, did they catch you having phone sex?”

“No!”

“Oh wow, having sex-sex?”

“No, we weren’t—” Shane’s mouth snaps shut, but the resigned look on his face says that he knows he’s already said too much. 

“Okay, but they caught you together? Oh my god. Where? When? And again, why wasn’t I invited?”

Groaning, Shane brings his hands up to cover his face. He’s still holding his iced tea, and Rose tracks the way that the liquid sloshes dangerously close to the rim of the glass. Shane either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care—he leaves his hands over his face, precarity of liquids be damned.

“Do you remember the silent retreat I did at the beginning of the summer?”

“Do I remember your weird, pretentious, Instagram influencer-ass announcement that you wouldn’t be texting me back?” Rose asks, laughing. “Yes, yes I do—”

It’s Rose’s turn to abruptly cut herself off, sucking in a sharp gasp. Shane curls further into himself at the noise in a way that is maybe becoming less the fun, good kind of embarrassment, so Rose tamps down her initial urge—to scream something along the lines of wait, was that a sex vacation?!?—and instead makes herself smaller to match. Reaching out, she lays a careful hand on Shane’s knee. 

“Hey,” she says, voice soft, low. “You don’t actually have to tell me anything.”

Shane shakes his head but drops his hands, his ice tea once again threatening to fly right out of his glass with the abruptness of the movement. Rose is relieved to see that there’s none of the barely held-back tears that there had been when they’d broken up. Shane looks a bit stressed, sure, but more than anything he just looks embarrassed. 

Plus, Shane kinda always looks a bit stressed.

“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s— it was fine. It wasn’t even— we were kissing, yeah, but not like— it was more— the whole thing was just a shock.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Rose says. “Oh, Shane, I’m sorry.”

Shane frowns, and Rose continues before he can ask.

“I’m sure that wasn’t how you wanted to come out to them,” she says. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to do it on your own terms.”

Shane spins the straw in his drink, looking down at his own lap as he shrugs. “It’s fine,” he says. “I mean… it happened, so. Whatever.” 

Rose bites her lip, shoving down the urge to argue that it is not, in fact, whatever.

There’s only so far she can single-handedly un-repress a man. She handled the homosexuality. Someone else could deal with his emotions.

“So,” she says, changing tracks, “your parents know who he is then?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah, they do.”

He’s still looking at his lap, still avoiding her eyes, but Rose sees it anyways—the slight upwards tug of the corners of his mouth, the way his shoulders sink, tension leaving him at the mere thought of his boyfriend. 

Rose was going to scream. 

It was so sweet and so what Shane deserved and she was so going to lose her fucking mind if she didn’t find out who it was. 

Still, she doesn’t want to actually also make Shane go insane in her quest to not go crazy herself, so she moves the conversation on without asking any more questions—redirecting it on to the Metro’s upcoming training camp and Shane’s return to his horrible micro-whatever diet that he stuck to with a near religious conviction every season. He describes it with just as much fervour as he adheres to it, and Rose isn’t convinced that half the things that he’s talking about are even real in terms of like, biology. 

Seriously. The second career as an LA influencer was right there waiting for him the second he got done with hockey. 

Miles: he still won’t tell you??

Rose: no 😭

Rose: and like, i get it, bc he’d be outing his boyfriend to me

Rose: but also, he could ask his boyfriend first if it would be okay??

Rose: plus, like, ngl i do kinda feel like i’ve earned this one

Miles: no u have fr

Miles: its fair payment

Miles: gossip as reparations for never making u cum

Rose: Miles oh my god 😭

Rose: in his defense we slept together like, twice

Rose: even straight guys can’t figure out how to make a woman come after two times together

Miles: babe

Miles: we have GOT to talk abt ur track record

Rose: shut up it’s normallllllllll

Rose: it’s harder to get women to orgasm, that’s just like. a biological fact

Miles: …..

Miles: that’s it, we’re having an intervention when u get back

Miles: u might be able to live like this, but I can’t live watching you live like this

Rose: 🖕

They’re still on the highway, about two hours away from the airport, when Shane’s phone starts buzzing and then… doesn’t stop. 

Shane has been giving it increasingly nervous glances but is way too much of a rule-follower to actually pick it up and look at it, so Rose takes mercy on him. 

“Want me to check?” she offers.

Shane taps his fingers on the steering wheel, glancing between her and the road. His phone buzzes again. He sighs.

“Yeah,” he says, “if you wouldn’t mind, just— if it's my parents, and we forgot something up there…” 

“They’ll have to mail it to me, if it’s mine,” Rose points out as she reaches out and snags Shane’s phone from the cupholder. “We do not have time to go back and still have me make my flight.” 

“Wow, big fancy Hollywood star can’t afford a new flight?” Shane asks, with that small proud smile he always gets when he thinks he’s really nailed a chirp. 

“Big fancy NHL player can’t afford to mail a package to his best friend?” Rose counters, flipping the phone screen to face her. The notification says that he’s gotten—Jesus, twelve new texts—but nothing else. Rose doesn’t have to ask to know why he has notification previews turned off though. 

“Passcode?” she asks instead.

“1221,” Shane says.

Rose punches it in, and it opens directly into the iMessages app and—

“Woah,” Rose says.

“What?” Shane asks.

Rose doesn’t reply—still processing the fact that all the texts had come in from a single contact—even as she automatically, unthinkingly, begins to read them, and—

Lily: are you done dropping off boring rose landry yet

Lily: shaaaane

Lily: i am all alone here, in my big empty house

Lily: thinking about you

Lily: thinking about the way that you—

“Ohmygod!” Rose says dropping Shane’s phone like she’d just been burned. 

“What?” Shane asks again, with far more alarm. His eyes are wide as he glances over at Rose, and then down at her lap, where the unlocked screen of his phone shines up at them both. 

The phone vibrates with another incoming text, drawing Rose’s eyes back down to the screen and—

Jesus Christ. 

Rose looks back up at Shane, who is blushing in a way that Rose didn’t even know he was capable of.

“Oh, fuck,” Shane says, still staring down at his own phone. He seems to remember that he’s driving at the same moment that his other instincts kick in. Jerking his head back up, he returns his eyes to the road at the same time that he begins blindly scrambling to grab his phone from Rose’s lap.

“Oh my god, stop,” Rose says, slapping Shane’s hand away before he accidentally grabs something that neither of them want him touching (again). Picking his phone up, she holds it towards him, locking it with an exaggerated press of the button before dropping it back into the cupholder. She drops back against the backrest with a huff, crossing her arms as she looks out at the road.

The car is totally silent. 

Shane’s fingers are clenched around the steering wheel in a death-grip, tight enough that Rose can hear the leather faintly creaking in protest. Rose glances at him, but he’s not looking at her—determinately keeping his eyes fixed on the road in front of them. 

Rose looks down at her own lap, picks at her cuticles. Looks out the passenger-side window. Notes that they are now only 80km away from Ottawa. Looks back at Shane.

Opens her mouth.

“Don’t,” Shane says. 

“So,” Rose says.

“Don’t,” Shane tries again. 

“You really weren’t kidding about being a bottom, huh?” 

“Oh my god,” Shane says, and Rose can practically see him willing himself not to bang his head against the steering wheel. 

There’s a second of strained silence, where Rose really isn’t sure which way this is going to go—if Shane’s about to start to fully spiral, and then—

A buzz. And then another. And another.

Rose can’t help it—she starts to laugh. After a second, Shane does as well—a bit shaky and uncertain, but there and real. 

Reaching down to the cupholder, Shane thumbs off the vibration on his phone. He returns his hand to the steering wheel for only a second before he’s reaching back down to tilt it face-down. Sparing them both the sight of the screen continuing to light up with the arrival of even more messages, apparently utterly undeterred by Shane’s lack of response.

The silence they fall back into feels far less fraught than before—Shane no longer looks like he’s at risk of snapping off the steering wheel at least, and he’s no longer sitting quite so ram-rod straight. 

Rose settles back into her own seat, content to let Shane continue to unwind while she turns this new information over in her mind.

So. Shane’s boyfriend was apparently pretty shameless. And had an exceptionally filthy mouth—fingers?—ew, no, mouth. 

Rose was honestly mostly just impressed. Between Miles’ tendency to overshare and the… everything, about life in LA, she’d been subjected to probably more than her fair share of sexts over the years. She knew that the line between hot and gross was a very, very fine one, but Shane’s boyfriend was apparently very comfortable walking it anyway. Even if his grasp on grammar did leave something to be desired.

Shane’s boyfriend—Lily.

It was kind of cute, actually. Sad, that they had to use code names in each other’s phones, but sweet too. Kind of like a pet name. Lily was such a pretty pick too. She wondered which of them had chosen it—wondered what Shane’s name was in “Lily”’s phone. 

Kind of funny, too, for Shane to have gone from Rose to Lily. She wondered if it had anything to do with her, which— wait, that actually might be super egotistical of her, shit.

Wow. Hollywood really had changed her.

Although, actually, maybe not—Shane’s boyfriend clearly knew who she was. Knew that she’d been visiting Shane. Was a bit jealous about it too, she was guessing, based on him calling her boring. Which— rude? She didn’t even know him!

Though that was kind of nice too, in a way. Shane deserved to have someone who was a little bit jealous and possessive over him. Someone who knew what they had, and wanted to keep it.

Lily, though. There had to be a reason for it, right? It couldn’t just be random—not when there are so many other, far more generic and popular, girl’s names that they could have picked, if they wanted to keep it as vague as possible. 

Maybe it was based on his actual name? 

Rose tried to remember if there had been anyone who had featured in her brief foray into delirious arts-and-crafting whose name would translate into Lily. There were definitely a handful of Europeans who had far too many Ls in their names. 

Though, it could also be based on his first name—there was a Liam-something who played for Calgary. Lysander Bakas, on the Admirals. Linden Ca— no.

Lily, Rose thinks. Lily. Lily.

Li—

Rose jerks upright, ignoring the way that Shane jumps, startled by the sudden movement. 

“Oh my fucking god,” Rose says, staring blankly out at the road. 

“What?” Shane asks, voice high and tight. 

Rose’s head whips towards him. 

“You’re dating Ilya Rozanov?”