Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Angst, Upsetting Scenes, Graphic Description, reader discretion advised

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2025-12-12 Completed: 2025-12-20 Words: 28,056 Chapters: 6/6

Dig Two Graves

Summary

There’s no humor in Shane’s voice. It’s cold, hard, determined. “When we meet them on the ice next season, I want to fucking destroy them.”

After a moment, he feels Ilya nod thoughtfully behind him.

“Is good plan. Let’s fucking destroy them.”

The Montreal Voyageurs won't stop slinging mud at Shane in the press, so Shane and Ilya decide to get revenge the best way they know how.

Chapter 1: The Bait

If there’s one thing that Shane Hollander has learned to really hate in his decade-plus as a celebrity, it’s walking into a room and having everyone immediately stop talking and stare at him worriedly. He’s so used to it by now that the panicked roiling of his stomach has settled into a dull ache of dread.

“What?” he sighs. He just wants an immediate gauge of how bad it is; how long he’s going to have to avoid the internet for this time.

His mom plasters on a fake smile. “It’s not a big deal…” she starts, not meeting his gaze as she minutely rearranges a stack of breakfast plates on the cottage’s kitchen counter.

Shane’s looks over to his husband, who is leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Ilya’s eyes snap to his immediately and he says, bluntly, “Voyageurs talking shit.”

It could be worse, of course, but it’s still a stab to the heart, even without knowing the specifics yet. Things had ended badly with Shane’s old team, but up until now they’ve at least had enough professionalism to keep their comments behind closed doors. 

His name is trending when he opens up social media (another thing that Shane has come to dread). He quickly finds the video: TMZ shoving a camera in the faces of a few of his former teammates as they stumble merrily out of a bar, and asking for their reaction to the news that Shane has signed with Ottawa.

Drapeau is among them, and his mouth twists into a bitter sneer as he shoves his face toward the camera to answer.

“We’re just happy Hollander came out of the closet. Turns out he’s been playing for the other team for years.”

There’s a bray of obnoxious cackling behind him even as hands land on his shoulders to pull him back. Someone says with a nervous laugh, “dude…”

“How do you feel about your chances against Ottawa this year?”

“Pretty good now we have a captain who isn’t fucking sabotaging us,” Drapeau slurs.

“Oh my god, dude…”

Drapeau gets dragged away and the clip ends, but the cruel, taunting expression on the Montreal goalie’s face is burned onto Shane’s brain. The pain in his fingers suddenly registers and makes him realize how tightly he’s holding his phone. He doesn’t know what his face is doing, but whatever it is draws his dad over to wrap an arm around him and squeeze his shoulder tightly.

“Ignore them, bud,” David says in a falsely jovial voice. “They’re just trying to get a rise out of ya.”

“Right,” Shane says, his blood thundering in his ears. He gives his parents a tight, fake smile, and then walks out of the cottage before his face can falter. He deliberately leaves his phone behind, not wanting the temptation of checking what people are saying on Twitter or – god forbid – the temptation of posting a response. 

He walks down to the dock, because looking out over the lake often helps with perspective when Shane is getting tunnel vision. Something to do with the vast expanse of the water, unchanged for centuries, and the way it reflects the sky above with a whole universe behind it. It makes hockey drama seem so small and petty.

But this isn’t just hockey drama. This is personal. Those guys were like Shane’s brothers, and now they seem to genuinely despise him. He doesn’t know if they truly believe he was going easy on Rozanov – a claim that’s factually absurd, given the number of times he’s kicked Ilya’s ass on the ice – or if that’s just a convenient channel for their feelings of betrayal and anger. Either way, the whole situation is ugly, and now it’s been aired for everyone to see.

Shane’s tempted to take his shoes off and dangle his feet in the frigid water to distract himself, but the edge and underside of the dock is lined with a gross, slimy green skin of algae. Just the thought of it touching his bare skin makes him shudder. He sits down cross-legged instead, like a kid, and looks out over the water, nursing the ache in his chest. 

After a few minutes, he hears Ilya padding barefoot down the dock. His gait is imprinted on Shane’s senses now: the swaggering, slightly frustrated steps of a man who feels more at home with skates on his feet and ice underneath him. Shane can sympathize; after a day swooping smoothly around the rink, the act of walking always feels so slow and plodding. It must be even worse for the fastest skater in the league.

Ilya folds his long limbs down onto the boards of the dock next to Shane. He doesn’t look at him; just stares out over the water, giving him space. After a few long seconds he reaches over to smooth his hand over Shane’s back, squeeze his shoulder, bury his fingers in Shane’s loose hair and then gently guide his head down to rest on Ilya’s shoulder. He smells like maple syrup, something that wouldn’t even be in the cottage if Ilya wasn’t here. (Shane’s dad loves cooking disgusting unhealthy breakfasts for Ilya almost as much as his mom loves micromanaging Shane’s macros.)

They don’t talk. Ilya doesn’t rush him to feel better, or press Shane for ways to cheer him up. Ilya himself has said that sometimes feeling like shit is just something you have to live with. He once told Shane that one of the best things he ever did for his depression was to let go of his urgent need to be fixed. 

Shane feels an extra flutter of anxiety in his chest as he suddenly wonders how badly Ilya has been affected by this, if at all. It’s so hard to tell. Ilya has spent most of his life masking his emotions – from his father, from his brother, from the press, from the fans – and now he’s terrifyingly good at it. Even after all these years, Shane still struggles to read him.

But Ilya isn’t badgering Shane for a status update on his feelings, so Shane won’t either. Instead, they just sit in silence on the dock and feel like shit together.

That night, Shane can’t sleep, not even after Ilya spends an hour slowly and tenderly fucking his brain into mush. As soon as the post-coital glow fades, Shane finds his body tensing up again, his hands curling into fists, his teeth grinding so hard that he can hear it. So he slips out of bed and goes to do the only thing he feels sure of.

He plays hockey.

OK, it’s a plastic rink, but it’s good enough for practicing his stick handling and firing pucks viciously at targets does expend some of the brimming, furious energy inside him. It helps to picture every one of the targets with the faces of his former teammates, glaring at him coldly the way they did after that video of Shane and Ilya leaked. Not even giving him a chance to explain, and dismissing the explanation out of hand when he did give it. 

Shane misses a target. “Motherfucker!” he spits, slamming his stick against the smooth surface of the rink.

Suddenly a puck whips past him out of nowhere and slams into the target, dead center. Shane whirls around and sees Ilya Rozanov slouching casually behind him with a cocky, infuriating smirk on his face. 

The years fall away all at once, shedding like an old skin. Suddenly they’re kids again: young, dumb, and full of… ego. Burdened with superstardom before their brains have even fully developed and thriving in the fire of it. As the night sky rolls over their heads, they tease that old competitive spirit out of each other until they’re furious, exhausted, laughing, shoving each other against the boards.

Shane pants hotly against Ilya’s neck, relishing the slide of damp curls on his forehead. “Fuck,” he manages at last. “I needed that.”

“The practice? Yes, you definitely needed it,” Ilya rumbles mischievously in his ear.

“Fuck you,” Shane laughs breathlessly.

“Too much soft spring water, I think.”

“You’re dead, Rozanov.”

Ilya responds by putting him in a headlock and aggressively planting kisses in his hair. Shane grabs at him, trying to turn the tables, but the struggle fades into a tight embrace. He looks out over the chaos of stray pucks before them.

“I think I know what I want to do about the Voyageurs,” he says, calm at last.

Ilya tenses a little behind him. “Please tell me you’re not going to, ah, ‘clap back’ on Instagram,” he groaned.

Shane shakes his head. “No, I’ve got something better in mind.”

“Oh?”

There’s no humor in Shane’s voice. It’s cold, hard, determined. “When we meet them on the ice next season, I want to fucking destroy them.”

After a moment, he feels Ilya nod thoughtfully behind him. 

“Is good plan. Let’s fucking destroy them.”

Chapter 2: The Regular Season

Shane isn’t sure how much resistance he’ll face from the Ottawa Centaurs in his plan to train harder than he's ever trained in his life. The impression he’s gotten from Ilya is that the team is pretty laidback, and in fact that’s one of the things that Ilya loves about them. (“The sticks stay in their hands, not up their butts,” he’d once quipped, looking so pleased with himself that Shane was sure he must have carefully rehearsed the phrase in English beforehand.)

Ilya himself has already proven just how high the team can climb in the rankings with one star player, so Shane is fully prepared to crush the Montreal Voyageurs as, essentially, a two-man army. When they return to training at the end of the summer, the plan is for Ilya and Shane to stay on after team practice sessions for a couple of hours each day, packing in more time on the ice. But the Centaurs are such a naturally sociable team that their presence in the locker room is quickly missed, and the other players start to hang back as well. Mostly they just watch lazily from the stands, drinking in the spectacle of Shane and Ilya’s skills. But usually at least some of them end up rejoining them on the ice, unable to resist.

One player who always stays in the stands, chewing anxiously on his fingernails, is Eric Wong. He’s young – only 22 – and a fresh draft for the season. Coach Wiebe is keen to make him a first line forward after raving about seeing him in play last year. 

Honestly, Shane is struggling to see what Wiebe saw. When Wong plays on the same team as either himself or Ilya in practice he’s frustratingly deferent. Even when he has a clean shot at the goal he’ll panic and pass the puck, wasting the window of opportunity in the process. And when he plays on the opposite side he’s unbearably timid, barely presenting much opposition at all. Once, on a particularly bad day, Shane snaps at Wong to “get in the fucking game” and finds himself immediately being taken to one side by Ilya and reprimanded.

“That’s not how we talk to each other here,” Ilya says, calm but stern, fully in Captain Mode. It’s actually kind of sexy, but mostly it just makes shame bloom in Shane’s chest. He swoops back out onto the ice and mutters an apology to Wong, who looks even more terrified by the apology than he was by the nasty remark.

Shane keeps his temper after that, biding his time on the assumption that Wong will end up on second or third line anyway. But one day, after Shane and Ilya have wrapped up their extra practice session, Shane realizes that he’s left his phone behind on the bench and stumps back to the rink on his skates to fetch it. The sound of blades scraping on the ice makes him pause, and he approaches the spectator side of the boards slowly, curious about who’s on the ice.

It’s Wong. He must have headed down after everyone else was gone. He’s arranged a line of pucks neatly on the blue line and is completing a lap of the rink so fast that he’s almost a blur. When he returns to the line he elegantly scoops a puck away and fires it at a goal target.

Dead hit. 

Shane’s jaw drops.

Wong swoops around in a tight, elegant circle and shoots the next puck. And then does it again. And again. Four pucks. Four perfect hits. 

Shane is pretty sure Wong just destroyed his shooting accuracy record.

He hears a soft exclamation in Russian behind him that he recognizes as swearing. Ilya steps closer, resting a hand on Shane’s shoulder and peering through the glass to get a better look at Wong catching his breath.

“Where the fuck has this guy been hiding?” Shane mutters.

Wong turns, sees them staring at him, and promptly falls over on the ice so hard that Shane’s tailbone aches in sympathy.

“I think I have some idea,” Ilya replies drily.

Wong says “sorry” excessively, even for a Canadian. It’s unclear what he’s even apologizing for, though it probably doesn’t help that he’s sitting on the bench with Ilya and Shane standing over him, arms folded like they’re conducting a police interrogation. Ilya quickly recognizes the disparity and sits down next to the young player, wrapping a friendly arm around his shoulder.

“What’s this ‘sorry’?” he asks. “You’re a fucking rockstar, man.”

Wong blushes and stammers, “I’m not…”

“No, you’re a fucking rockstar,” Shane echoes, his voice coming out angry even though he means to be encouraging.

Wong cringes, and Shane takes a slow breath, trying to identify the emotion that’s tightening his chest. There’s jealousy, sure; that old spirit of competitiveness, coupled with the knowledge that Wong is at the start of the career and still has a decade or two ahead of him, while Shane’s own career is approaching its twilight years. But even that is sharpened further by the elephant in the room: they’re the only two Asian players on the team, and players of East Asian descent are overall vanishingly rare in the NHL. Of those currently on rosters, most are biracial like Shane. Wong was born in Toronto, but his parents are both Chinese immigrants.

It’s not like Shane has ever liked the pressures of tokenism, but if tokenism is a competition then Wong is winning. And maybe part of Shane has been deliberately avoiding bonding with Wong, rebelling against the expectation that they’ll be friends just because they're both Asian.

Shane looks at Wong’s miserably hunched shoulders, and he feels like the world’s biggest asshole. He sinks down onto the bench next to the young player and stares down at the ice for a moment, collecting himself, before he turns to look at Wong.

“You’re fucking incredible, dude,” he admits, quietly and sincerely. “We need you out there.”

Wong meets his gaze hesitantly. “You do?”

“We do,” Ilya says solemnly from the other side of Wong. “Hollander is getting old and frail.”

Shane narrows his eyes at his husband in warning. 

“Soon he will have to come out onto ice on zimmer frame,” Ilya continues in the same funereal tones.

Wong smartly ducks out of the way as Shane explodes up from the bench and Ilya pushes off as well, laughing as he outpaces his old rival on the ice. But when Shane glances back at the bench he sees Wong wearing a quietly ecstatic smile.

They have a couple of weeks before the pre-season starts, which is just enough time to draw Eric Wong out of his shell. He starts joining Shane and Ilya for all of their extra practices, which largely become private coaching sessions as the two veterans share everything they’ve learned from their decade-plus of experience on the ice. 

Shane is sensitive to the tensions that this special treatment might create with the rest of the team. It certainly would have gotten some backs up among the Montreal forwards. But the Centaurs seem happy to let the new first line fall naturally into place. Troy and Bood shift to the second line and take Luca Haas under their wing, and the third and fourth lines remain unchanged from the last season. 

When they emerge from training for their first exhibition games, the media frenzy surrounding Rozanov and Hollander playing on the same team – as a married couple, no less! – is so huge that Eric barely gets a mention. He’s just the other first line forward, the guy that isn’t Rozanov or Hollander. When fans mob them after games or ambush them for selfies in restaurants, Eric gets treated like he’s invisible. Fortunately he seems more relieved than insulted, ducking quietly to the side whenever the cameras start flashing. And strategically, it’s good for the Centaurs to have a dark horse on the team.

Shane is jittery going into their first regular season game against the Voyageurs, caught somewhere between anxiety and anger as he prepares to face his former teammates. Emboldened by Drapeau’s drunken comments earlier that year, and by the NHL leadership turning a blind eye to them, several of the Voyageurs have been getting regular digs in on social media. Even more of them have been publicly liking fan tweets that range from snarky to openly bigoted. Shane tries not to pay attention to social media bullshit, but it’s not easy when reporters are constantly pressing him for a reaction.

It’s apparent from the moment they step onto the ice that the animosity isn’t limited to the online sphere. There’s a cold, nasty energy radiating from the Voyageurs players that’s even more intense than Shane was expecting, and feels pretty unfair. After all, he and Ilya have purposefully not responded to the Montreal players’ antagonism, choosing instead to pour their energy into training. But the Voyageurs seem, if anything, even more angry than they were after losing the playoffs last season. Their mood probably isn’t helped by the fact that this is a home game for the Centaurs, and the Ottawa fans are enthusiastically booing the Voyageurs from the stands.

There’s something else too. Hayden and J.J. have both been demoted to third line, which seems crazy given their strengths as players. Shane hasn’t really spoken to either of them much since the wedding, and certainly not since training began. As the starters form up on the ice he tries and fails to make eye contact with them.

Ilya wins the face-off and a brutal, frustrating first period begins. Despite all their training, Ilya and Shane can’t even get close to the goal, finding themselves checked at every turn by a mob of Voyageurs players. Shane manages to break away from the pack and shoot, but Drapeau blocks the puck and smirks triumphantly through his helmet. By the end of the first shift change Shane already feels bruised and exhausted, and the other lines don’t have any more luck. Apparently the Montreal players have been doing some intense training in the off-season as well. The first period ends, miserably, with the Voyageurs scoring and the Ottawa fans groaning in disappointment.

The dispirited Centaurs stump into the locker room for a pep talk from Coach Wiebe. 

“Well, that sucked,” he says bluntly. “You see what the problem is, fellas?”

Shane sees it. “Tall poppy syndrome.”

The English phrase is outside of Ilya’s vocabulary. He frowns. “Tall… what?”

“It’s like, uh, tall poppies getting cut down first, because their heads are above the rest. The Voyageurs are all over the two of us because we’re the best players.” Shane is too tired to be tactful, but fortunately the other Centaurs nod in agreement.

“They’re all over your dicks,” Bood supplies helpfully. 

“Shane is not tall,” Ilya says, his brow still furrowed in confusion. But there’s a quirk at the corner of his mouth now that Shane recognizes all too well. He throws his water bottle at Ilya, who catches it and winks at him while sneaking a deep gulp of water.

Wiebe claps his hands together suddenly. “This is good,” he declares.

“It is?” Shane asks skeptically.

“Yeah, it is. If they’re fixated on covering you and Rozanov, they won’t be looking over their shoulders at our secret weapon.”

One by one, every head in the locker room turns to look at Eric Wong. He looks up at them all from under his lashes and turns a little pale.

Shane catches up to the coach's line of thinking and a slow grin spreads across his face. “Yeah,” he says. “They won’t see you coming.”

Eric swallows hard. “But you and Rozanov are better shooters than me.”

“Eh, maybe, maybe not.” Ilya shrugs. “We don’t need the glory. We have plenty. Team needs goals. You score goals. That is plan for rest of game, da?”

“Um, da?” Eric echoes nervously. 

Ilya claps him on the shoulder.

Shane grins. “Da,” he concurs.

The plan comes into play right in the first shift of the second period, and it’s an instant highlight of Shane’s career. Ilya wins the face-off, passes him the puck, and then Shane waits for the Voyageurs to pile up around him before firing the puck over to Wong, who’s on the other side of the rink and completely unguarded. 

Wong skates into it and whips the puck into the goal while Drapeau, who missed the pass, is still staring stupidly in the wrong direction. He only realizes a goal has been scored when the Ottawa fans go nuts in the stands, and then his head whips around with comical confusion. He registers the puck in the back of the net and looks up at Wong with an outraged expression that screams where the hell did you come from? Drapeau even looks over at the referee expectantly, certain that some rule must have been broken. When reality finally catches up to his brain, he looks furious enough to chew glass.

The shift changes and Bood takes advantage of the Voyageurs still being in shock to score a second goal within a minute of the first. The crowd is going wild. Ilya is grinning from ear to ear. He’s sitting next to Wong on the bench and he reaches over to grip both his shoulders and shake him encouragingly. A slow, disbelieving smile creeps onto Wong’s face and Shane finally sees a well-deserved spark of confidence in his eyes.

The Voyageurs are a mess for the rest of the game, scrambling to reconfigure their strategy even after the second break. The Centaurs win 5-1, with Wong scoring four of those goals. As soon as the game ends he’s buried under a pile of his whooping teammates, crushed to the boards with screaming fans on the other side. Shane and Ilya eventually manage to extricate their protégé and pull him out to center ice with their arms around him, thrusting him forward so the crowd can see him, Ilya pointing triumphantly at Eric's head to make sure no one misses him. Shane is smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, his heart bursting with pride. He never imagined he could be so happy about a game where he didn’t score a single goal.

Shane is so high on the celebrations that he floats through the handshake line, barely registering the venomous glares from the Voyageurs as he cheerfully tells them “good game, good game.” Some naive part of him maybe expects them to share in the joy as well: to enjoy the glow of seeing a great game of hockey, even if they were on the losing side. He’s too elated to see the storm brewing as the Montreal players slink off the ice.

After the Voyageurs-Centaurs showdown the media is all over Eric Wong, scrambling to make up for overlooking him in the previous weeks. The attention is so intense that Shane and Ilya actually find themselves overshadowed for once, which is quite a novelty. Shane happily cedes the spotlight, fiercely proud of Eric and delighted that people are finally giving him the recognition he deserves. He’s a little worried that Eric might crumble under the pressure, but thankfully it has the opposite effect and lights a fire under the young player. Over the next few weeks, the first line of Rozanov, Hollander, and Wong becomes a true triple threat. Shane can see open dread on the other teams’ faces when they tag in for their shifts. The Centaurs build up a six-game winning streak that rockets them up the rankings and sets them on a steady path to the playoffs.

The honeymoon ends abruptly at the quarter-season media press conference. Wiebe and Ilya take their seats at the table, looking relaxed and confident and clearly expecting to breeze through some softball questions. Shane is nursing a shoulder sprain so he watches the live feed from their home in Ottawa, an ice pack strapped to his shoulder and Anya sleeping with her head on his thigh. She’s so adorable that Shane hardly minds the drool.

It’s all going smoothly until Coach Wiebe calls on some young reporter for a minor sports blog, seated near the back of the room. He stands up eagerly, takes a deep breath, and asks: “Mr. Rozanov, would you like to comment on the recent grooming allegations against you?”

The question is met with scattered shocked gasps from the reporters and confused silence from the table. Shane feels a cold sensation washing over his entire body as the feed cuts to a close-up of Ilya frowning the way he does when he’s struggling to translate. Finally he leans forward and speaks.

“Ah, you mean, do I wax? My hair?” He gestures at his chest.

The tension eases a little, the microphones picking up faint scattered laughs. Ilya’s face twitches uncertainly between smiling and frowning, unable to read the energy of the room.

“Yes, is true,” he continues gamely. “Though I do not wax myself, I go to Lulu’s Beauty Salon on Second Avenue. I recommend. Ask for Lulu, she’s very good-”

“No, Mr. Rozanov…” the reporter attempts to break back in.

“No ingrowns!” Ilya adds, smiling like he's in a commercial.

“I was referring to the allegations of sexual grooming,” the reporter snaps, his cheeks turning a little red.

Shane feels sick to his stomach. Anya seems to sense his disquiet, waking up and staring up at him questioningly. He knows it’s bullshit, Ilya would never… but the fact that he’s even being asked such a question in front of cameras, with no idea what he’s caught up in, and without Shane there to protect him...

Ilya has realized by now that this isn’t a lighthearted conversation, but he doesn’t know what’s going on. His visible confusion breaks Shane’s heart. Thankfully, Coach Wiebe recovers from his shock and steps in.

“What allegations are these?” he demands. “You’ll have to fill us in, because this is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“The allegations of problematic behavior… with regards to younger players,” the reporter persists, though he stammers a little on the words. 

“Which players? Who has made allegations?”

“Well, Eric Wong, for example…”

“Eric made an allegation?”

Even through the TV, Shane swears he can hear the vacuum of every other reporter in the room holding their breath. He’s holding his too. Surely Eric wouldn’t…

“Well, no…”

“Then what are these allegations. Who’s making them?”

The reporter blinks, his confidence shaken in the face of Wiebe’s fierce, no-nonsense interrogation. “I mean, people online are saying…”

“People online?” Wiebe’s voice is dripping with contempt now.

“Well, on Twitter… a-and on Reddit.”

Wiebe takes a deep breath through his nose and releases it slowly. “Young man, which outlet do you work for?”

“Um…” He suddenly looks like he really doesn’t want to say. “HockeyChat.”

“Hockey… chat?”

“HockeyChat. One word. It’s a… we have a YouTube channel.”

Wiebe’s silence is devastating.

“And a podcast.”

Scattered scoffs from the veteran reporters in the room.

“Well, I would strongly advise... HockeyChat... to hire a media lawyer,” Wiebe responds with narrowed eyes. “To teach you the important difference between the word ‘allegation’ and the word ‘speculation.’ You can get into a lot of trouble mixing those two up.”

The reporter is bright red now. “OK, we will. Thank you.” He looks like he’s longing to sit down, but waiting for permission.

“So what is this speculation based on?”

“Um, well…” The HockeyChat reporter looks down helplessly at his notes. “There are photos of… of Mr. Rozanov and Mr. Wong… embracing.”

“Embracing?”

“After the Voyageurs game.”

“You mean hugging? Like all the players hug?”

The reporter abandons that thread and abruptly jumps to another. “And rumors of, uh, extra training sessions.” He makes an aborted movement like he was about to do air quotes but chickened out.

The feed cuts to a wide angle and Shane can see that Ilya has finally caught up now; there's a nearly-imperceptible shadow of anger on his face. But he quickly adopts his confused-foreigner persona again, so smoothly that only Shane would be able to tell he’s faking it.

“Ah, I think I can explain this,” Ilya says, eyes wide and earnest, his accent suddenly stronger than usual. “You see, I…” He places a hand in the center of his chest. “...Am captain of hockey team. And Meester Wong is player on team. And we play hockey games against other teams, but also, sometimes we play hockey when there is no game. For to, ah, get better at hockey.” He smiles, showing all his teeth. “You understand?”

The tension in the room dissolves, reporters openly laughing now, having collectively chosen their side in this match. The HockeyChat reporter nods mutely and sinks down into his chair, looking like he’d love to sink into the floor as well.

Shane calls their agent first. He’s too shaken to hold back.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m on it,” Farah says shortly, and then hangs up.

He doesn’t call her back, knowing he’ll only be interrupting her efforts to extinguish the fire. Besides, he needs to speak to Ilya.

It takes three calls to get through, probably because Ilya is being mobbed by press. When he finally picks up, the swaggering confidence from the press room is gone. His voice is small and quavering.

“Shane, I don’t… I didn’t… I don’t know what…”

“I know, it’s all bullshit.”

“I swear… I would never…”

“I know. I love you. Come home. Now.”

“I should stay… I should explain…”

Shane wants to murder every person responsible for making Ilya’s voice sound like that. It takes great effort to soften his own voice enough that Ilya won’t think he’s mad.

“Baby, come home,” Shane pleads gently.

He’s already put most of the pieces together by the time Ilya gets back. The Russian lies down as soon as he gets in, resting his head on Shane’s thigh the way Anya had been, with the dog herself now curled up in the corner of Ilya’s stomach and legs. Shane absent-mindedly pets Ilya’s curls as he furiously browses on his phone.

It started with bullshit memes, basically. A few press shots of Ilya grinning and squeezing Wong’s shoulders on the bench at the Voyageurs game, Shane sat on the other side with his game face on. Unfortunately, Shane’s game face has a lot in common with resting bitch face. Add in captions like “trouble in paradise,” “hockey homewrecker,” and the succinct “cucked!” and the photos tell a completely different story.

Several of the Voyageurs players liked the memes. Drapeau retweeted one of them. 

The “rumors” of extra practice turn out to not be rumors at all, but rather come from Wong openly telling the press that Shane and Ilya have been giving him extra coaching. Self-conscious under the sudden wave of attention, and still too new to celebrity to guess how his words might be twisted, he’s been clamoring to give credit and praise to his mentors. His quotes about Shane have been carefully clipped out to create video montages where it looks like Wong is a starry-eyed Ilya obsessive, completely under the Russian’s spell.

And that’s it. 

“That’s it?” Shane says incredulously.

Ilya is staring blankly across the room. “Is enough.”

He’s right, of course. They’re two openly queer men on a hockey team. Every stupid hug was going to be analyzed to death.

Farah calls back. “It’s not that bad,” is the first thing she says, out of breath like she’s just run a marathon. Shane puts her on speaker so Ilya can hear as well. “I called Eric and talked him down off the ledge. He apologized about a million times. I explained that it’s not his fault, and then he apologized a million more times. I stopped Roger Crowell from putting out a statement saying the NHL is starting an internal investigation into the allegations by pointing out that there aren’t any allegations, and threatening a defamation lawsuit if he says that there are. And thanks to Wiebe giving that on-air primer on the difference between ‘allegation’ and ‘speculation,’ not even the fan blogs are using the word ‘allegations’ in headlines. Honestly, I think that HockeyChat reporter overshooting actually helped you out. The backlash is bigger than the original ‘scandal.’” She marinates the word in sarcasm. “Most people are on your side.”

Shane feels the tightness in his chest loosen a little. He sighs. “Thanks Farah. You’re amazing, as always.”

After they say their goodbyes, Shane turns his attention to Ilya, carding his fingers more firmly through his curly hair and desperately trying to read his blank gaze. Ilya has gone all quiet and closed-off in a way that Shane recognizes as a warning sign. An agitated part of him wants to try and jostle his husband back into good spirits, but he knows it’s not that easy. For now, all he can do is make sure the important things are taken care of.

“What do you want for dinner?” Shane asks.

He hopes that the worst of it is over, but the whole terrible ordeal has one last sting in its tail. It strikes after the next Centaurs-Voyageurs showdown, which ends in a narrow Voyageurs victory. Eric Wong's confidence has been shaken. He's back to acting like an accessory, passing to Shane and Ilya when he should be shooting for the goal.

Afterwards, the whole team goes out to a bar to drown their sorrows. Even Shane sips a light beer, in the spirit of camaraderie. He’s just starting to feel a little better when he turns around and sees the Voyageurs players streaming into the bar as well.

Shane's whole body tenses up. His immediate instinct is to keep the two teams separate. The last thing they need now is a fight breaking out. He starts to make his way back to his teammates but finds his path blocked by Drapeau’s large frame. The goalie leers down at him. He’s already pretty wasted. His breath is rich with tequila fumes.

But Shane is sober and feeling defeated, in no mood for a fight. “Good game,” he says tightly, with a polite nod.

“Was it?” Drapeau drawls. “Were you even there? Don’t think I saw you…”

Shane catches Ilya’s eye from across the bar. He straightens up and starts to head over, but Shane shakes his head minutely.

Drapeau catches the movement and looks over his shoulder. Ilya happens to be standing next to Eric Wong, and Shane watches this register on Drapeau’s face in a bloom of glee.

“Well, look at that,” he says in mocking tones, and then he kind of rocks back and forth on his heels for a moment, considering.

The hairs on the back of Shane’s neck stand up. Over the years he’s developed a kind of sixth sense for when he’s about to hear some racist or homophobic bullshit. People get this look on their face, a visible war between nah, I can’t say that and can I say that? and I really want to say that. Their eyebrows twitch with the thrill of even thinking it, and flitting grins tug at the corners of their mouth. By the look on Drapeau’s face, he’s working up to something big.

There’s a moment, before he says it, where the life of Shane’s sort-of friendship with Drapeau flashes before his eyes. He sees them celebrating wins, commiserating losses, sharing the incomparable experience of raising the Stanley Cup. Maybe things weren’t irretrievably broken; maybe, with time, they could have healed the rift between them.

It all passes in a second. Then Drapeau opens his mouth and delivers the killing blow.

“Aww, what’s the matter, Hollander?” he taunts. “You not getting any now that Rozanov’s got a new pet gook?”

The din of the bar fades to a faint background roar. Shane tries to stare defiantly up at Drapeau, but he can feel unwanted tears pricking his eyes. He’s not even shocked, really. He’s just tired.

He’s so tired.

“Ho. Lee. Shit.”

A voice cuts through the noise, right next to them. Shane and Drapeau turn their heads simultaneously and find themselves staring at the black, merciless eye of an iPhone, held aloft by a gawping fan.

Drapeau’s triumphant expression crumples into abject horror.

Shane can’t find any pleasure in it. He sets his unfinished beer down, grabs his winter coat from the rack by the door, and walks out of the bar. It’s bitterly cold outside, the wind biting at his exposed cheeks. He strides down the street with his hands in his pockets and no idea where he’s going. 

When Shane’s phone starts ringing, he turns it off entirely.

Chapter 3: The Regular Season, part 2

Shane’s body carries him home on autopilot. He takes his evening supplements, showers to wash off the day, brushes and flosses his teeth, grabs a fresh pair of boxers to sleep in. Somewhere out there chaos is probably unfolding, but turning off his phone has granted him a little window of peace before he has to deal with what happened.

He’s just sliding into bed when he hears Ilya come home. Shane listens to the familiar jangle of keys in the bowl by the door, registers a pause that is probably Ilya seeing his coat on the hook, and thinks he catches a muffled sigh of relief. 

Ilya wanders into the bedroom, pulls his shirt over his head with one arm, and then manages to remove his pants, underwear, and one sock all in the same movement. He hops out of the other sock and crawls into bed completely naked, gathering Shane into his arms and pressing a kiss into his hair. They lie there in weary silence for a while, each sinking into the other’s anchoring presence. Just as Shane is dozing off, he feels Ilya’s lips moving against the back of his neck.

“If anything,” he murmurs. “I am the pet.”

Something unknots in Shane’s chest. He rolls over in bed and kisses Ilya’s mischievous smile in the near-darkness. Things quickly start to heat up. The hand on his waist slides round to his back and hooks him closer, until Shane can feel Ilya’s stomach flexing and quivering and sweating against his own. He surrenders gladly, letting Ilya quiet the noise in his head for a while.

Meetings with Roger Crowell are never exactly fun, but at least in this one Shane has the pleasure of seeing the man look immensely uncomfortable. 

“We’ll be releasing a statement shortly announcing Mr. Drapeau’s suspension.” Crowell’s eyes dart about nervously like a kid in a school play who's desperately trying to remember his next line. “The NHL aims to be a welcoming space for people of all races, sexes, ah, orientations, and…” He runs out of road.

“Gender identities?” Shane suggests, an artificial smile on his face.

Crowell’s lip curls almost imperceptibly. “Yes. That too.” He makes a visible effort to rearrange his face into something sympathetic and sincere. “Truly, gentlemen, I’m as upset about this incident as you are. You know, my brother-in-law is Filipino.”

“Wow,” Shane deadpans. “I’m sorry. This must be really hard for you.”

Next to him, he senses Eric Wong quivering with suppressed laughter.

The NHL commissioner doesn’t miss the sarcasm, but he chooses to double down anyway. “And I have many close friends who are... who belong to, or, you know, are descended from the Asian… hemisphere.”

With great maturity, Shane resists the urge to ask Crowell for the names of some of his close Asian hemisphere friends. He almost feels sorry for the man, who looks dangerously sleep-deprived. Shane is guessing that Crowell was up all night fielding angry calls from the NHL’s sponsors and distributors in far-flung time zones. Of course, that’s the real reason for Drapeau’s suspension. The NHL is hungry to expand further into Asian markets right now, and this is the last thing they need.

“The kind of language used by Mr. Drapeau is, of course, completely unacceptable,” Crowell says briskly, trying to get back on solid ground.

Shane takes a deep breath through his nose. Tries to stay quiet. Can’t. 

“That kind of language is completely unacceptable,” he echoes icily.

Crowell squares his shoulders and narrows his eyes, sensing a fight. “Of course.”

“And what about all the other shit he’s been saying?”

“I don’t appreciate that kind of language either, Mr. Hollander!” Crowell says sharply. It takes Shane a moment to realize he’s referring to the word ‘shit.’

“I’m just trying to get a clear picture of NHL policy here,” Shane presses, striving to keep his voice even. “So ‘gook’ is a no-go, but ‘fag’ is fine?”

“I’m not aware of any video where Mr. Drapeau says that second word.”

“I used to hear it in the locker room all the fucking time.”

“This is your last warning, Hollander!” Crowell’s face is turning puce. “I’ll suspend you too!”

“No, I don’t think you will. It wouldn’t be great optics.” Shane silently thanks Farah for teaching him that term.

They stare each other down for a moment, nostrils flaring and teeth gritted. Eric Wong isn’t laughing any more. He's looking back forth between them, wide-eyed, like a child caught in the middle of a divorce.

Finally, Crowell sags with exhaustion and shakes his head bitterly. “So, once again, everyone’s talking about identity politics instead of hockey. And once again, here you are at the center of it, Mr. Hollander.”

“What, are you going to tell me I shouldn’t have come out as Asian?”

“No, but I'm starting to suspect that you enjoy this kind of attention.”

A dozen different outraged retorts gather at the back of Shane’s throat. Fortunately they end up blocking each other as he wrestles with which one to fire first. If he actually managed to get any of them out then Crowell would definitely suspend him, screw the optics.

The commissioner takes Shane’s silence as a victory and turns to Eric, sliding a fake smile back onto his face. “Mr. Wong. You’ve been an exemplary throughout all of this. I think it would greatly help us to move past all of this if you’d provide a quote for us to release with the statement. Perhaps something about how you’re reassured by the NHL's swift action,” he suggests in wheedling tones.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shane sees Eric’s posture stiffen at the word “exemplary.” He recognizes the reaction well from feeling it on the inside -- every time someone calls him a ‘role model’ or a ‘representative’ with a euphemistic aura around the words. Be a good little ethnic minority for us, is what Crowell is really saying.

After a long, awkward silence, Eric finally replies: “I would… prefer not to.”

The smile slithers off Crowell’s face. “Well. That’s disappointing. There’s an opportunity for you to do some good here.”

Eric’s face does something complicated. His next words are filled with raw, wretched honesty.

“I just want to play hockey, sir.”

The words hit Shane right in his chest. He suppresses the urge to give Eric a hug. It would probably just make things worse.

“Well, I suppose I can respect that,” Crowell says begrudgingly. He nods at them dismissively and says, in a way that makes it clear the meeting is over, “Gentlemen.”

Stepping out of the conference room is like resurfacing after being trapped under water. Eric’s shoulders sag with relief. He asks Shane, “Is he always like that?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Ilya is waiting for them downstairs, slouched against a wall. “So, how’d it go?”

Shane considers the best way to answer that question. Finally he settles on saying, “Apparently Crowell has lots of close Asian friends.”

Ilya throws back his head and cackles riotously. “Like fucking who? Thai massage girls he pays to take a shit on his chest?” While Shane is still reeling from that horrible mental image, Ilya turns his attention to Eric, throwing an arm around his shoulders and tapping his cheek tenderly with the other hand. “Ah, look who it is! My secret lover! My boy toy! How are you, darling?”

Fortunately Eric is used to Ilya’s brand of humor by now. He grins and plays along. “Ilya, Shane is standing right there.”

“Don’t worry, baby, he doesn’t suspect a thing.”

Shane braces himself for uncomfortable silences and awkward conversations when he returns to the Centaurs locker room for the first time after the incident with Drapeau. Instead, he walks in to find several members of the team hooting with laughter, watching something on Dykstra’s phone. As soon as he walks in they wave him over eagerly.

“You gotta see this bullshit, Hollander!”

It’s a video that Drapeau’s posted to YouTube. In it, he’s sat on a couch that’s conveniently placed in front of his trophies shelf, a theatrically somber expression on his face as he delivers a prepared speech.

“-Would like to apologize who anybody who felt offended by the video, which was filmed and uploaded without my consent…”

“‘Sorry I got caught,’” Bood translates, mimicking Drapeau’s tragic tones.

“...will be taking some time off to work on myself as a person. I intend to learn and grow from this experience…”

The players collectively groan. With the hand not holding the phone, Dykstra makes a jerking off gesture.

“...And I’ll be getting therapy to address my issues with alcohol…”

“Of course, the tequila made him racist!” Barrett exclaims, clapping a hand to his forehead in exaggerated realization.

Leaning back on the bench, Boyle ponders in a slow, serious voice, “Does tequila make you racist against Mexicans too?”

Shane squints at him suspiciously. “Are you high right now? We have a game in an hour!”

“I play better when I’m high.”

“It’s true, he does,” Ilya says, walking in and pausing at the sight of everyone grouped together. “What did I miss?”

“Drapeau is growing and learning and working on himself as a person,” Shane replies, poker-faced.

“Oh. Good for him. Guess he’s got a lot of free time to do that now.”

No one says it out loud, but Drapeau going mask-off racist on camera is actually a godsend for the mission to destroy the Voyageurs this season. Most of the Centaurs players start treating it as a foregone conclusion that, without their best goaltender, the Voyageurs are dead in the water. 

But one person who doesn’t take it for granted is Ilya. Shane wakes up one morning to find the bed empty, which is unusual since he usually rises first. He gets out of bed with bleary eyes and searches for his husband, eventually finding him in the gym, pumping iron with such an intensely focused expression that Shane decides not to interrupt.

The real shock comes after Shane gets out of the shower and walks into the kitchen to find Ilya drinking a dark green smoothie, still wearing his workout clothes.

“What the hell is that?” Shane asks, with an incredulity that’s perhaps a bit excessive.

Ilya blinks at him, looks at the smoothie in his hand, and then down at a piece of paper on the kitchen counter. “Ah, is… kale, avocado, spinach, whey protein, flaxseed, Greek yoghurt…”

“That’s my smoothie!”

“Yes, I made one for you too.” Ilya nods at a second cup on the counter by the blender.

Shane approaches it in a daze, wondering if he’s still dreaming. “You’re drinking my smoothie?”

“No, I am drinking my smoothie. Yours is there.” 

“How did you even know how to make this?”

Ilya shrugs nonchalantly. “I spoke to your mother. She put me in touch with your nutritionist. We are mostly on same meal plan now.”

Shane considers calling NASA and warning them that his husband has been abducted by aliens and replaced with a pod person. “You’re following a meal plan?”

Ilya runs out of patience. He drains the last of the smoothie with a grimace, wipes his mouth, and kisses Shane roughly on the forehead. “Da. And now I am going for a run.”

“But you just did a workout.”

“That was weights. This is cardio. Have some breakfast, Hollander, you are very dozy this morning.”

Another unforeseen upside of the Drapeau incident? It brings Hayden and J.J. back into Shane’s life. Hayden invites him over the day before the next Voyageurs-Centaurs game, and Shane warily accepts. The house is free of kids for once, but when Shane walks inside he finds J.J. sitting on the couch, hands laced together anxiously.

“Is this a… very small intervention?” Shane ventures.

Turns out it’s kind of the opposite. In stilted, awkward sentences, Hayden and J.J. both apologize for the lack of contact over the past few months, and for not speaking up for him in public.

“We just didn’t want to add any fuel to the fire,” J.J. says.

Shane nods, but his whole body feels tense. “I mean, you could have added a little fuel,” he retorts stiffly.

There’s an awkward, guilty silence, during which Hayden sinks down onto the couch and downs half his beer in one go.

“Things have been so bad dude,” he says in a rush once he catches his breath. “So bad.”

“There’s a photo of you on the wall in the Montreal locker room,” J.J. reveals glumly. “Pinned to a fucking dartboard. Actually, we're on like the fifth photo because they keep getting destroyed.”

Hayden takes over again. “Coach Theriault, he really liked winning those Stanley Cups, and when you left it felt like our chances of ever holding it again were shot.”

“He wanted me to leave!” Shane interrupts furiously. “The team practically fucking threw me out of the building. Besides,” he adds, voice dripping in sarcasm. “I thought I was sabotaging you guys.”

“I’m not saying it makes any logical sense,” Hayden replies wearily. “But coach needed a way to motivate the guys this season, and I guess he picked you. He made it into our whole mission. ‘Destroy Hollander. Get revenge. Win the cup he stole from us last year.’”

Shane takes a moment to process the revelation that the whole time he’s been seeking revenge on the Montreal team, they’ve been seeking revenge on him as well.

“But I didn’t fucking do anything!” he explodes. “We won the cup three times while I was captain! And last year when I tripped, when Rozanov scored, that was an accident! I’m sick of saying it!”

“We know that,” Hayden reassures him, while at the same time J.J. wrinkles his face and queries, “You call your husband by his last name?”

“When he’s on the ice, yes,” Shane snaps impatiently. “And also sometimes when we’re…”

“Dude!” J.J. yelps, horrified, while at the same time Hayden looks up at the ceiling and sighs, “Well, I guess that’s something I know now.”

“Deal with it.” Shane is glad for a little petty revenge, even if he’s taking it out on the wrong people. He forces himself to soften a little, thinking about what he’s seen from the Voyageurs this season. “So is that why you two aren’t on the starting line any more?”

Hayden hesitates for a moment, then nods glumly. “It just became like a factional thing. If you aren’t on board the Hollander hate train, you’re the enemy. And they all know that we’re friends, and we weren’t willing to change that, so…”

“This season has fucking sucked,” J.J. concludes. “Honestly, I’d love it if you could knock us out of the running for the playoffs. The sooner I can get traded away to another team, the better.”

Shane nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

J.J. almost gets his wish. After the Drapeau incident, Shane’s thirst for revenge against the Voyageurs proves to be contagious. Even the most laidback players among the Centaurs start staying behind for extra practice, until finally the whole team is doubling their time on the ice between games. Shane and Ilya wake up at 5am every morning to engage in ruthless workouts. Against all odds, Ilya has stuck with his meal plan and Shane can see the difference when he’s on the ice. He was always a powerful player, but now he’s an absolute tank who never seems to get tired. Shane’s natural competitiveness drives him to keep up, and together they help Eric restore his confidence on the ice as well.

The Centaurs blaze through the rest of the regular season, racking up consecutive wins, seemingly unstoppable. They crush the Voyageurs in their third head-to-head match, and this time Shane works the handshake line in grim silence, staring coldly into the eyes of any player who’ll dare to meet his gaze. But both Ilya and Bood end up having to sit out their fourth match while they recover from minor injuries, and after a bitter battle the Voyageurs eventually win 1-0 in overtime.

Shane barely speaks for the rest of the day, answering Ilya’s questions and commiserations only with grunts. This whole season it feels like there’s been something building at the back of his skull, like a faint whine buzzing underneath all of his thoughts, and now it’s gotten loud enough that it’s becoming hard to ignore. His suppressed rage is like a livewire running through his body. At 3am, a sleepy-eyed Ilya pads into the gym to find Shane whirring back and forth mechanically on a rowing machine: form perfect, eyes fixed dead ahead, lips pressed tightly together.

Ilya doesn’t ask him why he’s up. He just throws on some workout clothes and silently starts cycling on the stationary bike.

Even with that victory, the Voyageurs’ shot at the playoffs comes down to a razor’s edge. Close to the end of the regular season it becomes mathematically impossible for them to become one of the top three divisional qualifiers, which means their only remaining shot is to qualify as one of the Eastern Conference’s wild cards. Shane and Ilya watch the Voyageurs’ final game at home in tense silence. Ilya is slouched back on the couch, but out of the corner of his eye Shane can see his husband’s leg bouncing anxiously. 

The game goes into overtime, and then Hayden Pike breaks the tie with a goal that launches the Voyageurs into the playoffs. Shane tries not to feel betrayed.

“Is good,” Ilya comments mildly as they watch the Montreal players celebrate. “Now we have another opportunity to kick their ass.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, without much enthusiasm. All this revenge is starting to curdle in his stomach.

Chapter 4: Game Four

Chapter Notes

September

The sound of soft, padding footsteps brings Shane back to his body to find that his eyes are dry and his neck is stiff. He blinks, pulls a deep breath in through his nose, and rolls his head on his shoulders. Then he returns his attention to the TV screen, not bothering to look over his shoulder.

Ilya stands there for a while, until it becomes obvious that his husband isn’t going to acknowledge him. Finally he says, “Shane.”

“Go back to bed,” Shane responds immediately, still not looking at him.

Ilya leans over the back of the couch, brushes his mouth against Shane’s ear sensuously. “Cannot sleep.”

Shane twitches away irritably. “I can’t help you with that.”

Ilya changes tactics. He walks around the couch and kneels down directly in front of Shane. He’s not blocking the TV, but he’s unavoidably in Shane’s peripheral vision now. Even out of focus, the strained expression on his exhausted face is impossible to miss.

“Shane, please.” Ilya’s voice is shaky now, his accent thick in the way it gets when he’s upset. “This is not good.”

“So go back to bed. No one’s making you stay.”

Ilya doesn’t argue. They’ve had this exact conversation before, more than once. Their hard edges are bruised and tenderized by it. Neither of them can muster much energy any more, so instead Ilya gives in and settles in on the couch next to Shane. He presses his mouth into Shane’s hair, eyes on the television, and massages his husband’s sore neck.

“Is game three?” he asks at last.

Shane nods. Of course Ilya recognizes it. He was there, after all, and he’s walked in on Shane watching it many times before. 

“There,” Shane exclaims, revived for a moment. “I shit-talked Comeau after we scored. Why did I… I didn’t need to do that. Look at his face.”

“OK, you found it,” Ilya says dully. “You found the moment you need to change when you get your time travel machine. Great. So we can go to bed now, yes?”

Shane’s silence is answer enough. On the screen, the game comes to an end. The Voyageurs drift on the ice like puppets with their strings cut, faces thunderous. The Centaurs celebrate raucously, blowing sarcastic kisses to the crowd when the Montreal fans boo them. There’s still about fifteen minutes left on the runtime – post-game commentary, a few interviews – but Shane ends it there.

“Do not watch Game Four,” Ilya pleads urgently. “Not tonight.”

Ilya hadn’t wanted Shane to ever watch Game Four. The first time Shane watched it, he had to do so on his laptop after Ilya hid the TV remote. That had been a big fight as well.

Ilya is gentler now. He reaches over slowly, like he’s approaching a wild horse, and lays a big, warm palm on Shane’s scars. 

Shane sucks in a sharp, shuddering breath, unbidden tears pricking his dry eyes.

“Not Game Four,” Ilya repeats, his other hand squeezing the nape of Shane’s neck in a way that sometimes forces him to relax, like scruffing a cat. This time, though, he resists.

“You should go to bed,” Shane says. “You have training camp in the morning.”

He knows Ilya won’t go, and he hates himself for keeping Ilya here. Shane needs to go to bed himself. He knows that’s the right thing to do. What he’s doing here isn’t right, or healthy, or fair to Ilya. Shane knows all of this, acutely. But he can’t bring himself to turn off the TV, to get up from the sofa, to let it all go. 

Ilya senses that he’s lost the battle. He heaves a huge, shuddering sigh and dashes a hand over his eyes. Then he pulls Shane closer, gentles Shane’s head into his lap, buries one hand in Shane’s hair and rubs his chest with the other. Shane expects him to fall silent then, like he usually does. But as Shane queues up Game Four, Ilya speaks.

“I cannot do this again,” he says quietly, brokenly. 

Shane’s hand freezes on the remote, index finger hovering over the green triangle of the Play button.

On the television, Game Four looms over them both.

Five months earlier

Shane has spent his entire adult life as a celebrity, so he’s no stranger to having his ego stroked. But it’s never been stroked quite like this.

In their mission to destroy the Montreal Voyageurs, he and Ilya have racked up an absolutely legendary season almost by accident. It creeps up on Shane, who has been avoiding social media like the plague ever since he and Ilya got outed. He’s so jaded by the internet at this point that he kind of just assumes that searching for his own name will just unleash a wave of toxic sludge. 

But one day his dad forwards him an email from one of his work buddies, with an embedded YouTube video titled “Hollander the GOAT!!” It’s a fan-edited montage of his highlights so far this season, set to a triumphant rock track. Shane doesn’t share it with anyone, but watches it over and over again in secret, shameful indulgence, feeding his vanity. Because, hell… he looks good in this video. If this was someone else, some other player, Shane would be watching in absolute awe. And after all the work he’s put in, hasn’t he earned the right to indulge in a little pride?

That little trickle of ego fuel entices Shane to take a larger look at the online landscape, and he finds a sea of praise that threatens to make his head too big to fit into his helmet. Turns out, people really love a winner, and he and Ilya have scarcely stopped winning this season. It’s led to a popular joke in hockey circles that more players should marry each other. There are obviously still background radiation levels of homophobia, but it definitely doesn’t hurt that the NHL’s small handful of openly queer players just so happen to be some of the best players in the league.

Or, as one Redditor puts it: “The secret ingredient is buttsex.”

Shane rides the wave of positive energy into their first playoffs game against the Voyageurs, which takes place in Ottawa amid an ecstatic home crowd. The other team slink onto the ice, stone-faced. Ilya takes position opposite Comeau, who was promoted to captain and to starting center forward after Shane left. Ilya smirks at him and says something that Shane can’t hear above the din of the crowd. From here, though, he can see the muscles in Comeau’s jaw clench.

Ilya wins the face-off. The Centaurs tear into the game like demons flooding out of hell. And over the next couple of hours they proceed to spank the Voyageurs’ asses up and down the rink. It’s barely even a match. After a while, it begins to feel more like beating up on a bunch of juniors. Shane doesn’t know what’s been going on behind the scenes with the Montreal players over the last few weeks, but they’re an absolute mess. One of the defenders gets hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for screaming obscenities at their own goaltender after he fails to save a goal.

The game ends with the Centaurs winning by a ridiculous 8-0 margin, and things don’t get much better for the Voyageurs from there.

Game two is a closer match – if you can call a 4-1 Centaurs win close – but only because the Voyageurs ramp up their aggression to a reckless degree. Shane spends most of his bench time wincing at the body checks and violent collisions. And every time he steps onto the ice, it’s like blood in the water. Over and over, the vengeful Voyageurs crush him against the boards and send him crashing to the ice. On one occasion, as he’s still trying to find his feet, Shane hears someone hocking a loogie and spitting, and feels the hot, viscous glob splatter his cheek. He shudders at the wave of nausea it triggers, and swallows bile.

Going to Montreal for game three is like having a bucket of ice water dumped over his head compared to the praise and adulation Shane has grown accustomed to. In Ottawa, no one will let him pay for his own drinks. In Montreal, he can’t even risk going out to a bar to begin with. The hockey team’s loathing of the Centaurs, and of Shane specifically, has spread to the whole city and hardened into a cyst of hatred. Ilya gets some of it too, of course, but Shane is the main target. He’s the traitor.

And whereas his winning streak has made much of the hockey world surprisingly tolerant, the attitude in Montreal has curdled bigotry into extremes. Some of the Voyageurs fans make a video of themselves burning effigies of Shane and Ilya and, as they add more bundles of sticks to fuel it, joke about “throwing another faggot on the fire.” As the team heads into the arena for game three, a fan tells Eric Wong to “go back to fucking China.” Fortunately, after this season’s trial by fire, Eric isn’t as easily spooked as he once was. He sneers at the fan and shoots back something in Mandarin that carries the tone of a disgusting insult. 

When Ilya asks him what he said, Eric admits: “It means, ‘Where is the library?’ I, uh, don’t actually speak that much Mandarin.”

Game three is a meat grinder. The Voyageurs are revved up by the cheers and chants of their home town crowd, and it feels like they’re actually trying to win again – a change that Shane welcomes. Later, he’ll remember the game mostly as a collection of sounds: low grunts of effort, the clatter of sticks, the scrape of skates on the ice as the two teams battle fiercely over the puck. The game finally ends an excruciating 35 minutes into overtime when Eric scores a tie-breaking goal, and Shane nearly collapses in relief.

That night, he orders several large bags of ice up to his and Ilya’s hotel room and pours them, with a cacaphony of rattling and splashing, into a bath filled with cold water. Shane gingerly eases out of his T-shirt and sweats, breathing heavily. Ilya, passing by the door, glances over at him and swears profusely in Russian.

“You look like bag of grapes,” he concludes in English, though the last word comes out as “grapeth.” Ilya got a front tooth (fake, he lost the real tooth years ago) knocked out during the game, and his appointment with the emergency dentist isn’t until tomorrow.

“Thanks, you say the sweetest things,” Shane replies through gritted teeth, hissing as he eases his battered body into the frigid water. The bruising is worst on his torso and thighs, but the pain radiates out until it feels like every inch of his body is a raw nerve.

Ilya approaches the tub and kneels down next to it, folding his arms on the edge. It’s quite a sight. His muscles are bunched up like passengers in a crowded subway car; when one moves, four or five others have to jostle out of the way to make room. Ilya has always been in great shape, but between the meal plan and the extra workouts he’s become an absolute beast. When Shane touches him, it feels like his body is carved out of wood. The last time Ilya posted a shirtless gym photo on Instagram, Calvin Klein actually sent someone in person to Farah’s office to badger her about an underwear modeling contract.

The muscles aren’t just for show. Fans have bestowed the nickname “Red Hulk” upon Ilya and have taken to chanting “HULK SMASH!” when he uses his bulk to bulldoze players out of the way. In a much-clipped regular season highlight, one of the New York Admirals attempted to bodycheck Ilya and ended up bouncing right off him and skidding to the ice while Ilya carried on unphased. He’s become both an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

Here, though, Ilya is soft and tender. He lays his head on his folded arms and looks up at Shane adoringly with his goofy gap-toothed grin. Shane smiles back and touches his thumb to Ilya’s cheek. It must be freezing from the water, but Ilya doesn’t flinch.

“You should rest and heal up before game four,” Ilya murmurs slyly. “I think we need to keep you in bed all day tomorrow.”

Oh yes. The muscles have also opened up a whole new world of incredibly athletic sex. Ilya has been having a lot of fun experimenting with the fact that he can now lift and carry Shane’s body without breaking a sweat.

Shane slips his thumb into Ilya’s welcoming mouth and warms it on the hot, wet muscle of his tongue. He opens his own mouth, intending to say something euphemistic and playful to keep the banter going. But his brain is too tired to think of anything clever, and there are blond curls falling over Ilya’s eyes, and his plush bottom lip is curving under the weight of Shane’s thumb, so what Shane blurts out instead is, “God, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

Ilya pulls off his thumb, deliberately letting it tug at the corner of his mouth as he goes, and gives Shane a pleased I know grin that shows off his tooth gap. “You are very thexy too.”

“OK, we really need to get your tooth fixed.”

Ilya returns the following day with his perfect smile restored and takes it in his stride when Shane quite literally jumps him. Ilya casually slings his husband’s legs around his waist and carries him to the bedroom of the hotel’s penthouse suite. Brimming with untapped energy from being stuck inside all day, Shane seats himself in the cradle of Ilya’s hips and proceeds to ride him furiously, head flopping on his neck, the pressure inside him bruising and perfect.

“Fuck, careful,” Ilya gasps, wide-eyed, grabbing Shane’s hips to try and tame his movements.

Shane shakes his head messily, flinging drops of sweat all around them. “I want to feel it,” he whimpers. “Tomorrow, I want to feel it still.”

Ilya swears in Russian, arches his back, and comes first – a rarity for them. Shane grinds down onto him while Ilya is still hard and soon cheats out a brain-melting orgasm of his own.

When Shane comes out of the shower, clean and pleasantly sore, he finds Ilya putting the finishing touches to making the bed up with fresh sheets. “Where did you get those?” he asks, surprised.

“I requested extra sheets when we checked in.” Ilya winks. “I knew we would need them. You are always so fucking horny after a game. And before a game.”

Shane is mortified, but he can’t deny that it was a smart move, so he just gives Ilya an arch look as he climbs into the lovely clean bed. They settle in, and Shane idly plays with the chain around Ilya’s neck, listening to the soft clink of the crucifix and wedding ring.

“Tomorrow, we end this,” Ilya murmurs sleepily into Shane’s hair.

“There’s still the rest of the playoffs.”

“You know what I mean.”

Shane knows. The playoffs are best-of-seven. Once they win game four, the Montreal Voyageurs will be done for the season. Defeated in their home town and knocked out of the playoffs without winning a single game. Utterly humiliated. Revenge complete.

Shane can’t wait.

The arena has the atmosphere of an execution when the two teams step onto the ice the following afternoon. The Montreal fans cheer for the Voyageurs when they appear, but without the usual enthusiasm. They know there’s vanishingly little hope; the Voyageurs would have to win not only this game but then three more games consecutively to make it to the next round, and the first three games made it painfully clear that’s not going to happen.

By contrast, the Montreal players themselves don’t look at all defeated. The starters skate into position with a matching vicious gleam in their eye. Comeau stares down Ilya with an expression that suggests he’s mentally peeling the skin off his face. Later, during his many replays of Game Four, Shane will remember sensing danger in the air, like a stretched elastic band waiting for the snap. But perhaps that’s just hindsight.

Comeau wins the face-off, earning surprised whoops from the crowd. It’s clear from the moment they start moving that the Voyageurs haven’t given up on their shot at the Stanley Cup yet. They’re going for broke, with nothing left to lose, and their determination not be knocked out of the playoffs seems to have temporarily smoothed over whatever cracks were appearing in the team. They’re putting up one hell of a fight, and Shane is delighted. It’ll only make it all the more satisfying to beat them.

By the end of the first period, despite the best efforts of the Voyageurs, the Centaurs are up by three points.

“Alright, alright, keep your heads in the game,” Coach Wiebe admonishes as the Centaurs troop into the locker room, jeering and hugging. “It’s not over yet.”

The warning is apt. In the second period, the Voyageurs turn the dial way up on their aggression. They’re not just playing harder, but dirtier too, pushing the limits of what they can get away with. Which, as it turns out, is quite a lot. Shane isn’t sure if the referees are covert Montreal fans trying to give their team an advantage, or if they’re going easy on the underdogs, or if they’re just plain stupid and blind. But whatever the reason, he soon gets sick of them failing to hand out penalties to obviously illegal plays. 

His anger boils over when he sees one of the Voyageurs players giving chase to Ilya as he in turn chases the puck. Unable to overtake him, the frustrated player extends his stick and deliberately hooks it around the front of Ilya’s ankle, tugging his foot out from under him. Ilya goes down like a sack of bricks, crying out in pain when he hits the ice, and Shane sees red. He kicks off, closing the distance in seconds, and slams his full body weight into the offending player, knocking him down so hard that his blades briefly leave the ice.

A whistle screeches before the player even hits the ground. Shane whips his head around and sees the referee making a rotating motion with his arms, signaling a major penalty for charging. Shane will have to leave the ice for five minutes. Ilya is still struggling to get up, clutching his shoulder and groaning. No penalty has been issued to the Voyageurs player who tripped him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shane screams at the referee. “Now you decide to open your eyes, huh? That’s fucking convenient.” 

The referee stares him down coolly and puts his hands on his hips in an exaggerated gesture. Misconduct penalty. Ten minutes. Shane will now be off the ice for most of the rest of the second period. 

With great effort he clamps down on his anger and turns his attention to Ilya, helping him up. “Are you OK?” he asks, hating the sight of pain on his husband’s face.

For his part, Ilya doesn’t seem to mind much. “My champion,” he murmurs, so only Shane can hear. “You being a bad boy, Hollander? Getting into trouble for me, hm?” Ilya rotates his shoulder, wincing a little. “Is fine. Not dislocated. Will feel like shit tomorrow, though.”

Coach Wiebe was not at all impressed by the display. As Shane sullenly sits in the penalty box, shaking with righteous fury, Wiebe leans over and hisses, “I suggest you use this little timeout to cool off, Hollander.”

Movement in his peripheral vision catches Shane’s eye. Comeau is smirking and waving from the other bench. Shane clenches his fists around his stick and controls his breathing, forcibly slowing it down. Coach is right. He isn’t helping anyone by losing his shit out there. There are already enough factors stacked against them. The Centaurs are away from home. This crowd fucking hates them. The referees apparently hate them too. The commissioner of the NHL hates Shane and Ilya. The whole organization, on a systemic level, hates the fact that they came out of the closet. There’s so much hate pressing down on Shane’s shoulders that all he can do is press up against it with hate of his own.

Being forced to sit out for the rest of the period is torture, though at least the Centaurs hold the line in his absence. By the time the period ends they’re up by six points, thanks to three additional goals scored by Ilya. 

“I avenged you, my darling!” he declares, tapping one of Shane’s cheeks tenderly and pressing a sloppy, extravagant kiss to the other. Someone in the crowd wolf-whistles. One of the referees is glaring at them like he’d very much like to issue another penalty for the cheek kiss. 

Ilya then switches seamlessly into Captain Mode. “No more outbursts in third period,” he tells Shane sternly. “We keep it clean. Do not give them anything to work with.”

Shane nods, admonished.

“Game’s basically over anyway,” Boyle says as they make their way back to the locker room. Several other players groan and shove him, not wanting to be jinxed. “Well, it is! They’re not gonna score six times in the third period. They’ve only managed to score one goal the whole game. It’s fucking over.”

The Montreal Voyageurs seem to have come to the same conclusion. When they all troop out onto the ice again for the start of the third period, something has shifted. They have the blank, dead eyes of doomed men walking to the gallows. But, somehow, the spark of fire in them seems to be burning even hotter. When play starts up again, the Voyageurs explode into motion and all hell breaks loose.

Shane has never played a hockey game like it. The Voyageurs are in their death throes, fouling so egregiously that the referees can’t ignore it any more. After just a few minutes of play they’ve accrued so many penalties that they’re running dangerously low on players. They’ve made the hits count, though. Boyle is sent off the ice with blood streaming from a freshly broken nose and Dykstra ends up limping to the end of his first shift with what looks like a dislocated kneecap. 

To make matters worse, the Montreal fans in the stands no longer seem to care about penalties or scores. They know the Voyageurs have no chance of winning. Instead, they settle for unleashing feral whoops every time a Centaur crumples to the ice. After LeBlanc, one of the Montreal defenders, shoulder-slams Bood at full speed when he’s making a play for the goal, he does a little circular flourish and bows, grinning, to the baying crowd, even as the referee blows the whistle to send him off the ice.

At one point Shane passes by Pike close enough to catch his eye. Pike looks utterly miserable. He shrugs his shoulders helplessly.

Shane looks up at the clock. Twelve minutes left. He squares his shoulders. It’s almost over. Soon they can get out of this hellhole and go back home, and he won’t have to see the Voyageurs again until next season.

With less than nine minutes left on the clock, the puck gets wildly misfired to a relatively empty quarter of the rink. A lone Montreal forward goes for it, and Shane gives chase from the left with Eric Wong closing in on the right in a tightly coordinated pincer movement. The Montreal player captures the puck and pivots round just in time to see his predicament. His gaze wanders over Shane’s shoulder and widens in alarm, and that’s when the world turns upside-down.

It’s an even harder hit than his collision with Marlow back in 2017. Gravity seems to vanish for a moment, and then pings back violently. There’s a cascade of brutal impacts all over Shane’s body: various parts of him hitting the ice, a helmet clonking against his own, an elbow jabbing into his lower back. Four hockey players slide to a halt in a pile, and the arena falls eerily silent.

Then the silence is punctuated by a woman’s scream.

Shane lifts his head dazedly. The first thing he sees is the blood. It’s splattered in a long arc, reaching almost to the center line. Shane follows the blood trail back, back, back, with his eyes, until he realizes that his elbow is in a pool of of it. As he stares into his own dark reflection, the surface of the puddle is disturbed by a fresh, violent spray of blood and his reflection ripples out of focus.

Shane turns and meets Eric Wong’s shocked gaze. Eric has one gloved hand pressed to his own throat. There’s blood spurting and cascading from behind it with a truly absurd degree of volume and force. It’s spraying so violently that it doesn’t even look real. It looks like a cartoon, or a cheesy horror movie.

While Shane is still trying to figure out what happened, his body reacts on instinct, reaching out to cover Eric’s gloved hand with his own. But it’s not working, the gloves are too clumsy and he can’t feel anything, so Shane bites down on one of the blood-soaked fingers of the glove and yanks it off his hand. He slides his now-bare fingers under Eric’s hopelessly groping glove and finds the source of the blood: a deep gash in his throat. Shane tries to press down over the cut, but it’s so large that his thumb slides inside it instead.

Eric’s eyes bulge. His face is turning terrifyingly pale. His blood sheets down Shane’s forearm and falls onto the ice from the stalactite of his elbow. Eric was exerting maximum effort when they went down and now his heart is pumping blood out of him at 200 beats per minute. Shane can feel the pulse of it under the pad of his thumb. 

He can feel something else there, something fleshy and muscular, with a rubbery texture like a garden hose. When he presses on it, it’s like putting his thumb over a running tap. The blood sputters chaotically around the obstacle, splashing the visor of Shane’s helmet and spattering saltily into his open mouth. His body instinctively recognizes a fight and rallies, pressing down harder, and then – miraculously – the flow of blood stops.

“OK,” Shane hears himself say, like he’s watching the whole thing from the outside. “OK, Eric, we need to get off the ice, alright?”

“OK,” Eric agrees in a thin, high voice.

“On three, we’re going to stand up together, OK?”

“OK.”

“One, two, three…”

The arena is so quiet that their grunts of effort echo around it. There’s nothing playing on the speakers, and only scattered muttering from the stands. Shane heaves himself up, keeping his thumb pressed on the fleshy tube inside Eric’s neck, and as he does so he feels a familiar, steadying hand at his back.

“I got you,” Ilya says, his voice calm and even. “Closest gate is about…” There’s a pause as he looks over his shoulder. “About thirty feet.”

“Jesus Christ,” Shane whimpers. Ilya might as well have said fifty miles. 

“You can do it. Come on, together now…”

Shane nods at Eric and slowly pushes off backwards, shuddering out a sigh of relief when he feels Eric moving in sync. The three of them make their way across the ice like some kind of weird crab. Over Eric’s shoulder, Shane sees Comeau sitting on the ice by the blood puddle staring at them, looking shell-shocked. He must have charged them. That’s why they all went down.

“Fifteen feet,” Ilya mutters.

Despite his best efforts, the movement is jostling Shane’s hand. Blood trickles out from under his thumb and courses down his arm, dripping a crimson trail across the ice as they move.

“Just five feet now… OK, here is step, be careful…”

They make it over without tripping and the team doctor is waiting for them. His brisk, fatherly voice is a balm to Shane’s senses.

“Hi Shane, hi Eric, you’re both doing really well. Eric, how are you feeling?”

“Uh, I’ve felt better,” Eric quips. A hysterical laugh bubbles up in Shane’s throat, but he swallows it back down.

“Are you feeling like you’re going to pass out?”

“I’m… yeah, my head is kind of…”

“Alright, I want you to put your back against the boards here and ease yourself down nice and slow. Shane, you go with him.”

They get Eric onto the ground. Shane’s thumb is still in Eric’s neck and he would really like for it not to be. Why isn’t the doctor taking over?

“Ambulance is six minutes away,” says Coach Wiebe from somewhere nearby.

“Great, you hear that Eric? Help’s on the way, just hold tight.”

“Are you going to, like, take over here?” Shane bursts out, feeling like a piece of shit for asking. But he’s not a doctor, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

The doctor hesitates before answering. He’s holding a towel and hovering it near Eric’s neck, but not touching either of them. “Well, Shane, it looks like you’ve managed to put pressure on the cut with your thumb. That’s good, that’s really good. Now, the problem is that as soon as you take your thumb off the blood is going to start spraying again. It could take me a while to apply enough pressure to stop it, and Eric will bleed out in about two minutes. So for now I just want you to keep your thumb right where it is, for as long as you can, OK?”

“OK,” Shane says, because what else can he say? “How far away is the ambulance now?”

He hears Coach Wiebe relay the question, and sound the reply. “Five minutes.”

Jesus Christ. “OK. OK.”

Eric jerks suddenly, and Shane fights to keep his grip. Eric is tugging at his other sleeve, frantically. “My mom…”

“Sure, yeah, someone can call your mom,” Shane promises blindly, but Eric interrupts.

“No, she’s already here, you gotta stop her…”

Shane hears some commotion nearby, a woman pleading frantically. He remembers the scream he heard earlier.

“I don’t want her to see…” Eric is fading, and there's a dreadful look of quiet acceptance behind the pleading in his eyes. Shane realizes what he’s saying.

I don’t want her to see me die.

Shane’s thumb slips.

“Shit!” 

He desperately tries to reposition it but the blood is pulsing out again, making everything slippery. Shane opens his mouth to shout for help but the doctor is already there, clamping a towel down over Eric’s neck and pressing down hard. Shane can’t tell how well it’s working. Eric’s skin is ashen now, beaded with sweat. His eyelids flutter and then droop closed.

“Eric?” Shane calls, his own voice unrecognizable to his ears. He reaches for him, but Wiebe is pulling him back.

“You did great, kid, but we need to let the doctor work now, OK?”

I let go, Shane thinks. I let go.

Ilya is gently pulling him away too. Shane can’t fight them both, but he cranes his neck, straining to keep Eric in sight.

“Wait, no…”

“The paramedics will need space,” Wiebe tells him patiently. “You’ve done all you can, Shane.”

I let go.

Numbly, Shane lets them guide him up the tunnel. They pass by an older Chinese woman who is sobbing hysterically and being restrained by a couple of Ottawa players. Her eyes fix on Shane in horror as he walks past her, and it’s only then that he realizes that he’s covered literally from head to toe in Eric’s blood.

Mrs. Wong’s wails echo down the corridor to the locker room. Halfway there, they warp strangely into the distant sound of sirens.

Most of the Centaurs are already in the locker room. A dozen heads lift to look at Shane when he walks in, and he sees a dozen pairs of eyes silently doing the same calculations he’s been doing in his head this whole time. The amount of blood on the ice. The amount of blood on Shane’s clothes. The amount of blood in the human body.

Someone whispers, “Shit.”

Someone else asks, “Is he…?” But doesn’t finish the question.

Shane can only manage a weak shrug.

Ilya squeezes his shoulder and says, firmly, “Showers. Now.”

They sit down on a bench outside the showers to take off their skates. As Shane leans down to untie the laces he sees something that makes him freeze.

Blood on the blade.

It could have gotten there a dozen different ways. It could have dripped down when he was holding Eric’s throat. It could have splashed up when they skated across the ice.

It could have been Shane’s skate that cut Eric’s throat.

Was it my skate? 

It all happened so fast. 

Did I do that to him? 

It was just a freak accident. 

Was it my skate?

Did I fucking kill Eric?

It doesn’t occur to Shane that he needs to take off the rest of his clothes until he’s looking up at the shower head. He moves in slow motion, finding the hem of his jersey and pulling it over his head. The blood-soaked material clings wetly to his face, smothering him. Shane feels like he’s being waterboarded. He frantically tugs it the rest of the way off and then just stands there, holding it, no idea what he should do with it.

Ilya saves him by plucking it from his fingers. But then Shane has to take off his blood-soaked compression shirt, and that’s even worse. It was designed to cling to skin and it does so eagerly, adhering to his face like an octopus. Shane thrashes, starting to panic, and then he hears a tearing noise and his mouth and nose are uncovered. He takes a huge, sucking breath.

“Easy, easy,” Ilya rumbles, steadying Shane’s shoulders. He’s holding what’s left of the shirt after he tore it open to get Shane free. “Pads and pants now.”

When Shane finally gets down to his cup and underwear, he realizes that the blood has soaked through to them too. The red stands out starkly on the white band of his jockstrap. He has to peel his boxer-briefs down his legs, and they leave behind red streaks on his thighs.

The water is cold when it first hits Shane’s skin, making him jump and bringing him back to himself a little. Ilya is just standing there, staring at him, holding the bloodied clothes in his hands. When Shane glances over at him he sees that Ilya’s face is a mask, his eyes blank, lost in some thoughts that Shane can’t possibly guess at. So he looks down at the drain instead, at the blood circling with the water and disappearing into darkness. Something about it feels disrespectful. The phrase human remains comes to Shane’s mind, unbidden. This is Eric that he’s washing off his body. This is Eric that he’s washing down a drain that has someone’s pube stuck in it. 

It doesn’t seem right. But what else can he do? Shane pumps out some shower gel from the dispenser on the wall and scrubs it over his arms, his chest, into his hair that the blood is drying into spikes. Time blurs in the darkness behind his eyes. Shane isn’t sure how long he stands there under the water, slowly and mechanically washing himself. But suddenly, a cacophony of noise from the locker room breaks through.

“Wait here,” instructs Ilya, who has apparently just been standing there the whole time. He drops Shane’s clothes onto the bench as he goes.

Shane doesn’t want to wait. He turns the water off, wraps a towel around his waist, and pads after Ilya. When he returns, the Centaurs once again all turn to look at him, but this time there are relieved grins on their faces.

“Hospital called,” says Ilya, who isn’t smiling but looks considerably calmer than he did in the showers. “Eric is in stable condition. He will not die.”

“He’s still in surgery,” Coach Wiebe quickly clarifies. “But they stopped the bleeding and got a couple of bags of blood into him in the ambulance. He was awake again by the time they got to the hospital.”

Shane stands frozen, trying to process this information. He’d already accepted that Eric was dead, and it takes a moment for his brain to align with a world where Eric is still alive, and, god willing, will continue to be alive for many years to come.

The locker room has already broken down into chatter, reliving the whole incident like a play-by-play. The Centaurs are comparing it to other similar hockey horror stories (“that guy in the ‘80s, what was his name?” “that dude who played for the Cheetahs, I remember seeing that live, that was gnarly”) and piecing together the details they had each caught glimpses of (“you should’ve seen Hollander, he just jammed his thumb right in there, cool as anything!”)

Shane sinks down onto a bench, staring at the floor. After a moment he feels Ilya’s hand squeezing his shoulder.

A few minutes later, Wiebe gets a call on his walkie and yells over the din. “Gentlemen! I know that was all very exciting, but it’s time to pull your panties back up and get back out there. Zamboni should be done cleaning up in about five minutes."

The various overlapping voices settle into a confused silence. Half the guys are already halfway out of their uniforms. It’s Ilya who finally speaks up, sharply. “What are you talking about? We are supposed to go back out there?”

“There’s still eight minutes on the clock,” Wiebe confirms.

“Fuck that!” Ilya spits. A few of the other players echo the sentiment.

Wiebe clears his throat and shuffles his feet like even he knows that this is bullshit. But he puts on a brisk voice and says, “We can go back out there or we can forfeit the game.”

“Fine, we forfeit,” Ilya snaps dismissively. That gets less support from the room.

“If we forfeit,” Wiebe says slowly, “Montreal wins by default.”

There’s another rumble of discontent, but Ilya ignores it. “OK. They can have this one. We wipe them out in game five.”

“No.” Shane’s blood is thrumming through his veins so loudly he can hear it. He stands up, keeping a tight grip on his towel to maintain his dignity. “We’re not forfeiting.”

Ilya whirls on him, comically incredulous. “Hollander, you are not fucking going back out there.”

“Yes, I am,” Shane snaps. “We all are. Because if we don’t? Those goals that Eric scored earlier, they don’t get counted.”

“Fuck the goals! Is just a fucking game!”

“Not to Eric! He earned those goals. We all did. So we’re going to go out there, and we’re going to play for another eight minutes, and we’re going to make sure Eric's goals get counted.”

The whole locker room is holding its breath. This is the closest thing they’ve ever seen to a mutiny from Shane. He’s implicitly challenging Ilya’s authority as captain in front of everyone, and Ilya knows it. The Russian’s nostrils flare in anger and his mouth twists.

“‘We?’” he echoes coldly. “You are going to go out there in fucking towel, Hollander? Or do you want to put your uniform back on? Because it might confuse people now. They might say, ‘I did not know the Admirals were playing tonight.’”

The Admirals uniform is red.

The tense stalemate is broken by the arrival of a runner at the door. Coach Wiebe takes something from them with thanks, and turns to Shane. “Problem solved,” Wiebe declares. He’s holding a fresh uniform, even a spare numbered Hollander jersey. 

Shane  grabs it from him and stalks back to the shower area to get dressed. But as he sorts through the pile of clean clothes, he realizes that something is missing.

“Shit,” he mutters.

“No underwear,” Ilya says from the doorway. His face is that unreadable mask again. “No cup.”

Shane glares at him. He considers going out into the locker room and asking if anyone has any spares, but he knows it’s unlikely. With great reluctance, he plucks his jockstrap off the bloody pile of clothes still sitting on the bench and pulls it back on, figuring he can forego underwear for eight minutes of play. It’s not like he’s ever going to wear this jockstrap again.

Shane has always hated the sensation of damp fabric dragging on his skin. Those commercials where he was hosed down with water for the sexy wet look were awful to endure. But it turns out that pulling a jockstrap soaked in cold, congealing blood up your legs is even worse.

He dresses in silence, Ilya watching him the whole time. Only when Shane sits down to put his skates back on does Ilya finally join him, his mouth twisted into a grimace. They get laced up without speaking to one another. Only when Shane stands up and moves to walk back to the locker room does Ilya interact with him again, placing a firm hand in the center of his chest and looking into his eyes.

“Shane,” he pleads softly, something wild and terrified in his face. “Do not go back out there. Please. Let us take care of it. We are six points ahead. We can run down clock for eight minutes without you.”

Shane shakes his head and pushes Ilya’s hand away. “I’m going back out there. I’m finishing this. For Eric.”

Because Eric is fine. It’s just an injury. Yes, it was quite a shocking injury, but Shane has seen plenty of shocking injuries over the years. This is a game where guys skate around with knives on the bottoms of their feet and deliberately crash into each other; nasty accidents are inevitable. Shane overreacted earlier, but he’s fine now.

“I’m fine,” he tells Ilya out loud.

Ilya looks at him sadly and shakes his head. “No. You are not.”

Shane ignores him. He ignores the tea-kettle warning whine in his head that’s been growing louder all night. He ignores the drying blood that he missed in the shower, which he can now feel flaking and itching behind his left ear. He pushes past Ilya, and heads back out to the ice.

Chapter End Notes

Medical details in this chapter are mainly lifted from Clint Malarchuk's carotid/jugular injury in 1989 and Richard Zedník's carotid injury in 2008. In both cases, gameplay resumed as soon as the players were reported to be in a stable condition (and as soon as the Zamboni finished cleaning the blood off the ice).

A similar story from the football world is Denmark player Christian Eriksen suffering a cardiac arrest and collapsing during a UEFA Euro match in 2021. His heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated on the pitch, so his teammates technically watched him die. Once he was confirmed to be in a stable condition in the hospital the teams were given a choice: resume play immediately, or return the following day to play the last 50 minutes of the match. According to the Denmark team coach, they chose to resume play immediately just to get the game over with.

Chapter 5: Post-Game

HockeyChat Podcast episode 143: Post-Conference Quarterfinals Craziness

Devin: …I was there in the arena when Wong went down and it was just crazy, dude. I mean, straight-up, I have never heard an arena go so quiet during a game.

Sean: Oh yeah, I was watching in a sports bar and it was like half hockey fans, half casuals. But when that blood started spraying someone yelled “holy s—!” and suddenly everyone was watching. It was so f—ing gnarly.

Devin: I mean, I for sure thought I was watching someone die. Like, for sure.

Sean: He seriously could have died, for sure. I mean, Hollander straight-up saved his life. And then they were, like, right back out to finish the game!

Devin: I mean, it was actually like a half-hour, ‘cause they had to clean up the blood and everything. When they announced on the loudspeakers that Wong was going to make it, everyone went nuts celebrating. I was hugging people I didn’t even know.

Sean: Such a rollercoaster.

Devin: Right? Anyway, after the game I was up all night writing and recording the reaction video for the YouTube channel…

Sean: [interjecting, jokingly] Like and subscribe!

Devin: [laughing] Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, guys! But yeah, I get the video uploaded, close my laptop, brush my teeth, get my PJ’s on…

Sean: The ones with the little hockey sticks, right?

Devin: Of course. I get into bed, I think I’m done for the day, I open up Twitter ‘cause that’s, like, my bedtime story. I see Hollander’s trending and I figure it’s because of the slashed throat incident. But then I click on the trend to see what people are saying, and that’s when I realize, ‘oh s—, this day is not over.’

The last eight minutes of Game Four are pretty uneventful. There are no more goals scored, and no more dramatic collisions. There’s a silent truce between the Ottawa and Montreal teams now, an understanding that they’re just running down the clock to finish the game. Comeau remains on the Voyageurs bench throughout, hollow-eyed, looking out over the ice but not tracking any of the movement on it. 

The only real shock comes when Shane first steps out onto the ice, and the entire arena suddenly explodes into thunderous applause. One by one, people stand up in their seats, until it seems like everyone is standing. Ottawa fans, the Montreal fans who hated Shane’s guts mere minutes ago… they’re all cheering. Confused, Shane raises a hand to wave, and the volume of the applause spikes.

The energy remains the same after the game ends with the already-secured Centaurs victory. Shane finds himself being hustled to the press pen for a post-game interview, and a reporter with shiny white teeth and a botoxed forehead shoves a microphone in his face and says, like they’re at an awards show, “Shane Hollander! How does it feel to be a hero?”

Her voice is so loud and energetic that the silence which follows is especially awkward. Shane has no idea what she’s talking about. “Um. I guess if I see a hero I’ll ask him?” He’s not even really trying to make a joke, but there are scattered laughs anyway

“Experts are saying that Eric Wong would be dead right now if it wasn’t for your quick thinking,” the reporter presses, her eyes wide and expectant.

Is that a question?

“I, uh, wasn’t really thinking,” Shane says honestly. “It was just instinct, you know?”

“Have you seen the footage yet?” the reporter asks keenly.

“No…”

“We actually have it queued up right here, if you want to take a look, it’s just incredible…” And she’s fumbling with an iPad, lifting it so he can see the screen, which is currently frozen on a wide shot of the rink. Suddenly it feels like Shane’s whole body is frozen too, like he can’t start again until someone presses Play. His voice sticks in his throat, and he couldn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if he wanted to.

“No.” It’s Ilya, face as grim as Shane has ever seen it, grabbing Shane by the bicep and dragging him away before the reporter can wrap up the interview.

The mood in the Centaurs locker room is muted. No one’s really celebrating the win, and the adrenaline that had been keeping them all going through those last eight minutes of play is now draining out of them. They start to get undressed in silence, and Shane already has his jersey and compression shirt off before he remembers that he’s only wearing a bloodstained cup under his pants. He freezes in place again, not sure how to proceed.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Luca Haas doubles over and vomits all over the floor. He gasps, retches, splutters something that sounds like an apology, and then pukes again. Shane is still stuck in place, but Ilya is by the kid’s side in a minute, rubbing his back and muttering platitudes.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Luca gasps, over and over. He sounds like he’s more shocked than anyone.

Hayes ducks out of the changing area then, and a couple of seconds later they all hear him quietly retching into the toilet. The locker room is full of pale, stiff faces. No one is really making eye contact, everyone lost in their own world.

Coach Wiebe chooses that moment to noisily barge in. He picks up on the tense mood immediately, clocks the vomit splattered on the floor, frowns.

“We are good, is nothing,” Ilya snaps firmly before Wiebe can even say anything. Ilya is still rubbing Luca’s back protectively, and he glares up at the coach with ill-concealed animosity.

Wiebe averts his gaze and speaks to the locker room at large. “Just wanted to give you fellas an update on Eric. He’s out of surgery now, they got him all stitched up, and he’s doing real good. Awake and talking, so I hear.”

“Can we go see him?” Shane doesn’t realize he’s the one who spoke until everyone turns to look at him.

“I did ask, but they said they want to keep it to just family for today. I think they were afraid of having an entire NHL hockey team showing up on the ward.” Wiebe chuckles weakly. “His mom’s with him right now, though, and his dad and sister are heading over from Toronto.”

Like a gif looping in his head, Shane sees Eric’s mom as she’d looked when he’d passed her earlier. Her whole face contorted in unimaginable pain. The horror when she saw him and registered the blood on his clothes.

“Look, today sucked,” Wiebe admits briskly. “But things could have turned out a whole lot worse. Hollander, you saved Eric’s life out there. And all of you, going back to finish the game afterwards – that took balls. You did Ottawa proud today. You made me proud.” He looks around at all of them expectantly. “And we’re gonna take that same energy into the semifinals next week, right?”

The semifinals. Shane had somehow forgotten that he was going to have to go back out on the ice again in a few days. He’d really come to think of tonight as the last game of the season. But there’s still the championship to play for. The stakes are only going to get higher from here.

Shane’s head is buzzing on the car ride back to the hotel. There are a thousand thoughts all drowning each other out so that he can’t hear any individual one clearly. He’s still wearing the bloodstained jockstrap under his sweats and it’s sticking to his skin and tugging uncomfortably. Ilya keeps looking over at him, but Shane just stares out of the tinted window with his chin resting on his hand, not in the mood for conversation.

He’s broken out of his funk by the chime of a FaceTime call on his phone. He looks down at it, assuming that it’s his mom and dad calling. They weren’t in the audience today, but they would have been watching from home and they’re probably freaking out. 

It’s not his parents, though. The caller ID says it’s Eric Wong.

Shane stares down wildly at his phone screen, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Even though he knows Eric is alive, it feels like getting a phone call from a ghost. But he pulls himself together, holds his phone out in front of him, and answers the call.

Eric is propped up on white pillows, a huge gauze bandage under his chin, some medical equipment just visible on the edge of the screen. His face is slack when Shane first answers, but it revives into a weary grin a second later. “Hey dude,” Eric says, his voice a little rougher than usual. Swelling from the surgery pressing on his vocal cords, maybe? Shane sees Ilya’s head swivel at the sound of his voice.

“Hey,” Shane manages, shock making him stupid. “Hey, Eric, dude, what’s up?”

Eric chuckles weakly. “Oh, y’know, not much. Same-old, same-old.”

“You look… good. Better.”

“Yeah.” Eric gently touches his fingers to the bandage. “200 stitches, four units of blood. Getting the five-star treatment. Though I’m still kind of scared to move my head too much in case it, like, falls off.” He laughs as if it’s just a joke, but Shane heard the raw truth in the confession. “Anyway, um, someone rescued my phone from the locker room and brought it to the hospital, so I just wanted to call and say, y’know, thanks for saving my life.”

Shane feels a sudden swooping sensation in his stomach and fights the urge to hang up. “Oh… I didn’t really…”

“Nah, man, you did. I overheard the doctors talking about it. It’s so funny, they’re like sports fans, doing play-by-plays. All raving about how it was a best-case scenario for an injury like that. Apparently with carotid artery cuts, basically the first thirty seconds after it happens decide if it’s going to be life or death. If you hadn’t stopped the bleeding when you did…” His voice is getting more and more strained, so Shane interrupts.

“Forget it, man. I’m just glad you’re OK.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. This is what I get for thinking I’m too cool for a neck guard, right?”

Ilya leans over into Shane’s space then, and Shane can see his artificial, falsely bright grin in the small embedded video feed from their camera. “My secret lover!” Ilya greets. “You must get better soon so we can continue our torrid affair, da?”

Eric chuckles. “Da,” he agrees. He rubs the back of his hand over his eyes, suddenly looking exhausted. “I’d better go, the painkillers they’ve got me on are no joke. But, um, I just wanted to say thanks. To both of you.”

“You are welcome, I take all the credit,” Ilya drawls.

“Bye, Eric,” Shane says, smiling.

He ends the call. The smile slithers off his face. He goes back to looking out of the window.

“Shane.”

Ilya’s hand is stretched across the back seats of the car, lightly stroking Shane’s neck. It tickles. He twitches away.

Shane’s phone rings again. They both look down at the screen. Mom.

“Hollander.”

“I have to take this.”

He spends the rest of the car ride mostly letting his mom talk at him, occasionally affirming her with “yeah, it was crazy,” “I’m fine, Mom,” “I will, Mom,” “I know, Mom” – then a brief sojourn into “hi, Dad” and another “yeah, it was crazy” – before it’s back to “uh-uh,” “OK, Mom.” Finally they pull up to the hotel and he has an excuse to sign off: “Gotta go, bye, I love you.”

Ilya won’t stop staring at him on their elevator ride up to the hotel room, studying Shane like he’s a bug in a jar. It sets Shane’s teeth on edge, adds to the buzzing whine in the back of his head that’s almost deafening now. But he refuses to snap at Ilya about it, because then Ilya will think he’s not OK. And Shane is OK. He’s fine. Nothing even happened, basically. Eric is alive and well. He might even recover in time to rejoin them in the playoffs, to lift the Stanley Cup with them. It would make for one hell of a comeback.

So it’s all good.

Ilya is on him as soon as their hotel door clicks shut, wrapping his big arms tightly around Shane’s torso and hooking his chin over Shane’s shoulder. Shane tries to relax into the embrace, but his body is stiff and unresponsive. He still has his hands in his pockets.

“I have wanted to do this all day,” Ilya confesses quietly in his ear. “You were so brave.”

“Yeah,” Shane says. “Yeah, it was crazy.”

Ilya tenses behind him, then grips Shane’s shoulders to turn him around so they’re face-to-face. Shane tries to make eye contact with his husband, but finds his own gaze keeps sliding away and darting around the room.

“Is just us now,” Ilya says sternly. “You have permission to lose your shit.”

Shane shakes him off. “I don’t need to, I’m fine. Besides, we’ve got the semifinals next week, we need to figure out a new roster now that Eric’s gone…” His voice hitches for a moment, but he persists. “I don’t have time to lose my shit right now. Maybe in the summer, after we take home the championship.”

Ilya looks unimpressed and combative. “Ah, you even schedule time to lose your shit, Hollander? Or does your mother schedule it for you?”

Shane’s lip curls. “Fuck you.”

“Yes, good, get angry at me! Let yourself fucking feel something for once!”

“You think I don’t have feelings?” Shane’s voice is defiant, but the idea cuts him deeply.

“I think you do, but you fight it. You think it is weakness. And it fucks you up, Shane. I know you, I see it!”

“Whatever.” Shane refuses to be drawn into a fight. He steps away. “I’m going to take a shower. Congratulations, you get a break from looking at me.”

“That is not what I want!”

“Well, maybe it’s what I want. You want to know what I feel? I feel like I’m sick of you and everybody else staring at me. I just want two seconds to myself, is that OK with you?”

Ilya looks like it isn’t OK with him at all. He looks like he’s scared to let Shane out of his sight. He has one arm up, scratching at that spot at the back of his head that he scratches when he’s anxious. Shane always teases that he’s going to give himself a bald spot.

“I do not think you should be alone,” Ilya says at last, breathing hard through his nose.

“Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking,” Shane pleads, trying to make peace.

Ilya’s mouth twists. “Fine,” he agrees reluctantly. “I will order room service. Get us some food. What you want?”

Shane shrugs, already walking away and pulling his T-shirt over his head. “Whatever, man. You pick.”

He goes into the ensuite bathroom and closes the door behind him, leaning his head against it briefly as he feels his whole body sag with delayed exhaustion. The movement shifts the jockstrap slightly against the skin of his hip, rough where the fabric is starched with blood, and a wave of disgust roils through his whole body. Shane strips down with fast, jerky movements. He hesitates over the jockstrap, wanting desperately to throw it in the trash so he never has to look at it again, but knowing that it’ll probably end up on eBay if he does. He settles for hiding it between his folded sweats and T-shirt and planning to burn it when they get home.

The first thing he does in the shower is scrub frantically behind his ear with a loofah to get the dried blood that he missed earlier. He looks at the loofah afterwards, masochistically, to see if there’s any blood visible in the soapy foam, but there isn’t. Something about that leaves Shane oddly frustrated, so he begins to inspect his body for other traces.

At first he appears to be completely clean, but then the hairs on his arm catch the light and Shane sees a red tint gleaming on them. Of course; it’s the arm he used to hold Eric’s artery closed, the one that had been completely coated with Eric’s blood, a waterfall coursing down his skin and onto the ice. Shane scrubs at the hairs viciously with the loofah, using the heel of his hand to drive the rough, scratchy material against his skin.

There’s a knock at the door and the indistinct rumble of Ilya’s voice. Impatiently, Shane turns off the water so he can hear.

“What?” he snaps.

“I said, it has been five minutes.”

“What are you, my jailer? Fuck off, Ilya!”

A moment of silence. Then, the soft, defeated sound of Ilya walking away.

Shane’s heart is pounding with a mixture of lingering anger and encroaching shame. He thinks about Ilya’s gentle hand on his back, guiding him and Eric to the gate. Ilya tearing Shane’s bloodied compression shirt apart with his bare hands so that Shane could breathe. The way Ilya had said ‘no’ when Shane couldn’t and pulled him away from the press. Ilya has been protecting him all night, and Shane hasn’t even asked Ilya if he's OK yet. After all, they’d both been there when Eric was bleeding out.

It’s fine. Shane will get clean, and then he’ll go out there and apologize. He’ll even fake an emotional breakdown, if it’ll make Ilya feel better. He’ll make peace, and they’ll have dinner and go to bed and start to heal.

Shane just needs to get clean first.

He resumes scrubbing his arm, but after a few more seconds he mutters “fuck it” and steps out of the shower, going over to the sink where Ilya’s fancy five-blade razor is sitting next to a tub of expensive shaving cream that has to be stirred up and applied with a badger hair brush. Shane does so, clumsily and inexpertly, and then grabs the razor and hops back in the shower. He shaves his entire forearm four times, in four different directions, breathing a little easier as the bloodstained hairs plop onto the tiles with the shaving foam and wash down the drain. But then it agitates him that he can’t actually see any streaks of blood in the soapy water.

Shane holds his arm up to the light again and peers at it, and his heart drops when he sees gleams of red taunting him from inside the exposed hair follicles. He thinks about the phrase capillary action. He thinks about the bear tattoo on Ilya’s chest, how the needles punched the ink underneath his skin to leave a permanent mark. He thinks about…

An Indian wedding, one of his mom’s friends from college. Shane is only about six or seven, wearing a rented salwar kameez and gawping at all of the bright colors and jewellery and noisy chatter. There’s a big table full of food that catches his eye, and Shane wanders over to it and reaches to grab a poppadom, but he’s barely taller than the table and drags his sleeve across a bowl of yellow curry on the way.

His mom freaks out when she sees it, dabbing at it frantically with wet tissues. “Oh, David, look what he’s done, that’s going to stain,” she laments to Shane’s dad.

Shane gets far away from the food table after that, wandering around until he comes across a room where a group of teenage girls are applying mehndi to each other’s hands with great concentration, copying patterns from a book. Shane approaches silently, hypnotized by the intricate swirling designs, until the girls look up and notice him. Fortunately, he’s still young enough that they see him as cute rather than as an unwelcome male intrusion.

“Can I have some?” Shane asks boldly.

They giggle and say “awww!” and then an older girl with a very long braid takes him by the hand, sits him down on a cushion, and starts delicately applying henna to his small hands. It looks like mud and smells funny, like cut grass, but Shane is fascinated by the patterns blossoming on his skin. By the time she finishes applying the last of the henna, the first lines have already started to dry.

“Now,” she says bossily. “You have to be very careful not to touch it, and leave it on as long as you can. It will dry by itself and fall off. But if you wash your hands before then, it won’t stain.”

The word stain hits Shane like a gut-punch. He looks down at his hands, and at the crumpled yellow patch on his sleeve. He leaves and immediately runs to the washroom and frantically scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, smearing the henna everywhere. The lovely designs disappear, but now his hands are stained faintly with orange all over. 

Afterwards, Shane tries anxiously to hide his hands so his mother won’t see the stain and the girl who did his mehndi won’t see that he ruined her designs. He fails on both counts.

Shane stares at the red pinpricks on his arm, taking sharp, shallow, breaths through his nose. He remembers how Eric’s blood had already started to dry by the time he got into the locker room showers. Adhering to his skin, the hairs drawing the red down, down into his follicles, underneath the skin, where soap can’t reach. To stay and stain like the henna, like the ink in Ilya’s tattoos. 

Shane picks up the razor again and drags it over the skin on the back of his forearm, not bothering with shaving cream this time. He does it again, and again, until it stutters and catches and, finally, a rivulet of Eric’s blood trickles out into the water. Shane feels a flood of pain mixed with elation, like he just popped a stubborn zit. He works the razor over the same spot and Eric’s blood flows more freely from under his skin. Satisfied at having found an effective technique, Shane starts firmly and rhythmically raking the razor down his arm. Every time it catches and lances another hidden pocket of Eric’s blood, he stops to work over that spot harder for a few minutes.

It’s as if all his other problems have faded into the background, forgotten, and now Shane has only one problem to focus on: cleaning his arm. It’s relaxing, almost meditative. He breathes slowly, in and out through his nose, occasionally rinsing his arm under the water to clear the field and scrubbing it with the loofah to exfoliate and smooth the skin.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed when there’s another knock on the door. Shane turns off the water and answers more calmly this time. “Yeah?” He doesn’t stop shaving.

“Food is here. Getting cold.”

“OK, thanks. I’ll be out soon.” Shane needs to buy some time. This is a bigger job than he’d anticipated. So much of Eric’s blood has sunk into his skin that the faster he eliminates it, the faster it seems to flow. But there must be an end to it, and Shane will find it.

Ilya hasn’t moved from the door. Eventually he says, “I’m coming in.”

“No!” Shit, Shane should have locked the door. He hurries to finish, furiously dragging the razor over his arm, but it’s not working as well any more. The blades are all gummed up. Did Ilya pack any spare razor heads?

“Relax, Hollander, is nothing I have not seen before.”

Shane is helpless to stop him. Ilya steps into the bathroom and there’s a pause, probably Ilya clocking the messy, shaving cream-covered sink and his missing razor. “Shane?”

Shane can’t answer, can’t do anything but mechanically drag the blunted razor over his bloody skin.

The shower door slides open and there’s a beat, like the brief pause between lightning and a thunderclap when a storm is right overhead. 

Then Ilya lets loose a strange, strangled, wordless wail, like a wounded animal. He grabs Shane’s wrist hard, plucks the razor from his slack fingers and throws it across the bathroom, a cascade of words spilling from his lips (“no-no-no-no-no, oh god, Shane, oh god, what did you do? oh my fucking god…”) as he grabs one of the hotel’s fluffy white towels and slaps it against Shane’s arm, pressing down hard, the fibers instantly turning red under the weight of his fingers.

Shane wants to comfort Ilya, wants to explain, but it’s like some vital string has been cut between his brain and his body. He can’t speak, can’t even move of his own volition. Ilya wraps him in a tight bear hug and lifts him bodily out of the shower, carrying him to the bedroom, heaving him onto the bed, running back to grab more towels and wrapping them around Shane’s arm, all the while gasping panicked breaths and babbling frantically to himself in Russian.

The cool air of the room hits Shane’s wet skin and he starts to shiver. Then his teeth start to chatter. He’s freezing. His whole body is juddering, his teeth clacking together noisily. 

Ilya returns, holding a pair of sweats (his) and a thick cardigan (Shane’s). “OK, OK,” he’s saying, his voice wet and shaking. “You have to get dressed, OK? And then we go to hospital.”

To visit Eric? Shane wonders. But he can’t speak.

“Shane, can you put these on, can you get dressed?”

Shane wants to help, but he doesn’t even have enough control of his body to meet Ilya’s gaze. He stares vacantly as Ilya kneels down in front of him and pulls the sweats over his feet, tugging the elasticated bottoms over his heels, looking up desperately into Shane’s face. Whatever he sees there, or doesn’t see, makes him give up on trying to get Shane to do anything by himself. Ilya pulls the arm that’s not wrapped in towels through the sleeve of the cardigan, tugs mismatched socks onto Shane’s feet, briefly looks around for shoes and then declares “fuck it” and picks Shane up in a bridal carry. His phone is in his hand, too, and Shane can feel his voice rumbling in his chest as he makes a call.

“I need car now… Right now… As in, I am heading to elevator and I need a fucking car waiting for us by the time I get down to lobby… Yes, is fucking emergency. Car. Now.”

The ride down in the elevator seems to last a century. When it first lurches into movement, the shift in gravity triggers an autonomic response in Shane and he burrows closer into Ilya, clawing his fingers in Ilya’s shirt. 

“Shhh, is OK, I got you.” Ilya’s voice is brittle, but he presses a hard, tender kiss onto the top of Shane’s head. Then the elevator stops, and he curses virulently.

Ding. The rumble of the doors opening. Then a woman's voice gasping and exclaiming, “Oh my god!”

“Get the next one,” Ilya snaps, leaning over to press the button to close the doors.

The elevator continues on its journey. But just a few floors later, it slows to a stop again.

“Blyat!” Ilya spits, and then the doors open and there’s a cacophony of chatter.

“Oh my gawd!”

“Is that Rozanov?”

“Oh my gawd, what happened?”

“Is that blood?”

“Is that Hollander?”

“Is he hurt?”

Shane feels the muscles in Ilya’s chest tense as he growls, “Do not fucking dare, put that down! Do not… pizdets!”

He jostles Shane in his arms and then Shane feels the loose side of the cardigan wrapping over his head, covering his face, just before he hears an artificial camera shutter sound from someone's phone.

The doors close again and the elevator descends, the excited voices fading away above them. Ilya presses his forehead hard against the top of Shane’s head, and Shane feels hot tears soaking into his hair. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Ilya whispers.

The doors open again and he’s running, Shane bouncing in his arms, scattered shocked gasps surrounding them on all sides. Someone nearby says, “Sir, do you need help?” but Ilya doesn’t answer, and then there’s freezing air hitting Shane’s exposed skin and more voices popping up from somewhere nearby.

“Oh my god, look!”

“Holy shit.”

“That’s fucking Rozanov! Quick..."

“Hey Ilya, Ilya, look this way!”

“Ilya, can you tell us what happened?”

“Where is the car?” Ilya snarls. “Where is the fucking car, I fucking told them… hey, hey, here! Yes, is for us, open the door!”

“Ilya!”

“Ilya!”

“Ilya, is that Shane Hollander?”

“Is he hurt?”

“Ilya, what happened?”

“Ilya, look over here!”

Still held in Ilya’s arms, Shane feels the space around him get smaller and darker.

Somewhere above him Ilya snaps, “Hospital. Now.”

The car door slams shut and muffles the world.

“Here’s Dillon making a play for the goal, he shoots…! Wow a great save there by Pittsburgh goaltender Aaron Jenkins, the Centaurs will have to work harder than that…”

Shane blinks groggily awake to the sound of hockey being played. It’s a sound that’s imprinted on his brain; he’d know it if just a fragment of the sound echoed down a long tunnel. Or, in this case, if it was playing on a TV with the volume turned way down low.

The TV is high up, mounted in a corner of the room, near the ceiling. Shane frowns at the game on the screen. It’s the Centaurs against the Pittsburgh Puffins, but he doesn’t remember this game. Is it from before he joined the Centaurs?

“...Their first game of the semifinals, there’s still everything to play for, but…”

The semifinals.

Shane sits up in bed, heart pounding. It’s like every nightmare he’s ever had about oversleeping and missing a class, or an exam, or a game, all rolled into one. “Shit!” he yells.

In a chair next to him, Shane’s dad nearly jumps out of his skin. He looks around wildly, shocked to find Shane sitting up, and hurriedly grabs the remote and turns off the TV while Shane is struggling to get out of bed, looking around manically for some pants.

“Woah, hey, bud, you’re alright, calm down...”

“I can’t calm down, Dad, the game has started! I’m missing it! It’s the semifinals.”

“OK, well, you’re not going to be able to get to Pittsburgh before it ends, so just settle down, hm?”

Despair slowly sinks in. Shane looks around the too-white, too-clean room, trying to clear the fog from his head. “Where am I?”

“You’re still in the hospital, bud. In Montreal.” 

Shane looks around for clues as to why he’s in the hospital. He doesn’t have to look far; the top of his forearm is encased in gauze. Shane frowns and lightly touches the dressing with the fingers of his other hand, and David is out of his seat in an instant, pulling his hand away.

“No, hey, Shane, please don’t start that again.” 

“Did I get hurt? In the game?” Shane guesses. He struggles to pull up his most recent memories, then balks at the first one he finds.

Eric’s wide eyes. An angry pulse under Shane’s thumb. Hot blood coursing down his arm.

“No,” David says slowly. “No, you got hurt after the game.” Only then does Shane register how sad and exhausted his dad looks. 

The game.

Shane looks up at the TV as if he can switch the Pittsburgh game back on if he concentrates hard enough. “Is Ilya playing?” he asks urgently.

“What? No. Of course not, Shane.”

“And Eric’s…?”

“Eric’s out of the hospital, he’s gone back to his parents’ place in Toronto now. But he was here yesterday. Um, you were sleeping, but he left you a card…”

Shane looks over in the direction David had nodded and sees an array of cards on the bedside table. Most of them are hockey-themed.

“Shane,” David says gently. “Shane, d’you… do you remember what happened?”

He remembers every single second of what happened to Eric in painful, specific detail. He remembers passing Mrs. Wong in the tunnel. Then... a big blank patch that freaks Shane out. But he remembers Ilya holding him tightly in the back of a car, stroking his thumb rhythmically over the bare skin of Shane’s shoulder. He remembers looking through tinted windows at the dulled glow of the streetlights overhead. He remembers a hospital waiting area, the sound of Ilya arguing, the stares of people sitting in orange plastic chairs -- a homeless guy with a festering leg wound, a swaying middle-aged drunk woman with streaked mascara…

And the girl from the wedding, too, the girl with the long braid. But she looks different from the others in Shane’s memory, fuzzier around the edges. He remembers seeing her sitting in one of the ugly plastic orange chairs, still young and wearing her wedding outfit, even though she must be a grown woman by now. Shane remembers her staring at him with disappointed eyes and saying, reproachfully, You ruined it.

You ruined it.

“Dad,” Shane croaks. “Where’s Ilya?”

“He’s back at the hotel right now. Your mom’s looking after him, we’ve been taking shifts.” To Shane’s horror, his dad’s eyes suddenly start welling with tears and his voice grows thick. “There’s been someone here with you the whole time. You were never alone, Shane. We made sure you were never alone.”

But that’s not important to Shane right now; he’s stuck on something else his dad said. “Why would Ilya need looking after?” he demands.

“Well, he’s…” David clears his throat. “He’s a bit shaken up. The hospital admitted him as well, actually, not long after we got here, but he was discharged the same day.”

“Admitted him? Was he hurt too?”

“Not… not exactly. The hospital called us, your mother and I, in Ottawa, and obviously we drove up as fast as we could. And Ilya was here, he was right here with you, and he explained everything. And then he said he was going to go for a cigarette, and he left the room, and a few seconds later we heard all this commotion. He’d gotten about halfway down the hall and then just sort of collapsed. Panic attack, the doctors said... I think it just all caught up to him at once.”

Shane’s heart is pounding, each beat sounding in his ears as Ilya, Ilya, Ilya. Ilya had a panic attack and Shane wasn’t there. He had a panic attack because of Shane. Because Shane…

He frowns down at his arm, not touching it because he doesn’t want his dad to freak out again. Slowly, fragments start to resurface in his brain. The soft bristles of Ilya’s badger-hair brush caressing his skin. The harsh drag and sudden catch of the razor. A rivulet of blood.

Shane remembers methodically cleaning his arm, cleaning Eric’s blood from it, but something about the memory feels false. He studies it, puts it under a magnifying glass, until the details start to rearrange themselves like an anagram.

“Oh,” Shane whispers.

That wasn’t Eric’s blood. That was Shane’s blood.

He…

HockeyChat Podcast episode 143: Post-Conference Quarterfinals Craziness, cont’d.

Sean: …literally ripped the skin off his own f—ing arm. Fuh-layed himself. I heard he might need skin grafts. That’s some hardcore s—, dude.

Devin: He must’ve just snapped. I mean, who can blame him, right?

Sean: Yeah, but what a f—ing way to snap. Most people just, like, get f—ing drunk and steal a cop car.

Devin: [laughing] "Most people"...?

Sean: [laughing] I don’t know! Or get in a bar fight, or go streaking, or take a bunch of pills or whatever. I mean, peeling your skin off? That’s next f—ing level.

Devin: Pretty hardcore.

Sean: I’ll say this for Shane Hollander, man: he goes hard. Even his mental breakdowns are legendary.

Devin: Yeah, he’s…

Sean: Great f—ing hockey player. Weird dude.

Devin: [laughing nervously] I mean…

Sean: [In a high-pitched voice, quoting Rick & Morty] “I’m... I'm not even interested in having this skin on my personal space…”

Devin: [laughing] Oh my god, dude.

Sean: [laughing] I’m so sorry!

Devin: Here come the angry emails!

Sean: I had to.

Devin: [trying to get back on track] But, um, seriously, Shane, if you’re listening, we wish you all the best. Mental health is… is… you know. Awareness. It’s important. So we hope you feel better soon, and we look forward to seeing you back out on the ice again next season.

Chapter 6: Not Good, Man

Chapter Notes

September

The lake is kind of choppy today, enough that the dock bobs slightly underneath Shane as random waves slap against the sides of it. Shane is used to it though, even finds it kind of soothing. Despite the weather starting to turn autumnal, the sun showed up for the barbecue – along with Hayden, J.J., Shane’s parents, most of the Centaurs, and a handful of wives and girlfriends. Shane realizes that he now belongs to that last group. If hockey players keep coming out, they’re going to need a new acronym soon. Wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and husbands… WAGABAH? Sounds like something out of Star Wars.

The cottage that was once Shane’s fortress of solitude is now bustling with people. It was Ilya’s idea to bring their friends here, because Shane has been avoiding going out in public. Not out of any irrational fear, but out of a very rational fear of the paparazzi who have been hounding him all summer. The first photograph of Shane Hollander’s scars is this season’s hottest hunting target, and even though he’s been consistently wearing long sleeves there have still been some close calls. One particularly overzealous paparazzo actually grabbed Shane’s sleeve and yanked it up to try and get the money shot. It took Shane about an hour to stop shaking afterwards. Since then, he’s been diligent about wearing a compression sleeve on the arm whenever he ventures out into the world… which isn’t often.

So, their friends have come to him instead. And Shane has already completed his mission for the day, which was to reassure their friends that Shane Isn’t Crazy Any More. When they first showed up they had greeted him with nervous, too-wide grins and gazes that didn’t quite meet his eye. Shane had struck a careful balance between acting normal but not too normal, like he was overcompensating. He’d opened up about his breakdown enough to seem like he was being honest, but spared them the gruesome details and consistently framed it as a strictly past-tense event. 

(That was the angle they’d eventually agreed upon for the NHL statement: Shane Hollander suffered an acute mental health episode as a result of delayed shock. “Acute” meaning “one-off.” Don’t worry, folks, it won’t happen again!)

It worked, he thinks. After an hour or so of light chatting had gone by without Shane collapsing into a gibbering puddle or claiming to be Abraham Lincoln, the guys had relaxed and started treating him more or less normally. Mission accomplished. Shane thinks he’s earned this quiet time-out on the dock. Which is why he tenses a little when he hears footsteps – not Ilya’s – approaching.

They stop a few paces behind him and a voice asks “Hey, man, OK if I join you?” It’s not someone Shane can say no to. 

“Totally. Pull up a seat.” He pats the bare boards.

Eric chuckles politely and sits down cross-legged next to him. The scar on his neck is angled away from Shane like this, but Shane catches a glimpse of it as Eric settles in. It’s freely exposed to the air above the loose neck of Eric’s T-shirt, and Shane feels a flash of weird, bitter jealousy. He thinks, Must be nice to have a scar you can actually show off. One that makes you a badass instead of a basket case.

“Wow,” Eric breathes, looking out over the lake. “Great view.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees, some of his irritation easing. “I think this is maybe my favorite spot in the whole world.”

“I can see why.” Eric pauses for a moment, looking down the neck of his beer instead of at Shane. “So, are you really not coming back this season?”

Here we go again. “Nope.”

“Oh.” Eric continues to address his questions to his beer bottle. “Do you… mind if I ask why?”

Shane does mind, but he’s used to it by now. He’s given many different answers to this question, tailoring each one to the person doing the asking, telling them what he thinks is most likely to placate them. I’m just taking a break. I messed up my knee last season and it needs time to heal. I’m thinking of becoming a monk. (Hopefully Aunt Joan won’t follow up on that one.)

Eric, though… Eric deserves the truth.

“I just… don’t really care about hockey any more.”

That gets Eric to finally look up at him, shocked, like Shane has uttered some terrible blasphemy.

“I realized when I was watching the semifinals. I mean, I cared about the guys.” Shane glances back at the raucous noise coming from the direction of the house. “It would have been cool if they got to hold the cup. But other than that, I really didn’t care about winning. I wasn’t wishing I was there. It all just seemed kind of meaningless. And I can’t play hockey if I don’t care. All that stuff we did last season, all those extra practices… I only did all that because I used to care so much. And now I just… don’t. So...” Shane shrugs.

Eric’s brow is so deeply furrowed in thought that he almost looks angry. They lapse into silence for a while, looking out over the lake. Shane can hear Eric taking hesitant little breaths, like he’s about to say something, but stopping. Eventually he gets it out.

“Um, Shane? I’ve been meaning to apologize.”

Shane blinks in surprise. “For what?”

“For FaceTiming you right after it all happened. I was so hopped up on painkillers that I don’t even really remember what I said. But if I… if I said anything that… upset you, or…” Eric’s voice hitches suddenly, and he has to steady himself before finishing. “I’m just really, really sorry.”

“What? Oh my god, dude, no.” Shane is mortified at the thought that Eric has been torturing himself with this for months. “That had nothing to do with… trust me, you were great, you didn’t say anything bad. It actually helped a lot, seeing you were OK instead of just hearing about it second hand. I know I still… freaked out, afterwards, but that would have happened either way. That was all me, that’s not on you.”

Eric nods reluctantly, but his mouth is still twisted where he’s chewing the inside of his lip. “And you’re… are you OK now?” His gaze skitters over to Shane’s covered scars and then darts away again.

“Yeah,” Shane says on autopilot. “Yeah, I’m good, man.”

They sit in silence for a while, just looking out over the lake, Eric slowly peeling the label off his beer bottle. His shoulders are still tense. It feels like he had more to say, but he isn’t even attempting to start saying it this time. Eventually, Shane gets the sense that Eric is trying to find a polite way to leave. But before he can, a sudden impulse prompts Shane to speak first.

“I’m actually, uh… I’m actually not good, man.”

Eric looks up, startled. “Oh. You’re not?”

“No,” Shane says, something telling him that he needs to commit now that he's said it. “I’m really not. I tried to go back to the rink again this summer, just to skate around a bit, you know? And I was just sitting in my car in the parking lot and I had a full-blown panic attack. I couldn’t even see the ice yet but just the thought of going back on it made me feel like I was dying.” In fact, just remembering the panic attack is setting off some tachycardia, but Shane persists. “And I’ve been having nightmares basically every night, so I’m scared to go to sleep and instead I just stay up and rewatch the games, the playoff games – even the last one. Watching it over and over, trying to figure out what I could’ve done, how I could’ve stopped it...”

“Dude, no!” Eric breaks in, in the same tone that Shane used when Eric tried to apologize for his FaceTime call. “None of it was your fault, it was fucking Comeau…”

But Shane is already shaking his head violently. “No. No. I know everyone made him the bad guy of the story. The fucking internet and the media all tore him to shreds, his career’s probably done, he’s a fucking mess… he just got that DUI. But I’ve watched that game. I’ve watched it over and over, and there’s one part that just fucking haunts me.” Shane wipes a shaking hand over his mouth and confesses, “I did it too.”

He can’t speak for a moment, until Eric prompts: “Did what?”

“I charged that Montreal player. Rousseau. The one who tripped Ilya. I wasn’t even playing the game any more, he wasn’t anywhere near the puck, I just charged him because I was so fucking mad, and I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt Ilya. And I could have. I could have really, really hurt him. If he’d landed the wrong way, or if I’d gone down too and my skate had… I could have killed him. And the worst part is I didn’t even think about it at the time. I was too busy throwing a fucking tantrum about getting a penalty.”

Eric’s mouth is hanging slightly open, like he intends to explain why Shane did nothing wrong and Comeau is a monster, but he hasn’t figured out an argument yet. To save him the trouble of coming up with one, Shane barrels on with a brand new tangent.

“And Ilya’s going to leave me,” he says, dull and matter-of-fact.

“What? Has he said…”

“Not explicitly, not out loud, not yet, but it’s coming. It’s too much for him. After his mom, and then his dad, his fucking brother… he’s spent his life looking after people, and it’s all used up. He’s trying to be there for me, but he’s running on fumes. And he thinks I can’t tell, but I can, and so I’m just sitting around waiting for him to just fucking do it already. But he won’t leave, and it kind of pisses me off, and I end up taking it out on him. I think maybe I’m trying to push him out the door so he doesn’t waste the rest of his life with me dragging him down. Giving himself up little by little, a piece at a time. Cannibalizing himself to keep me alive. I can’t let him do it. I love him too much.”

“And I have nightmares about him, too. Now that he’s back at training camp, on the ice every day, I have nightmares where Ilya goes down on the ice and doesn’t get back up again. And they feel so fucking real. So when he’s here I’m sitting around waiting for him to break up with me, and when he’s not I’m sitting around waiting for someone to call me and tell me that he’s dead, or paralyzed, or in a coma. Like, sometimes I don’t go out because I’m worried I’ll miss that call.”

Shane’s hands are both shaking violently now. His chest feels tight. He tries to practice the breathing exercise that Ilya taught him, which Ilya’s therapist had taught to him. Ilya has become something of an evangelist for therapy since he started going, and he’s pleaded with Shane many times to consider it for himself.

“I’ve tried it, Ilya. It doesn’t work.”

“You just need to find right therapist. When I found Galina…”

“The therapists aren’t the problem. I’m the problem! I can’t talk to therapists. I just end up telling them what I think they want to hear, and they can tell, and they get frustrated, and it all falls apart. Maybe some people just aren’t built for therapy.”

“Or maybe you are just scared.”

So that’s another regular feature in their rotating schedule of recurring arguments.

“So, yeah,” Shane says weakly, wrapping up. “I’m not good, man. Everything’s fucked.”

He’s expecting Eric to awkwardly try and cheer him up and then beat a speedy exit. But Eric doesn’t say anything at first, and then not for a long while, until it’s Shane that’s trying to think of excuses for a speedy exit. He’s just working up to one when Eric finally stutters back to life.

“You know that, um… that thing you said? About not caring who won the conference semifinals?”

“Yeah.” Shane isn’t sure where this is going.

“Well, I cared. I cared a lot. I was so, so scared that we were going to win. I was praying we’d lose. Because I got medically cleared to go back on the ice the same day as the last game against Pittsburgh, and I knew that if we won I would have to go back for the conference finals, and then maybe even the cup finals after that.”

“Dude, no,” Shane says, horrified at the thought. “No one would have made you…”

“I would have made myself go back. Because I wouldn’t have had an excuse not to.” Eric reaches up to hold his throat, fingers massaging over the scar. “You know what sucks? This thing almost killed me, but it’s not a ‘career-ending injury.’” His hand breaks away briefly to complete the air quotes, then goes right back to his neck. “The dressings came off after a few days, the stitches started to dissolve after like a week, and then the doctors were just like, ‘Yeah, you’re good to get back out on the ice.’” Eric sounds angrier than Shane has ever heard him.

“Is that why you’re back now?” Shane asks tentatively.

Eric gives a vague, helpless gesture. “I mean, what choice do I have? It’s just a scar now. All hockey players have scars. And everyone’s talking about what a badass I am, how cool the scar is, how I’m a tough guy for getting right back out there. And the whole time I’m just trying not to puke. I’m so, so fucking scared every second I’m out there, and it’s messing up my game, and Wiebe can tell, he keeps telling me I’m s’posed to skate towards the puck, not away from it. I’m going to get busted down to third line, maybe even fourth. I suck, but I can’t quit.”

“I mean, you could…”

“I could quit if I got hurt,” Eric rushes on, clearly, like he’s given the idea a lot of thought. “Broke a hip or shattered my knee or an elbow. I could maybe take some of the padding out of my uniform, go for some brutal falls, try to mess myself up. It’d be great if I could do something that puts me in a cast. But I’m too much of a pussy. And… and so sometimes it feels like I’m tied to a train track, and I can see the train coming, but I can’t move, I can’t do anything, I can’t even close my eyes, I just have to watch it getting closer, and know that eventually it’s going to hit.”

“What’s the train?” Shane asks gently, trying not to disturb the air between them, which feels taut and fragile.

Eric sniffs, shrugs, and barks out a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. Me blowing my brains out just so I don’t have to go back on the ice? That’s gotta be a career-ending injury, right?”

Shane’s heart should be pounding. Instead, he feels eerily calm – perhaps the calmest he’s felt in months. He lets Eric’s words sit on the air for the moment, giving the smoke time to clear.

“Eric,” Shane says at last. “Have you signed your contract for this season yet?”

Visibly trying to pull himself together, Eric replies, “No, my agent’s still working out some of the details.”

“OK. I think we need to call your agent, now, and tell them that you’re not going to sign the contract. Any contract.”

Eric blinks, befuddled. “Now?”

“Yeah. And then we can call Coach Wiebe too, and tell him you won’t be coming back to practice.”

It’s tragic, really, how wide-eyed and hopeful Eric looks before all his demons catch up to him and he shakes his head. “I can’t, I can’t do that, I’m sorry about before, I was just freaking out, I’m fine.”

Still treading carefully, Shane nonetheless presses: “Eric, you’re not fine.”

“Well, I have to be fine! I can’t just quit! I’m 23 years old! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had to hear about my stupid potential? How I could make it to the Hockey Hall of Fame? How there are kids who don’t ever see guys who look like them on the ice, but then they see me and look up to me…”

Shane, who has a very good idea of what that’s like, privately thinks: Fuck them kids.

“I can’t quit,” Eric concludes, miserably. “What would I even say to people?”

Shane nudges him with his elbow and suggests, “Just tell them you don’t care about hockey any more.”

“Ha.” Eric gives him a weak, sideways grin. “OK. I’ll give it some thought.”

There’s a temptation to just leave things there, comfortable in the knowledge that he said the right thing, that he tried to help Eric. But tried isn’t enough for Shane.

“I think we should call them now. Right now. Here, on the dock.” Shane holds out his palm flat between them. “If you give me your phone, I can even do the talking.”

Eric looks down at the proffered hand uncertainly. “Why are you pushing this?” he asks, though he doesn’t sound mad about it, just curious.

“Because I think if you go away and think about it, you’ll talk yourself out of quitting. And I think you really, really need to quit, Eric.” Knowing that that’s not enough, that Eric will need a reason that’s not just about his own wellbeing, Shane adds, “The sooner they know, the better. It’ll give them more time to find a replacement for the roster.”

Eric’s mouth is all twisted up again, but he’s not arguing any more.

“I’ll do the talking,” Shane reiterates. “You can just sign off at the end.”

An eternity seems to pass before Eric finally says, in a small voice, “OK.”

The agent is the hardest call, because he’s an asshole. Even though he obviously knows who Shane is, he still speaks to him with an air of who do you think you are? He keeps telling Shane to put Eric back on the phone, that he wants to hear it from Eric himself, but Shane refuses to pass the phone over until the agent calms down, stops arguing, and agrees to tell the Centaurs management that the contract won’t be signed. Only when he has very begrudgingly submitted to all of this does Shane hand the phone back to Eric, who says, shakily, “Yeah. Yeah, everything he said. Yeah, OK, thanks, bye.”

Coach Wiebe is much easier. As soon as Shane tells him, he hears a crackly sigh of relief down the phone and Wiebe says, “Thank Christ.”

“Yeah?” Shane prompts, glancing over at Eric, whose upper body is bowed over his crossed legs as he holds his head in his hands.

“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t said anything to him, and none of the guys have either because they want to be supportive, but it’s obvious he wasn’t ready to come back. The other day he just started crying on the ice, in the middle of practice – didn’t even stop playing! We all just pretended we didn’t notice, because we didn’t want to embarrass the kid. And at the end Rozanov covered for him, said they were both staying behind for extra practice so that poor old Wong wouldn’t have to walk into the locker room with tears and snot all over his face…”

Ilya hasn’t mentioned that. The revelation that he’s been ping-ponging between watching out for Shane at home and looking after Eric during training lands hard and heavy.

“Anyway,” Wiebe continues. “I’ve been having goddamn palpitations over it, to be honest. I mean, after what happened with you…” He cuts that sentence short, and when his voice comes back it’s suddenly shaking in a way Shane has never heard before, not even right after the accident. “I’d just hate to see Eric do something, you know? Get hurt, the way you got hurt.”

For some reason it’s never occurred to Shane that Wiebe would have been shaken up by his breakdown… but it makes sense. For all his faults, the coach does seem to see the Centaurs as his sort-of sons. 

“Are you, uh…” Wiebe’s voice is thick, like he’s on the verge of crying. “Are you doing better now, kiddo?”

Shane really doesn’t want to hear Wiebe cry. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m all good, man.”

“That’s good. That’s really good.”

The coach doesn’t even ask to hear Eric confirm the news. He just says a hurried farewell and hangs up. Shane lowers the phone so that Eric can see the call’s ended, then hands it back.

“There,” Shane declares. “Now you don’t have to go to practice tomorrow.”

Eric stares down at the phone in his hand. He takes a deep breath. And then he just starts sobbing – his whole body shuddering with the uncontrolled violence of it, tears and snot and even drool dripping onto the dock as Shane rubs his back in mild alarm. Shane isn’t a big hugger, and he’s definitely not a fan of having other people’s bodily fluids on him. But when Eric starts visibly panicking about the fact that he can’t stop crying, Shane gently cradles the back of his head, draws it down, and lets Eric wail into his shoulder. 

When he finally manages to pull himself together, he leaves behind a wet imprint of his face on Shane’s shirt.

As the last of their guests depart, Shane observes Ilya’s shoulders slumping. Ilya is an extrovert who loves being around other people when they’re there, but once they leave the hangover tends to kick in fast. He’s also taken on most of the burden of hosting today, since Shane ended up spending so much time on the dock. Ilya has been taking on a lot of burdens lately. For instance, they didn’t hire caterers because of the risk of one of them trying to shoot a photo or video of the now-reclusive Shane Hollander, so Ilya was in charge of the barbecue. Now, the porch is covered in dirty plates and empty beer cans, and the maid isn’t coming for another few days.

“Hey,” Shane greets, sliding a hand around Ilya’s waist to rest on his hip.

Ilya shakes himself out of his funk and immediately turns to Shane, shoulders curling forward as if to protect him from some invisible barrage. “You OK?” Ilya asks in a familiar, weary, worried tone.

“Yeah, I’m… yeah.” Weirdly, Shane feels a lot better than he has in a long time. Helping Eric seems to have dragged him out the swamp of self-pity he’s been wallowing in for the last few months. Maybe not all the way out of the swamp, but at least to the edge of it. “I talked to Eric.”

“Oh?” The short answer confirms Shane’s suspicion that this whole barbecue was kind of a set-up, but he’s not mad about it.

“Yeah, he’s uh… he’s not going to play this season. Maybe not ever again. But definitely not this season. It’s done, Wiebe knows…”

“Thank fuck,” Ilya blurts out, echoing the coach’s reaction. But his briefly relieved expression quickly tightens up into concern. “He is OK? Eric is OK?”

Are you OK? Shane wants to ask, but he doesn’t. Ilya will think he’s trying to start a fight. Instead he replies, “No, he’s not OK. That’s why he’s leaving. But I’m hoping… I’m hoping he’ll get better now. Or that he’ll at least have some breathing room so he can figure out how to start getting better.”

Ilya nods, blowing out a slow breath. “This is good. He was…” But he doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Yeah.” Shane rubs his husband’s hip. “Hey, why don’t you go inside and take a break?" he suggests. "I can get started clearing up out here.”

Ilya hesitates, but Shane can see the exhaustion tugging at him. “You are sure?”

“I am sure.”

“Well, maybe just for five minutes…”

When Shane returns thirty minutes later, a stack of dirty plates in his hands, Ilya is passed out and snoring on the couch. Careful not to wake him, Shane finishes cleaning up outside and loads the dishwasher, drawing comfort and calm from the act of cleaning. Then he sits down on the couch near Ilya’s socked feet and turns on the TV, searching for something to watch. Ilya stirs as the movie is starting and peers blearily down his body at Shane.

“What is?” he asks, his English not quite functional yet.

“It’s, uh, Battleship Potemkin,” Shane says, with a sheepish grin. “It’s Russian.”

“Ah yes, I think I have heard of it,” Ilya quips, his sarcasm quickly getting up to speed alongside his language skills. “Why are we watching Battleship Potemkin?”

“I thought it might make you feel at home.”

Ilya squints at the screen, where a bunch of burly, shirtless Russian seamen are slumbering in swaying hammocks. After a pause he says, with a regal air, “OK, fine. I will watch.”

He remains lying down, his head pillowed on one of his biceps. After a few minutes Shane shuffles up, pulls Ilya’s feet into his lap, and starts rubbing them without much rhythm or plan, just looking for knots and sore spots and easing them when he finds them. Ilya hums softly in gratitude.

Battleship Potemkin is a silent movie, and it soon makes Shane feel like an uncultured swine with an embarrassingly short attention span. It has English subtitles, but watching characters speak and then having to wait for intertitles to find out what they just said feels like a slog. Shane loses interest in the film and reassigns that interest to Ilya, gently pushing his knees apart and crawling up between his legs, squeezing his thighs and nosing at his groin. Between Shane being half checked out, Ilya being busy with practice, and the unpleasant tension there's been between them, it’s been a while since they’ve done anything like this.

A hand comes to rest in his hair, but doesn’t push him away. “You will miss the plot,” Ilya says, his scolding tone threaded with amusement and arousal.

“So explain it to me.” Whatever’s happening must be exciting. The music is rising to a crescendo. Ilya is rising too.

“The sailors… are doing mutiny,” Ilya narrates distractedly. 

Shane reaches up and presses a hand to the center of his chest to feel the rumble of his voice. “Go on,” he says, breathing hotly on Ilya through the fabric of his shorts.

“They… the priest is telling them to stop.” Ilya is trying to keep his voice steady out of sheer stubbornness, but Shane can hear and feel his breathing getting heavier. “For fear… of god.”

“Fuck that,” Shane murmurs, pulling Ilya’s shorts down and pushing his T-shirt up to expose his taut, slightly hairy stomach.

Ilya groans and mutters something in Russian. He falls silent for a while, hips churning slowly as Shane mouths at his erection through his underwear. Just as Ilya’s boxers are finally pulled down, exposing him, he says, “They, ah, throw doctor in the sea.”

“Good, great, hated that guy.” Shane is barely listening.

“Now they are, they… ohhh, Shane…”

Shane tries to take his time, wanting to savor this, but it isn’t long before he’s shoving his hand into his own pants for some relief. He feels Ilya look down and see what he’s doing and mumble, “Oh fuck, yes,” the words slightly muffled by Ilya’s thighs tightening around Shane’s head. He finds a steady rhythm that he knows Ilya likes and sticks with it, and after a couple of minutes Ilya starts tapping him on the head frantically in warning.

But Shane stays right where he is.

“Hoooly fuck,” Ilya breathes when he’s capable of speech again. He looks down his body, sees Shane mouthing stupidly at his hip, hand speeding up and breath hitching roughly, and quickly drags him up until his head is resting on the same pillow as Ilya’s. “On me, on me,” Ilya coaxes.

Shane obliges, gasping wetly against Ilya’s cheek as they both look down and watch it happen.

After, when Shane has cleaned Ilya’s belly with a warm washcloth and their rumpled clothes are back on their bodies, they get back to watching the film. Shane lies between Ilya’s legs, resting his cheek on Ilya’s stomach and stroking his ribs.

Suddenly, out of the blue, Ilya mutters, “I cannot believe I got blowjob while watching Battleship Potemkin.”

“Does it make you feel closer to Mother Russia?”

Ilya giggles deliriously. “It makes me think I will not be able to look Mother Russia in the eye ever again.”

Shane smiles, smug.

Ilya waits until an appropriate amount of time has passed, and he and Shane are in a slightly less intimate position, before he says, quietly, “My father loved this film.”

Shane looks over at him, but Ilya makes a shushing gesture and points at the screen. He doesn’t want to be looked at, not right now. Shane can understand that.

“When I went home for summer, to look after him, if he was having a bad day I sometimes put this film on for him. It always calmed him down. As if while he was watching it he knew where he was again.” Ilya pauses, then confesses in a cracked voice, “And I… I would get a break.”

The words hang heavily in the air. Shane doesn’t speak to disturb them, just runs his fingers silently through Ilya’s hair.

“Is fucking awful thing to say. But is true. Some days I just needed to not look at him for an hour. Needed to go out, and know he would still be OK when I got back.”

Shane is dying to ask, Do you feel that way with me sometimes too? To say, You can take a break from me, if you want. For an hour, or even longer. To admit, I worry about you so much sometimes that it makes me sick. But he controls himself. This isn’t about Shane, and if he tries to make it about himself then Ilya will never open up like this again.

Ilya doesn’t say anything else for a while, but Shane can feel some of the tension in his body easing. He’s just starting to doze off when Ilya nudges him awake, excited.

“Watch. Is Odessa Steps sequence. Very famous.”

Shane flexes back into an upright position and tries to cooperate with Ilya’s efforts to culturally enrich him. It’s just a bunch of people waving on some steps. He’s starting to lose interest again when the intertitles say Suddenly… and then soldiers appear out of nowhere and start firing into the crowd. Blood spatters on the stone. The people tumble down the steps in panic, knocking each other down in their haste to flee the bullets. A little boy falls, bloodied, and his mother watches in horror as he’s trampled to death by the crowd.

Ilya is suddenly breathing in a way that’s a little too controlled, tensing where he’s pressed up against Shane’s body. Shane suspects that Ilya is worried about the violence and chaos on the screen setting off memories of Game Four. Mostly, though, Shane is just kind of impressed. He didn’t know they made movies this violent back in the 1920s.

The mother holds her dead son aloft in anguish and is gunned down by the Cossacks. Then they turn their guns on another mother, dressed all in black and shielding a baby in a pram.

“No way,” Shane breathes, morbidly enraptured. He feels Ilya relax a little against him upon hearing him speak.

“Way,” Ilya confirms seriously. 

Shane watches in dreadful awe as the mother is shot and her falling body tips the pram over the edge of the steps. The baby wails as the pram bumps down the steps, threatening to spill its fragile contents. “Did this really happen?” he asks.

Ilya waves a hand dismissively. “Eh, no, but dead baby is good for propaganda.”

“I’ll say. I think I’m a communist now.”

They go out on the dock to decompress afterwards, dragging out a couple of sun loungers even though the sun has set, and fetching blankets when they realize how chilly it is. The sky is clear, though, and full of stars thanks to the lack of light pollution out here. Shane looks up at them, searching for the few constellations that he knows -- some landmarks to tame the beautiful, overwhelming chaos of it all.

“Hey,” Ilya rumbles from his lounger. He’s not even looking at the stars; he’s looking at Shane. “You OK?”

Shane finds Orion’s Belt. That one’s always easy. He reaches over and snags Ilya’s pinky finger with his own, anchoring them both.

“Ask me again tomorrow.”

Chapter End Notes

Sources/further reading

Bleeding Out, by Clint Malarchuk

Common Carotid Artery Laceration in a Professional Hockey Player: A Case Report

Zednik's injury brings Malarchuk's own nightmare back to surface

Players given 'unpleasant choice' after Eriksen collapse: Uefa should have stopped match, says crisis psychologist

Battleship Potemkin's infamous Odessa Steps sequence