Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, David Hollander & Shane Hollander & Yuna Hollander, Shane Hollander & Yuna Hollander

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Zane Boodram, Ottawa Centaurs - Character, Original Characters

Additional Tags:

Angst, Character Study, Introspection, Racism, Homophobia, POV Shane Hollander, Fragmented Points on Racism and Shane's Thoughts on the Matter, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Top Ilya Rozanov, Bottom Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Series:

Part 5 of a collection of hollanovs

Collections:

Anonymous

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-08 Words: 9,610 Chapters: 1/1

thylacine

Summary

He’s just about ready to doze off—his ritualistic pre-dinner, thirty-minute nap—when, suddenly, Ilya says, “Huh. Interesting.”

Shane cracks one eye open. “Hmm?”

“Oh, nothing, малыш,” he replies, though his brows are furrowed when he says it. Shane’s even more curious now.

“No, really, what is it?”

Ilya must lose some internal debate; a deep sigh leaves his body before, wordlessly, he turns his phone to Shane.

The bright light makes him squint, still not used to Ilya and his affinity for both using the light-mode feature and turning the brightness in his phone to a maximum. He forgoes scolding him when, after his eyes have adjusted, he reads: Metros acquires Fil-Canadian Rivera; second Asian player in franchise history after Hollander.

At first he thinks, oh, that’s my name. Shane hasn’t seen his name mentioned remotely near the words ‘Montreal Metros’ ever since he transferred to Ottawa three years ago. Then, and this is when it finally dawns on him, Shane thinks: second?

Notes

about 40% of this was written in a sad stupor, listening to your best american girl (mitski) and deuteronomy 2:10 (the mountain goats), thinking about shane and his fragmented, disjointed, contradictory thoughts on race and how he's perceived. i made a joke that shane's politics about his race is "i'm too busy being the best so i don't really think about that". a good friend had said "the way shane thinks about his race is that he tries very hard not to think about it." the remaining 60% of the fic was written with that latter statement in mind. that, plus "okay, i don't really think shane is as woke as we think he is because he's a man and also a hockey player." ultimately, i just wanted to write another shanetrospection.

Extinction. A noun. The death of the last remaining member of a species. It is the precise moment at which something ceases to exist anywhere determinable in the world. A matter of population counts dwindling from a handful of digits to the final zero. Rarely catastrophic all at once, thank God. It took the dodo roughly eighty years to go extinct from the start of hunting and deforestation. So too did the passenger pigeon, which took around eighty to a hundred years before the last one died pitifully in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. It’s all gradual; the natural erosion of time, aided by the violence of human hands. 

Violence. What a word.

It starts, ostensibly, with an offhand comment from Ilya. 

Dusk has just settled over the cottage, the air of the warm evening brushing against Shane’s cheeks, paired with the humming of the cicadas from the bushes and the trees. From the petrichor, Shane surmises that it may rain tomorrow; summer showers, always something to look forward to. Shane has always loved it when it rained, because he’d have the excuse to just stay inside and not do anything else. He’s grown to love it even more since he got married, because that meant having Ilya all to himself. Yes, still, possessive—even when they already spend every single moment with each other, Shane could never get enough.

Ilya clicks his tongue from behind him, sliding their back door closed, slippered feet padding over to where Shane is sat. His eyes are closed, but he grins when he feels the shadow of his husband looming over him; it turns into a fuller smile when Ilya presses a quick kiss directly above his freckles. “Hi,” he whispers against Shane’s skin.

“Hey.”

The couch beside him dips. Shane finally opens his eyes and turns his head. There’s a towel wrapped around Ilya’s hair. Fresh from the shower, then. He almost pouts, remembering that Ilya had suggestively wagged his eyebrows at Shane earlier after practice—cracking a joke about showering together at home while their teammates groaned collectively in the locker room—but he doesn’t. Instead, he shifts sideways, lifting his legs to rest his feet over Ilya’s lap. Ilya, who is now staring at his phone, takes them with no other comment.

Shane closes his eyes again, savoring the moment. It had been a good day, all things considered. There’s a tight pull on his calves, but nothing a good massage wouldn’t solve. Typical game pains, of course. He’d taken a hit from Luca that resulted in a fall; nothing too serious. If it had been, Ilya wouldn’t have laughed and attempted to get Harris to record Luca’s hands hovering over Shane, fumbling to apologize. 

He’s just about ready to doze off—his ritualistic pre-dinner, thirty-minute nap—when, suddenly, Ilya says, “Huh. Interesting.”

Shane cracks one eye open. “Hmm?”

“Oh, nothing, малыш,” he replies, though his brows are furrowed when he says it. Shane’s even more curious now.

“No, really, what is it?”

Ilya must lose some internal debate; a deep sigh leaves his body before, wordlessly, he turns his phone to Shane.

The bright light makes him squint, still not used to Ilya and his affinity for both using the light-mode feature and turning the brightness in his phone to a maximum. He forgoes scolding him when, after his eyes have adjusted, he reads: Metros acquires Fil-Canadian Rivera; second Asian player in franchise history after Hollander.

At first he thinks, oh, that’s my name. Shane hasn’t seen his name mentioned remotely near the words ‘Montreal Metros’ ever since he transferred to Ottawa three years ago. The last time had been some months back, after a game with them that resulted in a crushing Metros loss; 5-1 in Ottawa’s favor. He’d read the article, then spent the rest of the night relishing in the fact that he’s always, always going to be his former team’s biggest regret; all their genuine feelings for him and his lifestyle be damned. 

Then, and this is when it finally dawns on him, Shane thinks: second?

But his brain blanks immediately after. His gaze shifts from the phone to his husband, whose face seems disinterested enough, probably just eager to get his phone back to continue his scrolling. Then he goes back to reread the headline again, squinting even further, as if doing so would rearrange the words into something that has more meaning. The series of it strikes him, each one harder than the last: second Asian player in franchise history. 

And yet, Shane can’t seem to find anything to say. So he pushes the phone away from his face and echoes what Ilya said: “Huh. Interesting.”

So it starts, ostensibly, with that. 

Shane can, in a sense, still remember his first ever hockey game. It’s a study in sensations, for the most part. A test of how good his memory is. It’s a game he’s mostly losing, because try as he might he can no longer recall the specifics. Just that: he was ten years old. The cold rink was a huge contrast against his warm, sweaty skin beneath the gear and padding. The boards had towered over his too-small, too-young body. The sound of the skates scraping against ice had rattled against his ribs. The stirrings of a dream; the accompaniment to a life-long dance. 

It’s all a grand blur after that. That's what he meant by sensations. It's all feeling that follows after. All he can really remember is that the puck had ended up on his stick, and instinct erupted in his chest. Aim, swing, crack, and the small black thing was sent flying across the ice, shooting past a goalie who was probably younger than Shane. This is good, he had thought in the aftermath, crowded by the surge of his yelling teammates. The thrill, the rush of blood in his veins. The first of many highs. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

He tries very hard not to think about it. He doesn’t think about it as he wipes down the kitchen counter after making dinner. He doesn’t think about it as he reorganizes their pantry for no specific reason. He doesn’t think about it as he drives him and Ilya to practice, going on about his day as his husband almost skips like some cartoon character to where Wyatt and Luca had been huddled over by the door. He doesn’t think about it as he goes for a run so long his knees end up aching something awful afterward, and he doesn’t think about it as he watches game footage from evening until the early morning, ignoring the blooming headache behind his eyelids. Pivot, pivot, pivot. 

But the brain is a traitorous little thing.

These are the contents of an opened but unread email in Shane’s laptop: 

To Captain Hollander,

Is it alright if I call you that, even if you’re not my captain? My name is Martin Rivera. I’m sure you already know this, but I just got signed by the Metros over the summer and, honestly, writing this email feels a little surreal. 

I’ve been trying to figure out how to say all this without sounding too weird or overly dramatic, but I don’t think there’s really a normal way to tell someone how they’ve shaped a huge part of your life. I grew up watching your games. My dad and I would sit in front of the TV and watch your games every night. Of course, I suffered in the morning because then I’d be late for class, but I like to think it was all worth it. 

I think I was nine when I first realized you were Asian too. I know it probably sounds ridiculous now, but at the time it felt huge to me. You were just there, living the dream, wearing the jersey I someday dreamed about wearing and now actually do. Being good enough that nobody could ignore you. I think people who aren’t like us don’t really understand what that means sometimes. You made everything seem possible in a way I didn’t know hockey could be for kids like me. Like us. Not just making the League but staying there. Becoming the captain of the best team and the face of the franchise. 

I know everyone talks about your stats and the Cups and your leadership and all that stuff, but what stuck with me the most was how you made all that space your own. I’m not gonna pretend there isn’t pressure coming into the Metros as the second Asian player they’ve ever signed. I’ve got big shoes to fill, and people have already brought your name up in interviews more times than I can count. Honestly, it’s terrifying. Your legacy is enormous. I still feel like I’m playing dress up, sometimes. But I wanted to thank you anyway. Even if I never become half the player you are, I got here because you existed first.

And maybe this is asking too much, but if you ever have the time, I’d really appreciate any advice you have. No trade secrets, of course, but… I guess just how to survive all this. From one Asian kid to another. No pressure to respond. I know you’re probably insanely busy. 

Thank you, Captain. 

Signed, Martin Rivera.

There are about six thousand and four hundred forty miles between Tokyo and Ottawa. 

Shane knows this because he looked it up once, when he was seventeen, at three in the morning, while his mother was snoring softly from the other bed, the glow of his laptop turned low against the dark so as not to disturb her. Six thousand and four hundred forty miles across oceans and continents, with a timezone difference so severe that while one city sleeps, the other one is just starting to wake. 

It still feels impossible, sometimes, that his grandmother crossed all of that distance at nineteen, only with two suitcases and speaking a language nobody else around her could understand. That she arrived in a country so unfamiliar, so harsh and hostile, and built an entire life from nothing but her sheer stubbornness and the absolute refusal to go back. That because of her crossing that seemingly impossible space, Shane was able to exist at all.

Six thousand and four hundred forty miles. Some distance and a life.

Shane is an observant person. Many people will try to say otherwise and contradict him, but Shane has lived with himself for thirty-three years; surely, he knows what goes on in his head better than anyone. What Shane decidedly isn’t is confrontational. He’ll notice things, sure, but it’s a rare occurrence for him to do something about whatever it is that has caught his attention. It’s at that juncture where people confuse things, he supposes. That because Shane doesn’t say anything about something, then he must not know about it.

More often than not, it’s led to a lot of misunderstandings. A lot of pain on his end, definitely, because almost always the result is the people who care for him thinking that he’s not making the effort to understand them right back. At its worst, it’s people treating Shane like some terminally ill child they have to sidestep difficult conversations around, at this misapprehension that he won’t really know whatever it is they’re talking about. 

This, too, is a game Shane likes to play all by himself. For example: it only took him until his fifth hook-up with Ilya when they were younger to realize that when Ilya lies, he likes to look to the side and on the floor so that he looks dismissive when in fact he’s trying not to let his feelings show. And Shane has noticed that when Rose is pre-empting some PR catastrophe, she likes to be papped with Shane around to subtly remind everybody that she is, in fact, a good person. Whenever his mom has a disagreement with his dad, she likes to tend to the tomatoes she’s planted in her backyard garden. Recently, Shane had a talk with Wiebe about possibly pulling Bood aside for a check-up when, after a particularly brutal practice a week ago, he’s still favoring his left side and avoiding putting weight on his right.

At the party, right after Shane was drafted, right before his eyes met Ilya’s looking down at him from the balcony, some higher up from the Metros had told his mom: ‘we are thrilled that Shane is Asian, or Asian-Canadian. We’ve historically broken barriers and we’re doing that again.’ To which his mom responded that they’re both excited to be a part of the most legendary franchise in all of hockey history, and then followed up by saying that she’s the world’s biggest Metros fan, and that watching their games every Saturday night with her dad is part of how she came to feel Canadian. 

He’d mentally checked himself out of the conversation almost immediately after. Much later, finally entering the famed Metros locker room, seeing only J.J. and no one else like him or them, this is what had struck Shane first: that man had lied and lied well through his teeth.

While Shane can only describe his first hockey game in sensations, he can perfectly recall when exactly he fell in love with the sport: seven years old, teeth chattering beneath a scarf his dad had wrapped too tight around his neck and too high over his mouth, sitting in the nosebleeds of the Bell Centre while the Metros played the Raiders on a Tuesday night. The players had looked like ants all the way from the top, but Shane remembers thinking it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, the closest he’d ever be to God. Thousands of people reacting like one living, breathing organism, the ebb and flow. Somewhere, towards the end, his mother reached over without looking and took his hand. Something inside Shane slotted neatly into place.

These are the contents of an unsent email in Shane’s laptop: 

To Martin,

First of all, congratulations. Really. Getting signed by the Metros is a huge accomplishment, even if it probably doesn’t feel real to you yet. That’s fine. I don’t think it all fully settled for me until my first game, and even after that I still had to pinch myself.

Thank you for your email. It must have been hard writing it. I read it a few times before answering because I wasn’t really sure what to say. I still don’t know if I do.

You mentioned realizing I was Asian when you were nine years old, and I don’t think that’s ridiculous at all. I understand exactly what you mean. Hockey isn’t a sport that houses so many people who look like us. When I was younger, I didn’t have anyone to point to at all. There wasn’t ever a roadmap for people like us, which meant a lot of the time you were left alone to figure things out while also trying not to stand out too much while doing it.

I’ll be honest with you, I never really thought of  myself as a trailblazer while I was living through it. Even now, still living through it. Most of my time is just spent surviving hockey and being good enough because, well, I want to be. I do get how you feel though. This pressure to be great so that no one could question your place. That exists for me, even now, even if I don’t acknowledge it. 

I get the feeling you’re trying to describe. This feeling that you’re walking into the rink and not sure if you’ve really earned it. More players feel that way than they admit to. The difference is that for players like us, there’s that added feeling that if we fail, it reflects on more than just ourselves. My mom used to always say: this is important for kids like you who don’t see themselves in places like this. That’s a heavy burden to carry at my age. I’m sure it’s heavier for you. 

But here’s the kicker: you do belong here. Not because you’re filling an internal quota, not because you might inspire somebody out there someday, but because you’re good enough to be here. Full stop. Don’t entertain anything else. Of course, the other stuff still matters. There are kids watching you now the same way you watched me. You probably won’t fully understand the impact of that for a long time. Maybe ever. But it’s all garnish. Adjacent only to the game.

I don’t really have anything groundbreaking to give as advice. Honestly, you’re probably better off talking to J.J. than to me. Maybe this: don’t let hockey decide for you what you can and can’t be. Don’t let it take everything from you in exchange for belonging there. Here. You’re the only one who knows who you are.

And one more thing: stop comparing yourself to my legacy with the Metros. It’ll crush you if you do. You’re not supposed to become another Shane Hollander. The point is that there gets to be a you now.

Good luck this season, Martin. I’ll be rooting for you, even on the other side of the rink.

All the best,

Shane Hollander

Rose had asked him, once, to paint her a picture of what he was like at the age of eight, unlocking a memory he didn’t even know he could still dredge up from whichever imagined box he’d shoved it into: that one other Asian kid in his U9 hockey team, who had hated Shane because his name was Shane Hollander, and everyone decided it was easier to make fun of a kid named Lee Seo-joon even though they couldn’t pronounce his name right. Seo-joon, who bore the brunt of the teasing and the bullying because he packed Korean food instead of a “normal” lunch like Shane, who opened his pack at break to find a ham and cheese sandwich. Seo-joon, who spoke Korean softly with his father in the corner of the rink lobby while Shane spoke effortless English with his mom. Shane who never had an accent, unlike Seo-joon who struggled to roll his r’s. Perfect Shane Hollander, who went on to do great things. So easy and palatable, so safely Canadian that people could forget he was Japanese altogether whenever it suited them.

He wonders where Seo-joon is now. If he kept playing hockey long enough to love it despite everything, or if U9 had been enough to teach him that there was no real place for boys like him in the sport. If awful Shane Hollander who had never once defended him has put him off the sport. He wonders if he heard about his draft. If he recognized Shane and then turned the TV off, incensed, because Shane once again was able to glide through in a way he never could have. 

Shane hopes not. He hopes Seo-joon has forgotten him forever. Memory-holed, shot put to the void of the mind. Wouldn’t that be kinder?

Shane used to be so insecure over the women Ilya would date. Partly because of the whole “I’m not a woman, I don’t know if he wants a life like that with me” thing; of course, he’d long accepted that his husband liked both—”Bisexual,” Ilya had said to him before. “Means I like both.” He certainly has no insecurity over it now, given that they’re married and he knows that Ilya would sooner die than even imagine a life that isn’t with Shane.

The other part of it, and one that he almost always ignored because, really, he never thinks about things like that—this whole other aspect of his self that only really comes up when the name Shane Hollander doesn’t exactly match the face. It’s that Ilya, in the before, almost always dated a particular archetype of woman: tall, blonde, white. Svetlana had been an exception, sure, but they never really dated. And Svetlana was more a childhood friend than anything, so Shane thinks she doesn’t count. His own particular jealousy for her role in Ilya’s life aside.

Ilya had been known for his “womanizing”, so to speak. Manwhore. Slut. Roz and his roster, players used to say about him. Pre-marriage, of course. No one would say that shit now, especially around Shane. But, before, no matter what city he was in and no matter what the end result of a game was, win or lose, Ilya would always have a warm body in his bed. And always, always with the same kind of girls. It had only stopped in 2016, supposedly, during that brief period where, according to a drunk and teary-eyed Marleau who spent an awful lot of time embarrassing Ilya at their wedding, Ilya only went for ‘short as fuck brunettes with freckles.’

Followed by, after a double take: ‘which, fuck, Hollander, now that I’m seeing you, I mean, the resemblance is just—’

Ilya had cut him off then, but Shane knew what he meant. 

Still, even with the knowledge of that, he can’t help but remember that night at the club with Rose and Ilya and—well, Ilya had been dancing with a girl. A tall, blonde, white girl. Decisively different from the kind of girl Marleau had been describing, and absolutely beyond who Shane was: not a girl, not blonde, not white. 

And Shane didn’t exactly know what to do with that information. He didn’t even know what he was feeling at the time, only that whatever it was sat uncomfortably beneath his sternum. Logically, it meant nothing. Less than nothing, even. They were broken up, and Ilya was young, drunk and available, angry at Shane and the world for giving him something and then taking it away once he decided he wanted it too. They’re married now. Ilya stood in front of everyone they loved and promised Shane the rest of his life with a certainty so overwhelming that Shane had nearly burst apart from it. The ring on Shane’s finger is solid, real, realer than all those other girls in his life had ever been. So what was Shane supposed to do with the memory of some blonde girl at a club? What useful purpose could possibly come from dissecting it?

None. There is no point. Nothing at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

“You love me, right?” Shane asks, so suddenly, in the middle of changing into new clothes, fresh from the showers and long after most of their teammates had gone home. The words slip free from his throat to his tongue to his teeth, all out before he could even help himself. 

Ilya, who does not know where the question is coming from but who entertains Shane anyway, only tilts his head and, with a scrunch in his nose, replies: “Of course I do. Why do you ask?”

A good question. One that, unfortunately, Shane has no answer for yet. “No reason,” is all he provides, and Ilya is perceptive enough to just let it go.

The League has always been good at dismissing things. Sweeping controversies under the rug. Categorizing every bad thing as locker room talk. Part of the culture, they always say, to which Shane would reply in his head: whose culture? But he never found the strength to voice that shit out, because what good would come from doing so? People would just look at him weirdly, and Shane tried not to draw any more attention to himself than he already does.

Still, it would be a lie to say that it never affected him. All that racist crap that players from the opposing team would spew whenever he scored against them in a game. The same players who, at some gala or any other place that isn’t the rink, would clap Shane’s shoulder like they’re all good friends, no bad blood: There’s Hollander, my favorite guy. Hey, don’t take it too personally, alright? It’s just the game. Always, always just the game. Hockey and its cathedrals, all dedicated to men who don’t look like Shane. 

There are times where Shane looks at Troy and wonders how easy it must be to move through the world like that. Not easy, exactly—Shane would know better than to think being gay in hockey has ever or will ever be easy—but easier, at the very least. In the way that his whiteness would always come first before anything else. Troy gets to be complicated and still, ultimately, forgivable. One of them. Shane watches him sometimes—at the locker room, the hotel bar, BBQs at Bood’s, laughing so easily with the guys. Ilya, his own husband, sharing drinks with him like they’ve known each other their whole lives. Sins absolved, forgiven, forgotten to time. Like nothing ever really happened.

And, well, maybe something did happen. Maybe there had been some penance he wasn’t around for. Some closed-door confessional with Troy at the center. Apologies exchanged, forgiveness given; a reckoning Shane never got to witness because he hadn’t belonged to this particular orbit yet. Back then, he’d only been Shane Hollander the Metro. Division rival, formidable enemy. Not yet Shane Hollander the Centaur, Shane Hollander the captain’s husband. But how could Shane dole out forgiveness for an apology he never got? When Troy had spent years being Dallas Kent’s best friend. Dallas Kent, who had once spat in his direction before calling him a ‘filthy Chinese faggot’ with all the casualness of someone commenting on the weather before skating away as if Shane was supposed to just, what, nod and move forward?

Apparently so. Because Shane just pushes it all down. Smiles at Troy before he joins the merriment. Swallows it like he does everything else. In the end, he is his own monster.

What does Shane have that counts for an experience, anyway? One that ties him to something, any semblance of an identity outside of hockey. Ilya, he had met through hockey. His closest friends are former teammates. He’d met Rose at a party thrown by hockey players. His father played collegiate hockey for McGill. Cut fruit? He’d read a post on Instagram once that said it was a universal experience for children in Asian households—peeled oranges, sliced apples, cubed mangoes in a bowl placed on the table in lieu of an apology. Then he stared at the fond, nostalgia-filled comments and tried to muster up the memory of the same for himself.

No memory could be conjured up, not even after he forced himself. He didn’t live in an Asian household. Shane’s apples had always come whole.

Shane loves his mother. He loves her in ways often indescribable. His mom had been the one to give him his first pair of skates and led him to the life he’s been living for a great many years now, lacing and unlacing them for every time that he was on the ice as a child. She’d driven him to every practice and every game, and then held him in her arms whether he was crying because of a loss or celebrating a win. She’d gotten him his first partnership, gotten him through his first year with the Metros, his first year with the Centaurs, gotten him through it all. All of Shane’s heartbreaks, all of Shane’s joys. Her blood, his veins. Shane doesn’t know a life without her. It’s always them against the world.

“Hey, did you hear about that new kid in the Metros?” 

Shane looks up from where he’s tying his laces. “Yeah,” he frowns, though he offers nothing else. He goes back to tugging his laces, once, twice, making sure they’re tight enough that they won’t unravel. From the distance, he hears Ilya’s booming laugh. He tries to focus on that.

Bood hasn’t given up yet. He hums. “So, what do you think?”

Briefly, Shane wonders if Bood had read the same headline as him. Maybe that’s what was driving the curiosity. People always love to hear what he thinks, because he rarely ever tells people what he actually thinks. Or, the voice inside his head says derisively, maybe because Bood is a fucking Black man, and you’ve seen the flag he has tattooed on his arm, and maybe he wants to know because for once in your life, Shane, someone actually cares enough to ask how you want to address the elephant in the room. Because maybe this affects him too. Because maybe you should think about it, for once in your life. 

But what is Shane supposed to say? That when he finally read the article, a cold chill went up his spine when it mentioned that Martin Rivera is the only Asian and the only non-white kid in his draft class? That he remembers what it’s like to be eighteen in the Metros locker room, surrounded by players older than him, circling him like vultures and telling him that he was ‘good for his kind’, whatever that meant. There’s no blueprint in Shane’s head for conversations like this. He has no practiced script. What else can he say? No words come. His whole life has been built around smiling, nodding at interviews, pretending that playing well is enough to get him by. Shane, the role model. Shane, the safe choice. Shane, who responds to every question with “I’m just here to play hockey.”

So he does just that. He stands, taps the blade of his stick once against the floor, and jerks his head towards the ice.  “I don’t know. Haven’t really thought about it much. We should probably start practice soon.”

Bood doesn’t say anything else to him after. It’s Seo-joon, all over again.

Shane had only met his grandmother a few times in his life. She’d died when he was young; seventy-eight to Shane’s nine, and there’d been a language barrier there, so it wasn't like they were particularly close either. Shame had eaten away at him, and so too did the guilt, when at the funeral, his eyes were mostly dry. 

He does have some fond memories of her. Fond, he supposes, is the closest word. Shane would sometimes replay them in his head, obsessively, like one of those old Metros game tapes from his mom’s childhood that he'd rewind when he himself was a child. He does so now, looping one afternoon in his head: him and his grandma, crouched over and cooing at the tulips. He never really understood the things she said, and neither did she understand what he’d say. But that pocket in time was theirs alone. No one could ever take it from him.

Often, he wondered how she felt seeing her own daughter grow up and marry a white man. Did it hurt her to see her own grandson butcher the language of his ancestors? Did it hurt her to watch the rest of her family forget its roots, leaving her behind the way she did Tokyo? Did she think it was karma? Cosmic retribution for what she’s done? If she ever did, Shane wouldn’t understand why. It had been, after all, the reason she came to Canada in the first place. In pursuit of the great dream. How could she complain over a life she chose? Albeit, one that found her at the twilight of her years, head bent low, whispering to petals while her grandson stared at her completely clueless, mind already somewhere else. 

Well, in the end, Shane could never ask. He wouldn’t know how to, anyway.

Here is how the League views Shane Hollander, in a series of pieced together commentaries: “A captain’s captain, really, there’s no one else you’d rather have leading your locker room." “The most promising Canadian prospect since Gretzky.” “You watch the way he carries himself on and off the ice, and that’s the gold standard right there.” “Three-time Stanley Cup champion Shane Hollander continues to prove that he’s simply the best in the game.” “First Asian-Canadian player ever drafted by the Metros, and what a legacy he’s built since then.” “You know what Montreal loves about Shane Hollander? The discipline. Hard pressed to find another guy like that.” “Hockey machine, all around. That’s Hollander for you!” “Does Shane Hollander ever fight anybody?” “You can count on one hand the number of times Hollander has ever dropped the gloves. Solid kid. Never really loses his temper.” “Honestly, if you were building the perfect hockey player in a lab somewhere, you’d probably end up with Shane Hollander.” 

A class act. Home grown. All-Canadian.

Sometimes Shane would take long drives. No particular place in mind, always just going nowhere and always coming home at the end of it. Load up on gas, turn his phone off. Ilya, over the years, has learned to accept this. What’s one more idiosyncrasy on top of another? Weird Shane Hollander and his even weirder rituals. The world starts to look different once Shane gets far enough away from everything. All passing by him beneath the wide open sky. Fields that go on and on and on. Endless. Nothing beyond Shane’s sight but the good soil.

He’d never admit it to Ilya, but Shane does feel a spike of jealousy, sometimes, whenever he thinks about the connection his husband has to Russia. Not good, of course. There’s a reason he’d never say it out loud. He knows how bad Russia had been for Ilya. Shane has been witness to Ilya on the bathroom floor, drunk on vodka that has dislodged the deep grief in his chest, crying about his mother in broken Russian and being angry at everything else—at Alexei, most of all, and the unbearable finality of becoming orphans before either of them figured out how to forgive each other properly. But Russia had also been home, once. Always, maybe; Shane knows what Ilya thinks about when it starts getting cold. Something to want and miss. A place Ilya returns to in memory, even if not in body.

All Shane has is a paper house. A white room he’s trying to define from the outside.

Surprisingly enough, it is him who manages to finally bring it up to J.J. during one of their rare calls.

He doesn’t really mean to. J.J. had called not even to talk about hockey, but to ask Shane to confirm a story for him that happened during one of their off-season gatherings in Hayden’s house, just to settle a bet. Honestly, Shane had been about ready to end the call when, after passing by a mirror and seeing his face, he mentions it. “Hey, how’s the new kid?”

“Huh?”

“Rivera, I mean. I… how’s he doing?”

“Good, good,” J.J. replies in the usual, sort of detached manner that he does whenever he talks about the Metros with Shane. It’s never normal anymore, not really. They’re long past that. While he’s closer than he’s ever been with J.J. and Hayden, Shane also understands that he no longer belongs to the world they still occupy.

It's weird, still. The Metros had once felt inseparable from the shape of his life; Shane, for all that he’d wanted to retire with the team that drafted him, is an outsider now. Not by his own doing, of course. He's still not over that particular betrayal. But it’s not like he can resent J.J. and Hayden for staying, because that would be hypocritical of him. Not when he would have stayed too if he hadn’t been pushed out first.

“Hmm.”

“Rivera’s adjusting well,” J.J. finishes eventually. “Though… there’s been some difficulty. With the older guys, you know what I mean.”

Ah. “That’s… okay.”

A beat of silence. Then, Shane asks, “Did it ever bother you?”

“Sorry?”

Shane swallows the hesitation. Watches his own reflection faintly in the glass. “That it was only just us.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not fully. Can’t say hey, J.J., did it ever bother you that everyone we ever played with was a White guy? That I was the team’s first Asian captain, you were only the third Black guy to ever be signed as a player, and that in all the years that we were both there we never saw anyone else like us?

J.J.’s loud laugh crackles through the receiver. That’s how Shane figures that he knew what he was saying anyway. “Yeah, well, it never seemed like it bothered you.”

Shane frowns at that, unsettled. Feeling both like he’s been misunderstood and relieved that he never came across as rattled by what was going on around him. “Well,” he starts, proud of the way his voice doesn’t waver at all. “I guess neither of us really did anything about it.”

“Yeah,” J.J. sighs, voice much gentler. “We never really did. I mean, we’re both still here, right?”

Here. Still here. The same rooms, the same game, the same life. Nothing changing. Isn’t this what he wants? “Yeah,” Shane finally says. “I guess so.”

This is the email that Shane, eventually, sends Rivera:

Martin,

Thank you for writing. I appreciate the kind words, and congratulations on signing with the Metros. It’s a huge accomplishment,  you should be proud of the work that got you here. 

Transitioning into professional hockey is always overwhelming. I should know, I’ve been there. The nerves still get the better of me most of the time, and I’ve been playing this sport for over a decade. The most important thing to do is to stay focused on your game and trust the people around you. There’s always going to be pressure and outside expectations, especially when you’re joining a franchise like the Metros, but don’t let that distract you from why you started playing in the first place.

As for advice, I think the best thing you can do is stay consistent and take things one day at a time. Be a good teammate. Work hard. Listen to your coaches more than you talk back at them. The rest, well, it tends to figure itself out eventually. Trust me.

I’m glad to have been a meaningful part of your professional life. I wish you the best moving forward, and I’m looking forward to seeing how things develop for you this season and more.

Take care,

Shane Hollander

Ottawa Centaurs

Shane is sure that some part of it has to do with being gay. Funny, how complex a person can be. Of course it had something to do with being gay. That’s what it always comes back to these days. Shane Hollander can’t score? That’s ‘cause he’s a fucking faggot. Shane Hollander transferred teams? Yeah, because of his husband, keep up. Shane Hollander, queer icon. We can’t ever get enough! Like he isn’t some fucking person outside of that.

Hockey has always had a very specific idea of masculinity, and Shane had entered the sport at a disadvantage before anyone ever found out he liked men. Asian boys weren’t supposed to be hockey players in the way white boys were hockey players. Not really, not in the cultural imagination of the sport. Asian boys were smart, quiet, better relegated to small corners, more expected to be in academia if anywhere at all. Never imposing, never dominant, never part of anything brutal or physical or revered. 

It’s why Shane clung so hard to being good. Being the best. Building himself so carefully into this perfectly playing machine—the most palatable, most curated version of himself. Smile for the cameras, Shane, there we go! Shane, what a pretty face. Would be a shame if it got hit. Shane, come on, just one more ad. It’d be such a waste to let those looks go. Shane bore it and done it, no complaints, no hesitation. Perfect Shane Hollander at the expense of everything else.

Ilya dreams in a language Shane can’t understand. Sometimes, Shane wakes to the sound of him murmuring softly, words honeyed by sleep, cloying around Russian syllables that Shane could never fully identify with his rudimentary understanding of the language. Shane feels guilty, almost, listening in. Occasionally, he’d catch familiar strings—his name, most often. Alexei’s, sometimes. Once what he thinks had been mama spoken so heartbreakingly tender that Shane had to stop himself from walking out of the room. What was it like, to live in a world inside that exists so completely out of reach? The one place Shane could never follow Ilya to; where desire and memory are old friends sitting hand in hand. How precious. Shane doesn’t dream of anything at all.

What would life be like without hockey? Who would Shane Hollander be without it? What would it look like for a year to be so structureless, undefined by morning skates and video reviews and the taping of his stick with the ritualistic etching of his mother’s name? Would Shane still wake up automatically at six in the morning? Would his body still ache in all the same places? A house with no practice clothes in the dryer. Winters without arenas. Conversations with his parents that don’t inevitably loop back to the game. Even his love story belongs to hockey. Ilya belongs to hockey; belonged to the ice first before he was ever in Shane’s orbit. What unraveling can be done without also untethering Shane?

Sounds horrifying, Shane decides, feeling nauseous all of a sudden. Not a thought worth looking into.

“What are you thinking about?” Ilya asks, absentmindedly tracing patterns with his nail against Shane’s stomach, just beneath the hem of his shirt. It’s a quiet, golden afternoon. Warm sunlight spilling all over the floor, fracturing beams through the glass. What am I thinking about? I’m thinking, one of these days, we should go to Japan. Let’s go to Tokyo. I’ve never been, can you believe? Did you know that my grandmother is buried in a neat little plot in Beechwood Cemetery? So impossibly far away from where she’d been born. Do you think her childhood home still exists, Ilya? All I know is that it had once stood somewhere on the outskirts of the city, near a rice field. Of course, it was a rice field then. I don’t know what it looks like now. Maybe a convenience store. Or an apartment building. Maybe nothing at all. I don’t know. No one knows. I haven’t spoken to my cousins in years.

Shane nearly forgets about the question until Ilya nudges him back to being lucid, snaps him awake from the half-dream. “Shane,” he whispers. “Любимый.”

Darling. Always, your darling. “Nothing,” Shane sighs softly after a moment. “Just that I love you, that’s all.” In this juncture, Shane is only really lying to himself.

Is Shane a bad person for being happy that his grandmother had packed up her life and left Japan when she did? Is he a bad person for thinking that everything she has ever lost, everything that her daughter—his own mother—has sacrificed is all worth it for what Shane gets to have? If she stayed, who would Shane be? Shane would be nothing. Shane would have nothing. He loves his life too much to let it go. Why can’t anyone just accept that? Why is he the only person to have accepted that? This is the shape of the life he wants. The only life he will ever want.

This is a partnership letter sent to Shane’s spanking new, professional email address, some four months after he’d been drafted to the Metros: 

Dear Mr. Hollander,

On behalf of the Asian-Canadian Cultural Advancement Initiative, we would like to extend our warmest congratulations on your recent selection by the Montreal Metros. 

Your draft represents an extraordinary achievement, not only as an athlete, but as a young Asian-Canadian man entering one of the country’s most visible sporting institutions. We know that the coming months will be exciting, demanding, and perhaps overwhelming at times, but we hope you also understand the significance of this moment. Representation matters to us deeply in the Initiative. For many Asian-Canadian children growing up loving hockey, seeing someone who looks like them succeed at the highest level can fundamentally reshape what feels possible to imagine for themselves. Whether you intended it or not, your accomplishment has already become meaningful to many within our community.

Each May, our organization hosts an Asian Heritage Month Gala and Charity Event which celebrates excellence, leadership, and achievement amongst Asian-Canadians across a variety of fields, including athletics, arts, education, and public service. We would be honored to invite you as one of our featured guests for next year’s event.

We understand entirely that your professional obligations and transition into the League will take priority. However, should you be interested, we would love the opportunity to discuss a possible partnership or appearance at the gala. We believe your story and perspective would resonate deeply with many of the young people and families attending.

In the meantime, please accept our sincere congratulations once again. We look forward to watching your career with great pride and excitement in the years ahead.

Warm regards,

Dr. Joelle Park-Pearson

Community Outreach and Communications

Asian-Canadian Cultural Advancement Initiative

Ottawa, CA

The story of how his parents met is told to Shane in short bursts. Often at drunken intervals—his mom too tipsy to deny anything, his dad too plastered to hold back. There’s no interesting ending, from what he’s pieced together. No matter who tells it, it will always end with a look thrown in Shane’s way, a mixture of fond and something else he’s yet to decipher. 

His dad always tells the story this way: a bad game, miserable 3-0 loss to Queen’s. He’d been dragged to a party, forced to go by his teammates even if he insisted he didn’t want to go. A pulsating headache on the left side of his head. Shane would later learn that it’s part of the reason why his dad never pursued a professional career, settling on a desk job instead after graduating. He’d been at the corner, nursing a half-empty cup of a tequila sunrise when, all of a sudden, in his line of sight, Yuna Hollander.

“Of course, she wasn’t Yuna Hollander then,” his dad would always say whenever he recounts that part, voice low. “I tried, but I could never really pronounce it right.” It’s followed by a sly look and an even slyer grin, like Shane’s supposed to be in on the terrible joke. Shane never got it—Aoyagi was fairly easy to pronounce, but he always just accepted it as one more thing separating him from his father. His mom had apparently told him that he needed to learn how to better read the opposing team players, and he can only do that if he rewatched more game tapes. “And we haven’t separated since,” his dad would finish proudly, a clap on Shane’s back.

His mom has her own variation of the story. It’s mostly the same, really, except for when she says that his dad never really tried saying her last name again after the first time. “He never got the accent right,” murmured almost ruefully. “And that’s just that,” she would finish pointedly before bringing her wine glass to the sink. Yuna Hollander and her own paper house.

“I know your mother is Japanese, or something,” Ilya had said once, a teasing grin on his face that made him look less older than he actually was, at the time. Hand to Shane’s cheek, then his neck. “Probably where you get your looks.”

What Shane said, at the time, was “Half of them, yeah.” In his head, privately, never to be heard: he thinks I’m beautiful as me, like this, just as I am.

They play their first game against the Metros with Rivera in the team some months after Shane sends that email. The Metros lose, of course; they have not been winning against the Centaurs lately, not really. Shane wouldn’t care, and it’s not Rivera’s first game ever, but it’s also his first game against Shane Hollander—childhood hero, role model, good example. Earlier, in the ice, Rivera had taken a solid check from Dykstra. Shane barely looked when he skated past. 

But their eyes are meeting now. This moment: Shane, standing at the edge of the tunnel, the rest of his team disappearing behind him. Rivera stares at him head-on. From afar, it almost looks like he’s crying. Good, Shane thinks. Cry it out now. You won’t get to do it again later. Then the moment passes, and he turns around to disappear into the dark with everyone else.

Shane has only seen his mom cry three times in his life: once, right after he got drafted, her beautiful face scrunched up in tears of joy. Then another time, after Ilya, asking Shane for a forgiveness he wasn’t sure he wanted to give but handed anyway.

The first time, after his grandma passed away, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. Yuna Hollander, all alone. No one left except for him.

This is the email sent by his mom to the Asian-Canadian Cultural Advancement Initiative on April 10, 2010, exactly a month before his 19th birthday:

Dear Dr. Park-Pearson,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful message and kind words regarding Shane’s recent draft selection.

We sincerely appreciate the invitation to participate in your upcoming event. Unfortunately, due to prior professional obligations and scheduling commitments beyond our control, we will respectfully have to decline at this time.

Truly, we are grateful for your support and wish the Initiative continued success. Should an opportunity to join arise again in the future, please let us know.

All the best,

Yuna Hollander

Manager

Ilya is pushing Shane back against the door, a single fluid motion. He’d be bothered by the urgency, by the way his head cracks almost painfully against the wood, but they’d both been pent up all night, even for entirely different reasons. In the next second, Ilya’s mouth is on Shane’s. He melts into the kiss, sliding his hands up to grip his husband’s hair, pulling him closer. Thought dissolves into sensation, which dissolves further into primal instinct. It’s autopilot when they move next; from the front door, to the stairs, to the bedroom. Next thing Shane knows is that he’s naked on their bed, the sheets soft beneath him, Ilya’s fingers inside him.

“Tell me what you want,” Ilya grunts into Shane’s mouth. Then he moves to kiss Shane’s cheek, then the crook of his neck, right where it meets his jaw. Over and over. “Shane, please, tell me.”

“Fuck,” Shane breathes out. He can feel Ilya’s smile against his throat. The nick of his teeth. “Ilya, please.”

Ilya’s free hand moves to brace his weight above him. “Shane,” he murmurs. This too, over and over. Almost like a prayer. Almost. It’s too filthy to be one, really. The way it drips from Ilya’s tongue. “Shane.”

“Ilya, please.”

“What do you want?” Ilya asks again. “I will do anything. Anything for you, моя любовь. Tell me.”

“Kiss me, please,” Shane begs; he’s not even finished saying the words before Ilya does. He brushes his thumb along Ilya’s cheekbones, tracing a familiar path, well worn. Their lips move together, crashing over and over until Shane is numb with the high of doing it. 

“What else do you want?” Ilya asks again. Shane wishes he’d stop. What more does he want for Shane to say? It’s all already here, laid bare. Why does Shane have to say anything? Why do people keep asking Shane what he wants? Why does everyone want to know what he thinks? Why can’t they all just let things go? Leave things be. Stop fucking—

“Shane?”

It’s like the world is tilting around him, suddenly. Like he’s been stretched and then turned inside out. Shane opens his eyes and can’t tell where to put them. The wall? Ilya? The ceiling? His lungs collapse inward, then constrict. His exhale is trapped somewhere halfway down his lungs and throat. 

“Shane, what—”

“Ilya,” he croaks out. Don’t say it, please don’t ask me, don’t—

“—do you—”

Please stop wanting things from me. Just stop it. Just stop. Please just stop. I don’t—

Shane drags Ilya down for another kiss. It doesn’t make anything feel better. “Ilya, please—”

“Shane, I—”

“Fuck me. Just fuck me, Ilya, please. Fuck—stop asking me what I want, please. Just—”

Slowly, Shane feels Ilya push his cock inside him. Around the same time, he realizes he’s been crying. Fuck. “Ilya—”

Ilya shushes him, both hands now cupping Shane’s face. He presses their lips together again, where Shane gasps softly as his legs move to wrap around Ilya’s waist, locking him in and drawing him closer. Ilya rolls his hips, over and over, each harder than the last. “моя любовь,” he says again. At least, he doesn’t ask Shane what he wants again. He doesn’t want Ilya to ask him things ever again. 

Shane’s still crying when his fingernails graze against Ilya’s back, which prompts a hiss, but Ilya doesn’t stop moving. He turns his head, presses his lips against Ilya’s ears. “Please, you’re so good. Please. Please.”

Breath against breath. Skin against skin. It’s getting even harder to breathe, but Shane doesn’t care anymore. The pace quickens, ever so slightly. It’s not enough for Shane. “Harder, Ilya, please,” he sobs, voice rough with need. “Please. I want you to fuck me. Please. Don’t hold back. Ilya—”

Shane only has a moment to watch Ilya’s blown-out pupils grow larger before he closes his own eyes, crying out in pleasure as Ilya slams forward to bury himself to the hilt. It’s a toe-curling pleasure that borders on pain. In one move, Ilya’s hand is pinning Shane’s wrists above his head, holding him in place as he sets a brutal but even rhythm, hips snapping against Shane’s with a relentless force. 

“You like—” Ilya pants what was probably a question before he hesitates. Then he dips his head, biting into Shane’s collarbone. Shane hopes he leaves a mark. “I’ll give you what you like,” he says. “Fuck. Shane.”

“Tell me you love me,” Shane groans as he bucks his hips up to meet Ilya’s thrusts. “Please, Ilya, tell me you love me, please, please—” It’s the same desperation from before. He spreads his thighs wider, like Ilya could get any deeper. If Shane could find a way to tuck Ilya beneath his skin, he would. “Tell me you love me, Ilya. You love me, right?”

“I love you.”

“Again. Ilya, say it again.”

“I love you, I love you,” Ilya obliges. Sweat drips from his forehead to his brow and finally into Shane’s skin. Shane, who shatters soon after, cum spilling into his stomach. Ilya follows him soon after, cumming inside Shane, filling him with heat. A stain. Shane hopes it never goes away. They’re both still catching their breaths when Ilya finally lets go of his weight, letting it all drop on Shane.

Shane, who is still crying, somehow. Even after this. Even as Ilya assures that he loves him over and over again.

If nothing else, Shane will have Ilya. And if he can’t have Ilya, he’ll always have his mom. And if Shane can’t have his mom, well, he will always have the game: the ice, the puck, the ebb and flow. Hollander, Hollander, Hollander. No one could ever take hockey away from him. Shane has made sure of that.

What do you call it when a language is spoken less and less each generation? When traditions are forgotten because nobody bothers writing them down? When names are mispronounced until, eventually, they change entirely? Survival. That, too, is a word. Shane will outlive them all.

He can tell that Ilya wants to ask about it. Can tell from the way he stands in front of Shane, hands hovering, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Still, he doesn’t talk. He doesn’t ask.

“You love me, right?” Shane finally asks, some moments later. His head is tilted up, eyes wide open, spilling the same question from the night before and from nights before. Ilya’s already looking at him when their gazes meet; his blue to Shane’s brown. The golden strands of his hair catch even more golden rays of light. The end of a study in lifetimes, and whatnot. A life in Ilya’s shape. Isn’t this enough? It has to be enough. I don’t want to be anything else. I don’t want to want anything else.

“Of course,” Ilya whispers back, pulling Shane up to press a kiss to his forehead. “Of course, of course,” he repeats, over and over, some answer to a dream. Together, they sway in the empty living room. This is Shane’s paper house. The field stretches onward, far from his reach but at least within sight. He breathes it all in.

The last thylacine died alone in its enclosure in Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania, 1936. Its endling, unnamed, spent the last of its days pacing concrete floors, looking up at the sky and feeling the ghost of open fields beneath its fur, all while the rest of its kind existed only in memory. That strange dog-like creature with its dark stripes; a monster in its own right, but a life all the same. A history reduced to grainy footage. When Shane’s grandmother died, there had been Yuna. When Yuna dies, there will be Shane. When Shane dies, there will be no more after him.