Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Hayden Pike, Ilya Rozanov, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Supportive Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Shane Hollander Comes Out, Love Bites, Funny, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Humor, Secret Relationship, Established Relationship, Locker Room, Epic Bromance, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Possessive Ilya Rozanov, Found Family, Happy Ending, Non-Explicit Sex, Shane Hollander Is a Menace, Sassy Shane Hollander, Prompt Fic, Competition, Penis Measuring, Sexuality Crisis, Gay Panic, Dumb Hockey Boys, Apologies, Internalized Homophobia, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Prompts, Part 1 of Metros & Centaurs Assemble ♡

Collections:

TDH Game Changers / Heated Rivalry, TDH Artworks, ILuxuryCruiseThatsfanficcollection, Hollanov, Violeta's Good Ones, HollaNov fanfics I Love, Shaylia, AHRFC, Hockey Boyfriends, *Heated rivalry melts my heart*, HeatedRevelry, Zulie's Best of Heated Rivalry, Read & Loved Heated Rivalry Fics, Hollanov sucks!, greenlight

Stats:

Published: 2026-06-27 Completed: 2026-08-03 Words: 35,048 Chapters: 3/3

The Blueprint

Summary

After Shane comes out, the Metros become convinced he might be attracted to them.

Shane corrects this assumption with devastating precision, accidentally describes Ilya Rozanov in the process, and somehow turns the entire locker room into a deranged pageant of heterosexual insecurity.

Notes

Here is a crack treated seriously fic, filling a prompt given in the Heated Rivalry Fanfiction FB group.

It went against every fibre in my being to write supportive Metros content, so I had to double down and commit and probably went a little overboard with the entire fic.

I wrote half of this completely pissed as I was watching England Vs. Croatia (GO LIONS!) so I apologise for whatever is contained in this, because drunk FyrestoneSiren considers herself hilarious but not always sensible when writing.

But I hope you enioy this silliness.

There's also not a load of canonly known Metros players so I just threw it extra.
Unlike our Shane bb, this fic isn't a dick so don't take it too deep.

Written for: AquariusYoukai

Remember, don't like? Don't read. ❤️

P.S – mapleice hates this so you'll probably love it! 💋

P.P.S – ⚠️❗️ Please do not read this if in public, at work, on a treadmill, are eating, drinking or currently without your inhaler if asthmatic.
There have been too many near choking accidents and firings for my conscience to handle 😂🫣

Chapter 1

 

The week after Shane came out to the room felt, in technical terms, like absolute shit.

It was not that anyone said anything outright.

It was the way conversation shifted when he walked into it, like someone had yanked the cord on a lamp and left the room dimmer. The way two of the younger guys, who had previously thought nothing of changing in the middle of the room with all the shame of Roman emperors, suddenly started clutching towels around their waists like maidens protecting their virtue and jokes which died half-born when he was in the vicinity and how his presence seemed to make everyone aware of their own limbs.

Shanehated that he noticed it and couldn’t stop noticing it. Hated most of all that the whole thing had not even happened according to plan.

There had been a plan.

A good plan, actually. A foolproof, Shane Hollander plan, which meant it had spreadsheets in his head and projected outcomes and an acceptable margin of emotional catastrophe.

He and Ilya had discussed timelines and scenarios in whispered conversations with the sheets tangled around their legs. There had been strategy, patience and intent.

Then one of the defensemen had laughed in the locker room after practice and said something ugly about Scott Hunter kissing his boyfriend on the ice a couple years back, something sneering and small and mean, and Shane had felt the floor tilt under him.

He remembered the exact sensation of it of his heart slamming and skin going hot and every instinct he had screaming at him to stay quiet and stay safe and do this later....

....and then another instinct, older and fiercer and far less reasonable, had ripped through him.

"Yeah?" Shane had snapped, voice cutting like knife. "You saying that also insults me, so fuck off."

The room had gone silent, so much they could hear the Zamboni in the rink beginning it's solo dance on the ice and as if the whole world had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.

The player had paused, looking dumbfounded and not fully certain he relied on his hearing. "What?"

Shane’s pulse had roared in his ears. His hands had been shaking, which was humiliating, so he shoved them under his arms and made himself stand there.

"I said," he had replied, every word clipped to death, "if you’ve got a problem with gay players, congratulations, that includes me. So maybe keep your Neanderthal bullshit to yourself."

He had not waited around for the aftermath. He had walked out on legs that felt half-borrowed and locked himself in a bathroom stall and stared at the metal door while his body remembered how panic worked.

That had been seven days ago.

Seven days of sideways looks and weirdness. Seven days of feeling as if he had somehow become nuclear and radioactive.

He told himself he was imagining half of it, that it was panic and anxiety and his brain doing those bastard tricks.

It and he was not.

By Friday, he was wound so tight he thought one more awkward pause might make him actually burst into flames.

Practice had been brutal, bag-skate adjacent, and by the time they all dragged themselves into the locker room, the air was heavy with sweat, damp gear, and the low-grade suffering of professional athletes pretending they were not exhausted.

Shane sat on the bench at his stall and unlaced his skates with quick, sharp motions. Around him, conversation sputtered in weird little starts and stops.

He could feel it again, that subtle awareness every time he moved. Every time he spoke or he looked up and someone abruptly looked somewhere else.

He wanted to scream.

Instead, he yanked off one skate and was reaching for the other when someone across the room said, far too loudly, "Hollander."

Shane looked up automatically and instantly gagged.

It was not dignified, or subtle but a full-body, visceral recoil of horror.

Because there, standing in the middle of the room like a sacrificial idiot, was Mathieu Bouchard completely naked like the day he was born.

Just naked. There was no towel on the floor that suggested incident or a slip, no otherworldly excuse for just why Bouchard was currently cursing Shane in every way with that. 

Shane made a strangled, embarrassed sound and clapped a hand over his face as he wordlessly tried to stop himself from gagging further. "What– Jesus Christ– what is this? Put it away!"

Then somebody, from the back, muttered, "Oh my God."

Mathieu was still standing there, naked and somewhat under the impression that this had been a good idea.

Shane peeked between his fingers just long enough to confirm that yes, unfortunately, the situation remained exactly as terrible as he had first assessed, then covered his eyes again.

"Bouchard," he said, voice climbing, "if you do not put some fucking clothes on right now, I’m going to march you and your dick to HR!"

Mathieu, sounding offended, said, "You gagged."

"Yes," Shane snapped. "Because you’re naked in front of me!"

Half the team started wheezing on laughter whilst he other half looked like they wanted the floor to open up and swallow them.

Hayden, who had been toweling off two stalls down, sat down hard on the bench with a snort and buried his face in his shoulder to muffle himself.

Mathieu, to his credit, at least had the decency to look uncertain now. "It was just– we were just trying to–"

Shane dropped his hand from his face and stared at him in disbelief. "Trying to what?"

Nobody answered. Which, in retrospect, was answer enough.

Shane looked from one face to the next. At the guilty expressions and the badly hidden curiosity. One guy who had the nerve to avoid eye contact, as if that somehow made him less involved.

Then understanding hit, and with it, something hot and ugly in his stomach and he genuinely had to fight down the urge to vomit for real.

"Oh my God," he said flatly. "You were testing me."

No one denied it and Mathieu crossed his arms over himself, which was frankly too late to be useful. "We just wanted to know–"

"How noble." Shane seethed.

"–if you were, you know. Looking." he finished, lamely, embarrassment already high on his cheeks.

Shane stared murderously, and here was a rare moment in his life when language failed for half a second. Then it came roaring back.

Marc Beaulieu, displaying the survival instincts of a pigeon, offered, "You can understand why we’d wonder."

Shane turned his head with terrifying slowness. "Can I?"

The room was quiet and tension awkward.

"No, really," he went on, voice going silkier and more dangerous with every syllable. "Explain it to me. Take me on that journey. Because I’m dying to hear how you all managed to land on because Shane is gay, Shane must obviously be lusting after every man within a ten-foot radius."

"Whoa," muttered one of the defensemen.

"Oh, don’t whoa me, I’m just getting started." He folded his arms once more, eyes blazing. "Please, enlighten me. Walk me through the brilliant hockey-bro logic that led you geniuses to this conclusion."

Down from him, Hayden was no longer even pretending to be normal. He had a towel over his mouth and tears in his eyes darting between Shane and the others.

Mathieu rallied badly. "That’s not what we meant."

"No? Because from where I’m standing, it sounds very much like you all decided that me being gay means I’m predatory." Shane said with a sneer. "Congratulations on the Olympic-level homophobia, by the way. Very progressive."

"That’s not–" J.J. finally piped up, before faltering when Shane turned on him.

"Isn’t it?"

No one spoke further and Shane’s chest felt tight again. Underneath the fury was hurt, stupidly bright and painful.

Because he knew these men. Or had thought he did. He had bled with them and won with them and sat on flights half-asleep with his head knocking against their shoulders. And apparently one overheard confession and a week later they were holding a bizarre naked tribunal to determine whether he was secretly objectifying them all.

He laughed bitterly. "Let me simplify this for you. Do you find all women attractive?"

Mathieu blinked stupidly. "No."

"No?" Shane echoed. "Interesting. So you are capable of understanding that being attracted to a gender does not mean being attracted to every single member of that gender? Groundbreaking. Truly revolutionary stuff. I’m so proud."

A couple of guys looked at the floor. J.J. nodded, biting his lip.

"It’s just different," someone muttered, Drapeau if Shane heard the tone right.

Shane swung toward the voice. "Different how? Different because it’s me? Because now suddenly you’re all imagining I’ve been leering at you in the shower? Cataloguing your sad mediocre asses? Please." Shane spat with a scoff. "Spare me the fragile egos. None of you are that special."

A scandalized cough came from somewhere by the tape table.

Shane pressed on with the righteous fury of a man who had finally found a target worthy of his irritation.

"For one thing, none of you are my type."

This landed like a live grenade and several heads came up at once.

"What?" Mathieu said, affronted enough to forget his nudity entirely.

Shane laughed, this time with genuine disbelief. "Oh, now that’s the part you care about? Not the part where you treated me like a predator, but the part where I wounded your delicate little hockey-boy vanity?"

"You just said none of us–" J.J said, looking insulted.

"Yes," Shane cut in. "None of you. Not a single one. Not even on your best day with perfect lighting and a following wind."

"Come on," said Louis Koch, their backup goalie, looking genuinely stung. "None?"

"Would you all like a PowerPoint?" Shane asked. "A pie chart? A rubric? Maybe a participation trophy for effort? I could rank you if that helps your delicate feelings. How about flashcards for the slow ones to enable you to keep up?"

Hayden made snorted behind his towel.

Gilbert Comeau, far too invested now, said, "So what is your type, then?"

Shane opened his mouth to say nothing you need to know and then stopped.

Because if they were going to make him suffer, maybe they could suffer too.

He tilted his head.

"Well," he said, with the deadly pleasantness of a man about to commit verbal violence, "if we’re doing this, let’s be accurate. My standards are actually quite high."

"Oh my God," Hayden whispered to no one.

Shane began ticking points off on his fingers.

"I like a man who is tall. Actually tall and not five-eleven and loud about it. Broad shoulders. Strong and competent. Preferably with a face that could ruin lives and a body that could bench-press your entire ego."

Several Metros straightened unconsciously, then immediately looked annoyed at themselves for doing it.

Shane kept going, voice dripping with scorn.

"Dark blonde hair. Good hands. Very good hands, the kind that know exactly what they’re doing. Intimidating presence. Terrible personality at first glance, but in a compelling way that makes you stupid. Capable of shutting me up, which is rare and apparently beyond all of you. Smarter than all of you combined on your best day. Meaner than all of you when it counts. Better cheekbones than should legally be allowed. And ideally he should be able to look at me like he wants to kill me, kiss me and fuck me at the same time without needing a team meeting about it."

The room had gone eerily still. Hayden slowly lowered the towel from his face and his expression was ecstatic.

Shane, now fully committed and also perhaps exorcising several private demons, continued with the serene cruelty of a saint in designer athletic wear.

"He should also be able to keep up with me intellectually, physically, and emotionally, which already disqualifies most of this room on all three counts."

A wounded "Hey" came from the back.

"I’m not finished." Shane flicked his hand. "I appreciate discipline and precision. Someone who can actually dress himself without looking like he lost a fight with a sporting goods store. Someone with depth and mystery and emotional repression so severe it circles back around into eroticism. You know actual fucking substance."

Hayden doubled over laughing.

Mathieu, still somehow the main casualty here, said weakly, "That’s very specific."

"Yes," Shane said. "Because I’m a specific person with actual taste, unlike whatever this collective midlife crisis is."

J.J. frowned. "So you like muscle, then?"

Shane looked him up and down in a way that conveyed disappointment. "Not yours. Yours look like they’re for show. I prefer the kind that actually deliver."

Mathieu finally grabbed a towel and wrapped it around himself with the dazed air of a soldier returning from war. "Jesus Christ, Hollander."

Shane picked up his shower bag.

He could have left it there and he should have left it there.

Instead he paused at the door, looked back over his shoulder at the collection of deeply offended, increasingly competitive professional athletes staring at him, and delivered the final blow.

"Oh," he said lightly. "And I require, at minimum, nine inches."

He held up both hands to demonstrate the length with chilling precision.

Then he smiled a calm and beautiful smile and walked out.

Behind him, the locker room dissolved into pandemonium.

 

---

 

In hindsight, Shane should have known that humiliating a room full of heterosexual hockey players and then informing them that none of them met his standards would not end peacefully.

He had assumed foolishly that shame would make them drop it, but instead it made them insane.

By Monday, the weirdness had evolved.

He walked into the room to find three of the defensemen doing push-ups shirtless before practice.

Not unusual in itself. What was unusual was the fact that they kept glancing up to see if he was watching.

Shane stopped in the doorway and one of them, noticing him, did the hockey equivalent of fluffing his feathers and said, "Morning, Hollander."

"Why are you doing push-ups in jeans?" Shane asked.

The player paused.

Hayden, already in his stall and taping his stick, did not even look up. "They heard you like muscle men."

Shane turned. "Hayden."

Hayden’s face was the picture of innocence. "What?"

By Wednesday it had somehow gotten worse.

Their starting goalie, Sorren Miitka, aka Mitty, started bringing him coffee.

Another defenseman held doors open for him with the focused intensity. Two third line forwards got into a disagreement over whether being 'sensitive' meant talking about feelings or just saying the word vulnerability in a husky voice.

Hayden stoked every single flame, it became his life's work. 

"Shane appreciates acts of service," he said over lunch, just loudly enough for the nearby half of the room to hear.

Shane looked up from his salad. "I am sitting right here."

Hayden nodded. "And?"

Across the table, one of the rookies immediately reached for Shane’s water bottle. "Need a refill?"

"No," Shane said.

"Too late," the rookie replied, and sprinted off with it before Shane could argue and he stared after him in horror. 

Hayden beamed. "See? They're flourishing."

"You are a bad person." Shane said with irritance.

By the end of the week, the room had split into factions.

The Muscle Men, who had decided Shane obviously preferred a physically imposing type and therefore spent indescrible amounts of time flexing in the vicinity of his stall or proving their strength by lifting and carrying things past him with huge grins. 

The Soft Boys, who had somehow concluded from Hayden’s meddling that Shane wanted tenderness and emotional intelligence and thus started speaking to him like they were auditioning for an indie film.

And the Flirts, who seemed to think confidence was the deciding factor and had begun winking at him with mixed results and that Shane was half concerned they were stroking out.

"Morning, handsome," Gilbert Comeau said as he passed Shane at the tape table.

Shane looked at him for a long moment. "You look like someone whose mom still irons his bedsheets."

Comeau looked confused. "What does that mean?"

"It means no whatever this is." Shane said with an eye roll. 

Another time, J.J. dropped into the seat beside him after practice and said, in what he probably believed was a seductive voice, "You know, Hollander, I am actually very emotionally available."

Shane did not look up from unwrapping his stick. "You threw a tantrum because they changed the ketchup brand in the players’ lounge, try again."

The Soft Boys were possibly the worst.

One of them brought Shane a protein bar and said, "Just thought you might need fueling up."

Another touched his shoulder after a bad drill and murmured, "You’ve got this, man. Proud of you."

Shane recoiled like he’d been splashed with acid. "Why are you talking to me like I'm damaged goods?"

The player looked wounded. "I’m being gentle."

"I don’t need gentle," Shane said, verging on pained. "I need all of you to develop shame."

It did not help that Hayden kept changing the criteria.

"Actually," Hayden announced one afternoon while they were stretching, "I think Shane likes mystery."

Three heads snapped up.

"Really?" asked Marc, already looking around for a pen as if to take notes.

Hayden nodded sagely. "A quiet intensity. Hidden depths. Could also be flirting, though," Hayden added thoughtfully. "He likes banter. Bit of bite. Push and pull."

One of the Flirts sat up straighter.

"Though," Hayden continued, because he had the soul of a pyromaniac, "acts of service are still huge. Real huge. And I do think competence matters to him. Probably wants to feel challenged."

"Hayden," Shane said in a hiss that should have killed him where he stood.

Hayden ignored him. "And softness. Don’t underestimate softness. Shane likes people who act all hard and then turn out to be secretly sweet underneath."

Now the whole room was listening.

Shane looked around at the gathering attention, at the dawning determination on several faces, and felt a genuine flicker of fear.

"This is how cults start," he informed no one in particular.

No one cared.

Over the next few days, the peacocking escalated into what Shane could only describe as psychosexual community theatre.

The Muscle Men started staying late after practice to lift where he could see them.

The Soft Boys got really into checking in on his emotional state.

The Flirts sharpened their game until every trip to the coffee station felt like surviving a low-budget dating show.

J.J. offered to carry Shane’s bag to the bus.

Another casually mentioned he volunteered in the offseason.

A third leaned against the doorway of the trainer’s room and asked, "So what are you into, like, on a deeper level?"

Shane stared at him. "Peace. Quiet. The sweet release of death."

The guy laughed as if that were flirting.

It was not.

And the worst part, truly the most humiliating part was that Shane couldn’t even be properly angry anymore because the whole thing was too absurd. Offense and bafflement kept tripping over each other inside him until all that was left was exhausted disbelief.

 

---

 

A week later he was tugging his hoodie off over his head and reaching for the clean compression shirt laid out in his stall when Hayden dropped into the seat beside him wearing the smuggest expression known to man.

It was game day.

Montreal versus Ottawa, hosted in Ottawa's barn.

Which already meant the room had a different kind of energy to it with every movement edged with anticipation. Equipment bags were open. Jerseys hung ready. Guys were stripping out of practice gear and into game prep layers, pads and compression shirts and the rituals they never admitted were rituals. Music thudded overhead and someone was arguing with the trainer about tape. Patrice Drapeau was spraying entirely too much cologne like the Centaurs were going to be defeated by upper notes of bergamot.

Shane, for his part, was trying very hard to behave like a normal person.

This was made difficult by the fact that he had spent the previous night being thoroughly, catastrophically ruined by one Ilya Rozanov.

His lower back still ached in a way that was both deeply satisfying and profoundly inconvenient, and there were fingerprints of that satisfaction all over him if one knew where to look. Which, in Shane’s defense, he had not.

He had showered and had dressed, looked in the mirror but he had not exactly craned around to inspect the back of his own shoulders, because unlike some people, he did not begin every day assuming he was the aftermath of an erotic wildlife attack.

Apparently he should have.

Hayden sat there for a moment, watching him with the serene delight of a man holding a live grenade and waiting for the right time to pull the pin.

Shane narrowed his eyes. "What."

Hayden’s smile widened. "Nothing."

"Hayden." He warned.

"Well," Hayden said, "Marc wrote you a poem."

Shane closed his eyes. "I’m sorry?"

"A poem. Left it in your stall." Hayden said, eyes alight in glee.

Shane looked down and there was, in fact, a folded piece of paper tucked by his gloves.

He opened it.

Roses are red
You are quite neat
I, too, have depth
And impressive cleats

Shane let out a pained moan as Hayden shook beside him, a genuine tear falling down his cheek.

"Oh my God," Shane whispered. "I hate this." His cheeks felt warm, the blush rising fast. It was sweet if not verging on cringe.

"No, you don’t."

"No," Shane admitted, folding the poem back up with terrible care, and absolutely promised himself he would stash it somewhere dark, unknown and away from Ilya purely for the concern of Marc's welfare. 

The whole thing was getting ridiculous and Shane knew they had hurt him. They had been idiots and made him feel strange in his own skin for a week, and then somehow managed to overcorrect so hard they’d launched themselves into performance art.

But they were his idiots.

And maybe this was their graceless, mortifying way of trying to prove that nothing had changed except now they were all painfully aware that Shane Hollander had standards and they did not meet them.

Hayden nudged his shoulder. "For what it’s worth, they don’t think you’re predatory."

Shane cringed. "No. Now they think I’m a judge at some deranged pageant."

"You absolutely are." Hayden grinned. "And for the record, your little speech ruined them. Half of them have been spiraling for days."

"Good."

"Bouche googled whether cheekbones can be improved naturally."

Shane let out a snort of amusement. 

"J.J. asked me if emotional repression can be learned."

That got another helpless laugh out of him and  Hayden’s grin softened, just a little. "They were stupid."

"Yes." Shane said with a small sigh. 

"They didn’t know how to act."

"That is not my problem." He replied, a little defensively. 

"No," Hayden agreed. "But they’re trying now. Very badly. Hilariously. But trying."

Shane looked down at the poem in his hand.

Across the room, one of the Muscle Men was pretending not to flex while rearranging tape. A Soft Boy was helping someone fold towels for later with the solemn focus. One of the Flirts caught Shane looking and immediately winked so aggressively he nearly dislocated something.

Shane shuddered and Hayden burst out laughing again.

"You did this." Shane said.

"I improved it." Hayden replied innocently. 

"You weaponized heterosexual insecurity."

Hayden placed a hand over his heart. "For your amusement. And mine of course."

Shane shook his head, but he was grinning now despite himself.

Then, from the other side of the room, a voice called, "Hey, Hollander."

Shane, against all better judgment, looked up.

Drapeau straightened, softened his expression as if trying for mysterious tenderness, and asked, "Do you want the last yogurt from the team fridge? I saved it for you."

Before Shane could answer, another voice cut in.

"No, no, he likes confidence," said J.J., shoving Drapeau aside. He flashed what he clearly believed was a devastating grin. "Shane, after the match maybe you and I–"

A third interrupted, flexing. "He said he likes broad shoulders."

Bouchard snapped, "He also said depth, dumbass."

Shane sat frozen on the bench, bottom gear half-on, staring at the chaos unfolding in front of him like he had somehow slipped into another dimension.

Hayden leaned in close and said, with the deep satisfaction of a man watching a carefully nurtured fire take down an entire forest, "This is the best week of my life."

Shane looked at him, then back at the Metros, who were now actively arguing over whether acts of service trumped banter.

Then down at the truly terrible poem still in his hands.

And because his life was a cosmic joke and because he missed a certain dark blonde rival so badly some days it felt like a bruise, and apparently this was what his coming out had become, not rejection but a roomful of baffled idiots trying to be wanted.......Shane laughed.

He laughed until his stomach hurt, relief and joy flooding through him. 

Across the room, the noise faltered and everyone turned to look at him.

Shane stood, clutching his hands to his chest, and took in the lot of them with all the fond exasperation of a man uniquely cursed by God.

"You are all deeply embarrassing," he informed them.

Then Mathieu, brave in the way only the terminally stupid can be, asked, "But like… in a promising way?"

Shane stared at him with soft disdain.

"Bouchard," he said at last, "if you ever get naked at me again, I will kill you myself."

Mathieu blushed as jeers echoed around the locker room and Shane turned once more to face his stall, finally pulling off his shirt and reached for the clean black compression top in his stall. 

It should have been normal. It was normal.

Right up until J.J. glanced over, froze, and said, "Holy shit."

Shane paused, one arm halfway into the compression shirt. "What now."

No one answered immediately, which was ominous, and Hayden made a loud gasp and slapped a hand over his mouth.

Shane went still in his place, eyes widening and feeling anxiety creep in at just what they were reacting to.

Across from him, Louis was staring openly now. So was Mathieu. So, with all the subtlety God had denied him, was Marc. Their expressions moved in a wave from confusion to realization to something like scandalized awe.

Shane’s stomach dropped.

"What," he said again, slower this time.

Hayden took a breath, failed to compose himself, and wheezed, "Oh my God."

Shane turned to him. "Hayden."

Hayden pointed helplessly at the back of Shane’s shoulders. "Your–"

Then he dissolved, bent double on the bench, laughing so hard he nearly inhaled a mouthguard.

Shane’s eyes narrowed to slits. "If you don’t start using nouns immediately, I’m going to kill you."

One of the younger guys, still standing there holding his jersey, said in the tone usually reserved for natural disasters, "Dude."

Mathieu, who had not learned nearly enough from his previous public humiliation, stepped closer and squinted. "Are those hickeys?"

Shane whipped around so fast he nearly strangled himself in the compression top. "Those are not–"

"They are absolutely hickeys," Marc said, scandalized and delighted all at once.

"No!" Shane snapped.

"Yes." said three people in unison.

Hayden made another awful, strangled noise of joy. "Oh my God, they’re all down the back of your shoulders."

"Hayden, I will end you."

"Um, someone," Hayden gasped, clutching his ribs, "apparently tried to consume you from behind."

The entire room lost it. Even the guys who had only been half-paying attention swung around now. Heads turned and conversation stopped. Every Metro with functioning eyesight immediately became invested in the situation.

Shane, with all the speed of a man trying to outrun his own body, yanked the compression shirt over his head and dragged it down hard.

It was too late. Far too late.

"Oh my God," said one of the defensemen.

"That is a lot of surface area," someone else observed.

"Was he angry at you?" another asked.

"No," Hayden said before Shane could speak, tears streaming down his face, "that man was enthusiastic."

Shane turned on him with murder in his eyes. "I hate you."

"No, you don’t," Hayden said, still shaking. "Also, wow."

Shane grabbed his jersey and began pulling it on with the tight, clipped movements of a man hanging onto dignity by his fingernails. His face was on fire. The back of his neck, apparently also on fire for additional reasons prickled under the fabric.

This was horrendous in the way the room had already spent two weeks spiraling over the fact that Shane had standards and they did not meet them, and now there was visible, physical evidence that those standards were not theoretical.

The room knew there was an actual man.

An actual man who had Shane Hollander in bed and apparently treated him like a five-course meal.

"Wait," Marc said, sitting up straighter. "Wait. Your type."

Shane's jaw clicked as ice trickled into his veins.

No. Absolutely not.

But the room had reached the conclusion before he could stop it.

Mathieu looked as if the heavens had opened. "Oh my God, that’s why he was so specific."

J.J. pointed at Shane like he’d solved a mathmatical equation. "You described your boyfriend."

Hayden was no longer even trying to be a decent person. "Oh, he absolutely did."

"I did not!"

"You did," Hayden said cheerfully. "Tall, broad shoulders, terrifying face, dark blonde hair, good hands, emotional repression so severe it circles back into eroticism–"

"Please stop talking," Shane pleaded.

"–mean at first glance, smarter than all of us–"

"I mean that part was obvious," muttered someone.

"–and capable of shutting Shane up, which frankly should’ve been our first clue."

Shane, now half inside his jersey and half inside a stress response, looked at Hayden with profound betrayal. "You are not my friend."

One of the rookies, eyes wide, said, "So your boyfriend is actually the guy who did that."

He pointed vaguely at Shane’s back, then immediately lowered his hand when Shane’s glare cut toward him.

Mathieu frowned. "Okay, but that narrows it down how?"

"It narrows it down a lot," J.J. said slowly, eyes still fixed on Shane in growing horror. "Because whoever did that is not, like, an accountant."

"Maybe Shane likes accountants," Marc said.

Shane gave him a look of 'please'

Marc nodded. "Okay, no, he does not. Scratch that."

"He said broad shoulders," Louis said, ticking it off on his fingers now. "Good hands. Competitive. Terrible personality."

"Could be a gym dude," Drapeau suggested. "Like a trainer."

"Not a trainer," Marc said, squinting at Shane. "He said smarter than all of us and half the trainers we know are roid rats, that shit kills your junk and your brain."

"Trainers can be smart," Comeau objected.

"Not the point. Shane was insulting us while describing someone specific. That means someone like us...but not us....or like hockey-adjacent." Marc added, more animated playing Sherlock Holmes now than Shane could ever remember seeing him in general. 

Then the room collectively seemed to realize what he had said.

Hockey.

Shane’s heart dropped straight through the floor.

"No," he said immediately.

Nobody listened.

"Another player?" Mitty asked, voice climbing with joy.

"No," Shane said again, wildly.

"Someone in the league?" Louis said.

"No. Just stop–"

"Someone close by?" J.J. asked.

Shane should not have reacted.

But his eyes flicked, just once, toward the concrete wall that separated Montreal’s side of the building from Ottawa's end.

It was tiny, barely a movement but unfortunately, he was surrounded by professional athletes whose careers depended on noticing tiny movements.

Hayden saw it first and his entire face lit up like Christmas morning.

"Ooooooooh" he said menacingly.

Shane’s blood went cold. "No." he repeated, each time the no appeared weaker and more desperate. Shane didn't even know what else he could say. His brain was going fuzzy and his skin was beginning to itch.

Mathieu looked toward the wall. Then back at Shane. Then toward the wall again.

"No fucking way," he whispered.

The room went electric with anticipation.

"Ottawa?" Drapeau said, pulling a face.

Shane couldn't even find words now.

Hayden made a sound like a teakettle reaching its final form. "Ottawa."

"Shane," Louis said, horrified and thrilled. "Your boyfriend plays for Ottawa?"

Shane paled and shook his head. 

"Your face says Ottawa," Marc accused.

"My face says I hate this conversation." Shane whispered, regretting every life choice that led here. Maybe he should've stayed in the closet.

"No, no, wait." Mathieu lifted both hands, suddenly businesslike. "We can figure this out."

"Do not figure this out," Shane said, his tone pained.

They ignored him with the unified focus of men who had found a puzzle and had absolutely no respect for privacy.

"Hayes?" Comeau suggested.

Someone immediately scoffed. "Hayes is the goalie."

"So?" Mitty said, looking insulted.

"So Shane said good hands, not catching glove."

"Also Hayes is light blonde," J.J. added.

"Too blonde," Louis agreed.

"And married," Marc said.

"And straight," Comeau piped in.

"Also," Hayden added solemnly, "Shane would never date a goalie. He has standards."

"Thank you," Shane said before he could stop himself.

The group all snapped toward him, Mitty again looking wounded and muttered a soft "Wow, okay." 

Shane closed his eyes, mortified and kicking himself mentally.

Hayden pointed. "Interesting."

"Okay, not Hayes," Mathieu said, dramatically ticking him off on an invisible list. "What about Haas?"

"Haas?" Marc repeated. "Luca Haas? He's pretty–" then seemingly shut himself off and looked down quickly. 

"He's nineteen," J.J. said.

"Shane isn’t exactly one to rob the cradle," Louis added.

"Also too small," Mathieu decided.

"And short," Marc said.

"He is not short," Shane said automatically, because he was pathologically fair even when under interrogation.

The room turned on him again.

Shane grimaced. "I hate myself."

Hayden was shaking. "So not Haas, but thank you for defending his honour."

"Wyatt Hayes is out," Mathieu said, now fully committed. "Luca Haas also out. Who else?"

"Dillon?" Louis suggested.

"Tanner Dillon?" Mitty made a face. "Again, goalie, not to the standard apparently" no one commented on the bitter sarcasm. 

"Chouinard?" Drapeau tried.

 Mathieu looked personally offended by the idea. "No. Shane said intimidating presence. Also are you colour blind? His hair is black."

"LaPointe?"

"Too French," J.J. said.

Everyone stared at him in a mix of 'Huh?'

J.J. shrugged. "What? Shane’s already in Montreal. If he wanted French, he has options. I am right here and not the type so–"

"That is deranged logic," Shane said.

"But not wrong," Hayden mused. 

"And anyway," Marc cut in, waving a hand. "None of them match the description exactly."

Except....

There was only one guy on Ottawa anyone in this room would call that guy and Shane watched in real time as it all fell into horrific place.

Across the room, a few expressions shifted at once. Pieces clicking together. Games against Ottawa. The sharpened edge that sometimes came over Shane in those matchups and the way he and Rozanov moved around each other on the ice like magnets with a grudge, specificity of Shane’s so-called standards and the fact that the bite marks looked less like the work of a casual lover and more like the aftermath of being claimed by an apex predator.

Oh no.

Oh, fuck no.

"No," Shane said flatly, because denial was all he had left.

Hayden looked at him with delighted sympathy. "Shane."

One of the defensemen frowned, thinking hard enough to be dangerous. "Wait."

Comeau slowly said, "Rozanov’s, like… what, six-three?"

Hayden made a little see? gesture.

Shane wanted the earth to split.

"Dark blonde hair," said Mathieu.

"Terrible personality," added Marc, smug and in full agreement of the statement. 

"Good hands," said someone else, and then winced as the implications settled over the room.

"Broad shoulders," Mitty supplied.

"Intimidating presence," said Louis, with the careful tone of a man describing a large predator through reinforced glass.

"Shuts Shane up," Hayden finished sweetly.

It was as if someone had detonated a bomb as the group exploded all at once. 

"No fucking way," Mitty said.

"Rozanov?" Bouchard barked.

"Rozanov?" J.J. echoed, voice cracking.

"Hollzy, are you kidding me?" Comeau said, looking repulsed.

"That’s your boyfriend?" Drapeau demanded.

"That psychopath?" J.J. said.

"That explains so much," Marc breathed, raising an eyebrow. 

"That explains literally everything," Louis said.

And because apparently humiliation still had layers, the first wave of shock gave way almost instantly to outrage of a very specifically Montreal variety.

"Wait," Marc said, sitting up straighter with the expression of a man who had just remembered treason existed. "Wait, wait, wait. You’re genuinely sleeping with Ottawa’s captain?"

Shane stood up so fast the bench squealed. "You have all become intolerable."

"No, because actually answer the question," Mathieu said, pointing at him like this was now a congressional hearing. "Since when?"

"That is none of your business."

"Since before he got traded there?" one of the younger guys blurted.

Shane stared viciously.

The rookie paled. "Not that it matters. Obviously. Just, timeline-wise–"

"Terrific," Shane said. "Now I’m being audited."

Hayden was in tears. "Keep going. This is incredible."

Marc ignored him. "Did you sleep with the enemy as, like, a bit? Is this espionage?"

That got a horrified level of gasps.

"Oh my God." J.J muttered, shaking his head.

"Shut up, Marc."

"No, I’m serious," Marc insisted. "Was this tactical? Did we have an asset in Ottawa and nobody told me?"

Shane looked at him with withering disgust. "Yes, Marc. I seduced a top-line center for intelligence purposes. I endured world-class cheekbones and an overdeveloped sense of possessiveness and got dicked down in service of the franchise."

Mathieu jabbed a finger toward Shane. "Okay, but don’t act like that’s impossible. You are petty enough."

"I am not sleeping with anyone for organizational gain!"

"Not even for standings points?" Louis asked.

Shane made a face like he had just smelled roadkill. "Especially not for standings points."

That should have been the end of it but naturally, it was not.

One of the defensemen squinted. "Did you ever let him win?"

Shane turned slowly, eyes wide with furiosity. 

"What?" he asked, dangerously. 

The player, having perhaps not understood he was approaching the lip of a volcano, pressed on. "I’m just saying, if you were, you know. Together. Did you ever go easy on him?"

The silence that followed was so total it felt upholstered and the look he gave them made a few of the men recoil and step back. 

Then Shane laughed once, with zero trace of humour. "Oh, that is offensive."

"Shane–" Hayden began, suddenly sounding less delighted and more wary.

"No." Shane held up a hand, eyes still fixed on the idiot who had asked. "No, I want to be very clear, because apparently some of you have lost what little sense God gave you."

The whole room shut up.

"I have never," Shane said, each word sharp enough to cut, "let anyone win anything against me. Ever. Least of all him."

No one moved, no one dared breathe.

Something fierce and immediate had come into his face now, embarrassment burned away by insult.

"I don’t care who I’m dating. I don’t care who I’m sleeping with. When I’m on the ice, I play to win. Every shift. Every puck battle. Every faceoff. Every game. If Rozanov beats me, it is because he earned it, and if I beat him, it is because I earned it. You do not get to cheapen my game because you’re too stupid to understand I can fuck someone and still want to bury him professionally!"

The room held it for a second then Hayden nodded. "You're absolutely right, the stats speak for themselves, if anyone here actually believes that then–"

Mathieu rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay. Yeah. Fair."

"More than fair," Marc muttered. "That question was insane."

"Yes," Shane said flatly. "It was."

The defenseman who had asked went pink. "I didn’t mean–"

"I know," Shane cut in. "That’s what makes it worse."

For a second, no one said anything.

The room still had that same stunned, upholstered silence to it, but it had changed shape now. It was not only embarrassment anymore or the collective realization that they had stepped too close to a line. There was something else under it, something Shane could feel even through the heat in his face and the bite of anger behind his teeth.

They knew, suddenly, that this was bigger than locker-room gossip.

Shane swallowed and his hand tightened around the edge of his jersey.

"And while we’re apparently saying every insane thought out loud today," he said, quieter now, "this does not leave this room."

The shift was immediate that even Hayden stopped looking so entertained.

Shane looked around at all of them, one by one, until every pair of eyes was on him.

"I’m serious," he said. "I am not out publicly. He is not out publicly. Nobody knows about us, and it stays that way."

Mathieu’s face sobered first. Then Marc’s. Then J.J.’s, Louis’s, Drapeau’s, Koch's, Mitty's and Comeau's One by one, the amusement drained down into something steadier.

"Shane," Hayden said softly.

"No, I need to say it." Shane’s voice did not shake, but it wanted to. He could feel the tremor trying to climb up the back of his throat. "Because I know this is funny to you. I know all of this is–" he made a small, helpless gesture, encompassing the hickeys, the peacocking, the entire ludicrous nightmare of the last two weeks, "–whatever this is. But if this gets out, it’s not funny."

Nobody interrupted, the mix of guilt, apprehension and understanding settling amongst them all. 

"If the press gets it, they won’t treat it like a joke. The league won’t. Fans won’t. Agents, sponsors, management, none of them will. It becomes headlines and cameras and questions neither of us agreed to answer."

He forced himself to breathe.

"And for him, it’s different."

That there was the part that made his chest hurt and made this more than inconvenient. More than uncomfortable and of Shane’s carefully managed fear of public opinion and losing control of his own life.

"It’s Russia," he said, and the word landed cold. " It’s his home country. It’s a whole part of his life you don’t know anything about, and neither do I, not all of it. But I know enough. I know enough to know it is not the same as me standing in front of a few reporters and saying I’m gay."

The room had gone very, very still.

Shane looked down for half a second, then made himself look up again.

"So yes," he said, voice going sharp again because it was easier than letting it break. "Make jokes. Be weird. Be whatever horrifying version of supportive this team is apparently capable of being. But if any of you breathe one word of this outside this room, if one person hears it from one of you, if one text gets sent or one drunk comment gets made or chirp gets too clever on the ice, I swear to God I will not forgive you and I will destroy you professionally, legally, mentally and physically."

The warning was final, and Shane inhaled sharply preparing for any blowback.

Then Marc said, quietly, "We wouldn’t."

Shan fixed him a look of wary disbelief.

Marc’s expression was still a little horrified, still a little offended because apparently even mortal stakes could not fully override the fact that it was Rozanov, but beneath it was something solid.

"We wouldn’t," he said again. "Not that."

Mathieu nodded, jaw tight. "No. Absolutely not."

"Room is locked," J.J. said.

"Vaulted," Drapeau added.

Hayden, gentler now but still Hayden, lifted a hand. "Stupid vault. But vault."

A tiny, unwilling laugh escaped someone.

Shane did not laugh and one of the rookies, looking pale and earnest and about twelve years old, said, "I’m sorry. About earlier. About all of it. We were being–"

"Idiots," Shane supplied.

"Yeah," the rookie said. "Idiots. Assholes even."

Marc rubbed both hands over his face and exhaled. "Okay. So. No one says anything. Not to wives. Not to girlfriends. Not to brothers. Not to trainers. Not to former teammates. Not to anybody."

"Not even if they guess?" Mitty asked.

Shane’s stomach tightened.

Hayden answered before he could. "Especially if they guess. You become stupid immediately."

"That won’t be difficult for some of you." Shane said automatically, which sent him a dozen more insulted looks, but no one disputed it. 

Mathieu pointed around the room. "Phones?"

Everyone stared at him.

"What?" he said defensively. "I’m not saying anyone did anything. I’m saying phones."

That was enough to send a new kind of discomfort through the room.

Not suspicion, exactly. More like the sharp collective awareness that in their world, privacy could die in half a second because somebody thought something was funny enough to record.

Shane’s skin prickled.

Hayden stood first.

He pulled his phone from his stall and tossed it onto the middle bench. "There. Mine."

J.J. followed immediately. Then Marc. Then Mathieu. Then Louis. Drapeau and Comeau. One by one, phones appeared on the bench in an ugly little pile of proof.

Drapeau leaned back against his stall, arms crossed. "We’re assholes, Hollander. We’re not cruel."

It hit harder than he expected.

Maybe because a week ago he had not been entirely sure and because the silence after he had snapped in defense of Scott Hunter had felt too much like rejection and the towel-clutching and the staring and the naked insanity of Mathieu Bouchard had made Shane feel like a specimen under glass.

But hearing them say it, plainly and without making him ask, loosened something tight in his chest.

"We’re also not outing Rozanov," Louis said, grimacing slightly as if the name still tasted bad. "Even if he is, you know."

"A hostile foreign power," Mathieu muttered.

"An enemy combatant." J.J. added.

"An Ottawa Centaur and ex Raider." Marc said darkly, as if that were the most damning one.

Hayden nodded solemnly. "Truly the greatest sin."

Shane stared at them and despite himself, snorted.

The whole room seemed to breathe again.

Mathieu glared at him immediately. "Do not mistake this for approval."

"I wouldn’t dream of it."

"I still hate him." Mathieu added.

"That is your right." Shane agreed coolly. 

"I may hate him more now." Marc murmured, pulling a face.

"That’s also your right." Shane said with diplomacy.

Marc lifted a finger. "But privately."

"Exactly." Shane said.

"Professional hatred only." Drapeau agreed.

"On-ice hatred." J.J. said.

"Regulation hatred." Hayden added.

"League-sanctioned hatred." Mathieu finished.

Shane closed his eyes for a second. "You all need help."

"Yes," Hayden said. "But you’re safe."

Shane opened his eyes and Hayden was looking at him steadily now, all the wicked amusement softened into something that had been there the whole time, underneath the arson.

"You are," Hayden said. "With us. He is too, by extension, unfortunately."

Marc groaned. "Do not say unfortunately like we’re adopting him."

"We are not adopting Rozanov," Mathieu said.

"No," J.J. agreed. "We are accepting a hostile custody arrangement."

That broke the tension properly as chuckles rolled through the room, uneven at first, then louder.

Shane shook his head, but the pressure in his chest had eased.

It would not be gone for a long time. Maybe not ever. Not while there were reporters outside and phones everywhere and a league that could polish rainbow tape into a marketing campaign while still leaving players to rot under the weight of what coming out actually cost them.

But here, for now, in this room full of idiots, it eased.

"Good," Shane said, because anything more honest would undo him. "Glad we’ve established the hostage terms."

Hayden grinned. "Very progressive of us."

"Do not make me regret trusting you."

The grin faded just enough to mean something.

"You won’t." Hayden said.

And this time, no one made a joke.

Still, the sting had gone out of the room. Not fully, but enough that what came next sounded more like bruised loyalty than accusation.

"It’s still Rozanov, though" Louis said, as if that alone explained the emotional crisis.

"Yes," Shane said. "I’m aware."

"He’s an asshole." J.J. muttered.

"Often." Shane replied airily.

"He chirps like he was raised by wolves." Mitty piped up.

"More or less."

"He tried to take your head off last season." Drapeau said, as if the action itself was proof that Rozanov was not a good choice. 

"And I cross-checked him in the ribs," Shane replied. "Your point?"

Hayden, recovering quickly now that the danger had passed, grinned. "See? Healthy relationship. Strong foundation. Mutual attempted manslaughter."

"Professional antagonism." Shane corrected.

"Foreplay." Hayden said.

Shane threw a roll of tape at him and Hayden caught it one-handed, smug as the devil.

Marc was still frowning. "I just can’t believe it’s Rozanov. Like, of all people."

Shane arched a brow. "You say that as though I have bad taste."

"No," Marc said honestly. "That’s the problem. Your taste is apparently.....that. And not what I expected at all."

Another player shook his head. "So what, we’re just supposed to be normal about this?"

"You have never once in your life been normal about anything," Shane said.

"True." Mathieu admitted.

The younger defenseman who’d put his foot in it earlier cleared his throat. "For what it’s worth, I wasn’t saying you’d throw a game. I know you wouldn’t."

Shane looked at him for a moment, then gave a short nod. "Good."

Marc muttered, "Still don’t have to like that you’re dating the enemy."

Shane’s lips twitched. "It's lucky for you then that you don’t have to date him."

Mathieu made a sound of outrage. “That’s not what we're saying."

"I know," Shane said, and there was enough dry amusement back in his voice now that the room loosened another inch. "You’re being territorial. It’s very moving."

"It’s disgusting," Marc corrected. "You’re one of ours."

Shane snorted. "I still play for Montreal, drama queen."

"Yeah, but now when you chirp him I’m going to be wondering things."

Hayden threw an arm over the back of the bench and sighed happily. "Honestly, I think this is beautiful. The room’s so accepting now they’re moving directly into possessive older-brother fury."

"We are not his older brothers," Mathieu said.

"Thank Christ," Shane said.

"Protective teammates, then," Hayden amended. "Same unearned entitlement."

“Unearned?” Marc said, offended. “I’ve eaten airport sushi with him.”

"Deep bond." Hayden agreed solemnly.

That got a chuckle, even from Shane.

Just the Metros being the Metros, accepting in the dumbest possible way, suspicious because it was Ottawa, furious because it was Rozanov, and somehow still circling back to Shane with the graceless loyalty of men who had decided he was theirs long before they knew this particular thing about him.

One of the defensemen let out a long whistle. "Man, no wonder none of us had a chance."

"Chance?" Mitty said, scandalized. "There was never a chance. We were apparently competing against a preexisting national security threat."

Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. "He plays for Ottawa, not the KGB."

Hayden looked thoughtful. "Can’t rule out both."

Shane threw him a glare.

Marc was still staring. "This is sick, actually. All those weeks and you never said anything."

"You were busy turning my sexuality into a low-budget mating ritual," Shane said. "I did not feel invited to deeper disclosure."

The rookie on the end bench frowned. "So all that stuff about your standards…"

"Yes?" Shane said.

"You literally meant him."

Shane looked at the ceiling. "I have gathered that we all understand this now, yes."

"No, but like literally him," Marc pressed. "Not just tall and mean in theory. Specifically him. You walked into that locker room, insulted every single one of us to our faces, and basically gave a scouting report on your boyfriend."

Mathieu looked wounded all over again. "He called us mediocre while picturing Ottawa’s captain."

"I was not picturing–" Shane stopped.

Hayden made a victorious noise. "You absolutely were!"

Comeau shook his head, still half-offended and half-impressed. "I can’t get over the confidence, actually."

"What confidence?"

"The confidence to stand there and tell an MHL locker room none of them meet your requirements when you’ve already got Rozanov at home."

Shane shut his eyes for a second and wished he could rewind the entire past month. 

That, somehow, was what made the whole thing swing back into the absurd. Because yes, apparently that was still what bothered them.

Not Shane secretly dating a rival and apparently getting manhandled within an inch of his life by the Ottawa captain. Not even several of the traits Shane had listed with such smug acidic superiority were now visibly attached to a real person.

No.

What offended them most was still that none of them measured up. Fucking typical straight man Neanderthal hive mind mentality. 

Mathieu folded his arms. "That is unfair."

Shane stared, a little confused. "What is unfair."

"That you’re comparing us to Rozanov."

Hayden, ever helpful, cut in. "To be fair, you were all competing against an established market leader and the blueprint for Shane's preference."

"Hayden." Shane said warningly.

Hayden ignored him. "Like, this is not a theoretical ideal anymore. The benchmark is real. The benchmark is Ottawa’s terrifying Russian asshole prince."

The room groaned as one.

One of the rookies muttered, "How are we supposed to compete with that?"

"You aren’t." Shane said immediately.

Mathieu looked wounded. "So when you said none of us met your requirements–"

"I meant it." he said with a proud smirk.

"God," Marc said, affronted. "At least lie a little."

"Why would I do that?"

"To protect morale?" Comeau muttered.

Shane barked a laugh despite himself. "You chose to make my sexuality a team-wide personality crisis. Protect your own morale."

Hayden pointed at him. "That’s completely fair."

Mathieu huffed and pointed at the back of Shane’s shoulders again. "Still hate that he marked you up before a game against us, though."

Shane’s face went hot. "I hate that you can see."

Hayden grinned like a shark. "Oh, he wanted us to see. That’s a territorial Russian if I’ve ever seen one."

Shane did not answer, which told the room much more than answering would have.

A collective noise rolled through them.

"That is so obnoxious." Drapeau murmured.

"Kind of iconic, though." Mitty said with a shrug.

"Do not say iconic." Shane snapped.

Hayden leaned in, delighted. "So he did do it on purpose."

Horribly, traitorously, his mind offered him the answer in full.

Of last night in Ilya's Ottawa house, low lamplight, sheets kicked loose, Ilya above him with that unbearable look in his eyes, the one that always made Shane feel both hunted and held.

He had made the mistake of telling him.

Enough that Ilya had gone very quiet, still and contemplative.

Shane remembered that stillness now with exquisite clarity. The way Ilya had paused over him, one hand spread warm on Shane’s hip, eyes gone dark and focused and almost disbelieving.

"You told them this?" he had asked, voice low.

Shane, already half-undone, had rolled his eyes on instinct. "Not you specifically."

"But this was me."

It had not really been a question.

Shane had felt heat crawl up his throat anyway. "You are unfortunately for them, the blueprint, yes."

The expression on Ilya’s face after that had been impossible.

Not soft or smug. Something hotter and hungrier than either.

"Blueprint." he had repeated, like the word itself pleased him.

Shane had known, right then, that he had made a tactical error.

And Ilya, who enjoyed Shane’s tactical errors more than any decent person should had bent and kissed him slow first, as if he had all the patience in the world, as if he were not pinning Shane open with one broad hand and the weight of his body and that awful, awful pleased attention.

"You talk too much." Ilya had murmured against his mouth.

"Then shut me up." Shane had shot back, because he had never once in his life been able to leave provocation alone.

Which had, in hindsight, been another error.

Because Ilya had smiled.

And afterward there had been nothing patient about it.

Just Ilya relentless and intent and devastatingly pleased with himself, driving Shane into the mattress hard enough that Shane had lost all sense of dignity and most of his ability to form coherent language. The room had narrowed to heat and pressure and the sharp drag of breath and the way Ilya kept saying things into the back of his neck in Russian and then in English just to make it worse.

"This what you require?"

And later, rougher, against Shane’s skin–

"Tell me again I am your type."

And later still, when Shane had made the mistake of arching back into him with a wrecked little sound he would deny on pain of death, Ilya’s mouth had found the slope of his shoulder with sudden, feral purpose.

Possessive enough to leave proof.

Enough proof that Shane, dazed and boneless afterward, had eventually mumbled into the pillow, "You cannot send me back to Montreal looking like I lost a fight with a wolf."

Ilya, maddeningly unrepentant, had just pressed one last kiss to the marked skin and said, "But you won. Besides, there is barely mark."

Which had been disgusting, actually and unhelpfully hot.

So when the room waited now, all dumb curiosity and bruised outrage and ghastly investment, Shane dragged himself back into the present with visible effort and fixed them all with a glacial stare.

"I am not discussing that with you."

Hayden leaned back, grin evil and beatific. "That’s a yes."

One of the defensemen gave Shane an assessing once-over and said, with deep resentment, "So all this time your standards were impossible because you were already sleeping with a fucking supervillain."

Shane considered this and smiled with terrible sweetness. "Correct."

A chorus of protests broke out immediately.

"That’s bullshit."

"That’s cheating."

"You can’t set the curve at Rozanov."

Shane’s smile sharpened. "And yet I have. Feel blessed I removed him from the market." 

Hayden put both elbows on his knees and sighed in bliss. "I cannot believe this. All this time they were trying to peacock for you and meanwhile you were going home to the final boss."

He laughed because the whole thing was ridiculous and awful and embarrassing and because the image of Ilya as the final boss was, annoyingly, not inaccurate.

He could practically hear the low, smug thing Ilya would say if he knew about any of this. Something in Russian first, just to make it worse. Then some unbearable line about standards.

Across the room, the Metros were still grumbling.

This was offended fascination. Competitive despair and a kind of reluctant acknowledgment that Shane’s impossible, devastatingly specific standards had not been invented to insult them, but formed in the image of one very real man who existed, infuriatingly, somewhere down the halls in their locker room.

Mathieu slumped back against his stall. "I can’t believe the guy who called me mediocre is dating Ilya Rozanov."

Shane looked at him. "I can."

Hayden, wiping at his eyes, said, "Do you know what the worst part is?"

Marc, who clearly had not yet exhausted his capacity for emotional self-harm, said, "No, the worst part is that now I’m going to be watching every Montreal-Ottawa game wondering whether there’s, like, that subtext thing."

"There has always been subtext." Hayden said.

"There has not." Shane muttered.

Mathieu groaned. "Great. Fantastic. So every time he runs you into the boards–"

"He is trying to separate me from the puck." Shane said.

"And maybe thinking fond thoughts?" Drapeau suggested.

Shane looked at him with perfect contempt. "Nothing Rozanov does on the ice is fond."

"That’s sort of reassuring." Louis admitted.

"It should be completely reassuring." Shane said. "Because despite what several of you seem determined to still imply, I do not stop being competitive just because I’m in love."

The last two words slipped out before he could call them back.

The team froze up again.

Hayden’s face changed first from startled, to then weirdly soft.

Mathieu blinked. Marc’s mouth actually fell open. The others looked poleaxed, stunned and surprised.

Shane felt his heartbeat in his throat. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. 

For one long second, no one said anything.

Shane’s face could probably have cooked food. "None of you heard that."

"Oh, we heard it." Mitty whispered, scandalized to his core.

Mathieu sat down abruptly on the bench. "Oh my God."

The rookie clutched his water bottle to his chest. "That’s… kind of nice?"

Shane closed his eyes. "I am going to transfer."

"You can’t," Hayden said, still sounding unfairly gentle now. "You’re our gay disaster."

Shane opened his eyes, glaring just a little. "Hayden." 

"I mean that with profound affection."

"That somehow makes it worse." Shane sighed.

J.J., still visibly reeling, rubbed a hand over his hair. "Okay. Okay. I still do not like that it is Rozanov."

"No one asked you to." Shane said, his tone neutrally calm despite his brow raising.

"But," J.J. said, dropping his hand, "I do like that he makes you stupid."

Hayden pointed. "Yes."

"I am not stupid." Shane protested, insulted in equal measure.

"You just accidentally confessed your feelings to a room full of emotionally underqualified hockey players," Hayden said. "That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done."

Shane considered this and hated that it was vividly true.

Mathieu let out a long breath and shook his head. "All right. Fine. I still reserve the right to hate him on principle."

"That would be deeply normal of you." Shane said.

"And," Mathieu continued, "if he ever hurts you, we’re allowed to help bury the body."

Hayden put a hand over his heart. "See? Supportive."

Marc nodded. "Very supportive. Still furious. Still suspicious. But supportive. Not gonna stop me smashing him into the boards though."

Shane looked around the room then at the idiots, the peacocks, the catastrophically heterosexual overinvested weirdos who had made his life miserable and hilarious in equal measure and felt that same strange, reluctant warmth move through his chest.

"Noted." he said dryly.

Hayden grinned. "Aw. He’s touched."

"I am not."

"You are a little."

Shane rolled his eyes once more and grabbed his stick. "I’m leaving."

As he headed for the door, Mathieu called after him, "For the record, still hate the marks."

Marc added, "Yeah, that was a hostile act against team morale."

Hayden shouted, "I think they improved morale immensely."

Without turning around, Shane lifted a hand and gave them all the finger.

Which, given the laughter that followed him out, did rather prove the point.

Chapter 2: Bonus: The Nine Inch Issue

Chapter Notes

The reaction to this is astounding and I'm still wrapping my head around all the love it's gotten. My inbox is giving me anxiety but I am so genuinely warmed and grateful for the positive response and I will at some point address them all! 😭🥰🙈

It was noted in comments that a certain requirement of the blueprint was not referenced.
Upon editing I personally decided not to include it, simply due to the timing and revelation of it being Ilya that Shane is sleeping with. The Metros had to get real cool real quick with already stressful information and with how chaotic the fic was I felt it went too much into Crack territory.

However, I have taken snippets of what I initially wrote and have written a bonus scene below with where I feel it can be addressed and again, it really is a ridiculous piece of writing so you have been warned 😂

Once again, this is crack treated seriously but also not intended to be taken at all seriously in real life.

I wish the Metros were like this, though. Shane deserved so much better.

I also don't plan to write anything more from this prompt, it honestly was just a fun thing for me to approach in between a break of writing my more serious angsty WIPs. So I am sorry for those who asked for and wanted more, I don't see it happening feasibly.

But who knows, I'm a cusp led by two warring horoscopes so I will say for now, it is a no but do not take it as gospel. The wind might change, I might be drunk enough next match, the world is a mysterious thing.

Anyway I hope you enjoy this. ❤️

P.S - The length of a demi-baguette here in the UK is between 10/11 inches so.....cut off some of the tip.....you can see what Shane's dutifully riding like a champ so do with that information as you will. 👀

The thing Shane had not accounted for was that heterosexual male athletes, when presented with a concept that wounded them, did not always discard it.

Sometimes they kept it and turned it over in their minds like a splinter. Othertimes they obsessed over it so hard it achieved sentience.

For about four days after the Rozanov revelation, nobody mentioned the nine inches, it had seemingly gone unremarked from the initial guess work of who had been Shane's hickey wielding boyfriend.

Which should have reassured Shane.

Instead it made him deeply suspicious.

The Metros, as a collective, did not possess restraint. They possessed volume and fixation and the survival instincts of decorative birds. Silence, in that context, was not maturity.

Silence was incubation.

The first sign that something new and profoundly stupid was happening came two days later, when Shane walked back into the locker room after weights and caught Marc Beaulieu standing by his stall with a tape measure.

Marc jerked so hard at being caught that it snapped back into its casing with a violent zip.

Shane stopped dead as Marc went still.

For one long second, they stared at each other.

Then Shane said, very carefully, "Why do you have that."

Marc looked down at the tape measure as if he had never seen it before in his life.

"This?"

"Yes, Marc," Shane said. “The measuring device in your hand. That."

Marc cleared his throat. "I was measuring my stick."

Shane looked at him, then looked around, spotted the aforementioned 'stick' and then back to Marc.

"You're standing three feet away from your stick," he said flatly. "Which is over there."

Marc glanced toward the opposite bench, where his actual hockey stick was leaning in plain view.

There was another momentary pause.

"I was," Marc said with immense dignity, "estimating."

Shane narrowed his eyes. "You are lying so badly it is physically embarrassing."

Marc shoved the tape measure into the pocket of his hoodie like that would somehow improve matters. "You’ve become very suspicious lately."

"I wonder why." Shane deadpanned.

Marc’s face took on the pained look of a man caught in a lie too stupid to maintain but too humiliating to abandon. "It’s not what you think."

That, obviously, meant it was exactly what Shane thought.

Shane narrowed his own. "Marc."

Marc backed away at once. "I’m leaving."

"You are acting bizarre."

"And you're dating Rozanov," Marc shot back, affronted. "We’re all acting bizarre."

Then he turned and fled before Shane could pin him to the wall and shake answers out of him.

That should have been his warning.

The second warning though came on the ice.

Ilya had always been unbearable against Montreal.

That, unfortunately, was not new.

He had always been smug in that dark, polished way of his, too composed by half, too amused by his own ability to get under people’s skin. He played like a man who considered irritation an art form and Montreal his favourite canvas.

It had gotten worse now that Montreal knew the truth.

Worse now that Ottawa knew too and that both teams knew the other team knew, and the knowledge was being weaponised on both sides with all the grace of a bar fight in skates.

But this week there was something else in it.

A private sort of satisfaction and dark little gleam in Ilya’s eyes every time he passed Shane at the dot or clipped shoulders with him along the boards, like he had swallowed a secret and was enjoying the shape of it under his tongue.

It made Shane want to kill him on principle.

The problem was not that the Metros played badly. The problem was that they kept looking at Ilya.

At first Shane thought he was imagining it.

That it was only paranoia, only the sharp, self-conscious awareness he had been carrying ever since the Rozanov reveal in the room and Hayden’s resulting descent into arsonist-level matchmaking chaos.

Then Bouchard took a defensive-zone draw against Rozanov, lost it cleanly, and spent the next three seconds staring at Ilya’s hips with the distracted intensity of a man trying to solve long division.

The puck went the other way.

"Bouchard!" Coach barked from the bench.

Bouchard jolted belatedly back into the play.

Shane skated through center ice with a sick feeling already beginning in his stomach.

Then Comeau passed Ilya on a line change and visibly looked down.

Not a subtle glance or some natural drift of the eye. A full, doomed drop of attention before he snapped his gaze back up like he had remembered God, cameras, and personal dignity all at once existed.

Then Drapeau got pinned in the corner with him, shoved off hard, and came back to the bench looking visibly unwell.

Shane stared at him with venom. 

Drapeau stared straight ahead, jaw tight, mouthguard half out like he had just discovered a horrible truth about the universe and did not yet know how to carry on.

Then Mitty nearly missed a save because he was looking at Rozanov’s midsection.

Shane saw it.

Coach saw it.

Rozanov definitely saw it.

And, worst of all, Ottawa saw it too.

Shane caught Wyatt Hayes looking from Montreal’s bench to Ilya and back again with dawning, delighted horror. Troy Barrett’s entire face lit up with the kind of expression that meant he had understood something astronomically entertaining and was going to enjoy every second of it. Zane Boodram looked like a man trying very hard not to react because reacting would only make it worse.

Luca Haas, at least, seemed more focused on the game.

Or, more accurately, on Marc Beaulieu trying to staple him to the boards every chance he got.

That was its own problem.

Marc was playing left defense like his life’s purpose was to make rookies regret crossing the blue line. Twice in the first period Shane watched Luca come down the wing with bright, twitchy speed only for Marc to step up on him with all the gentleness of a collapsing wall.

The first hit was clean and hard.

The second was meaner.

The glass rattled and Ottawa’s bench shouted. Marc barely looked bothered.

"Stay on your skates, rook." Marc growled after the whistle, giving Luca one extra shove for the joy of it.

Luca shoved back at once, all flushed cheeks and offended pride. "Read a rule book, asshole," he snapped, glaring up at him through his visor.

Marc snorted like he’d been mildly entertained against his will. "Cry about it somewhere else."

Then he skated off before Luca could answer, already looking for his next act of recreational violence.

Shane filed it away as Typical Beaulieu Behaviour and went back to trying not to throttle the rest of his team.

Because J.J., who ordinarily chirped anything with a pulse, got caught in front of Ottawa’s net staring at Rozanov’s lower half so long he nearly took a puck to the throat.

Coach yelled at him.

J.J. still looked dazed.

The whole thing would have been funny if Shane were not trapped inside it.

As it was, it felt like trying to captain a team through a collective concussion while the object of their distraction skated around looking broad-shouldered and smug and insufferably aware.

At one point, during a break in play, Mitty leaned over on the bench and muttered to Bouchard, "Do you think maybe it just looks bigger because Russian equipment sits different?"

Shane nearly swallowed his mouthguard.

"What," he hissed, turning so fast he almost cricked his neck.

Mitty blinked at him through his mask, caught somewhere between shame and scientific curiosity. “I’m just saying maybe the cut is different.”

“Why,” Shane asked with terrible calm, “would you say that to me.”

Mitty seemed to realize, far too late, that there was no good answer.

Then, not thirty seconds later, Bouchard shrugged after having stared down Rozanov intently. "It could also be posture."

Shane wanted to kill them all.

Not metaphorically or in an exaggerated, fondly hostile way professional athletes said it about each other six hundred times a season.

But cold, hard, violently literally.

Coach Thieult caught Shane’s expression as they reset and pointed at the ice with the violent economy of a man hanging on by his last nerve. "Play hockey." he barked.

"I'm trying!" Shane snapped back.

"Try harder. Get your team in gear!"

Across the ice, Rozanov’s mouth briefly flittered into a smirk. 

Prick.

The game itself was a mess of hatred and hesitation. Systems were still systems, even if everyone had apparently become deranged.

But the timing was off.

Passes came a fraction behind. Reads lagged and players who had spent years learning each other’s tendencies were suddenly letting their attention snag in stupid places.

And because nobody on either side could say the actual thing without detonating the entire arrangement, the chirping came out harsher, stranger, bent around the truth without touching it and funnelled into pure stupid animalistic jock rivalry.

Midway through the second, Shane drove the net on a broken rush and got tied up with Ilya shoulder to shoulder in front. The contact was sharp, legal, irritatingly intimate in the way only hockey could make things.

"Go fuck yourself, Rozanov." Shane spat as they untangled.

Ilya did not even look at him. He just reset his stick and said, with maddening calm and shockingly quietly. "Why myself when I have a captain ready and willing."

Shane nearly tripped over the back of his own skate and Shane’s face burned hot under his visor.

He recovered the puck just in time to be flattened into the end boards by Zane, who muttered a perfectly neutral, “Sorry, hockey is hockey, no hard feelings” in a tone that said he was absolutely not sorry and had witnessed far too much already.

Late in the second, Drapeau ended up next to Shane at the bench and said, without preamble, "I don’t even know why I care."

Shane, still trying to regulate his breathing and his homicidal impulses, yanked his helmet strap straight and snapped, "Care about what?"

Drapeau looked at him, then at the ice, then down toward his own skates with the dejected air of a man defeated by forces beyond his understanding. "Doesn’t matter," he muttered. "Forget it."

Shane stared at him and he could feel a muscle beginning to spasm. What the fuck is going on?

Drapeau did not elaborate.

On the next shift, Marc lined Luca up again at the half wall and crushed him there with ugly, efficient force. The play stayed technically clean, which only made it more annoying.

Luca bounced off, furious. "That was late," he shot back, circling in on Marc with all the reckless indignation of youth.

Marc gave him a look of enormous contempt. "That was hockey."

"Yeah? Thought cavemen only played with rocks."

Marc barked a laugh at that, rough and disbelieving. "You got a death wish, kid?"

Luca’s chin lifted. "You gonna catch me first?"

Then the puck moved and Shane had to get back in the play before he could see the end of it, but he did catch Marc shoving off with a faint, crooked sneer and Luca going pink in the face in a way Shane generously assumed was anger.

The rivalry, at least, had survived intact even if it was worse.

Montreal hit harder every time Ilya touched the puck, as if physical violence might restore order that had been so disrupted by the mutual knowledge Hollander and Rozanov were fucking.

Ottawa answered every shove on Shane with equal enthusiasm. Nobody was normal or even pretending anymore. As if both sides were testing just how far they could push. 

By the third, the awkwardness had fermented into something vicious.

A borderline hook went uncalled on Beaulieu in the neutral zone and Troy yelled, "Read a fucking rule book!" from the far side.

Marc turned his head and shouted back, "Read a map, Ottawa!"

Wyatt slapped the top net hard enough to make his bottle wobble. "Stay in your fucking crease caveman!"

Marc grinned like a threat. "Worry about your own save percentage."

"Eat shit." Wyatt barked.

"After you."

Shane was almost grateful for the hatred. It was normal hatred. Clean, traditional, but no longer uncomplicated hatred. 

Then came the faceoff in late third.

They lined up at the centre, close enough that Shane could feel the heat of Ilya even through layers of gear, close enough that any casual observer would see only two rival captains preparing for a faceoff.

Ilya leaned in without looking at him.

"Your team is behaving strangely." he said.

Shane kept his gaze forward and his voice flat. "They are always behaving strangely. Even more now they know you’re fucking their captain." he whispered harshly.

"Hmm." Ilya shifted his stick, maddeningly calm. "No. This is different. They keep looking at me."

Shane said nothing, he didn't trust himself to say anything.

Beside him, Ilya waited exactly long enough for it to become menacing.

Then he lowered his voice into that dark, dangerous register that made Shane want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure and said, "More specifically, they keep looking at my dick."

Shane nearly fumbled his grip.

The puck dropped and Ilya won it clean because of course he did.

Shane lunged after the play already furious, red-faced and hearing a half-choked noise from somewhere behind him that sounded suspiciously like Bouchard dying of secondhand embarrassment.

It got worse from there.

J.J., still apparently unable to cope with the existence of either rivalry or private life, tied up with Ilya near the crease on the next sequence and started shoving him around with the offended intensity of a man who had become accidentally protective of his captain.

"Back the fuck off." J.J. snapped, stick jabbing at Ilya’s ribs.

Ilya barely moved. "Or what."

"Or I put you through the glass."

"You can try."

Then, because God clearly wanted Shane dead, J.J. lost his temper and growled, "Touch him or fuck with him again and I swear to God–"

Ilya turned his head at that, cool and implacable and he said softly. "I touch him whenever I like."

J.J. went incandescent as he cross-checked Ilya high enough to draw a whistle.

The rink erupted.

Ottawa shouted. Montreal shouted back. The linesmen came in fast and Wyatt looked like he might leave his crease out of pure emotional investment. Troy was yelling something obscene and inventive. Marc arrived at the edge of the scrum already furious whilst Drapeau and Comeau were swearing. Bouchard looked like he regretted all his life choices.

And Shane, because apparently humiliation had not yet reached its natural conclusion, skated straight into the middle of it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he snapped at JJ and then Ilya, squaring up for appearances and because he genuinely wanted to throttle him a little.

Ilya looked down at him with that infuriating stillness of his. "Many things."

"Obviously." Shane hissed. 

"You seem emotional.” Ilya replied, smirking. 

“Oh, go fuck yourself."

"There it is again."

Shane’s eyes flashed. "Rozanov!"

Marc shoved in on Shane’s left, glaring at Rozanov with the righteous anger of a man who had not signed up to be captain-adjacent in whatever this was. "You want to run your mouth," Marc barked, "do it without hiding behind a whistle."

Ilya turned his gaze on him. "Are you volunteering? Why not, you have been looking at me all night...."

Marc flushed furiously before snarling. "Happy to, assh–"

"Beaulieu," Shane snapped, more sharply than intended. "For once in your life, I want you be your grumpy stoic self and shut up. You've started more shit tonight than normal!"

That stunned Marc into silence for about a second and a half.

Then the officials dragged everyone apart before the whole thing could become a line brawl and Montreal got to kill off the penalty while Shane tried not to throw himself into the St. Lawrence.

On the Ottawa man advantage, Shane caught Wyatt saying something to Ilya, both of them looking deeply unwell with amusement.

Shane did not want to know. He especially did not want to know when Luca and Marc got tangled again in the final minutes, Luca chirping up at him with reckless baby-faced indignation.

"You ever smile, or is that medically ruled out?" Luca called as Marc leaned into him on the wall.

Marc looked down at him and sneered. "You ever shut up, or is that a rookie condition?"

Luca shoved off him with a glare. "Keep dreaming, grandpa."

Marc’s laugh was short and mean. "Cute."

Then he hammered the puck up the glass and nearly took Luca with it.

Shane only had time to register that Marc seemed oddly energized by the exchange before the play turned over and he had bigger problems.

Namely Ilya Rozanov bearing down on him with the puck and that smug, unreadable face.

The final minutes were ugly and fast and blessedly, finally, hockey again of hard shifts, bruising contact, snarled chirps, and the clean violent honesty of a rivalry that had survived far more than this.

Shane won one draw from Ilya by a hair and gave him a tiny, ugly grin for it.

Ilya clipped him shoulder to shoulder on the backcheck hard enough to repay the debt.

Shane shoved him once after the whistle because he could.

Ilya shoved back because of course he did.

The horn finally sounded before one of them committed fully to the fight and both teams retreated to their benches. 

 

---

 

By the time Shane got back to the room after media, his patience was hanging by threads.

He peeled off his jacket, hung it up in his stall, and went looking for a snack in the players' lounge before he committed murder.

The evening had already contained too much.

Too much hockey and Rozanov and absolutely too much of his own team acting like they had all simultaneously developed a niche and deeply invasive scientific interest in one rival captain's lower half and general presence.

He pushed open the lounge door and stopped dead.

Because inside were Mathieu, Marc, J.J., Mitty, Drapeau, and Comeau in various states of distress.

And on the table in front of them was a display that looked like the aftermath of a deeply fucked up home economics project.

A demi-baguette.

A cucumber.

A wrapped sausage from someone's forgotten post-practice meal.

Two bananas.

One protein shaker bottle.

A tube of tennis balls.

A rolling pin.

A tube of Pringles.

An aerosol deodorant can.

A Sharpie.

A printed-out article from some men's health website.

And, lying in the center like the heart of some ancient evil, the tape measure.

Everyone looked up and froze in various stages of guilt, embarrassment, horror and confusion.

Shane stared in silence as they stared back wordlessly. 

Then Shane said, with eerie calm, "I am going to close this door, and when I open it again, I expect to find literally anything else happening."

He closed the door.

Opened it again.

Unsurprisingly, they were all still there.

Shane shut the door behind him with exaggerated care and put both hands on his hips.

"Whatever this is," he said, nodding toward the mass of objects, "I'm telling you right now that I refuse to be involved, and after tonight you're lucky I'm not just kicking all your asses."

"It's not what it looks like." Marc said.

Shane looked at the table, then back to Marc with profound distrust.

"It looks like six grown men having a breakdown in front of household produce," he said flatly, "when they should be thinking what the fuck was that tonight?!"

J.J. rubbed both hands over his face. "Okay," he said, voice muffled, "in fairness, this is not the whole context."

Shane laughed once without humour. "What possible context," he asked, "could improve this."

Comeau pointed at the baguette. "Would you class this as a standard regulation of girth."

Shane recoiled. "No. Absolutely not!"

"Please," Mitty said quietly, which somehow made it worse.

Shane looked from face to face in disbelief. "You cannot be serious?"

"Oh, we're serious," Marc said grimly. "That's the problem."

"There's been a lot of psychological damage," J.J. added.

"To whom?" Shane demanded.

Drapeau gestured helplessly at the table. "To the room."

"The room," Shane repeated, appalled, "has been doing this to itself."

"You started it," Mathieu accused.

Shane swung toward him. "How?"

Mathieu looked genuinely affronted by the question. "You made one statement that detonated six men's sense of scale."

Shane stared hard. "Your sense of scale?"

"Yes," Marc snapped. "Scale. Proportion. Geometry. Masculinity. All of it."

Mitty nodded gravely. "There are angles involved."

"Why," Shane asked, "are angles involved."

Comeau pointed anxiously at the printout. "Actually, angle can affect perceived–"

Shane held up one hand. "Finish that sentence and I will feed you the baguette sideways."

Comeau shut his mouth.

Drapeau, who at least had the dignity to look ashamed, said, "We need clarification."

"On what?"

The room went weirdly quiet and no one seemed willing to be first.

Finally J.J., with a resigned and haunted expression of a man about to ask a question that would follow him into the grave, said, "Was that number bullshit?"

Shane raised a brow, though a sinking feeling had already started in his stomach. "What number?"

Every single one of them looked at him with immediate annoyance.

"Your number requirement," Drapeau spat.

Shane closed his eyes briefly. "The nine inches?"

"Yes," Mathieu said. "The nine inches."

"No one has stopped thinking about it," Marc added darkly.

"That," Shane said, "is not my problem."

"It became our problem when you said it with confidence."

"I said it to wound you!"

"Well," J.J. said, voice pitching high with stress, "mission accomplished."

Shane looked at the table again then at their faces and it hit him with sickening clarity.

The tape measure, the comments and stares. Bouchard at the draw. Mitty in net. J.J. looking dazed in front of Ottawa's crease. Drapeau coming off the corner like he'd been hit by revelation instead of a body-check.

"Oh my God," Shane said.

Nobody moved, just remained looking dejected.

Shane motioned to all of them. "You're all spiralling over Rozanov's dick?"

No one answered, which was answer enough.

Marc then pointed back at him. "That's unfair saying it like that. You introduced the concept."

"I did not invite follow-up research."

"Follow-up research?" J.J. repeated. "Hollzy, I nearly got a puck to the throat tonight because I looked down for one second and my brain left my body."

"You looked down for way more than one second," Shane snapped. "Coach yelled at you."

J.J. looked wounded. "Your tone seems very pointed right now."

"Oh? Pointed? Let's see, Bouchard lost an entire faceoff because he was too busy doing geometry at center ice," Shane said, rounding on him next. "Mitty nearly let one in. Drapeau came off one board battle looking like he'd seen the afterlife. Rozanov leaned over at the centre and told me you were all looking at his dick."

Mathieu made a strangled noise as Mitty slapped both hands over his face.

Comeau whispered, "Oh no."

Marc looked physically ill. "He said that out loud?"

"Yes," Shane said with deadly calm. "To me, while I was trapped beside him. Do you have any idea how close I came to murdering all of you with my own stick?!"

"There was context," Drapeau muttered.

Shane turned on him. "There was not enough context in the universe to justify the way you lot behaved tonight."

Comeau gestured weakly at the table. "Do you know what you've done to morale?"

Shane barked a disbelieving laugh. "I'm sorry, what I've done to morale?"

"Yes. You. Morale," J.J. said, increasingly impassioned. "You cannot tell a room full of professional athletes that our arch nemesis, who is also your rival boyfriend, is the blueprint and then attach a number to it."

"I did not attach a number to him specifically," Shane muttered.

"You absolutely did," Marc protested.

Shane folded his arms. "I did not."

Mitty leaned forward. "Okay, but if the blueprint was Rozanov, and the blueprint included nine inches, then–"

"No," Shane said immediately.

"Yes," six men said in unison.

He glared at them as they stared back with the tragic intensity of men seeking truth in a barbaric world.

Drapeau broke first. "We just need to know if we should all be this upset."

"That," Shane said, "is not a normal sentence."

"Nothing about the last two weeks has been normal," Marc shot back. "Do you know how many times Mathieu has asked me whether length works differently when it's gay sex?"

Mathieu turned bright red. "I asked once."

"Three times," J.J. corrected.

"And none of you thought," Shane said, scandalised, "to maybe not do this?"

"We tried," Comeau said. "But then someone said Rozanov slept with half the women in two countries and now nobody knows what's statistically reasonable anymore."

"That is not how statistics work," Shane said.

"Then explain how they work!" Mathieu cried.

Shane made a helpless gesture at the ceiling, as if appealing directly to God. "Why is this my life."

Marc picked up the dry-erase marker and tapped it against the table. "We also have follow-up questions."

"There should not be follow-up questions."

"There are," J.J. said grimly. "Several."

Mathieu began counting on his fingers. "Does it all fit?"

Shane choked. "Mathieu."

"What object of girth is also in the equation?" Drapeau asked over him, pointing to the array of items.

Shane made an inhuman noise.

"Does length work differently when it's gay sex?" Comeau added.

"For fuck's sake," Shane exploded. "It's just sex."

Then Marc said, almost plaintively, "That doesn't answer anything."

"It answers everything," Shane snapped. "You're just too thick to receive wisdom."

Mitty frowned. "But is there, like, a conversion chart?"

"A what?"

"A conversion chart," Mitty repeated, earnest to the point of madness. "For gay sex versus straight sex."

Shane stared at him for several seconds.

Mitty went pink. "No, I don't mean–"

"You absolutely mean something insane."

J.J. raised one hand. "Is it more about technique?"

"Yes," Shane said immediately. "Good. Great. Technique matters. Skill matters. Communication matters. Everyone hold hands with that concept and walk away from the table."

"But," Mathieu said, leaning forward intensely, "can skill overcome a four-inch deficit?"

Shane's soul briefly left his body.

Marc nodded like this was a board meeting. "That is actually one of our key questions."

"One of your key questions," Shane repeated faintly.

"Yes."

"Wonderful. Tremendous. I'm thrilled to be leading this franchise."

Drapeau tapped the Sharpie against the table. "Also, when you said minimum, did you mean that literally? Like, is eight and three-quarters an automatic disqualification?"

Shane looked at him in disbelief.

Comeau frowned. "Are we measuring from the base?"

"Do not answer that," Marc snapped towards Shane before looking at Gilbert Comeau. "We agreed base."

"I didn't agree base," J.J. said.

"Everyone agrees base," Mathieu said. "That's standard."

"Standard according to who?" Comeau demanded.

"The internet."

"The internet is full of lies."

"The internet is where facts live!" Mathieu stated firmly. 

Shane pointed at him. "That sentence is why none of you should be allowed unsupervised access to Google."

Mitty, still visibly anxious, said, "Does curve count?"

Shane felt his eye spasm begin once more. "Curve...."

"Like, if someone has a curve, do you measure along the curve or straight line?" Mitty asked.

The room kicked off loudly.

"Along the curve."

"No, straight line."

"That's cheating."

"It's not cheating if that's the route."

"What route?"

"The route of the dick!"

"Don't say route, jeez."

"I'm just saying if there's a curve, the distance travelled–"

Shane slapped both hands onto the table.

Everything stopped, apart from the cucumber, which rolled slightly.

Everyone watched it roll and Shane briefly closed his eyes, inhaled, exhaled, prayed for strength and reopened them. 

"I am going to say this once," he said. "The human body is not a hiking trail."

Then J.J. whispered, "That actually helps."

"It does not help," Shane said. "It was not meant to help. It was meant to shame you."

Mathieu dragged a scrap of paper out of his pocket and shoved it across the table.

Shane looked down.

It was, unmistakably, a handwritten list of initials and measurements on the back of a torn-out lads' magazine page.

The front of the page, partially visible beneath the writing, featured a woman in a bikini leaning against a sports car with the dead-eyed expression of someone who deserved better than this.

Across the back, in a mixture of Sharpie, blue pen, and what appeared to be panic, was a chart.

MBo - soft L: 3.4 / hard L: 5.7 / girth: 4.9 / circumference: 4.9?
note: good recovery time??

MBe - soft L: 4.1 / hard L: 6.3 / girth: 5.2 / circumference: 5.1 /
note: respectable? check if angle helps

JJ.B - soft L: 3.9 / hard L: 6.6 / girth: 5.0 / circumference: same as girth??? /
note: confidence high until Rozanov!!!!

SM - soft L: 3.2 / hard L: 5.5 / girth: 4.7 / circumference: 4.7 /
note: may have measured cold

PD - soft L: 3.9 / hard L: 5.3 / girth: 5.0 / circumference: 5.0 /
note: possibly above average??

GC - soft L: 3.5 / hard L: 5.4 / girth: 4.8 / circumference: 4.8 /
note: banana inaccurate

For a moment, Shane could not speak.

He was fairly certain he had suffered some kind of stroke as his vision went briefly white around the edges.

He looked up slowly as every single one of them looked back with terrible, doomed hope.

"No," Shane said.

Marc sat up straighter. "Before you say anything–"

"No."

"We anonymized it."

"You put initials," Shane said. "Your names are Mathieu Bouchard, Marc Beaulieu, J.J. Boiziau, Sorren Miitka, Patrice Drapeau, and Gilbert Comeau."

Mathieu frowned. "Initials are still technically anonymous."

"They are not anonymous if everyone in the room knows who MBo is."

"Could be anyone," Mathieu said bravely.

"You wrote good recovery time next to yours," Shane muttered, already feeling slightly ill now he had that information.

Mathieu went red. "That is relevant information."

Drapeau pointed at the chart. "Also, before you mock us, circumference and girth are apparently the same thing, which none of us knew at the time."

"You made two columns for the same measurement?" Shane asked, wondering if he should order a collective mandatory IQ test.

"We weren't sure," Marc said lamely.

"You are grown men."

"Girth sounds more sexual," Comeau said.

"Circumference sounds more medical," Mitty added.

"So we included both," Marc finished, as if this were reasonable.

Shane looked at the ceiling.

God did not intervene. Not even a damned bolt of lightening to put him out of his misery. 

"Why," he asked slowly, "does one note say banana inaccurate?"

Comeau looked pained. "Because the banana was misleading."

"It had curve," Mitty supplied.

"I told you curve was relevant," J.J. muttered.

"The banana," Shane said, voice trembling with the strain of not screaming, "does not matter."

"It mattered at the time," Comeau said.

Marc tapped the magazine page. "We need validation."

Shane stared in disbelief. "You need therapy."

"We need to know we're normal," Mathieu corrected.

"And whether we've been betrayed by scale," J.J. said.

"You have not been betrayed by scale."

"Then by Rozanov."

Shane pointed at him. "Do not make his dick your own apparent failing."

Marc looked scandalized. "It feels like one."

J.J. flung both hands out. "He literally said, 'Why myself when I have a captain ready and willing.' What the fuck were we meant to do with that."

"Play hockey," Shane deadpanned.

"We tried," Drapeau said.

"You absolutely did not."

"I got hit with existential dread in the corner," Drapeau replied. "That's not the same as not trying."

Mitty lifted a finger. "I would also like it noted that I did still make the save."

"You nearly didn't," Shane said.

"But I did."

"By accident," Marc muttered.

Underneath all the bravado, ridiculousness, and the homoerotic locker-room catastrophe of it, was something almost painfully earnest.

Six deeply rattled men whose worldview had apparently been cracked open by the possibility that one rival captain might be hung like a Greek god.

Marc pushed the paper a little closer. "From someone in the gay community," he said, with dignity hanging by a thread, "we would appreciate a professional opinion."

"A professional opinion," Shane repeated.

"No one else can settle this," J.J. said.

"You want me," Shane said incredulously, "to evaluate your self-reported dick measurements."

When nobody contradicted him, he covered his face with both hands.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was Mathieu anxiously crinkling the wrapper off the sausage.

When Shane dropped his hands, six faces were still staring at him with doomed hope.

Against all reason, a flicker of affection went through him.

Because this was mortifying, horrific, wholly inappropriate and somehow sincere.

"You are all genuinely stressing this much?" he asked, tone gentler now, unwillingly.

"Yes," said everyone except Marc, who muttered, "I hate that yes is the answer."

Shane exhaled through his nose. "Fine."

The boys straightened as if his reluctant agreement had revived their souls.

"Fine," he repeated. "You do not ask me for specifics or comparisons" - there was a chorus of groans - "you also do not ask me to confirm or deny what Rozanov actually has."

They all sat in guilty silence.

Shane's eyes narrowed. "That was going to be the next question, wasn't it?"

"No," Mathieu said.

"Yes," Marc said at the same time.

Shane pointed at Marc. "At least your shame has integrity."

Marc nodded. "Thank you."

"That was not a compliment."

"I'll take it."

"You do not say the phrase regulation girth again in my presence," Shane added, pointing at Comeau, who looked suitably chastened.

"You do not create any more charts."

J.J. opened his mouth, then visibly thought better of it.

"You do not ask whether balls count toward the final grade."

Mitty looked disappointed.

Shane stared at him disappointedly. "I knew it."

Mitty looked wounded. "I didn't say anything."

"You had the face of a man about to ask about testicles as extra credit."

Drapeau whispered, "We did discuss package as a concept."

Shane exhaled deeply. "Of course you did."

Marc shoved the paper into Shane's hand before he could rethink any of this.

Shane looked down at the list.

Then up again.

Then down.

"This whole thing is disgusting, by the way," he said automatically.

"That is not the feedback we need."

Shane skimmed the numbers, jaw tightening with the effort of maintaining anything resembling professionalism.

The chart somehow got worse the longer he looked at it.

"I hate you all for making me do this," he said quietly.

"We know," J.J. said.

"No, you don't. You cannot possibly know the depth of it."

Marc leaned forward. "But are we normal."

Shane let the silence stretch just long enough to punish them. Objectively, none of them were bad. In fact, and Shane would go to the grave rather than give one or two of them the satisfaction, they were not measuring average either. 

But Shane was a bitch and he was still pissed off, so he sighed dejectedly and in suffering before rolling his eyes. 

"You are all within a perfectly average to above-average normal range."

J.J. sagged with so much relief he nearly slid off his chair. "Thank Christ."

Mathieu dropped his face into his hands. "Oh my God."

Drapeau leaned back and stared at the ceiling like he had just survived a diagnosis.

Marc closed his eyes. "Respectable?"

Shane glared at him. "Do not fish."

"Not fishing," Marc said quickly. "Just clarifying."

"You are normal," Shane said. "That is all you are getting from me."

"Normal good or normal neutral?"

"Marc," he warned.

"Right," Marc said. "Shutting up."

"Listen," Shane said, rubbing two fingers against his temple like he could manually massage the memory of this conversation out of his brain. "Length and size do not matter as much as you think they do."

Six grown men stared at him with rapt attention.

"What matters," Shane continued, "is skill. Confidence. Communication. Paying attention to your partner. Not treating sex like a competitive combine. Not turning your genitals into a spreadsheet. Being normal about sex matters, though none of you seem especially gifted there."

Comeau nodded slowly. "So it's not like hockey stats."

"No."

"But there are still performance metrics."

"Comeau."

"I'm trying to learn," he insisted.

"You are trying to make me regret literacy."

Mitty frowned. "So a guy could be, like, average but excellent."

"Yes," Shane said. "Obviously."

The room absorbed this with the intensity of monks receiving divine knowledge.

Marc snatched the paper back and stared at it like it had personally absolved him.

"So," J.J. said carefully, "hypothetically, someone could be normal neutral but perform normal good."

Shane glared at him.

J.J. shifted. "I'm using the language."

"That was Marc's language, and it was already stupid."

Mathieu leaned forward, distress renewed. "But your opinion does matter."

"No," Shane said immediately. "It really does not."

They all looked offended by that.

Which was, somehow, worse.

"You're our captain," Drapeau said.

"And?"

"And gay," Comeau added, then immediately winced. "Not like– as a job. I just mean–"

"As a credential?" Shane supplied.

Comeau looked pained. "I heard it as soon as I said it."

"Good." Shane said firmly.

Marc gestured with the chart. "You're the only person here with relevant external perspective."

"External perspective?" Shane repeated. "This is not a market research group."

"But you know things," Mathieu said.

"I know many things," Shane said. "Most of them against my will."

He exhaled through his nose, then pointed at the cursed paper in Marc's hand. "My opinion, however validating, should not matter this much to any of you, because these are not the dicks I am riding."

The silence that followed was diabolical.

Then Mathieu made a small dying sound.

Comeau physically recoiled, no doubt seeing a visual.

J.J. stared at the table.

Marc looked simultaneously enlightened and traumatized.

Mitty whispered, "Jesus."

"Yes," Shane said. "Exactly. Sit with that."

Drapeau, after a moment, said, "That was very direct."

"I am under extreme psychological duress."

Marc cleared his throat. "Okay, but–"

"No."

"I'm just saying–"

"Just stop."

"What you prefer–"

"What I prefer," Shane cut in, "is different from what other people prefer. That is how attraction works. I am one person. One very tired, very harassed person who came in here for a snack and instead found six men conducting a phallic science fair."

"It wasn't a science fair," Comeau muttered.

"You have a control cucumber."

Comeau shut his mouth.

Shane pointed at the chart again. "My preferences are not universal law. Rozanov being my type does not mean every person on earth is wandering around with a nine-inch minimum requirement and a fondness for arrogant yet beautiful Russian assholes."

Marc considered that. "That would be a niche market."

"It is my niche market," Shane snapped. "Stay out of it."

Mathieu raised a hand slowly.

Shane sighed painfully. "What."

"So whichever poor souls actually manage to tolerate us long enough to sleep with us–"

"Heroic poor souls," Shane muttered.

"–they probably wouldn't be dissatisfied?"

Shane glanced at him, then at the others.

And God help him, they were genuinely waiting.

His irritation softened at the edges, unwillingly.

"No," he said, less sharply. "They most likely would not be dissatisfied. Assuming you listen, communicate, don't make it weird, and don't ask them to fill out a post-game evaluation card."

J.J. opened his mouth.

"Do not say performance metrics again."

J.J. closed his mouth.

"Also," Shane added, because apparently he was doing this now, "enthusiasm goes a long way. So does not being selfish. So does hygiene. And knowing where the clitoris is, for those of you still sleeping with women, which after this conversation is massively up for debate."

There was a pause.

Marc frowned. "We know where it is."

Shane looked around the table and the silence became damning.

Marc's face changed. "Most of us know where it is."

Drapeau looked offended. "I know where it is, Freya never complains."

"Congratulations," Shane said. "A feminist landmark."

Comeau leaned toward J.J. and whispered, "Do we need another chart?"

"No," Shane barked.

Everyone jumped.

"No more charts," Shane said. "No more measuring or produce-based comparison. No more treating sex like scouting analytics. You are normal. You are fine and you are probably, against all odds, capable of satisfying another human being."

Mathieu sighed with actual relief.

"Probably," Shane repeated, because he was still Shane and stress made him mean. "Do not make me overpromise."

Marc nodded gravely. "That's fair."

"It is generous."

"It is," J.J. agreed.

Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. "I hate that this is helping."

"It is helping," Mitty said quietly.

That, annoyingly, made Shane's chest loosen another fraction.

"Good," he said. "Wonderful. I have saved morale. Burn that immediately."

Marc clutched the paper. "It has our journey on it."

"Your journey ends in fire."

Mathieu frowned at the table. "But how is Rozanov not just walking around flopping it out for all to see, though. If I were him, I'd be showing everyone."

Shane fixed him with a look. "That sentence alone should bar you from speaking for the rest of the day."

"He has the confidence," Marc said, almost resentfully. "That's what bothers me."

"What bothers me," Shane said, "is that this is apparently still happening."

"No, but Rozanov moves like he knows," J.J. said.

Shane blinked owlishly. "What."

J.J. gestured vaguely, searching for the words. "Like, on the ice. In life. In general. He has dick-confidence."

"Dick-confidence," Shane repeated, appalled.

"It's a thing."

"It is not a thing."

"It is absolutely a thing," Marc said. "You can tell."

"I am begging you all to stop, please."

Mitty squinted. "So the real issue is just that he's obnoxious."

"Yes," Shane said. "That has always been the issue."

The room went quiet in a different way then. Embarrassed, but lighter.

Comeau folded his arms. "This doesn't make us gay, right?"

Shane looked at him, then at the others, suddenly a little wary again now that the panic had burned off and left them with whatever this was.

And because for all their stupidity, for all the stress and the invasive nonsense and the absolute psychodrama of the last month, they were asking sincerely now.

"No," he said, gentler than before. "Being weird about one specific rival's dick does not automatically make you gay."

A collective breath went out around the table.

"But," Shane added, and they all looked back at him, "curiosity doesn't contaminate you. Thinking another man is attractive doesn't make you less of anything. Neither does wondering or trying something. Even if you decide you never want to try anything. There is no team vote. There is no category you get shoved into against your will. Labels are yours. Or they're not. You get to figure that out yourself."

Marc looked down at the table. Mathieu swallowed. J.J. rubbed a hand over his jaw.

They were all very quiet now.

Maybe Shane should start using LGBTQ TED Talks any time he wanted peace.

"And if one of you does need to talk about it," Shane added, "you can come to me. Respectfully and privately. Without props."

Drapeau looked at the cucumber.

"Yes," Shane said sharply. "That was directed at the cucumber."

Mathieu nodded awkwardly. "Okay."

J.J. cleared his throat. "That was actually... helpful."

"Devastating that it took a dick audit to get here," Shane muttered.

Marc winced. "Can we not call it that."

"No. That's what it was. A dick audit. A dick census. Congratulations, you invented the worst possible team-building exercise."

Comeau rubbed the back of his neck. "For what it's worth, sorry. Again. For the ignorant stuff."

Shane's gaze settled on him warily.

Comeau shifted. "We're trying. Badly."

"Catastrophically," Shane said.

"Yeah," Comeau admitted. "That."

For a second, the room went quiet in a way that wasn't awkward exactly. Just exposed brutally.

Six grown men, one cursed chart, a kitchen cupboard's worth of phallic stand-ins and all of them suddenly looking like they had stumbled into sincerity without protective equipment.

Shane exhaled through his nose.

"Now," he said, straightening and pointing around the room like a judge passing sentence, "pack up your produce, burn that list, delete any search history that would make your mothers cry and for the love of God and hockey, pleaae stop thinking about my boyfriend's dick."

Mathieu, already reaching for the baguette, muttered, “That’s going to take time.”

Shane picked up the tape measure and threw it at his chest.

“Start now.”

Marc caught it on the rebound and, in a final act of self-destruction, looked down at it.

Shane saw him look.

Marc saw Shane see him.

There was one terrible, awkward moment.

"Marc," Shane said, tone stern.

Marc very slowly set the tape measure on the table.

"Sorry," he whispered.

Shane nodded, turned, and walked out.

Behind him, he heard J.J. say, "Okay, but seriously, who brought the Pringles?"

Then Comeau, deeply wounded, said, "It was for the possible Rozanov girth comparison."

Shane did not stop walking, he did, however, shout back, "I heard that."

The lounge went silent, before Mathieu said, "Vault?"

And Marc, sounding like a man about to fake his own death, replied, "Vault."

Shane shook his head, smiling despite himself, and got three steps down the hall before he stopped.

Shane should just keep walking, but a part of him now out and open to his team felt a little bit of responsibility towards ensuring all of them were comfortable. 

So he turned back.

The lounge door was still half-open. Inside, the others were starting to gather up produce and muttering amongst themselves.

"Beaulieu." Shane said.

Marc looked up at once, wary. "What?"

The others glanced between them.

Shane jerked his head toward the corridor. "A word."

That got immediate noise and smirks. 

"Ohhh," Mathieu said, grinning. 

"Beau's in trouuuuuuuuble." chorused Comeau. 

"Shut up," Shane and Marc said in unison.

Marc followed him out anyway, pulling the door to with a suspicious amount of care.

For a second they just stood there in the quieter stretch of hall, the muffled sound of the lounge behind them, the distant hum of the arena settling after the game.

Marc folded his arms. "If this is about the tape measure, I already accepted my shame."

"It isn't." Shane said casually. 

Marc eyed him. "The cucumber?"

"It also isn't the cucumber."

Marc looked briefly relieved, then immediately suspicious again. "Okay."

Shane leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked at him for a moment.

Marc, for all his gruffness and recreational violence and general emotional constipatedness, looked unsettled in a way Shane didn't see often. Still wound from the game and carrying too much energy under the skin. Defensive already, like he knew something was coming and hated that he might not be ready for it.

So Shane kept his voice level.

"What I said in there," he said, "about coming to me privately if something's on your mind. I meant it."

Marc frowned. "Right."

"Right," Shane echoed. "And I'm not asking you for answers. I'm not assuming anything and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth."

Marc's shoulders eased by maybe half an inch.

Then he squinted at Shane and said, "For the record, Hollzy, I don't give a shit that you're gay if that is what this is...."

Shane sighed. "How romantic."

Marc ignored that. "Seriously. Stick your dick where you want. Or take dick. That's your business."

"Beautiful," Shane said dryly. "I'm getting that framed."

"I'm being serious," Marc muttered. "If you weren't doing team shit much because of that, then that's stupid. You didn't have to worry. We were... taken aback, we should've been more....normal I know."

Shane's expression shifted, just slightly. "I know."

Marc shrugged one shoulder, suddenly awkward with the fact that he'd apparently said something sincere. "Good. Because we respect your sexuality."

Shane snorted. "My sexuality?"

"Yes," Marc said flatly. "Not your taste."

"Ah, there it is, the insult."

"You want to be gay, be gay. Fine. Great. Mazel tov. But Rozanov?"

Shane folded his arms. "He's really upsetting to you, huh."

"He's an asshole," Marc said immediately.

"You're an asshole." Shane shot back 

"Yeah, but I'm our asshole."

That got a laugh out of Shane before he could stop it.

Marc saw it and looked grimly satisfied with himself. "Exactly."

Shane tipped his head. "So what's your position here, exactly. Full support for my right to be into men, strong objection to my field choices?"

Marc glared at him. "Someone from our own fold would've been better."

Shane raised an eyebrow. "Like whom? You?"

Marc recoiled. "Fuck off."

Shane couldn't help but grin.

"I meant Hayden," Marc said, affronted. "Seeing as you have a thing for annoying little rats."

Shane barked a laugh. "That is slanderous to both me and Hayden."

Marc gave him a deeply unimpressed look. "You literally date Rozanov." Marc sniffed, then added darkly, "At least if it was one of ours, I wouldn't have to watch you two skate around doing whatever the fuck that was tonight."

Shane looked amused. "Playing hockey?"

"No," Marc said. "That other thing. The freaky telepathic rile each other up foreplay thing."

"That was pretty funny," Shane admitted. "But some of it, despite the foreplay was genuine professional hatred.

Marc stared at him. "Either way, you are a traitor to this franchise and I say that with love."

"I've been told and I don't care." Shane replied, with a shrug. 

A minute passed as the sarcasm settled. The corridor went quieter again as Shane went on, more gently, "But you were playing Luca Haas like he personally offended your bloodline tonight."

Marc gave him a flat look. "He's Ottawa." as if that was the only sane reason. 

"Yes," Shane said dryly. "I have, against all odds, noticed the jerseys."

Marc snorted despite himself, then shut it down.

Shane watched him. "Maybe that's all it is. Maybe he's just a mouthy rookie who gets under your skin. Entirely possible and frankly, very likely. We were all rookies at somepoint. But you do have the temperament of a man banned from several petting zoos."

Marc smirked just a little. 

"But," Shane added, softer now, "if it's not only that... if you're confused, or curious, or just noticing something and you don't know what to do with it, I would rather you talk to me than try to body-check your way through a personal revelation."

Marc stared at him quietly, for once there was no quick answer or gruff deflection. Then Marc dragged a hand over the back of his neck and looked down the hall instead of at Shane.

"I wasn't trying to hurt him," he muttered.

Shane kept his face neutral. "I know."

Marc's jaw flexed. "He kept smiling at me."

That did nearly get a laugh out of Shane but he swallowed it with dignity.

"Yes," he said. "Haas does have the habit of being too happy, how dare he, right?"

Marc chuckled before he could stop himself, then looked faintly betrayed by the sound.

Shane's tone stayed easy. "You don't have to explain it to me tonight."

"I'm not–"

"I know," Shane cut in. "You're not doing anything. You're not saying anything. You're not signing up for a label and a parade float. I'm aware."

Marc looked over at him then, some of the tension in his face shifting into reluctant understanding.

Shane shrugged one shoulder. "I'm just saying if you do want to talk, you can. No judgment.

Marc absorbed that in silence.

Behind the lounge door, someone dropped something. There was a muffled curse. Then what sounded suspiciously like Comeau saying, "No, keep the cucumber separate, we might need that for future comparison–"

Marc closed his eyes briefly. "Can't believe how much he got into our head."

"He tends to do that, did that to me for a long time."

Marc gave him a dark look. "I'm not you."

"No," Shane agreed airily. "You couldn't take nine inches."

That startled a real laugh out of him. "Fucking hell, bro." 

When it faded, Shane nodded once toward the lounge. "Go on, save them from themselves, bro."

Marc hesitated. "And this–?"

"Stays here," Shane said. "Unless you want otherwise."

Marc studied him for a second, then nodded once. "Okay."

"Okay."

Marc turned to go and Shane bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to hurt.

"Good night, Marc. Swiss dreams– apologies, I meant sweet."

Marc flipped him off over his shoulder and went back into the lounge.

Shane waited until the door shut behind him before he let himself grin properly. 

Then he went to find Hayden, not that Hayden would help.

Hayden would absolutely not help.

But someone else deserved to suffer with him.

Chapter 3: The Benchmark of Psychological Hockey Warfare – Teaser

Chapter Notes

You asked, I am delivering. I'm just not sure when I'll be finished nor have a set posting date. I'm aiming to have completed fics before I post more into the Metros & Centaurs Assemble series as I already have enough WIP's to fret about.

As a palette cleanser and as a thank you for such amazing support and love you've given me I have posted below a teaser (okay, more like short novel length teaser) of some of the follow up fic because I DO NOT have a set date for publishing.

This is also not fully edited so there may be some mistakes!

(PLEASE NOTE THE THEME OF CRACK IS PREVAILANT IN THIS SERIES!!)

I decided to combine The Benchmark and Psychological Hockey Warfare, two fics in the planned series together as they both take place at the same time so welcome to this Frankenstein crack fest.

Expect more insanity, dumb supportive Metros, interfranchise prank wars, a sexually compromised Shane and more phallic chaos.

Please for the love of my sanity, do not read this if eating, drinking working, at the gym, are asthmatic without the inhaler nearby or doing something which could cause a hazard.
And if your household and pets are sleeping? Save it until morning. Because I've caused too many near misses that I am considering putting a disclaimer in the next fic voiding any responsibility.

Anyway, enjoy, laugh, cry. And as always, don't like? Don't read 😈🩷🩷

P.S – Please don't glitterbomb or rig devices with glitter. This is in fact quite illegal in some countries and also dangerous. We get away with it here because A) Crack and B) Fiction but please DO. NOT. DO. THIS. Thank you!

 

 

---

Teaser 1

 

Two hours before Montreal's home game against Buffalo, a young catering assistant wheeled two silver trays into the Metros' locker room and unknowingly changed the geopolitical landscape of professional hockey.

Shane was seated at his stall with a tablet balanced against one knee, reviewing Buffalo's penalty-kill formation for the third time when the smell reached him.

Fresh bread. Roast beef. Ham. Mustard. Warm cheese.

His stomach responded before his brain did.

Around the room, heads rose with the eerie synchronisation of wolves detecting blood.

The catering assistant looked uncertainly at the collection of professional athletes staring at him. "Delivery for the Montreal Metros," he announced, checking the slip clipped to the handle of his trolley. "It's prepaid."

Marc lifted the lid, his eyes widening as twenty-four demi-baguettes lay in neat rows across the two silver trays, each generously filled, individually wrapped and close enough in length and proportion to awaken a trauma the room had only recently begun pretending it had survived.

For one strange second, nobody understood.

They saw bread. Warm, fragrant, beautifully crisp bread, split down the middle and packed with folds of roast beef, smoked turkey, ham, cheese and mustard. They saw free food arriving two hours before puck drop, during the dangerous window when professional athletes could be persuaded to trust almost anything containing sufficient protein.

Then Shane looked up and his gaze landed on the demi-baguettes. Something small and cold walked two fingers down his spine.

"Oh no," he murmured. No one heard him over the immediate commotion.

Mathieu was on his feet in an instant and selected a roast beef sandwich from the first tray with both hands, lifting it horizontally in front of himself.

The baguette extended several inches beyond either side of his grip.

Hayden's eyes travelled to it, then to Shane and then back to the sandwich, and his expression changed. "From who?" Hayden asked slowly, remaining seated as Mathieu and Gilbert descended upon the first tray.

Marc, already suspicious, tracked Hayden, his own face tightening as he began putting two and two together.

The assistant shrugged, still unaware he was standing at the fault line of an imminent disaster. "I just deliver it."

"Could be management," J.J. suggested, following them towards the food with no evidence of caution or self-preservation. He plucked out a smoked turkey demi-baguette and held it upright while checking the label, one hand wrapped around its middle.

"Management usually sends labelled nutrition," Mitty said, hanging his goalie pads beside his stall before approaching with considerably less speed and considerably more suspicion. "Not mystery sandwiches."

"Maybe Buffalo sent it as a peace offering," Gilbert suggested, gripping one by the end and raising it to inspect the filling.

Mathieu had already taken a few bites.

Marc stared down at the immaculate rows of demi-baguettes, all approximately the same length, thick through the middle and positioned side by side with a precision that could no longer be dismissed as innocent once one possessed the necessary cursed context.

He picked one up and Shane watched anxiously as revelation filled his eyes.

Marc looked again at the sandwich in Mathieu's hands, to Gilbert and then J.J.

Mathieu was still holding it in front of his mouth, one end bitten away, mustard visible along the seam.

Marc's face went white. "Drop that."

Mathieu blinked at him while chewing. "What?"

"Just drop it," Marc said, wincing.

"Why?"

Marc's eyes darted towards Shane.

Shane stood rigid beside his stall, tablet forgotten.

Mathieu swallowed. "What?"

Marc slapped the demi-baguette out of Mathieu's hands.

The sandwich flew sideways, struck J.J. in the shoulder and landed on the rubber floor with a soft, meaty thud.

Everyone recoiled. Mathieu stared down at it, then at Marc and towards his own empty hands. "What the fuck was that for?" he demanded, wiping mustard from his lip with the back of his wrist.

Marc pointed at the fallen sandwich as if it was radioactive. "Look at it."

"I was looking at it. I was eating it."

"Exactly."

Mathieu frowned and his gaze moved slowly over the demi-baguette on the floor. The length, thickness, the missing section at its rounded end and the way Shane had gone pale.

His mouth fell open. "Oh God."

"This isn't lunch," Hayden murmured, approaching the trolley. "This is a message."

J.J. looked down at the turkey demi-baguette still in his hands. He was holding it across his palms now, but his thumbs rested along the split seam.

His face twisted. "Why does every way of holding this suddenly look wrong?"

"They are just sandwiches," Shane said, keeping his face as neutral as possible, despite knowing fully just what they actually were.

"They are suspiciously proportioned sandwiches," Marc corrected, his breathing becoming visibly shallow as his eyes flicked over the trays again. "Two dozen suspiciously proportioned sandwiches."

Mitty stopped before reaching for one, his hand hovering above the tray before he withdrew with the wary speed of someone narrowly avoiding a mousetrap. "How long is a demi-baguette again?" he asked.

Nobody answered and the silence told him far too much.

Men who had previously been moving towards the food now began backing away from it. The trolley, moments ago a source of collective joy, acquired an invisible perimeter.

Mathieu stepped over his fallen roast beef sandwich without taking his eyes from it.

J.J. held his at arm's length whilst Patrice placed his carefully back onto the tray, then reconsidered and moved it two inches farther from himself.

Gilbert folded his arms tightly across his chest. "This cannot be what I think it is."

Hayden reached the trolley and lifted the metal lid fully. "It absolutely is."

The catering assistant pointed helpfully beneath it. "There's the note taped inside, it's probably from the deli."

Nine heads snapped towards him and the young man faltered. "Is there a problem?"

"No," Shane said immediately.

"Yes," Marc said at exactly the same time.

Shane shot him a murderous glare.

Marc gestured at the trays with both hands. "There are twenty-four problems."

The catering assistant glanced uncertainly between them, wished them luck against Buffalo and escaped before anyone could ask why he had delivered two dozen sandwiches into what was rapidly becoming a meltdown situation.

Hayden peeled the card away from the underside of the lid.

"Don't read that," Shane ordered, his voice cracking through the room with enough authority to halt play during a riot.

The sharpness of it stopped even Mathieu's distressed staring. Hayden looked at Shane and the delight that entered his eyes could have powered the eastern seaboard.

"Why?" he asked softly, drawing the word out while one corner of his mouth began to lift. "You know who sent it?"

"No, I don't."

"You absolutely know who sent it." Hayden turned the card over. His eyes moved across the words, his mouth fell open. For three full seconds, he made no sound at all.

The silence around the trolley tightened. J.J. adjusted his grip on his sandwich without seeming to realise he had done it. Marc watched Hayden's face instead of the food now, while Shane remained rigid beside his stall, every muscle in his shoulders drawn taut.

Then Hayden looked at the trays. He looked at Mathieu's partially eaten sandwich on the floor and looked at J.J., who was still holding his vertically despite having changed positions four times.

Finally, Hayden clutched the card against his chest and wheeled towards the others. He drew in a slow breath, visibly gathering himself.

"Would the room like to hear the declaration of war?" he asked, clearing his throat theatrically.

"No," Shane said at once, the answer clipped and immediate.

"Yes," every other Metro replied, their voices colliding in eager, horrified unity.

Hayden held the note beneath the overhead light and began to read.

"'To my favourite franchise,'" he announced, his voice taking on the tone of a man reading the terms of surrender. "'I heard morale has been a little short, so I thought I would send something more substantial and filling before Buffalo.'"

No one moved. The room seemed to hold itself perfectly still around the words, as if reacting too soon might somehow make the implication worse.

Hayden's eyes flicked briefly towards the trays before he continued, his expression brightening with every fresh offence.

"'Two dozen. Plenty to share and all equal, no tape measure required.'"

Shane's stomach dropped. Heat climbed into his cheeks with humiliating speed, and he tried to stifle down the wave of guilt before anyone could look at him closely enough to see it.

Hayden's gaze lifted over the top of the card and landed on Shane. His delight had not faded, but beneath it something sharper had appeared.

He continued, stretching the pause with vicious enjoyment. "'Think of me tonight. Rozanov.'"

Shane's jaw clenched.

Hayden raised one finger. "There is a postscript," he said.

Shane stopped breathing, feeling murderous at his team and at Rozanov.

Hayden looked down and read, with vicious, exquisite clarity, "'Hollander is also correct, technique does matter.'"

Silence struck the room and it had a face. It had several faces, in fact, all of them turning towards Shane with gradual, dawning horror and betrayal.

For one suspended second nobody spoke, nobody moved and even the smell of warm bread seemed to become accusatory.

Then Hayden lowered the card very slowly and looked back at the trays.

"Rozanov sent us dick bread," he said, his voice hushed with revelation.

J.J. hurled his sandwich back into the tray as if it had bitten him.

The sudden movement broke the room apart. Gilbert jumped away so quickly that he collided with Louis. Patrice swore and wiped both palms down the thighs of his trousers despite having touched only paper wrapping. Mitty recoiled into his stall and sat hard on the bench.

Marc dropped his gaze to the demi-baguette in his own hand as though discovering evidence planted at a crime scene.

Mathieu stared at the fallen roast beef demi-baguette, his face drained of colour and he touched his mouth. "I ate his dick bread."

Mathieu looked up, eyes widening further as the full horror flowered inside him. "I ate his dick bread," he repeated, louder and more distressed. "I bit the end off."

J.J. let out a mangled whine and turned away, one hand rising to cover his mouth as if proximity alone might make him complicit.

Hayden bent in half, laughter bursting out of him so violently that the card nearly slipped from his fingers.

"It isn't his actual dick," Shane snapped, his own face now incandescent. "It's fucking bread!"

His voice cracked on bread, which only made Hayden laugh harder.

"Symbolically, I put Rozanov's dick in my mouth," Mathieu cried, staring at Shane with genuine betrayal. "In front of everyone."

"You put roast beef in your mouth."

"That is not helping," Mathieu whined, wiping his lips again as though mustard had become a permanent moral stain.

Marc looked down at the sandwich he had previously picked up to examine.

He was gripping it around the middle. His fingers loosened and the demi-baguette fell onto the tray. Marc's eyes darkened. "There's no correct way going forward to hold dick bread."

"Exactly," J.J. said, pacing away from the trolley while rubbing both palms together as if trying to remove the sensation. "That is part of the attack. Every grip is compromising. I will never enjoy a baguette again."

Patrice glanced at him. "You held yours with both hands."

J.J. looked wounded. "It was heavy."

"That's worse."

"Stop making it worse!"

Mitty looked towards the sealed trays with quiet despair. "I almost picked one up."

"But you didn't," Shane said, grasping for anything that might calm them. "You are fine." They had a game in less than two hours and Shane looked at everyone in his team in genuine concern.

Fucking Rozanov.

"I thought about which one looked biggest," Mitty cried.

Shane closed his eyes briefly and felt like he wanted to scream.

Marc rounded on the goalie. "Why would you say that out loud?"

"Because we're already in hell!" Mitty exclaimed, flinging one hand towards the catering trolley.

Mathieu remained fixed on his fallen sandwich. There was mustard on the rubber floor near the bitten end, a small yellow smear marking the scene like evidence nobody had thought to preserve. His expression crumpled further as he touched his lips with two fingers, then stared at them as though expecting to find proof of treason there.

"I chewed."

The admission came out hollow and faint, stripped of all his usual locker-room bravado.

Across from him, Gilbert's shoulders drew upwards towards his ears. He looked from Mathieu's devastated face to the mutilated demi-baguette and recoiled as the image assembled itself in his mind.

"Oh my God," Gilbert whispered, pressing one hand over his mouth.

Mathieu swallowed reflexively and the movement stopped him cold.

His eyes widened with renewed horror and snapped towards Marc, seeking him out automatically in the same way he did on the ice whenever a play broke down, because Marc was always there.

Marc was his defensive partner, his safety valve, the man who covered the space behind him when Mathieu pinched too far forwards and who knew from one shift of his shoulders whether he intended to pass, shoot or put someone through the glass.

"I swallowed."

Marc's entire face tightened. He stepped towards Mathieu immediately, the laughter and chaos around them falling away beneath an instinct older than the current disaster.

His hand landed on Mathieu's shoulder, firm and familiar, thumb pressing briefly into the muscle at the base of his neck as though steadying him after a bad hit.

"Bouche," Marc said, lowering his voice into the careful tone he usually reserved for talking Mathieu down after a reckless penalty, "you need to stop narrating."

Mathieu stared at the hand on his shoulder then his grief hardened into betrayal.

He shoved Marc's hand away with enough force to rock him back half a step. "You slapped it out too late!"

Marc blinked, visibly wounded by the accusation. "I had only just realised!"

His palms opened helplessly between them. He glanced towards the fallen sandwich as though hoping it might provide corroborating testimony, then back at Mathieu, whose expression suggested Marc had abandoned him during a two-on-one.

"You looked at me eating it for at least five seconds." Mathieu jabbed a finger towards Marc's chest. His voice climbed with every word, outrage making his accent thicker while Marc's brows drew together in offended disbelief.

"I was in shock."

"You watched me take another bite!"

"I didn't know what I was looking at yet!"

"I trusted you, Beau." Mathieu's voice had dropped on the final sentence, losing the theatrical edge until something almost painfully sincere remained beneath it. His hand fell away from Marc's chest.

For a second they simply looked at one another across the narrow space between them, two defensive partners confronting the first meaningful fracture in years of professional intimacy.

Marc's expression saddened despite himself.

He knew what Mathieu meant. Mathieu trusted him without thinking. He trusted Marc to call the switch behind the net, to seal the boards when he chased the puck, to take the inside lane when a forward came barrelling through the neutral zone.

Marc knew which shoulder Mathieu had injured three seasons ago, which skate lace he always tied twice and exactly how violently to knock their helmets together before a defensive-zone face-off without earning a complaint.

Apparently, that trust had now expanded to include the expectation that Marc would recognise weaponised phallic catering before Mathieu put it in his mouth.

Marc dragged one hand down his face, caught between affection, guilt and mounting exasperation. "Why would you trust me to identify hostile cock bread on sight?"

The question escaped louder than intended and Mathieu flung both arms out. "You're my defenceman partner. You're supposed to protect the front of the net."

His voice cracked around partner as though the designation carried legal obligations Marc had wilfully ignored.

Marc stared at him, then he glanced down at the sandwich, back at Mathieu and gestured towards the catering trolley with both hands. "This wasn't the front of the net."

"It was the front of something," Hayden managed between gasping bursts of laughter.

He was bent over beside the trolley, one hand braced against its metal edge while the other clutched his ribs. The words dissolved into another helpless wheeze before he could fully straighten.

Marc turned his head and gave Hayden a look of such concentrated violence that Hayden raised one apologetic hand, though the laughter continued shaking through him.

Mathieu, meanwhile, had returned his attention to the sandwich. His shoulders sagged. The wounded demi-baguette lay exactly where it had fallen, forcing him to relive the incident every time his eyes dipped towards the floor.

Marc noticed and his irritation gave way to protective impatience. Whatever Mathieu currently thought of him, Marc was not going to let his partner spend the next two hours staring at a partially consumed bread effigy and spiralling before they had to play Buffalo.

With the same brisk efficiency he used to clear loose pucks from the crease, Marc stepped forwards and kicked the fallen sandwich beneath the trolley so Mathieu would stop staring at it.

Unfortunately, the movement sent it rolling end over end before it disappeared beneath the bottom shelf.

Every man watched it go and a bleak silence followed.

J.J. stared towards the dark space beneath the trolley, his face draining of what little colour it had regained. "That was obscene," J.J. said faintly, afterwards.

Marc lowered his foot with great care.

He straightened and pulled his shoulders back, attempting to gather the remains of his dignity around him. His ears had begun to colour, but his expression hardened into the imperious glare of a man refusing to be prosecuted for an accidental bread trajectory.

"I kicked bread," Marc replied, straightening with wounded dignity. "You are all sick."

Mathieu turned towards him slowly. The betrayal in his face had somehow deepened. "You made it tumble."

"I was trying to help you."

"That did not help me."

"I moved it out of your sight!"

"You made everyone watch it roll."

Marc stepped closer again, lowering his voice as if privacy could still be salvaged in a room where nine men had just watched a sandwich somersault beneath a catering trolley. "Bouche, I was trying to protect you."

Mathieu's eyes narrowed. "You should have protected me before I bit it."

Marc recoiled slightly, the words landing with the force of a personal foul. "I cannot travel backwards through time!"

"You could have been faster in the time we had."

"We had five seconds!"

"We defend odd-man rushes in less than five seconds!"

"That is hockey. This was lunch!"

"It was never lunch," Mathieu said grimly.

Marc's jaw clicked and he looked ready to argue, but the genuine misery in Mathieu's expression stopped him.

With a frustrated sigh, Marc reached out once more and caught the back of Mathieu's neck, pulling him forwards until their foreheads nearly collided.

"You did not do anything wrong," Marc told him firmly, speaking with the blunt insistence he used whenever Mathieu blamed himself for a goal against. "You were hungry. The sandwich was free and Rozanov is fucking deranged."

Mathieu's glare wavered and Marc squeezed the back of his neck once. "And next time somebody sends us unlabelled food, I will inspect it first."

Mathieu considered him with grave suspicion. "For everything?"

"For everything."

"And you won't let me eat it until you're sure?"

Marc closed his eyes briefly, visibly surrendering a fragment of his soul. "Yes. I will protect you from sexually suggestive catering."

Some of the tension finally left Mathieu's shoulders. He gave one sombre nod, accepting the promise as the first step towards repairing their partnership.

Patrice, who had watched the exchange with his arms folded, pointed beneath the trolley.

"You kicked it tip first," he accused.

Marc's head snapped towards him. His hand remained on the back of Mathieu's neck, but the tenderness vanished from his face with frightening speed. "I am going to start hitting people."

Mathieu caught Marc's forearm automatically before he could step forwards, the movement effortless and practised after years spent stopping his defensive partner from turning post-whistle arguments into suspensions.

"Beau," Mathieu cautioned, still emotionally devastated but apparently unwilling to let Marc commit murder on his behalf.

"He deserves it."

"You cannot hit Patrice before Buffalo."

"After Buffalo?"

Mathieu hesitated. "We can discuss it."

Patrice took two prudent steps backwards.

"Can we please stop calling parts of the bread tip and base?" Shane demanded, pressing both hands against his temples. His eyes were closed now, his voice carrying the frayed restraint of a captain trying to steer the room away from collective psychosis. "It's a baguette. It has ends."

"One of which Bouche ate," Hayden reminded him.

Mathieu flinched as if Hayden had slapped him and Marc's arm immediately shifted across Mathieu's chest, physically placing himself between his partner and the renewed attack. "Pike!"

Hayden straightened, though laughter still trembled at the corners of his mouth. "What?"

"Leave him alone." The warning came out low and protective.

Hayden looked from Marc's arm to Mathieu's wounded expression, then raised both hands in surrender. "Fine. Sorry, Bouche."

Mathieu put both hands over his ears. "Just stop saying it."

Marc turned towards him at once, his anger collapsing back into concern. He kept one hand on Mathieu's shoulder and used the other to guide him gently away from the trolley.

"Come on," Marc muttered, steering him towards their stalls. "Sit down. Drink some water."

Mathieu allowed himself to be moved, but looked back over his shoulder towards the sandwich's final resting place with lingering trauma.

"Do you think the mustard will come out of the floor?"

Marc tightened his grip on him. "Don't look at it."

"I can still see where it went." Mathieu mumbled.

"I know."

"I think I need mouthwash."

"I will get you mouthwash." Marc said, fondly. 

"And gum."

Marc exhaled slowly through his nose. "I will get you gum."

Mathieu glanced sideways at him, the severity in his face easing by a fraction. "Mint. Not fruit."

"I know what gum you like, Bouche." The answer came automatically, carrying years of shared flights, road games and neighbouring locker stalls.

Mathieu gave a small, sad nod and let Marc guide him back towards the bench, their partnership bruised but intact.

Behind them, Hayden leaned towards J.J. and lowered his voice. "They really do act married."

J.J. watched Marc brush a streak of mustard from Mathieu's sleeve with the corner of a towel.

"More married than most married people," he whispered back.

The brief pocket of defensive-partner tenderness might have softened the room under different circumstances.

Unfortunately, Hayden still held a written declaration of war, twenty-three and a half hostile sandwiches remained within reach and the final line of Ilya's note had not stopped burning in every Metro's mind.

Hayden slowly straightened. The last tremors of laughter faded as he looked down at the card again, and the room's attention began to shift away from Mathieu's recovery towards the far more troubling question of how Rozanov had acquired the information required to construct the attack.

Marc closed his eyes whilst Mathieu, now seated beneath Marc's supervision with a bottle of water clutched between both hands, looked personally attacked all over again.

J.J. stared at the tray as though calculating how many individual insults it contained.

Gilbert made a wounded cry and doubled over when his gaze returned to the line about the tape measure.

Marc spun towards Shane, every trace of protective concern abruptly sharpening into suspicion now his partner was being soothed. "He knows about the tape measure?"

"It could be a joke," Shane said, trying to save face.

"A very specific joke," Mitty replied, his voice hollow.

Mathieu gestured furiously towards the trolley. "He got the scale right."

J.J. seized Mathieu by both shoulders and shook him. "He told us to think about it again!"

"I am trying not to," Mathieu cried, swatting him away. "I can still taste the mustard!"

Marc immediately slapped J.J.'s hands away from his partner. "Do not shake him. He is recovering."

"From eating lunch?" Shane demanded.

Marc rounded on him. "From enemy action."

Mathieu nodded gravely and took a small sip of water.

Marc paced away with his hands locked on his hips. "He cannot keep doing this. He cannot keep putting his dick into our professional environment."

"He didn't put it anywhere," Shane snapped.

Marc turned on him. "He sent surrogates."

Behind them, beneath the catering trolley, Mathieu's half-eaten sandwich sat like a tiny carbohydrate corpse.

Then Marc's eyes travelled back to the final line on the card, and the last trace of absurdity vanished from his expression. He spoke first. "What did you tell him?"

Shane folded his arms. "Nothing."

Hayden looked at the note. "Interesting," Hayden said, tilting his head. "Because the Russian bread terrorist knows about the morale problem, the tape measure and your speech about technique."

"I did not tell him all of it." The room inhaled as one and Shane closed his eyes. That had been the wrong answer.

J.J. took a slow step towards him. "There was some of it?"

"I misspoke."

"You're the most verbally precise person I've ever met," J.J. replied, pointing an accusing finger at Shane's chest. "You once corrected a reporter's use of fewer versus less while actively bleeding."

"That was different." Shane said, haughtedly. 

Marc advanced from the opposite side, his expression thunderous. "How much did you tell him!?"

Shane shifted slightly, his eyes focusing on anything but the faces of his team. "Not much."

"The note contains three separate pieces of classified information," Hayden said, tapping the card against his palm. "One of them is the baguette itself."

"It could be a coincidence," Shane said stiffly.

Every Metro stared at him and Shane's shoulders lowered. "Fine," he muttered. "It isn't a coincidence."

Patrice placed a hand over his heart. "We have been betrayed from within."

Shane rolled his eyes. "Oh, stop being dramatic!"

"You gave Rozanov our private locker-room business," Marc said, his voice heavy with disbelief. "Our shame."

"Our measurements," Gilbert whispered.

"I did not give him the measurements," Shane replied sharply.

That should have reassured them. It did not.

Mathieu stared at Shane with naked alarm.  "So he knows there were measurements?"

Shane hesitated and Mathieu's eyes widened. "Hollzy."

"I did not tell him the numbers."

"Did you tell him there was a chart?" J.J. demanded.

Shane looked away and a cry of outrage travelled through the room.

Mitty stared at Shane in horror. "Did you tell him I measured cold?"

Shane rubbed both hands over his face. "No. But I might have mentioned who participated."

Mitty recoiled as if struck. "Trust is gone," he said quietly.

The words were so sincere that Shane lowered his hands. "Mitty." The goalie turned away and stared mournfully at the wall.

Hayden had become very still. "How," he asked, "did this conversation happen?"

Shane's jaw tightened. "We talked."

"Naturally?"

"Yes."

"Casually?" Hayden pressed.

"More or less."

"With clothes on?"

Shane's face betrayed him. Heat rose along his neck before he could stop it, flushing beneath his collar and climbing into his cheeks. The response was minute, involuntary and devastatingly visible to a room full of men paid millions of dollars to notice physical tells.

Hayden's mouth slowly opened. J.J. followed his gaze.

Marc's eyes narrowed and Mathieu looked between them, comprehension gathering like storm clouds.

"No," Marc said.

Shane took a defensive step backwards. "It does not matter how the conversation happened."

"It matters enormously," Hayden replied, his voice dropping into horrified fascination. "Was this pillow talk?"

Shane sniffed. "No comment."

"Shower talk?"

"Fuck off."

"Foreplay talk?"

Shane said nothing and the memory returned with cruel and unnecessary clarity.

He had intended to complain when Ilya came to his house after the embarrassing, stressful dick-centric match.

That had been his first mistake. His second had been allowing Ilya to push him backwards onto the mattress.

His third had been assuming Ilya would forget Shane's complaints once Shane's clothes were off.

Ilya had not forgotten anything.

By the time Ilya finally let him come, Shane had surrendered the existence of the chart, the baguette, the cucumber, the tape measure, the team's morale crisis, and the fact that he had delivered an improvised lecture on sexual competence to six emotionally devastated heterosexual men.

He had retained the measurements themselves. Barely.

At the time, Shane had considered that a triumph of moral fortitude.

Standing in the Montreal locker room beneath the judgement of his entire team, he began to suspect history might assess him differently.

"You threw your team," J.J. said, his voice climbing with each accusation, "your brothers, your bros, under the bus for what...? Getting your dick wet?"

"It was not that simple," Shane snapped, though the heat flooding his face immediately weakened his authority. His cheeks burned, the back of his neck burned and he could feel the flush spreading beneath the collar of his compression shirt as if his own body had elected to testify against him.

Marc folded his arms across his broad chest. The movement was slow, deliberate and profoundly judgemental.

"Were you threatened?" he asked, fixing Shane with the cold stare of a man conducting an internal disciplinary hearing.

"No," Shane answered, lifting his chin.

"Restrained?" Hayden added from beside the trolley, his brows raised with exaggerated concern.

"No!" Shane shot back, louder now.

"Blackmailed?" Gilbert asked, stepping forwards with genuine interest, as if perhaps the correct answer might still preserve some fragment of Shane's dignity.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, no!"

Marc's mouth flattened. "Then it seems very simple," he concluded with open contempt.

"It wasn't," Shane insisted, looking from one appalled face to the next. "You weren't there."

"Thank God," Patrice muttered, shaking his head.

Hayden's gaze narrowed thoughtfully. "Was Rozanov using some advanced Russian interrogation technique?"

The question was delivered lightly, but Hayden's eyes had sharpened. Around him, the others quietened again, sensing that they had finally backed Shane towards an answer he did not want to give.

Shane opened his mouth, then closed it, his brain was checking out and running out of deflections and excuses.

His fingers tightened against his own upper arms. He could feel his pulse beating too hard beneath the heated skin of his throat, could feel the nine pairs of eyes waiting for the smallest crack in his composure. There was no version of the truth that did not end with him wanting to relocate permanently to another continent.

Mathieu watched his face and immediately frowned. "That hesitation means something."

"It means I am considering whether any of you deserve access to language," Shane replied, but the retort lacked its usual precision. His voice came out strained, clipped at the edges.

J.J. took another slow step closer. "That is not a denial."

Shane could feel the explanation gathering behind his teeth, hot and humiliating. He knew he should stop. He knew the remaining details could not possibly improve his position. Every instinct for survival, leadership and basic social dignity told him to deny everything, invoke captain's privilege and leave the room.

He looked towards the door.

Hayden shifted casually into the most direct path towards it.

"Don't," Shane warned, his tone low.

"I haven't done anything," Hayden replied, widening his eyes with offensive innocence.

"You are standing between me and freedom."

"Coincidence."

The room closed around Shane without anyone consciously moving closer. Marc remained planted near the trolley with his arms folded. J.J. watched him with the concentrated patience of a man waiting for a confession. Even Mitty had turned back from the wall.

Mathieu sat straighter on the bench, his bottle of water forgotten between his hands, apparently willing to postpone his own recovery in order to witness Shane's destruction.

Shane swallowed. Instead, under the pressure of nine accusatory stares, the words burst out of him.

"He was edging me, okay?!" Shane exclaimed, throwing both hands into the air. His voice came out louder and rougher than he intended, splitting through the room with the brittle force of something dragged unwillingly into daylight. "He kept stopping when I wouldn't answer."

The final sentence emerged in a rush. Shane's breath caught afterwards, his chest rising too quickly while his hands remained suspended for one useless second before dropping heavily to his sides.

Shane heard his own confession echoing in the newly vacant space. He closed his eyes as mortification rose through him like nausea.

Nobody laughed which was almost worse.

A water bottle slipped from Gilbert's hand, bounced once against the rubber floor and rolled beneath the bench. Gilbert did not appear to notice.

J.J.'s accusing finger lowered by degrees. Patrice's eyebrows climbed so high they nearly disappeared beneath his hairline, and Louis slowly turned his whole body towards Shane as though the conversation had just become a documentary he had no intention of missing.

Mathieu's mouth opened and Marc's hand landed over it before he could speak.

"No," Marc muttered, staring at Shane with hollow disappointment. "You are emotionally vulnerable today. Do not ask questions."

Mathieu pulled Marc's hand away but, for once, obeyed.

When Shane opened his eyes again, every expression had changed.

Marc's contempt had deepened into disappointment as Gilbert's mouth hung slightly open. Mitty stared at Shane as though trying to reconcile the revelation with everything he had previously believed about captains, professionalism and human resilience.

Patrice had pressed his knuckles against his lips, visibly fighting either laughter or horror whilst Louis looked fascinated in the detached manner of somebody delighted not to have been involved in the original census.

Hayden stared at Shane in open astonishment. For perhaps the first time since the sandwiches had arrived, he appeared to have no immediate response.

J.J. blinked. "Rozanov edges you?"

Shane's face flared hotter. "Do not repeat it back to me."

"I was checking that I heard correctly," J.J. said, lifting both hands as though the clarification had been medically necessary. "There has been a lot of shouting."

"You heard correctly. Now forget it."

Mathieu was the first to recover fully. "You folded like a deck chair!?" he shouted, both arms flying out in outrage.

Marc looked at him in disbelief. "You recovered quickly."

"This is bigger than me now," Mathieu replied, pointing accusingly at Shane.

"I did not fold," Shane snapped, seizing on the accusation because anger was infinitely easier to survive than embarrassment.

"You collapsed at the first application of pressure!"

"It was more like the tenth application."

The room reacted as a whole. A collective groan rolled through it, followed by several sharp exclamations of disgust.

Marc turned his head away and stared at the wall for a moment, visibly needing distance from that piece of information.

Gilbert bent to retrieve his water bottle, then remained crouched beside the bench for several seconds as though standing upright would force him to participate again.

"That made it worse," Mitty said quietly.

"I realised that as I said it," Shane said, haunted.

"You counted?" Patrice asked from behind his knuckles, his voice muffled by his hand.

"No."

"You just estimated ten?"

"It felt like ten."

A fresh wave of noise broke over the room. J.J. stumbled backwards until the bench caught behind his knees and sat down hard as Mathieu made a strangled sound and pressed both palms over his face. Marc continued staring at the wall with the rigid patience of a man waiting for an intrusive thought to pass.

"Stop providing context," Marc said without turning around.

"I am answering your questions!"

"Nobody asked how long you lasted," Mathieu cried through his hands.

"You implied I folded immediately!"

"That was before I knew there were rounds."

"There were not rounds," Shane said, every syllable sharpened by panic. "That is not what I said."

Hayden blinked several times, then lifted one hand with careful delicacy, as though addressing a traumatised witness. "This," he said, voice soft with devastating sympathy, "is not a defence."

"It explains the compromised decision-making," Shane argued, folding his arms again in a futile attempt to restore some dignity. "There were repeated physiological distractions."

The clinical phrasing did nothing to rescue him. If anything, it gave the room a fresh angle from which to be appalled.

"It makes your decision-making more pathetic," Hayden replied, his mouth twitching despite the gravity he was trying to maintain.

"How repeated?" Gilbert asked.

He had finally stood again, though he kept the water bottle clutched against his chest like protective equipment.

Shane's head snapped towards him. "That is absolutely none of your business."

"So more than once," Louis concluded from the doorway.

"Nobody asked you."

Louis gave a small shrug. "You provided enough data for inference."

"Do not analyse my sex life."

There it was. Sex life. The plain acknowledgement seemed to ripple through the Metros with a fresh, belated shock.

For years Shane had existed in their minds as a machine built from nutrition plans, controlled breathing and hostile punctuality.

Even after learning that he was gay and that Rozanov was his boyfriend, some part of them had apparently preserved the comforting fiction that the relationship occurred mainly through meaningful eye contact and carefully scheduled dinners.

That fiction had now been killed in front of them with the words he was edging me.

J.J. stared at Shane with a look of profound recalibration. "You have a much more active private life than I pictured."

Shane looked appalled. "Why were you picturing any version of it?"

"I wasn't picturing details," J.J. said quickly. "I pictured... order."

"Order?" Shane repeated.

"Calendars," Patrice supplied.

"Hydration," Gilbert added.

"Possibly a warm-up," Louis said.

Shane stared at all three of them. "I really do hate this team."

Hayden's let out a snort. "Apparently Rozanov provides the warm-up."

A chorus of pained noise followed. Shane pointed at Hayden with a hand that was no longer entirely steady.

"One more sentence and I will make sure Jackie receives a detailed account of every conversation you have ever had in this locker room."

Hayden's grin disappeared. "That would be disproportionate."

Marc slowly turned back. "You caved under a sexual act," he said disparagingly, looking Shane up and down as though the captaincy itself had been tarnished by association. "Wow."

His eyes narrowed with a new and distinctly personal offence. "You let Rozanov stop and start you until you gave him team information."

"Only after significant resistance!" Shane spat.

Mathieu slapped one palm against the catering trolley and the metal rattled beneath the impact.

"Significant resistance?" he repeated incredulously. "You gave him the entire summary."

"I withheld the measurements!"

"You expect praise for protecting one part?" J.J. demanded.

"Low blow," Hayden murmured, biting the inside of his cheek as his eyes gleamed.

"Literally," J.J. added, shaking his head with grave disappointment. "Trust is gone."

"Stop saying that," Shane muttered, though Mitty had already turned slightly away again, reinforcing the impression of genuine emotional hurt.

"I did not give him your measurements," Shane repeated, spreading his hands in appeal. "That was the only truly sensitive information."

Marc's expression hardened. "You gave him the operational outline."

"The operational outline?" Shane stared at him. "It was not a military project!"

Marc gestured sharply towards the catering trays, the handwritten note and the twenty-four identical baguettes currently occupying their workplace. "It is now."

Patrice nodded, gaze fixed on the silver lids. "He has replicated a primary visual aid and deployed it against us."

"Please do not describe the sandwiches as deployed."

"They were delivered behind enemy lines," J.J. said.

"Exactly," Marc replied darkly. "He penetrated the perimeter."

Shane's face twisted into revulsion. "Absolutely not. Choose another verb."

"No verb is safe anymore," Hayden observed.

Gilbert stepped closer, visibly distressed. "Did you tell him about the Pringles?"

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember?"

"I was under duress!"

"You were horny," Marc corrected.

"Those are remarkably similar conditions when Rozanov is involved."

"No," Mathieu said, his tone deeply aggrieved. "They are not."

Mitty turned back from the wall. "Did you tell him that's why I nearly missed the save?"

Shane hesitated again and Mitty's shoulders slumped. "Oh my God."

"He already knew," Shane protested. "Ottawa saw all of you looking."

"Knowing it happened and hearing our own captain report it are different injuries," J.J. said, pointing at Shane with the end of his sandwich. "One is battlefield observation. The other is treason."

"Stop using the bread to accuse me."

J.J. looked at the demi-baguette in his hand as if only just remembering it existed and he couldn't remember when he had picked it up once more. Then he took a furious bite.

Shane stared at him incredulously. "Why are you eating it!?"

"We need the carbohydrates," J.J. replied around the mouthful. "We have Buffalo in two hours and apparently a second war after that."

Marc had begun pacing again, shooting Shane with a look of personal betrayal. "So much for bros before..." He stopped and looked around thoughtfully. "Wait. Can we call Rozanov a ho if they're monogamous?"

The room considered this legal and ethical dilemma with more sincerity than it deserved.

"He hoed about for years," Mathieu decided, nodding solemnly. "I'll allow it."

"Right," Marc continued, turning back towards Shane. "So much for bros before hoes, Captain."

"He is not a ho," Shane said, deeply offended on Ilya's behalf.

J.J. barked a laugh. "He slept his way through Boston and at least two countries."

"He would be insulted by that low estimate."

Every man in the room groaned.

Mathieu pointed at Shane. "That right there. That is why you're compromised."

"I am not compromised!"

"Yeah okay, BeneDICK Arnold!" Gilbert said furiously.

Hayden abruptly slapped the card against the top of the trolley.

"This is an act of war," he declared.

Shane looked at him. "No. Absolutely not."

Hayden's head turned. "Excuse me?"

"No war," Shane said, planting both hands on his hips. "No retaliation. We have a game tonight. We are going to eat, dress, play Buffalo and forget this happened."

The room regarded him with stunned contempt and Marc shook his head. "You're recused."

Shane's brows drew together. "From what?"

"Strategic planning."

"This is my team," Shane said furiously.

"Exactly," J.J. said, gesturing towards him with the remains of his sandwich. "You sold us out for an orgasm."

Hayden reached for Shane's phone where it rested beside the tablet.

Shane snatched it first and held it against his chest. "What are you doing?"

"Protecting state secrets."

"Give me one reason not to punch you," Shane hissed.

"You can't punch me for safeguarding the organisation from its sexually compromised captain," Hayden argued.

Shane glared viciously. "I am not sexually compromised."

Nine faces stared at him and Shane's certainty weakened.

"I am not always sexually compromised," he amended.

Marc made a disgusted sound. "Get out."

"You're kicking me out of my own locker room?"

"We need to discuss retaliation without you leaking it into Rozanov's mouth."

Shane's eyes narrowed. "That sentence does not make anatomical sense."

"Neither does your loyalty," Marc deadpanned.

"Marc."

Marc glared. "Traitor."

Hayden stepped between them, still holding the note like a warrant. "Hollzy, we love you."

Shane looked instantly suspicious. "I don't like where that sentence is going."

"We support you," Patrice added.

"Still worse," Shane muttered.

Gilbert stepped closer. "We accept that you are gay, that you love Rozanov and that the two of you apparently conduct international diplomacy with your genitals."

Shane huffed. "We do not."

"But until this conflict is resolved," Hayden continued, laying one hand solemnly on Shane's shoulder, "you cannot be trusted with sensitive information."

Shane shrugged him off. "Nothing about any of this is sensitive."

Marc retrieved the card out of Hayden's hand and examined the words again. His eyes narrowed at the line no tape measure required. "He thinks he can send us twenty-four dick sandwiches and fly safely to Calgary."

"Demi-baguettes," Gilbert corrected.

Marc turned his head. "Whose side are you on?"

"Ours. I just think terminology matters."

Marc rolled his eyes. "Fine. He thinks he can send us twenty-four demi-baguette dick sandwiches and fly away."

Patrice sat forward, his sandwich forgotten at last. "We need his hotel."

Shane shook his head. "No, you don't."

"The league itinerary will tell us where Ottawa's staying," J.J. said, already reaching for his phone. "Or somebody knows somebody with Calgary."

"You are not sending anything to their hotel."

Mathieu looked up. "Why not?"

"Because this ends here."

Hayden began to smile, and Shane recognised it as the one which contained planning, vengeance and the particular reckless loyalty that had turned Shane's coming-out crisis into a psychosexual pageant within seven days.

"No," Hayden said softly. "It begins here."

Around him, the Metros straightened.

Shane watched his team transform before his eyes from offended sandwich recipients into a hostile planning committee.

"No charts," he warned.

Gilbert looked up innocently. "We don't need a chart for retaliation."

Shane headed towards the door. "I'm getting Coach."

"Coach doesn't need to know," Marc replied.

"Coach is absolutely going to know when all of you get suspended."

"For what?" Mathieu asked. "Sending a gift?"

"The sentence sending a gift should never sound that threatening," Shane said, exasperated.

Hayden leaned across the trays. "First rule. We do not hit Hollzy directly. He's already suffered enough through being attracted to Rozanov."

"Thank you so much," Shane said tightly.

"We do, however, assume anything said in his presence will reach Ottawa if Rozanov applies sufficient suction."

Shane's jaw dropped as the team snorted and, for the first time in what felt like hours, began laughing.

"So get out," Hayden told Shane, pointing towards the corridor while laughter crashed around the room. "Go review Buffalo. The adults are planning war."

"You are the least adult person here," Shane muttered, humiliation and contempt visible in his face.

"That may be true, but my dick has never compromised national security."

"Neither has mine!"

The room went silent and every eye dropped towards Shane's hips.

Hayden looked at him with terrible gentleness. "Hollzy, your dick is the entire reason we are in this situation."

😈

Teaser 2

By the time Shane realised they were genuinely leaving Montreal, it was too late.

He had been shepherded into the middle row of a vast black ten-seater SUV with J.J. on one side and Marc on the other, which was not seating so much as human containment.

The vehicle was the sort of enormous, polished thing teams hired for airport transfers, somewhere between a luxury car and an armoured personnel carrier, with tinted windows, too many cupholders and enough boot space to conceal several regrettable decisions.

Louis had volunteered to drive the first leg on the grounds that, as the backup goalie, he had spent significantly less of the evening being struck by Buffalo.

Hayden occupied the passenger seat and began giving directions with the confidence of a man who had used "trust me" as a substitute for legality at least twice in his life.

Behind Shane, Mathieu, Patrice, Mitty and Gilbert had arranged themselves across the rear seats, knees tangled with bags, takeaway containers and enough coffee to induce a cardiac event in a small horse.

Marc had packed whatever lived inside the plain black duffel wedged between his boots, which Shane kept eyeing because it looked less like luggage and more like something that might eventually hatch.

Nobody had explained anything. They had taken Shane's phone, handed him a coffee and put him in a car.

This, apparently, was friendship.

"We are not driving to Ottawa," Shane said, fifteen minutes into the journey.

Nobody answered him.

The city lights were thinning behind them. The road signs were becoming increasingly difficult to interpret as anything other than proof of an eastward trajectory. Louis drove with both hands on the wheel and scary calmness for chauffeuring eight fugitives while trying not to become legally implicated.

Shane slowly turned his head towards J.J.

J.J. became fascinated by the darkened window.

Shane looked past him at the motorway, then down at the navigation display glowing on the dashboard. The estimated arrival time sat there in cheerful digital betrayal.

"Oh my God," Shane said, sitting straighter. "We are driving to Ottawa. I thought you were joking earlier...."

Hayden looked back from the passenger seat, grinning. "Road trip."

"After a game," Shane replied, staring at him.

"Bonding road trip," Hayden corrected, spreading one hand as though that transformed the situation.

"To break into another team's arena?"

Marc shifted beside Shane, one broad shoulder pressing briefly into his. "Allegedly."

Shane rounded on him. "Do not allegedly me while carrying a suspicious duffel bag."

Marc glanced down at it. "It's not suspicious. It's plain black."

"That makes it more suspicious."

Marc gave him the slow, exhausted look. "You're projecting."

"I am being abducted by my own team." Shane said, still furious and anxious of being made accomplice to whatever nonsence his team were planning to unleash on Ottawa.

"Friendly kidnap," J.J. reminded him, patting Shane's thigh with the infuriating reassurance of a man who had helped confiscate his phone. "Very different atmosphere."

"There is no friendly category of kidnapping."

"There is when we bring snacks," Patrice called from the back.

Mathieu lifted a paper bag between the seats as supporting evidence. "Chicken wrap?"

Shane looked at it, then at him. "I don't want food from my captors."

"More for me," Mathieu said, immediately withdrawing it.

J.J. leaned forwards, elbows braced on his knees, his eyes glittering with the exhausted mania that came when professional athletes were too tired to make sensible choices but too adrenalised to sleep. "Listen, Hollzy. Rozanov hit us with dick bread."

"I am aware." Shane muttered, remembering his own mortification.

"He looked into our room metaphorically," J.J. continued. "He used you as a leak to destablise the team."

"He did not use me as a leak," Shane snapped.

"He absolutely did," Hayden said from the front. "He used his mouth, your inability to contain franchise secrets post-nut and probably his thighs. I'm not judging. I'm just saying we've assessed the vulnerability."

A muffled noise travelled through the SUV. It began with Gilbert choking on his coffee and ended with Patrice thumping him between the shoulder blades while Mathieu laughed into the neck of his hoodie.

Shane stared out of the window and contemplated opening the door at motorway speed.

J.J. patted his knee again. "We forgive you."

Marc, apparently deciding the conversation had wandered too far from the precious matter of vengeance, leaned forwards and rested his forearms on his thighs. "We cannot let Ottawa think Montreal only absorbs damage. We have to answer."

Shane turned towards him, surprised despite himself. Marc sounded weirdly serious, not merely angry or entertained by the prospect of trespassing. "The room took a hit," Marc continued. "A stupid hit, but still. Guys got rattled."

"By sandwiches," Shane pointed out.

"By Rozanov knowing things," Marc corrected, lifting his gaze. "Things he only knew because you trust him, and then he weaponised them."

That shut Shane up. It wasn't said as an accusation now, nor blaming Shane for trusting Ilya. He was acknowledging that the trust existed, that Ilya had been given something private and turned it into a joke aimed at all of them, and that somehow the room had decided this required an answer.

The familiar, uncomfortable warmth of affection moved in his heart.

His teammates were idiots. They were also, increasingly and against his better judgement, his idiots again.

The first twenty minutes after that passed in a blur of dark road, plastic coffee lids and the terrible intimacy of exhausted men refusing to sleep because revenge had replaced common sense.

Patrice and Mathieu argued over whether the planned operation qualified as sabotage if nothing was permanently damaged. Mitty informed them that this distinction was unlikely to comfort a judge.

Then the speakers crackled.

Shane looked up curiously as the opening of Cher's "Strong Enough" filled the SUV. Not quietly, either.

Hayden had connected his phone to the sound system and turned the volume up dramatically.

For several seconds Shane simply listened, his brow furrowing. He looked towards Hayden, who was staring ahead, one hand tapping against his thigh in time with the music.

J.J. began nodding along beside Shane.

From the back, Gilbert joined in under his breath with enough confidence to suggest this was not his first encounter with the song.

Shane looked from one man to another. "What is happening?"

"Music," Louis said, glancing at him in the rear-view mirror.

"I recognise the concept, Kochie. Why are we listening to Cher?"

Mathieu leaned forwards between the seats, already offended. "Cher is a queen. Don't disrespect 'Strong Enough'."

Shane stared at him. "I wasn't disrespecting it. I am questioning how it entered this vehicle."

"It's on the playlist," Hayden explained, sweetly.

"What playlist?" Shane asked, suddenly feeling anxiety creep back in.

Hayden glanced back with the pleased, expectant look of a child waiting for praise. "The road-trip playlist."

Shane looked at the media display. The title travelled across the screen one glowing word at a time:

ROADTRIP BUT MAKE IT GAY ✨️🌈

He closed his eyes, feeling tension rising behind them. "Who named it?"

"Patrice," Hayden said.

From the back, Patrice lifted one hand. "Branding matters."

Shane opened his eyes again. "Why is it gay?"

There was an awkward little pause, different from the strained kind that had made Shane feel radioactive in his own locker room.

This one was softer, full of men suddenly uncertain whether their attempt at inclusion had been well judged or had accidentally wandered into another social minefield.

J.J. shifted beside him. "Because you're here."

Shane turned his head slowly. "I'm sorry?"

"We put songs in for you," Gilbert explained from the rear seat, sounding cautiously pleased with himself. "So it wasn't just our music."

"We had normal road-trip music first," Hayden added, gesturing towards his phone as though the playlist development process had involved several rounds of professional consultation. "Then somebody pointed out it might look like we hadn't considered you."

"Who pointed that out?" Shane asked.

There was another silence. Marc raised his eyes from his phone briefly. "Everyone." before looking down once more.

Shane spotted Hayden silently pointing to Marc and mouthing 'It was him' and Shane felt weirdly appreciated.

"We were trying not to make it weird," J.J. explained.

Shane looked pointedly at the title glowing across the media display. "How is that going?"

"Mixed results," Louis admitted from behind the wheel.

"We discussed changing the name," Gilbert said. "But Patrice said that would be cowardice."

"It would have been," Patrice replied firmly. "You commit to the concept."

"The concept being what, exactly?" Shane asked. "That gay people cannot survive prolonged exposure to 'heterosexual' music?"

"No," Hayden said, looking genuinely appalled by the suggestion. "Obviously not."

Mathieu leaned forwards again. "But we thought it would be rude if there was nothing recognisably gay on it."

Shane blinked. "What does recognisably gay mean?"

Mathieu opened his mouth and nothing came out.

Patrice tried instead. "Songs with... cultural significance."

"Very good," J.J. murmured approvingly.

"You memorised that phrase from an article," Shane accused.

"It was either that or J.J.'s suggestion," Gilbert said.

Shane turned warily towards the man beside him. "What was J.J.'s suggestion?"

J.J. folded his arms. "Songs with homosexual energy."

Shane stared at him whilst J.J. stared back with complete sincerity.

From the rear seat, Mitty quietly said, "We agreed that sounded worse."

"We meant well," Hayden said, his expression becoming almost pleading beneath the ridiculousness. "We knew there was a chance we were stereotyping, so we tried to research what was actually important."

"You made a diversity playlist?"

"We made an inclusive road-trip experience," Patrice corrected.

"You called it 'Roadtrip But Make It Gay'."

"The sparkle was Gilbert," Patrice said, immediately surrendering him.

Gilbert looked betrayed but lifted both hands. "The plain rainbow looked corporate."

Shane stared at all of them, caught somewhere between wanting to open the door at motorway speed and being painfully, helplessly moved by the fact they had apparently held a committee meeting over whether their music choices might make him feel excluded.

"We also put some regular songs on it that you like," Hayden continued quickly. "It isn't all gay songs."

"How do you know which regular songs I like?"

"We looked at your warm-up playlists," J.J. said.

Shane's head turned towards him with terrible slowness. "You went through my Spotify?"

"I follow you." Hayden piped up.

"That does not make this less invasive."

"We didn't judge the amount of Taylor Swift," Gilbert assured him.

"I don't care whether you judged it."

Mathieu frowned from the back. "You should. There is a lot, but it makes sense what with you being in love so we respect it."

Shane stared at the display again as Cher continued to declare herself emotionally finished with a man who deserved it.

Something in his chest warmed before he could stop it. Unfortunately, the affection came hand in hand with mortification.

"Where did you get the idea this constitutes as gay anthems?" Shane asked, gesturing at the screen.

"Spotify," Hayden replied proudly. "From 'The Gayest Playlist Ever'."

"It had a rainbow cover," J.J. added, as if that established peer review.

Mathieu waved a hand impatiently. "And Cher is definitely gay music."

"Cher is music," Shane replied. "She is not exclusively issued to homosexuals at registration."

"Still a queen," Mathieu insisted.

"I'm not disputing her monarchy." Shane protested.

"Good," Mathieu said, settling back. "Because we voted."

Shane looked around the vehicle. "You voted on Cher?"

"It was unanimous. She also featured on 'Gay Classics' and 'Powerbottom Bops.'

Shane felt his cheeks flame.

"Nobody was supposed to say the name of that one aloud," Hayden muttered, throwing Mathieu a betrayed glance.

Mathieu shrugged without remorse. "It was a useful resource."

"It had categories," Patrice added.

Shane looked at him in horror. "I do not want to know what the categories were."

"You really don't," Marc said quietly, still staring at his phone.

Hayden scrolled to the next track. The synthesised opening of Erasure's "A Little Respect" began.

Shane looked at him sharply. "You put Erasure on here?"

"That one came up a lot," Hayden said.

"Because it is an actual gay anthem."

Hayden's entire face brightened. "See? Research."

"One correct answer does not make this research."

"There's George Michael," Louis offered.

"There's a lot of George Michael," Gilbert corrected.

J.J. leaned in towards Shane. "We added 'Freedom! '90', 'Outside' and 'Faith', but we weren't sure if 'Faith' counted because he wasn't fully out when he released it."

Shane stared at him. "How much reading did you do?"

J.J. looked modest. "A Wikipedia amount."

"That's more than I expected."

"We had tabs open," Hayden said proudly.

"Several tabs," Patrice added.

"At one point Mitty was reading an article about queer disco history aloud," Gilbert said.

Mitty looked out of the window, his expression distant. "I learned things."

"You held a seminar?" Shane asked faintly.

"It became more involved than anticipated," Louis admitted.

Marc, who had been silent, said without looking up from his phone, "George Michael was hot enough that the classification barely matters."

The SUV became very silent, with exception of Erasure singing of respect, and upon which Shane thought Marc might have just tanked his.

Marc's thumb stopped against his screen.

Shane slowly turned towards him and from the back, Mathieu's eyebrows rose.

Hayden twisted in his seat until the belt caught across his chest. "Beau?"

Marc stared at his phone. "What?"

"You sounded extremely certain there buddy." Hayden said, eyes flashing menacingly.

Marc looked up at last, expression flattening. "He was objectively attractive."

Hayden's grin began to spread. "Are there subjectively attractive men you'd like to tell the group about?"

"No," Marc said, far too quickly. His ears were beginning to colour. "I have eyes. That isn't a sexuality."

Shane studied him silently.

Marc had not said it jokingly. There had been no exaggerated hockey-bro caveat, no immediate insistence that appreciating George Michael's face was permissible only under controlled conditions. He had said it as if reporting a statistic, then looked faintly alarmed that anyone had heard him.

Interesting.

Not conclusive, Shane cautioned himself. Recognising another man as attractive did not automatically mean anything. Shane, of all people, was not going to shove someone into a category because of one sentence.

Still, it joined a few other things in his mind.

Marc beginning to say that Luca Haas was pretty before abruptly shutting himself down. Marc's strange, aggressive interest in pinning the Ottawa rookie against every available section of boards. The mean little "cute" he had thrown at Luca during their last game, sounding less dismissive than it had any right to.

Shane glanced down.

Marc's phone was angled slightly towards him in the cramped middle seat. An Instagram post filled the screen, recognisable at once from the Centaurs logo and the familiar bright sweep of blond hair.

Luca Haas.

It was a post from less than an hour ago, probably uploaded from Ottawa after training. The first picture showed Luca sitting at his stall in a black Centaurs training top, elbows on his knees, smiling towards whoever had taken the photograph. The caption beneath it read:

Late skate. Home game tomorrow. Still working. 🐎🏒🌙

Marc's thumb hovered over the photograph.

Then, as Shane watched, he tapped the screen twice as the small heart flashed red.

Marc seemed to feel Shane looking. He turned his head, saw exactly where Shane's attention had landed and locked the screen so quickly it was almost violent.

They stared at one another and Shane raised one eyebrow in amusement, watching as Marc glowered.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

Marc gave him a look that promised a quiet roadside death and shoved the phone into his pocket.

Interesting became much more interesting.

Before Shane could decide whether to prod the bruise, the music changed again. The opening beat of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" began, and the entire back row reacted with the delighted recognition of men who had apparently been waiting for it.

Patrice clicked his fingers between the seats. "This is definitely one."

"Yes," Shane admitted.

Mathieu slapped the back of Patrice's headrest. "Two points."

"This is not a quiz."

"It is now," Gilbert said.

"Queen?" Louis asked.

"Queen counts."

J.J. frowned. "Because of Freddie Mercury or because they're called Queen?"

Shane turned towards him. "Please tell me that is not how you made the decision."

"No," J.J. said, then hesitated. "Not entirely."

"Freddie was bisexual," Marc muttered, still looking straight ahead.

Hayden looked back again, eyes sparkling. "Beau has done his research too."

Marc's expression became murderous. "Everyone knows that."

"Not J.J." Shane said.

J.J. looked wounded. "I knew. I was checking whether all of you knew."

The playlist continued through Donna Summer, ABBA, Bronski Beat and Queen, interrupted occasionally by songs that appeared to have been selected through logic so flawed it deserved academic study.

Hayden had included "It's Raining Men", which was defensible, followed by "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!", which Shane suspected had been added because the title contained a gender.

Gilbert had contributed Cyndi Lauper. Patrice had added "I'm Coming Out" with such triumphant certainty that Shane did not have the heart to point out how aggressively literal the choice was.

There were stranger selections buried amongst them. The Village People had been represented by three separate songs because, according to Gilbert, choosing only "YMCA" felt superficial.

Britney Spears appeared repeatedly, although nobody could explain the exact methodology behind her inclusion beyond Patrice's declaration that "the community has been through enough with that woman."

A furious debate broke out over whether "Dancing Queen" was inherently gay or had merely become gay through prolonged cultural possession.

"It belongs to everybody," Louis argued, watching the motorway ahead.

"Nothing that kitschy belongs to straight men," Mathieu countered from the back.

"I danced to it at my wedding," Hayden said.

Mathieu pointed forwards. "You wore cufflinks chosen by Jackie, you were under supervised conditions."

Shane stared out of the window, pressing his lips together while the argument continued around him.

They had somehow transformed his sexuality into a travelling music symposium conducted by men with no qualifications, no shame and wildly conflicting interpretations of European pop.

Every few songs somebody turned towards him for official verification, as though coming out had also appointed him chairman of the International Gay Anthem Commission.

"Pet Shop Boys?" J.J. asked.

"Yes."

"Kylie?"

"Of course."

A triumphant noise swept through the SUV as Hayden slapped the console. "I told you."

Then "Believe" began and every Metro in the car shouted approval.

Shane rubbed at his forehead. "You people know too much Cher." Despite himself, Shane was beginning to enjoy it.

Not the playlist itself, although it was better than he would ever tell them or the chaos of eight overtired men debating whether ABBA belonged to the gays, the Swedes or all humanity.

It was the effort beneath it that was so misplaced, so stupidly literal and achingly sincere that Shane did not know where to put the feeling it gave him.

They had searched for songs and argued over categories. They had made a playlist whose title would probably get them disciplined if it ever appeared on a public screen, all because Shane was trapped in the car with them and they had wanted, in their fumbling way, to include something that belonged to him.

As if gay music were a dietary requirement and he would become deficient during the two-hour drive. It was ridiculous and also kind and Shane lowered his head slightly, hiding the smile beginning at the corner of his mouth.

"Play one more song selected by rainbow thumbnail and I will throw myself from the vehicle." he said but there was no malice behind it.

Hayden looked down at the queue and grinned. The first sharp beat of Madonna's "Vogue" came through the speakers.

Hayden turned the volume higher, whilst J.J. sat straighter beside him.

From the rear row came the unmistakable sounds of men preparing themselves.

Patrice cleared his throat.

Gilbert adjusted his seat belt.

Mathieu rolled his shoulders as though he were about to take a face-off.

For the first minute, however, nothing happened.

Madonna carried them through the opening verse while the motorway unrolled beneath the headlights, long ribbons of white paint flicking steadily beneath the SUV.

Hayden drummed his fingers against the steering console. J.J. mouthed several words with increasing confidence as Patrice attempted a seated approximation of the choreography until Gilbert told him he looked as though he was directing aircraft towards a runway.

Shane began, cautiously, to believe he had misread the situation.

Perhaps the ritual preparation had merely been enthusiasm. Perhaps they knew the chorus, as most people with functioning ears did, and had no intention of doing anything more humiliating than shouting "Vogue" in imperfect unison.

Then the chorus arrived and every Metro in the SUV, with exception of Marc, sang it.

J.J. turned towards Shane and performed a stiff sequence of hand movements near his own cheeks. "Is this right?"

"No," Shane said immediately, horrified.

"What am I doing wrong?"

"Everything." Shane muttered, embarrassed for him.

From the back, Mathieu attempted to demonstrate and nearly struck Patrice across the mouth.

"Watch the elbows," Patrice complained, recoiling.

Shane endured the second verse with his arms folded tightly across his chest, staring through the windscreen as the performance continued around him.

Somewhere during the next chorus, Gilbert and Patrice began harmonising badly. Mitty contributed only the word "Vogue" each time, but delivered it with such gravity that Shane could no longer decide whether he was participating or issuing a warning.

Minutes passed as the city thinned behind them, the motorway grew darker and Madonna kept going, carrying the vehicle deeper into a collective loss of dignity from which none of them seemed interested in returning.

By the time the instrumental break approached, the Metros had settled with ominous precision.

Hayden lowered his hands, J.J. straightened his spine.

Mathieu stopped arguing with Patrice and even Marc put his phone down.

Shane felt the first cold touch of genuine alarm.

Madonna reached the roll call as Hayden lifted one hand like a conductor. "Greta Garbo and Monroe," he sang, pointing grandly towards the windscreen.

J.J. accepted the invisible baton beside Shane. "Dietrich and DiMaggio," he continued, with far more commitment than dignity.

Behind them Patrice came in loudly and half a beat early. "Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean."

Gilbert leaned between the headrests, eyes bright with delight. "On the cover of a magazine."

Shane slowly sank lower in his seat.

Louis, still driving and somehow maintaining perfect lane discipline, contributed in a grave baritone, "Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean."

Mitty followed as if reading out a prison sentence. "Picture of a beauty queen."

Mathieu slapped both hands against his knees. "Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire."

Marc, caught by the momentum and apparently deciding resistance was beneath him, said, "Ginger Rogers, dance on air," with clipped severity.

Shane covered his face. This was unbearable.

Not merely because they were singing. Hockey players sang constantly, usually badly and with the volume of men who believed enthusiasm could repair pitch. This was worse because they had divided the lyrics in advance. There was organisation which meant at some point, rehearsal.

His teammates had formed a travelling Madonna ensemble in his honour.

Hayden came back around, spreading both hands. "They had style, they had grace."

J.J. lifted his coffee cup in tribute. "Rita Hayworth gave good face."

Patrice pointed at Shane over the seat, almost spilling his drink. "Lauren, Katharine, Lana too."

The final line approached, everyone inhaled and Shane braced himself for the merciful end.

Marc sat beside him with his arms folded, expression entirely straight, and delivered in the exact rhythm of the song:

"Ilya Rozanov, we hate you."

 

 

😈

Teaser 3

 

The first sign that something was wrong was that Wyatt Hayes opened his locker and screamed.

A full-throated, shocked, blond-man shriek that cut through the Ottawa dressing room at 8:14 a.m. and made three people in the hall jump.

Conversation stopped in pieces, a water bottle dropped to the floor as someone near the showers swore, and Tanner Dillon's head snapped up so quickly that the breakfast bar between his teeth nearly fell out.

Then came the detonation.

A violent fwump of compressed glitter erupted from the top lip of the locker the moment the door swung wide, and Wyatt disappeared in a catastrophic cloud of blue and red.

The blast swallowed the entire section of the room. Glitter billowed over the bench, drifted through the air vents and settled in slow, taunting spirals over every nearby surface while Wyatt remained lost somewhere inside it.

For a few seconds Wyatt just stood there in the center of it, frozen, mouth open, hair sparkling like a patriotic disco ball whilst grains of edible glitter coated everything.

The room stared back at him.

Troy Barrett, halfway through unzipping his gym bag, said, in hushed disbelief, "Holy shit."

His hand remained locked around the zipper. His eyes travelled from Wyatt's glitter-plastered hair to the red dust clinging to his eyelashes, then down to the thick blue stripe across the front of his sweatshirt.

Tanner laughed so hard he nearly sat on the floor. He caught himself against the bench, shoulders shaking, and pointed at Wyatt with the half-eaten breakfast bar still clutched in one hand.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Tanner wheezed.

Wyatt blinked once, twice, wiped his eyes and felt rage building inside.

Blue and red glitter clung to every available surface. His sleeves, shoulders, his eye lashes and stupid expensive trainers. The glitter looked like someone had slapped a Metro tribute to his body.

Wyatt looked down and his nostrils flared.

"Oh, fuck off," Wyatt said to no one and everyone. "No. No, absolutely not."

His voice rose with each word, disbelief hardening into offence as he looked around the room for an explanation, an accomplice or simply somebody available to punish.

He took one furious step back and behind him, Troy opened his locker.

The second blast went off hard enough to hit the ceiling. Troy vanished under a fresh cyclone of glitter and let out a choked, outraged, "Are you kidding me?"

The force of it drove him backwards into the bench. He emerged coughing, blinking rapidly as glitter slid from his hair and gathered along the shoulders of his jacket.

"Don't open anything!" Evan barked.

His warning cracked across the room with the authority of a man attempting to contain an active chemical spill.

Nick, who had already put a hand on his handle out of pure reflex, jerked it back like it had bitten him.

He stared at the metal handle, then at Troy, then carefully tucked both hands beneath his armpits as though protecting them from further independent decision-making.

Ambroise, on the other side, squinted at Wyatt, then at Troy, then at the line of closed lockers around them and said, with eerie calm, "Well. This a trap."

"Thank you, Poirot," Troy snapped, spitting blue glitter out of his mouth. "What gave it away?" He dragged the back of his wrist over his lips and only succeeded in smearing a bright red streak across his cheek.

Wyatt jabbed at him with a shaking, glitter-coated finger. "I hate all of you."

His finger moved from Troy to Tanner, then widened to include the room at large. Tanner attempted to compose himself, took one look at Wyatt's sparkling fringe and immediately folded over again.

"No, you hate Montreal," said Nick, eyes narrowing as he took in the colors bleeding everywhere. "This is Montreal."

The humour in his expression faded as he studied the pattern of the blast, the exact shades of glitter and the deliberate placement above the lockers.

The sheer theatricality of it, the sheer vindictive pageantry and commitment to humiliation over actual harm, all of it had Montreal written all over it in letters twelve feet high.

There was nothing subtle about the message. It was less a prank than an occupation conducted through craft supplies.

On the far side of the room, Ilya Rozanov came to a full stop in the doorway.

He had one hand on a coffee, the other on the strap of his bag, and he stood there taking in the scene with the grave stillness. Ah, he thought. Consequences of actions.

His eyes moved slowly across the dressing room. Wyatt glittering with fury. Troy glittering with outrage. Tanner bent double with laughter and Nick holding himself carefully away from his own locker as though it contained a venomous animal.

Ilya took a calm sip of coffee.

Wyatt, sparkling like an expensive Christmas ornament with anger issues, turned slowly toward him. "This is your fault."

The accusation came out low and dangerous, made slightly less threatening by the blue glitter caught in the corner of his mouth.

Ilya stared at him innocently. "How?" He tilted his head as though the connection genuinely escaped him.

"How?" Troy echoed, coated head to toe and now actively shedding Metro colours onto the floor. "How?!"

His second repetition cracked upwards into disbelief. He threw both hands out, sending another fine spray of glitter over the bench.

Nick folded his arms. "Well, let's walk through the recent history." His tone was patient in the way of someone addressing a particularly difficult witness.

"This started with your dick," Wyatt said. The words landed in the centre of the room with the bluntness of a puck dropped at centre ice.

Ilya's expression did not change. "My dick did nothing."

He said it with such conviction that Tanner made another sound of frustration and covered his face with both hands.

"Your dick destabilized another franchise," Evan said flatly.

Evan stood beside his closed locker with one palm braced against the door, his expression pinched with the mounting stress of a man realising he could not safely access his own deodorant.

"That sounds made up," said Ilya.

"It literally isn't," Nick shot back. "We are living in the consequences." He gestured towards Wyatt and Troy, both of whom sparkled in immediate support of his argument.

"And some of us are wearing the consequences," Troy added bitterly, shaking glitter out of one sleeve.

And because fate hated Ottawa specifically, that was the moment Zane Boodram forgot himself and operating on autopilot opened his locker.

The third detonated. Blue glitter burst outward in a glittering halo and Zane shut his eyes very slowly as the last of the particles drifted onto his beard.

The locker door continued to swing for another inch before stopping.

No one said a word, all sharing looks of anticipation.

Even Tanner stopped laughing. Troy pressed his lips together whilst Wyatt's glitter-covered finger remained frozen in the air.

Then Zane opened his eyes and said, with terrifying calmness, "I am going to kill Montreal."

His voice was quiet enough that everybody heard it.

A red fleck clung to one eyebrow. He reached up, plucked it away between two fingers and studied it with a stillness that felt considerably more threatening than shouting.

Half the team was laughing because it was objectively funny until you remembered it was happening to you. The other half was furiously trying to assess which lockers had been booby-trapped and whether there was any way to disarm them without sacrificing another body to the cause.

Men moved cautiously around the room, keeping a suspicious distance from every handle. The usual morning rhythm had collapsed. Nobody was taping sticks. Nobody was changing. Ottawa's entire preparation schedule had been interrupted by the sudden need to conduct explosive glitter disposal.

There was not.

Nick tried using a stick to nudge his open from a distance and it still went off.

The locker cracked wide and sent a concentrated wave of glitter down the shaft of the stick, over Nick's hands and directly into the front of his shirt.

Nick looked down at himself and exhaled through his nose. "Noted."

Ambroise attempted the towel-over-handle approach and managed only to redirect the blast directly into his own face. Gilbert-level glitter spread across the room, settling on bags, benches and skates.

Ambroise pulled the towel away with profound dignity, though his face was now divided diagonally into red and blue.

Troy pointed at him. "You look like a flag."

Ambroise turned his head very slowly. "Keep talking and I will use this towel to suffocate you."

Troy lowered his hand.

"Why is there so much of it?" Evan demanded. He picked up a skate and immediately dropped it again when glitter poured from the tongue like coloured sand.

Nick lifted a glitter-coated roll of tape, stared at it, and said, deadpan, "I respect the craftsmanship." He turned the roll once between his fingers, examining the even distribution with professional interest.

"Do not compliment the enemy," Wyatt snapped.

His voice broke slightly on enemy, which Tanner noticed and wisely chose not to mention.

"I'm not complimenting the enemy," Nick said. "I'm acknowledging engineering."

He set the ruined tape down with care. That, perversely, got a murmur of reluctant agreement.

Zane folded his arms and glared at his locker. Ambroise rubbed glitter from his eyelid. Troy leaned closer to inspect the packet mechanism wedged above the door.

Because it was well done. Insane, invasive, petty to the point of criminality but very well done.

Even Evan, who looked like his blood pressure had acquired a second blood pressure, had to pause mid-rant and admit, "The timing mechanism is actually kind of… efficient."

His irritation softened for one dangerous second into technical curiosity.

Wyatt rounded on him. "Evan! Don't support them!"

"I’m not praising it. I'm observing it." Evan lifted both palms defensively, though the reluctant admiration remained visible in his narrowed eyes.

Ambroise wiped red glitter off his jaw and flicked some onto the floor. "No, I'm with Nick. This is evil, but it's competent evil."

"That makes it worse," Wyatt said, his voice climbing again. "I don't want them competent."

"They have Marc," Troy muttered. "Of course they're competent."

At the name, Luca's head lifted before he could stop himself.

Troy shoved a hand through his glitter-heavy hair and glared at Ilya again. "And all because somebody couldn't keep his 'giant' dick to himself." His tone sharpened around giant with enough theatrical emphasis to make several players groan.

Ilya lifted one eyebrow. "Why are you saying giant like this is disputed."

Tanner made a wounded noise. "Please do not encourage the original problem."

"The original problem is Montreal's insecurity," Ilya replied, taking another sip of coffee.

"The original problem is that they know," Wyatt said.

"They knew before the bread."

"They did not know that we knew they knew," Nick corrected.

A silence followed while several men attempted to follow that sentence.

Zane frowned. "I hate this."

At the back of the room, Luca Haas had gone very still in front of his own locker.

He had watched Wyatt go first. Then Troy. Then Zane. Then Nick. Then Ambroise. Then two more defensemen get baptised in varying quantities of Metro propaganda. He had flinched at every burst and laughed helplessly at least twice before remembering he was supposed to be outraged too.

Each explosion had made his shoulders jump. Each new victim had increased the tension in his stomach as the line of unopened lockers shortened and his own waited in front of him with quiet, metallic menace.

Now, carefully, he looked at his own handle. He had accepted the inevitability that he too would get glitterbombed, but for the last minute stared at his empty locker once he had opened it.

He looked down at himself, then back into the locker, as if the glitter might simply be delayed out of spite.

"Uh," Luca said.

No one heard him and he tried again, louder. "Um guys."

His voice cut uncertainly through three overlapping arguments.

Troy turned, still flicking glitter off his sleeves. "What." The irritation in his tone eased when he saw Luca standing clean and confused beside an open locker.

Luca pointed. "Mine… didn't go off."

That got the room's attention, heads turning and eyes narrowing.

The remaining chatter thinned into silence. Even Ilya shifted his focus away from Wyatt.

Tanner squinted. "How do you know?"

"I opened it." Luca replied, pointing to the obvious. Then Luca looked down at himself. Clean hoodie. Clean joggers. No glitter or sparkles. Not even an insulting puff.

He spread his hands slightly as proof.

Troy narrowed his eyes. "Why not you." There was suspicion in his voice now, not serious enough to be an accusation but sharp enough to make Luca's shoulders creep higher.

Luca pulled a face. "How would I know?" he said, feeling more anxious that something hadn't happened, because now he was expecting something worse.

His gaze flicked upwards to the shelf, then beneath the bench, searching for wires, packets or some more elaborate form of humiliation.

"This is weird," Wyatt said. "I look like a craft store exploded on me and you're standing there untouched."

He sounded genuinely offended by the contrast. He took in Luca's entirely clean clothes as though Luca had personally negotiated immunity without consulting the team.

Ilya, who had thus far been spared only because he had not opened his own locker yet, shifted his gaze to Luca.

The look was brief but assessing. Luca felt it settle on him, then move to the empty space above his locker door where a packet should have been.

Nick leaned against the bench, still faintly sparkling. "Possible explanations." He lifted one finger.

"None," Luca said.

"Rookie exemption?" Tanner suggested.

His laughter had mostly subsided, though his mouth still twitched whenever he glanced at Wyatt.

Wyatt scoffed, before spitting out more glitter from his mouth. "Montreal do not respect rookie exemptions."

"Maybe they thought Haas wasn't capable of warfare," Tanner offered.

That got a few nods and murmurs of assent.

Zane considered Luca with grave seriousness. "You do not have an especially threatening presence."

Luca looked offended. "Excuse me?" His eyebrows shot up and his uncertainty briefly gave way to wounded pride.

Troy patted his shoulder, leaving a glittery blue handprint behind anyway. "No offense, Lu, but you do have a very 'I have never committed a crime' face."

The blue print stood out vividly against Luca's clean hoodie.

Luca looked down at it in betrayal. "I haven't committed a crime."

"Exactly," Troy said, as though Luca had proven the case.

Nick tilted his head. "Or maybe they like you." His tone remained light, but his eyes sharpened with interest as Luca's expression changed.

Luca laughed once, high and disbelieving. "Montreal does not like me." The denial came too quickly. He could hear it himself.

A very brief image flashed through his mind anyway. Marc Beaulieu looking down at him over the scrum glass with that hard, unreadable expression he wore on the ice.

The memory arrived with unnecessary clarity. Marc's glove against Luca's chest. The pressure of the boards behind him. That quiet, cutting cute spoken close enough that Luca had felt the word more than heard it.

Luca pushed the thought away so hard it practically left a mark.

On the other side of the room, Wyatt said, "Open it again."

Luca stared at him. "Why." His hand remained on the edge of the door.

"To see if it's delayed." Wyatt gestured impatiently towards it, apparently willing to risk Luca's face in the pursuit of answers.

"That is not how delays work," Evan said.

"Do you know that?"

"No, but I know opening it twice will not make us smarter."

Luca, because apparently public humiliation ran on team schedules now, opened his locker wider just to prove a point.

He did it cautiously, leaning his head back and turning his face away.

Nothing happened. A few sticks. Spare gloves. Hoodie. Toiletries bag. Tape. The usual.

The locker remained offensively ordinary. And, tucked just inside the upper shelf where only he could really see it from that angle, a folded piece of paper.

Luca frowned. Had that been there before? He couldn't recall.

The paper was small, folded twice and wedged carefully beside the edge of his training shoes. His heartbeat gave one strange, sudden thud.

Before he could reach for it, Nick said, "Well?"

Luca looked up fast and, acting entirely on instinct, shoved his training shoes slightly forward so the note vanished from view. "Still nothing," he said.

The answer came out too briskly. He hoped the room was too distracted to notice.

Wyatt looked personally insulted. "This is bullshit." He threw his arms wide and released another faint cloud of glitter from his sleeves.

"Maybe they think I'm too young," Luca offered weakly. His hand remained close to the shelf.

Troy snorted. "That's somehow worse."

"It's condescending," Zane agreed.

"Maybe," said Ambroise, "they just missed one."

The room collectively considered that. Then, from somewhere near the showers, Evan said, "No chance." His reply carried across the room with immediate certainty.

That also felt true because this was too precise to be random. Too targeted and meticulously stupid.

Whoever had done it had planned it. Timed it and built it. Chosen colours, quantity, angle, impact. There was no way they had accidentally skipped a single locker unless they'd wanted to.

A prickling awareness moved through the room. Several sets of eyes returned to Luca's open locker, then to Luca himself.

Luca felt something odd crawl up the back of his neck. He glanced at the folded paper again.

The note remained hidden behind his shoes, but merely knowing it was there made the entire locker seem louder.

Across the room, Ilya finally set down his coffee. The paper cup met the bench with a soft, deliberate click.

The room noticed that too and a hush spread in jagged little ripples.

Arguments fell away. Tanner straightened. Troy stopped picking glitter out of his hair. Wyatt slowly turned towards the captain's locker with the anticipation of a man about to witness justice.

Because for all the yelling and glitter and blame and outrage, there was still one thing left to happen.

Ottawa's captain had not yet opened his locker.

Wyatt, voice gone high with anticipation, said, "Roz."

He drew the name out like a ceremonial summons.

Ilya didn't look at him. "What?" He removed his bag from his shoulder and placed it on the bench with exaggerated calm.

"You have to." Wyatt pointed towards the locker. His expression now held something dangerously close to delight.

Ilya's mouth flattened into reproach. "No. I refuse."

"You cannot refuse," Troy said. "We all suffered."

"Not Luca," Tanner pointed out. Luca immediately busied himself with adjusting the cuff of his sleeve.

Evan folded his arms. "I do actually need to know if they targeted you more." His tone suggested this was now a matter of team security rather than collective curiosity.

"Of course they targeted him more," Wyatt said. "He started this."

"I did not start this." Ilya looked around for support and found none.

"You sent them dick bread."

"I sent lunch, it is not a crime that they took it badly." He delivered the defence with injured dignity.

Troy gestured wildly at the room. "Look around."

His hand swept across the glitter-coated benches, the contaminated equipment and the trail of blue and red footprints already spreading towards the showers.

Ilya did look around, seeing his team sparkling like blue and red baubles, the floor which now resembled a craft convention hosted by the Montreal Metros, at Luca suspiciously clean and the general state of his team equal parts outraged, impressed, violated, and alive with the terrible energy of men who had just discovered a war had officially been declared.

Something small and pleased moved behind his eyes.

He stepped toward his locker as everyone leaned in.

Wyatt held his breath. Tanner gripped the edge of the bench. Troy lifted his phone, then lowered it when Ilya looked at him.

The blast was enormous.

Blue glitter hit first. Red glitter followed. A secondary packet somewhere above the shelf burst with enough force to coat his collar, chest, one arm, and the side of his face. The stuff went everywhere, bench, floor, tape table, his bag, Wyatt again for good measure.

Wyatt recoiled with an offended shout as the second wave caught him across the shoulder.

The cloud hung in the air and a moment of nauseating silence.

Ilya remained standing in front of the open locker, one hand still gripping the door. Glitter trickled from his hair, slid along the bridge of his nose and collected in the collar of his jacket.

Then Troy snorted. "Oh, they really hate you."

Ilya stood there dripping Metro colors yet his expression remained perfectly still. Which, to anyone who knew him at all, was the worst possible sign.

The stillness travelled through the room. Tanner's smile vanished, Nick straightened from the bench and Evan watched Ilya's face with increasing concern.

Wyatt took one careful step back. "Roz?" His tone had lost its triumph.

Ilya wiped a slow hand down his face and looked at the blue-red shimmer coating his fingers. He rubbed the glitter between his thumb and forefinger as though assessing the quality.

Then he said, very quietly, "Interesting." That word sent more fear through the room than the bombs had.

Troy lowered his phone entirely. Zane glanced towards Nick whilst Wyatt retreated another half-step.

"That sounded like a threat," Tanner murmured.

"It was a threat," Evan replied.

Ilya looked towards the contaminated row of lockers, his expression thoughtful now rather than furious, which was somehow worse.

Luca, half-listening now, reached into his locker at last and palmed the folded note into his sleeve without anyone seeing.

The paper crackled faintly against his wrist. He froze, but nobody turned. All attention remained fixed on Ilya and the terrible calculations visibly beginning behind his eyes.

He waited until the room shifted again before slipping into the bathroom area for ten seconds of privacy.

Behind him, Wyatt had started demanding to know whether glitter could be removed from suede. Troy was arguing that Montreal should be billed for professional cleaning. Someone suggested retaliation involving live poultry, which Evan immediately rejected.

The noise followed Luca through the doorway and softened beneath the hum of the bathroom lights.

He stopped beside the sinks and checked over his shoulder.

Alone.

He unfolded the note and read the four words. The handwriting was block letters and scribbled as if hurried. Yet it was almost neat, as if care was behind the rush. And dozens of handdrawn stars dotted the page messily to further the assumption. His ears went hot and a flush of embarrassment graced his neck and cheeks.

For one suspended second, Luca could only stare at it.

Marc's face rose in his mind again, severe and unreadable, except now Luca could imagine the faint smirk at the corner of his mouth while he wrote it. The thought made the heat travel higher into his cheeks.

Works inspired by this one

Heated Prompts by AquariusYoukai

Metros & Centaurs Assemble - World Building by FyrestoneSiren

Cover Art for THE BLUEPRINT by FyrestoneSiren by pinkfoot