Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories:

F/M, M/M

Fandoms:

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

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais & Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais & Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova, Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike, David Hollander/Yuna Hollander, David Hollander & Shane Hollander & Yuna Hollander, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Hayden Pike's Children, Jackie Pike, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Svetlana Vetrova, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Theriault (Game Changers), Kip Grady, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Original Children of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Being Assholes (Game Changers), Shane Hollander Leaves the Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Bashing (Game Changers), Supportive Boston Bears | Boston Raiders (Game Changers), Good Friend Svetlana Vetrova, Good Friend Hayden Pike, Good Friend Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Good Friend Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov Needs A Hug, Shane Hollander Speaks Japanese, BAMF Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Stands Up for Self, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Boston Bears | Boston Raiders Player Shane Hollander, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Good Hockey Player Shane Hollander, Good Hockey Captain Shane Hollander, Healing, Depression, Therapy, Japanese Culture, Social Media, Shane Hollander Speaks French, Shane Hollander Deserves Better, Shane Hollander-centric, yuna hollander's love language is brand deals, Multilingual Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov is Hollander Catnip, Momager Yuna Hollander, Girl Dad Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Hollanov Lulu-verse

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-28 Completed: 2026-06-21 Words: 48,817 Chapters: 13/13

Tadaima, Okaeri

Summary

“We could’ve had everything,” Shane admitted softly.

The confession hurt more than he expected.

“A real relationship. A family. A future.” His eyes drifted toward the planes outside again before he exhaled slowly. “But dreams eventually end.” A small, tired smile pulled at his mouth. “And this is me waking up.”

Chapter 1: nah WHAT is happening in the voyagers organization

@mtl.insider • 4 minutes ago

nah WHAT is happening in the voyagers organization 😭😭😭

[video attached]

The video is shaky and clearly filmed from behind a concrete pillar near one of the underground rink hallways.

The first thing audible is the Coach Theriault yelling.

“You cannot do this to the team!”

Then the camera shifts to show Shane Hollander standing across from him in training clothes, still sweaty from practice, and looking furious.

“You think people will forgive this?” Theriault keeps shouting. “You are the captain of Montreal! The city depends on you!”

Shane just stares at him for a second before laughing once.

Cold.

“You want to talk about what I owe Montreal?” he asks.

Theriault points at him aggressively. “You signed a responsibility to this organization—”

“No,” Shane cuts him off, his voice echoes through the hallway. “I built this organization.”

Everything goes deadly quiet.

“I stayed here when everybody else left. I dragged this team through rebuild after rebuild.” He points at the ice behind them. “I gave Montreal their first Stanley Cup in sixteen years.”

Then harsher:

“And then I gave you another one.”

Theriault starts saying something back, but Shane keeps going. “I took every cheap joke. Every comment. Every asshole in the locker room acting like I was less of a man because I kept my head in the game and didn’t go looking for fights on the ice.”

The person recording whispers “holy shit…”

“I stayed silent when people treated JJ like garbage because he’s Black.”

Theriault immediately interrupts, angry now. “That is not true—”

“Oh, really?” Shane steps closer. “Should we talk about Hayden then? Should we talk about how his wife almost died giving birth to twins and you called him during it telling him to get back to the fucking rink?”

Theriault starts shouting in French.

“No,” Shane talks over him. “You don’t get to do that now.” His hands are shaking now. “You told me this was my duty as captain. Fine. I did it.”

His voice cracks slightly.

“I paid my dues to Montreal.”

Theriault says something quieter this time, but the video barely catches it.

Then Shane suddenly snaps.

“My grandparents are dead! I have a cousin in Japan with nobody left and you’re telling me I can’t take ONE year away from hockey to bring her here?!”

Theriault tries talking again.

“I gave everything to this team,” Shane points at himself.

Then, quieter and way angrier somehow:

“And now I’m done.”

Theriault suddenly notices the phone filming.

“What the FUCK are you doing?!” he yells in French.

The video jerks downward while people start yelling.

Cut to black.

caption:

i don’t even know what to say anymore

Top Comments:

@hockeyfan77

Nah Shane Hollander just destroyed that organization in 2 minutes

 

@voyagersdiehard

If this is real Theriault needs to be fired IMMEDIATELY

 

@jjsupporter

So, everybody just ignored the racism against JJ?????

 

@mtlgirl93

The “I built this organization” line was HARD because he’s literally right

 

@nhlwatcher

He sounded exhausted more than angry honestly

 

@stanleycupspam

TWO cups and this is how they treat him???

 

@hockeymess

Wait Hayden’s wife almost died?????

 

@canadianchaos

The coach going silent after Hayden got mentioned says EVERYTHING

 

@raidersfan81

Boston fans are already preparing the welcome banners

 

@montrealburner

This man gave the city everything and they still pushed him too far

 

@icedanceworld

The ‘didn’t go looking for fights on the ice’ part is real as hell. There’s not a more professional hockey player than Shane Hollander. He keeps his head in the game, and it shows—two Cups back-to-back!

 

@sportscenterjunkie

You could hear the heartbreak in “my grandparents are dead” 😭😭😭

 

@habsfan1998

I’ve defended this team for years, but this is disgusting

 

@nhltea

Not Theriault screaming in French after noticing the camera 😂

 

@hollanderdefenseleague

“I paid my dues to montreal”

YEAH HE DID

 

@sportsmedia

This is going to become a massive scandal

 

@voyagersfanforever

No because why am I crying over a leaked hallway video

 

@shanehollanderupdates

From now on I’m rooting for Hollander not Montreal idc

---

@hockey — HOT POST

@StanleyCupProphet

Montreal ruined Shane Hollander and I’m tired of pretending they didn’t.

I know everybody is losing their minds over the leaked hallway video right now, but some of us have been saying versions of this for YEARS.

The Voyagers were garbage for sixteen straight years.

Sixteen of no Cups, or consistency. They never had any real leadership or identity as a team. They kept living off old history while every other organization in the league modernized around them.

And then they got handed the greatest thing that ever happened to Canadian hockey:

Shane Hollander.

I am dead serious when I say this guy is the golden boy of the sport.

• Perfect stats.
• Perfect leadership.
• Perfect public image.
• Olympic medalist.
• Two-time Stanley Cup champion.
• Captain material before he could legally drink in the U.S.
• Beloved by fans.
• Beloved by sponsors.
• One of the most well-rounded players of his generation.

People compare him to Ilya Rozanov all the time because they came into the league at the same time and they’re both freak talents, but let’s be honest for a second: If Shane had been drafted literally ANYWHERE ELSE, his career numbers would probably be even more insane than they already are.

Because Montreal wasted years of this man’s life dragging him through dysfunction. That leaked video confirmed every ugly rumor people have whispered about that locker room for years.

• The racism.
• The toxic “man up and deal with it” culture.
• The pressure.
• The emotional manipulation.
• The organization treating players like machines instead of people.

And despite ALL of that?

Shane STILL dragged that team to back-to-back Cups basically on his spine.

You heard him yourself:

“I built this organization.”

HE’S RIGHT.

Who was the face of the franchise?

Shane.

Who carried those playoff runs?

Shane.

Who took every interview after losses?

Shane.

Who made Montreal relevant again after sixteen miserable years?

Shane fucking Hollander.

And now they’re trying to guilt him because he wants to take ONE YEAR to adopt his orphaned cousin from Japan after his grandparents died?

Are you kidding me?

Honestly, after that video, I don’t even care if this sounds dramatic anymore: The entire organization deserves to be investigated. Because if even HALF the stuff he mentioned is true, this goes way beyond hockey culture.

And yeah, maybe this next part makes me insane, but I’m saying it anyway:

Send him to Boston.

Imagine Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov on the same team. Tell me that wouldn’t instantly become the most terrifying duo in the NHL.

You’d have:

- The best captain in hockey

 - The most talented offensive player in hockey

 - Two media superstars

 - Two genuinely elite athletes

 - Two people who are psychotic enough about winning to destroy the league together

Boston would become a dynasty overnight.

And after everything Montreal put him through? Maybe he deserves a fresh start somewhere that actually appreciates him.

Top Comments:

@raidersnation

I would normally call any player that gets traded from Montreal to Boston a traitor, but after that video??? Nah. Free him.

 

@HabsTillIDie

I’ve defended Montreal my entire life and this is the first time I genuinely feel disgusted by the organization.

 

@nhl_gossip

The craziest part is that Shane technically wasn’t even trying to expose them. Dude was having a breakdown, and somebody secretly filmed it.

 

@stanleycupburner

“You told me this was my duty as captain.”

That line broke my heart.

 

@BostonBorn

Rozanov and Hollander on the same line would actually end civilization.

 

@hockeyhistory

People forget how BAD Montreal was before Shane got there. Younger fans genuinely do not understand.

 

@canadianwinter

He gave them TWO Cups, and they still treated him like that.

 

@icedragon77

The fact he stayed silent through all of it because he thought it was his responsibility says a lot about the kind of captain he is.

 

@JJDefenseSquad

I really hope JJ is okay because the racism comment was DARK.

 

@puckandskates

Honestly? Shane Hollander has always carried himself like somebody under insane pressure.

 

@raidersfan88

Boston fans watching this like 👁️👄👁️

 

@MapleLeafsHater

Not even joking, if Boston somehow gets Hollander the NHL is finished.

 

@HollanderDefenseLeague

At this point, wherever Shane Hollander goes, my loyalty goes too. FUCK MONTREAL!

 

@NHLWatcher

The saddest thing is that he clearly still loves his team. That’s what made the argument so brutal.

 

@CanadianPride

People keep calling him “soft” meanwhile this man carried one of the heaviest franchises in hockey on his back for YEARS.

 

@skatingandhockey

Hope his cousin in Japan is okay honestly. Sounds like the poor girl has been through hell recently.

 

@RozanovFan

Need somebody to check on Ilya Rozanov because you KNOW that man watched the leaked video.

 

@neutralfan12

The NHL has ignored toxic locker room culture for decades. Somebody was eventually going to snap publicly.

 

@hockeynight

Shane Hollander leaving Montreal would genuinely become one of the biggest moments in modern hockey.

---

@HollanderNation

📸 SPOTTED: Shane Hollander at Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport.

[attached photo]

— Shane wearing a black hoodie, baseball cap, and headphones around his neck. He was carrying two duffel bags, standing near Gate 74. The destination screen clearly reads: KYOTO, JAPAN

After everything that happened this week, we just wanna say:

Good luck, Captain.

Go take care of your family. We’ll handle things here. And don’t worry — by the time you come back, we’ll have the PERFECT NHL team waiting for you 🫡❤️

#ShaneHollander #CaptainForever

Comments:

@DCDefendersFan

Perfect NHL team = DC Defenders btw

 

@AdmiralsEmpire

Nah send him to New York. Hollander in an Admirals jersey would feed families.

 

@BostonRaidersHQ

The only reason the Montreal/Boston rivalry was still competitive was Shane Hollander carrying that team on his back 😭

Without him Boston would’ve buried them alive for YEARS.

Bring him to the Raiders.

 

@GuardiansForever

Toronto Guardians. Keep him in Canada.

 

@HollanderNation

ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE 😭

The entire hockey world is talking about toxic Canadian hockey culture, and your solution is sending him to ANOTHER Canadian team???

And not even just another Canadian team.

THE TORONTO GUARDIANS???

Absolutely not.

 

@TorontoPuck

okay DAMN 😭😭😭

 

@HabsTears

No because they’re right. Toronto is like the second worst team in the league when it comes to their racist chirps and toxicity. Up there with St. Luis and Montreal.

 

@BostonRaidersHQ

Boston would just aggressively love him instead ❤️

 

@AdmiralsEmpire

New York would give him fashion deals and emotional support.

 

@DCDefendersFan

DC would give him therapy and a military-grade defense line.

 

@NHLWatcher

Every fanbase is trying to adopt Shane Hollander right now 😭

 

@RaidersDefense

Do not blame us for appreciating what Montreal threw away because of their stupidity.

 

@BostonBorn

Rozanov and Hollander on the same team would literally alter the NHL forever.

 

@hockeyfan22

STOP 😭😭😭

 

@TorontoTruth

Still think he belongs in Toronto.

 

@HollanderDefenseSquad

Toronto is like the second circle of hockey hell be serious.

 

@PuckEmpire

The fact everyone collectively agreed “anywhere but montreal” is CRAZY

 

@LAKingsWest

Okay but consider:

Los Angeles.

Pure sunshine and beach days, for the Golden Boy of hockey.

 

@AdmiralsEmpire

A Canadian boy in LA would melt in six hours.

 

@BostonRaidersHQ

Shane Hollander seeing sunlight in January: “What the fuck is this?”

 

@DCDefendersFan

Bro would still wear winter jackets in California

 

@NHLChaos

The funniest part is that he’s not even saying anything and the entire league is fighting over him like divorced parents

 

@hollanderupdates

Hope his family in Japan is okay ❤️

 

@CanadasCaptain

Take your time, Shane. Hockey can wait.

---

BREAKING — SPORTS INSIDER DAILY

NHL Commissioner Roger Crowell Resigns Amid Montreal Scandal; Criminal Investigations Pending Against Former Montreal Staff

What began as a leaked hallway video involving Montreal captain Shane Hollander has now exploded into the largest scandal in modern NHL history.

Over the last seventy-two hours, multiple investigations have reportedly been opened involving the Montreal Voyagers organization, former head coach Luc Theriault, former hockey players Gilbert Comeau and Patrice Drapeau, and now-former NHL commissioner Roger Crowell.

Crowell officially announced his resignation this morning following overwhelming backlash from fans, sponsors, and several organizations demanding accountability after the viral video showed Hollander confronting Theriault over alleged abuse, racism, and toxic conduct within the Voyagers organization.

Sources close to the investigation claim the NHL initially attempted to contain the scandal internally before public outrage spiraled out of control online.

That attempt failed almost immediately.

Sponsors began pulling support within hours of the leak. Multiple former players allegedly contacted journalists privately regarding locker-room misconduct, while several advocacy groups demanded independent investigations into player treatment across the league.

Then came the footage.

This morning, videos surfaced online showing former Montreal coach Luc Theriault being escorted out of the Bell Centre by police officers while screaming profanities in French at reporters and staff members gathered outside.

One translation provided by bilingual reporters claims Theriault repeatedly shouted: “This is all because of that fucking faggot Hollander!”

The footage spread across social media in less than an hour.

Meanwhile, both Comeau and Drapeau were officially terminated by the organization pending further investigation.

In a move nobody expected, the owners of the Montreal Voyagers announced late tonight that they had sold the franchise following mounting public pressure and collapsing sponsorship deals.

The purchasing group reportedly includes multiple LGBTQ+ advocacy investors alongside several Black Canadian business organizations and athletes connected to racial justice initiatives.

The organization also announced immediate leadership restructuring.

Hayden Pike has officially been named captain of the Voyagers.

Jean-Jacques "J.J." Boiziau has been promoted to alternate captain.

Neither player has publicly commented beyond a short joint statement requesting privacy and promising “a healthier future for hockey.”

As for Shane Hollander himself, the former captain remains in Kyoto, Japan, where sources say he is currently handling family matters related to the adoption of his young cousin following the deaths of his grandparents.

Ironically, the event that triggered the collapse of an NHL organization appears to have begun because a player asked for one year away from hockey to take care of his family.

Comment Section:

@hockeydaily

Good. Fucking. Riddance.

 

@NHLWatcher

All this because a guy wanted to go take care of his family in Japan 😭

 

@canadianwinter

The fact this entire thing started because they wouldn’t let him adopt his cousin is INSANE

 

@puckchaos

OMG SHANE IS A DADDY NOW 😭😭😭

THAT IS SO HOT!

 

@MontrealBurner

Bro was literally just trying to go raise his orphaned cousin and the organization detonated itself

 

@sportsfan22

Are we just skipping past the coach calling him a faggot on camera???

 

@OldSchoolHockey

Look man I don’t care if Shane wants to suck cock or whatever. The guy plays hockey better than anybody alive and keeps his private life private. That’s all I care about.

 

@nhl_gossip

“keeps his private life private” is true though 😭

We literally know NOTHING about his dating life.

 

@ProudRaidersFan

People bring their wives and girlfriends onto the ice after games constantly but suddenly if Shane kissed a boyfriend it’s “too political”? GO SCREW YOURSELF @OldSchoolHockey!

 

@hockeyguy1991

We don’t even know if he’s gay 😭

 

@sportscenterfan

Okay but IF he was dating a man…

Shane Hollander’s boyfriend would become the most envied person on earth immediately.

 

@goalhornchaos

That man is on billboards for a reason 😭

 

@CanadasCaptain

Honestly the saddest part is realizing how much pressure he was under the whole time.

 

@JJDefenseLeague

JJ getting the A after all this feels right.

 

@MontrealRebuild

Hayden as captain actually makes me want to sob after hearing what happened with Jackie.

 

@hockeynight

Roger Crowell really destroyed his entire career trying to protect this mess

 

@raidersfan88

Boston sitting in the corner like 👀

 

@NHLmemes

Shane Hollander left for Japan and came back to discover he accidentally overthrew an NHL organization

 

@hollanderupdates

I genuinely hope he’s resting and staying away from social media right now.

 

@sportsdaily

Imagine explaining this storyline to someone a month later.

Chapter 2: But this is me waking up

Outside the massive airport windows, Paris was still dark and raining.

Planes moved slowly across the runway with blinking lights cutting through the wet grey morning while exhausted travelers drifted through the terminal wrapped in coats and scarves, dragging suitcases behind them. Somewhere nearby, a coffee machine hissed loudly between boarding announcements spoken first in French, then in English.

Shane sat near one of the charging stations with his ankle resting over his knee, phone propped against his carry-on while Hayden and JJ stared back at him through the screen.

“You leave the country for ten hours,” Hayden muttered, dragging a hand down his face, “and suddenly the entire league loses its fucking mind.”

JJ snorted beside him. “Understatement of the century.”

Shane smiled faintly.

He still looked exhausted. His hair slightly damp from the rushed airport shower he had taken during the layover, and the shadows under his eyes made it obvious he had barely slept in days. But somehow he still looked lighter. Not happier exactly, just… lighter.

Like a massive load has been taken off his mind.

“I turned everything off,” Shane admitted after a moment. “Social media, news alerts, every kind of notification.” He rubbed at one eye tiredly before leaning further back into the chair. “The only people I’m talking to outside my agent are you two and my parents. That’s it.”

Hayden stared at him. “You seriously haven’t seen any of it?”

“No.”

“Jesus Christ.” Hayden laughed once, though it sounded entirely stress-induced. “You have absolutely no idea what’s happening over here.”

“I don’t particularly want to.”

That settled quietly between them.

Around Shane, the airport kept moving in slow waves of noise and exhaustion. People lined up at nearby gates while workers pushed carts across the polished floors, wheels rattling softly every few seconds. The world kept moving with the same indifferent rhythm it always had.

Meanwhile, somewhere across the Atlantic, the hockey world was apparently imploding. But Shane no longer seemed interested in watching it happen.

JJ studied him silently for a few seconds before speaking.

“You really are done.”

It wasn’t a question.

Hayden still looked unsettled by the realization in a way JJ didn’t. Hayden understood anger. He understood burnout too. What he didn’t fully understand was the kind of exhaustion that settled so deep into someone that walking away started feeling easier than staying.

JJ understood it.

Maybe because he recognized too much of it.

Shane lowered his gaze briefly toward the floor before speaking again.

“I’m gay.”

The confession came out calmly, folded into the conversation so casually it almost didn’t register at first.

Hayden blinked startled at the sudden confession, while JJ remained silent. And Shane kept going before either of them could respond.

“I could handle the comments. People acting like my skin color was something they tolerated instead of accepted.” His mouth tightened slightly afterward. “Honestly, I could even deal with the racist jokes because at least with that, I always knew where I stood.”

Behind him, rain streaked softly across the massive windows while another plane rolled slowly through the dark outside.

“Hockey teaches people to survive by becoming part of the group,” Shane continued quietly. “Everybody builds a kind of closeness through locker rooms and road trips and parties and whatever comes with it.” He shrugged once. “If that works for people, fine. I’m glad it does.”

Then he shook his head slightly.

“It never worked for me.”

JJ nodded immediately because he knew exactly what Shane meant.

Most players let hockey consume every part of their lives until teammates became drinking partners, roommates, vacation companions, entire identities wrapped around the sport itself. Shane had always kept some invisible distance between hockey and the rest of his life. He loved the game more fiercely than almost anyone JJ had ever met, but some part of him always stayed separate from it too.

Private and untouched by the locker room.

“You guys became my family because I chose you,” Shane said softly. “Not because we wore the same jersey. Hell, our friendship was built outside of the rink. With family dinners and aquarium visits of all things!”

Neither of them spoke, but Hayden did chuckle at the reminder of the many outings they’d taken his children on.

“I kept hockey separate from the rest of my life for a long time,” he continued. “And maybe that saved me in some ways.” His expression dimmed slightly. “Though I can see now that every season still chipped away at me anyway.”

There was no bitterness in his voice, just bitter honesty.

“The winning made it worth it for a while,” Shane admitted quietly. “Making it to the playoffs, winning back-to-back Cups. Walking into the Bell Centre during postseason games with twenty thousand people screaming like the building might collapse.” A tired smile flickered briefly across his face. “Nothing compares to that feeling.”

Then his smile faded.

“But the second Theriault involved my family, everything changed.”

His jaw tightened hard enough that JJ immediately looked away from the screen for a second.

“He doesn’t get to tell me where I should be when my grandparents die. He doesn’t get to decide whether my cousin deserves a family. He doesn’t get to sit there and act like hockey matters more than the people I love.”

Silence settled heavily across the call after that.

Then Shane exhaled quietly. “And I owe both of you an apology.”

Hayden frowned immediately. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

There was enough certainty in his voice that neither of them interrupted again.

“JJ, I should’ve said something sooner every time people treated you differently because your skin. God knows I, out of everyone on the team, understood what you were going through.” Shane swallowed nervously before continuing. “And Hayden, I should’ve gotten Theriault fired the second he called you while Jackie was in the hospital.”

Hayden looked away, glaring at the distance.

“I knew how scared you were for her and the twins,” Shane admitted softly.“And I still didn’t say a thing because, at the time, all I could do was keep my head in the game and focus on winning.”

“You were trying to hold the team together,” Hayden argued.

“I was protecting an organization that abused us,” Shane corrected quietly, his eyes prickling with shame.

JJ lowered his eyes toward his lap after hearing that.

For a while, none of them spoke.

The silence didn’t feel uncomfortable anymore. Just heavy with the understanding that something enormous had already ended even if nobody had fully said it out loud yet.

Then Hayden shook his head roughly. “You did more for us than anybody else in that organization ever did.” JJ nodded immediately beside him. “You protected us however you could,” Hayden continued. “Half the reason that locker room didn’t completely fall apart was because of you.”

Shane still looked unconvinced, though too exhausted to argue.

JJ watched him quietly for another moment before finally asking the question both of them had been avoiding since the call started. “You’re not coming back to Montreal after the year is over, are you?”

Something painful crossed Shane’s expression.

“I can’t.”

The answer came easily, though thick with emotion.

“I can’t survive giving that place another chance to hurt me.”

Nobody tried convincing him otherwise. Eventually Hayden leaned back against the couch with a long exhale while JJ rubbed tiredly at the side of his face. 

“So, what now?” Hayden asked quietly.

Shane thought about that for a moment, then he looked directly at JJ. “You need to be careful.”

JJ’s expression sharpened immediately.

“I mean it,” Shane continued. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to the team after this. Everybody’s angry, reporters are circling like sharks, and management’s panicking." His gaze hardened slightly. “And now you are the only not-white player in that locker room.”

JJ grimaced, knowing exactly what Shane meant. What he did not say out loud. 

“If you can find a way to get traded,” Shane said quietly, “do it.”

Hayden frowned immediately. “Shane—”

“I’m serious.”

There wasn’t even a second of hesitation in his voice now.

“You shouldn’t have to spend your entire career forcing yourself to fit with people that refuse to meet you halfway.” He looked carefully at JJ through the screen. “Stop shrinking yourself for those assholes. You deserve better than that. You’re a hell of a player, Dagenais, and they should be thanking God for having you on the team.”

JJ laughed softly under his breath, though there wasn’t much humor in it.

“You sound like my mother.”

“She's always been a smart woman.”

That finally pulled a real smile out of JJ.

Then Shane looked toward Hayden. “You’ll survive there,” he said more gently. “As fucked up as it is, you are straight and white. You might even be made captain, now that I am not there. Plus you’ve got Jackie and the kids to think about. You cannot up their whole life by getting traded.” A vicious smirk crossed Shane's face. “So, stay and bleed them dry.”

Hayden barked out a startled laugh. “Jesus Christ.”

“I mean it.”

Another boarding announcement echoed through the terminal overhead while passengers slowly started gathering near in the gate beside Shane’s.

“And JJ,” Shane added quietly, “go to Hayden’s place sometimes. Be around the kids more.” His mouth softened faintly at the thought. “Every week we’ll video call. We’ll have dinner together like we always do.”

“Across three different time zones,” Hayden muttered.

“We’ll figure it out.”

Something in both Hayden and JJ’s expressions shifted after that.

Finally Hayden cleared his throat roughly before saying, “Yes, Captain.”

JJ smiled beside him, though his eyes looked suspiciously bright. “Yes, Captain.”

The title visibly hit Shane harder than either of them intended. For a second, he looked heartbreakingly young sitting there beneath the cold airport lighting, exhausted and grieving and far too relieved all at once.

Being their captain had meant everything to him.

“I love you guys,” he admitted quietly.

“Love you too,” Hayden answered instantly.

JJ nodded in agreement. “Always.”

Shane swallowed hard, then, softer this time, carrying all the grief he had been trying to keep buried since the call began:

“Being your captain was an honor.”

His voice cracked slightly at the edges.

“I just wish it could’ve lasted longer.”

The screen went dark as the call ended, leaving Shane staring at his own reflection in the black phone screen for a few quiet seconds.

Somewhere farther down the terminal, a child started crying loudly enough that exhausted parents immediately began apologizing to strangers while coffee machines hissed behind half-open café counters preparing for the morning rush.

Shane slowly lowered the phone into his lap and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.

He could cry later.

Preferably somewhere private and horizontal.

The flights had been booked too fast for decent connections, stitched together through whatever routes were still available once the media disaster started exploding back in Canada. Instead of a clean flight to Tokyo, Shane had ended up stranded inside Charles de Gaulle for almost six hours waiting for the next flight east.

At least the delay gave him time to think.

Or maybe too much time to think.

By the time the clock crept closer to six in the morning, the airport had started waking up around him. Metal shutters rolled open across bookstores and shops while warm yellow lights flickered on one by one behind bakery windows. The smell of espresso and fresh bread slowly replaced the cold recycled-air smell that seemed permanently trapped inside airports.

Shane watched people gathering near the cafés for another minute before finally standing and grabbing his carry-on.

The little bistro near his gate looked tiny compared to the endless stretch of glass and steel surrounding it, but the warmth spilling from inside still felt inviting after hours beneath cold airport lighting. Fresh pastries filled the display cases while exhausted travelers hovered near the counter clutching passports, phones, and oversized coffees with the hollow expressions of people surviving entirely through caffeine.

When his turn came, Shane ordered the largest coffee on the menu almost automatically. Then his eyes drifted toward the refrigerated fruit cups beside the register. Usually breakfast looked exactly like that, something measured carefully enough for nutritionists to approve without complaint.

For years his meals had revolved entirely around performance, calories, and training schedules. Half the time he barely even tasted what he ate anymore because hockey had slowly turned food into another form of discipline.

Then his gaze shifted toward the pastries instead.

Golden croissants rested beneath the warm lights with dark chocolate melting slightly through flaky layers of buttered pastry still fresh from the oven.

Shane stared at them for a second before a sudden thought crossed his mind.

I’m not playing hockey this year.

“Actually,” he said, glancing back toward the cashier, “can I get a chocolate croissant too?”

A few minutes later, he settled near one of the enormous windows overlooking the runway with coffee warming his hands and the croissant sitting on a small white plate beside him while rain slid softly down the glass outside.

Planes moved constantly through the grey Paris morning. Some descended slowly through the clouds while others accelerated down wet runways before disappearing into the sky with engines loud enough to vibrate faintly through the windows.

Shane tore off a piece of the croissant and took a bite. The pastry shattered delicately beneath his fingers while dark chocolate melted warmly against his tongue, rich without being overwhelmingly sweet.

His eyes widened slightly.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

Then he immediately took another bite.

Why the hell had he spent years eating like a depressed Victorian orphan for hockey?

The thought carried enough genuine irritation to almost make him laugh.

Everything in Montreal had been optimized within an inch of its life. Protein-heavy meals, with controlled sugar intake. Endless lectures from nutritionists treating dessert like organized crime. Every part of his body had belonged to hockey for so long that this stupid airport croissant tasted better than half the meals he’d eaten during playoffs.

The chocolate lingered pleasantly at the back of his tongue, darker than the aggressively sweet versions sold in Canada, and Shane immediately appreciated that. He had never understood Rozanov’s sweet tooth and love for fried food.

He could already imagine Rozanov biting into the croissant and complaining about the bitterness like someone had personally offended him. Hell, Rozanov could probably survive entirely on pastries and candy if left unsupervised long enough, whereas Shane usually preferred stronger flavors.

The thought pulled a tired smile onto Shane’s face while another plane disappeared into the rain outside. For the first time in years, nobody expected anything from him for the next few hours. No cameras waited outside locker rooms, no reporters demanded statements, no coaches expected leadership, and no teammates looked to him for speeches after bad losses.

There was only coffee, a warm pastry, rain sliding down the airport windows, and the strange, unfamiliar feeling of existing somewhere outside hockey for the first time since he was a teenager.

By the time Shane finished the last of the coffee, the rain outside had softened into thin silver mist drifting across the runway while the airport slowly filled with the constant noise of morning departures.

He stayed there for a while afterward with the empty cup warming his hands and crumbs from the croissant scattered across the plate, watching planes disappear into the clouds one after another while exhaustion settled deeper into his bones now that the adrenaline was finally starting to wear off.

Shane glanced down as his phone buzzed against the table. For a second, he considered ignoring the call. He was too tired for another conversation. Too emotionally wrung out to stand somebody else asking questions he no longer had the energy to answer.

Then he saw the contact name.

Lily.

The corner of Shane’s mouth twitched faintly despite himself because nobody except the two of them would ever understand how stupid that contact name actually was.

Of course it was Rozanov.

Something tightened painfully inside his chest. Because this might be the last real conversation they ever had. Shane closed his eyes briefly before answering the call and lifting the phone toward his ear.

“What the fuck, Hollander?”

Rozanov’s voice crashed through the speaker, roughened by stress and thickened heavily by the Russian accent that always got stronger whenever he got too emotional.

“What are you doing?” Rozanov demanded. “You’re leaving hockey for a season? Everybody losing their minds, nobody telling me anything, suddenly you disappear to fucking Japan—”

Shane leaned back slowly in the chair and closed his eyes again for one brief selfish second.

God.

He had missed that voice already.

The roughness underneath every sentence. The sharp edge to the accent. The way Rozanov always sounded halfway between furious and exhausted whenever he cared too much about something.

Or someone.

For a few seconds, Shane simply listened to him talk and let himself enjoy the sound of it. 

“I’m being selfish,” Shane finally answered.

Silence answered him from the other side of the line, and when Shane opened his eyes again, another plane was moving slowly through the rain outside the windows.

“This might be my only chance to become a parent before retirement,” he admitted softly. “Unlike you, Ilya, I don’t get to walk away from this.”

He heard Ilya’s breath hitch on the other side of the call. For a moment, Shane felt like the worst asshole in the world, but he needed to do this.

“You get to fuck your archenemesis in secret hotel hookups like some badly written spy movie while also sleeping your way through half the female population of Boston,” Shane continued, tired amusement flickering weakly through his voice despite everything. “And one day, when you decide you’re done having fun, you still get to marry a woman and settle down without anybody in the league caring.”

His gaze lowered toward the empty coffee cup between his hands.

“You get an exit strategy, I don’t.”

The words came out softer now.

“I’m gay, Ilya.”

Even after saying it earlier, the words still felt strange out loud.

“The only person I could actually build a life with would be another man.” Shane swallowed once. “And hockey…” He pressed his lips into a thin line. “Hockey doesn’t let people like me have that life.”

He could hear Ilya breathing raggedly through the phone now.

“I can’t openly marry a man while I’m still playing professionally. I can’t build a family without risking everything I spent my entire life working for.” His fingers tightened slightly around the cup. “And adoption agencies aren’t exactly lining up to hand children to single professional athletes, even with the good reputation I have. Unless, that is, there’s blood relation involved.”

His eyes drifted shut briefly.

“So either I spend years waiting for retirement and hoping maybe someday I can finally start living honestly…”

He choked back a sob that threatened to escape.

“Or I go to Japan right now and bring my cousin home.”

The ache in his heart deepened after saying it out loud, because maybe in another life, it could have been different.

“Maybe somewhere else,” Shane murmured quietly, “things could’ve been different.”

Ilya still hadn’t interrupted him once.

“Maybe in another life hockey isn’t filled with racist homophobic assholes terrified of people like us.” His expression dimmed slightly. “Maybe in another life Russia doesn’t throw people in jail for being bisexual.”

The words settled heavily between them. 

Because Shane knew.

He knew exactly what lived underneath Ilya’s recklessness. Underneath the hookups and the flirting and the constant performance of hypermasculinity. Russia had taught Ilya very young exactly what happened to men who loved the wrong people.

Maybe that was why they understood each other so easily from the beginning.

“We could’ve had everything,” Shane admitted softly. “A bright future, a real relationship, maybe even a family.”

The confession hurt more than he expected.

“It was a beautiful dream while it lasted.” His eyes drifted toward the planes outside again before he exhaled slowly. “But this is me waking up.”

His voice lowered almost into a whisper.

“For what it’s worth, I like you, Ilya. I think I like you maybe a little too much.”

For a long moment, the only sound between them came from static and distant airport announcements echoing overhead.

Then Ilya finally spoke.

“I like you too.”

His voice sounded thick now, the Russian accent stronger than Shane had heard it in years, every word roughened by emotion he was trying and failing to keep under control. And God, Shane loved him.

Maybe he always would.

The realization passed through him quietly, and only sadness followed it. A deep exhausted sadness for something that had never really been allowed to exist in the first place.

Shane smiled faintly despite the ache building in his throat.

“I know.”

Another silence stretched between them. Neither of them seemed capable of ending the call. Eventually Shane looked back toward the runway where another plane disappeared slowly into the clouds.

Then he swallowed hard and forced himself to say the words anyway.

“Goodbye, Ilya.”

The silence on the other end cracked softly, like Ilya had tried to answer and failed.

Shane ended the call before either of them could make it harder.

Chapter 3: I’ll take care of her from here

By the time Shane finally landed in Kyoto, the jetlag was killing him.

The flight from Paris had blurred into fragments of half-sleep, turbulence somewhere over Siberia, flight attendants speaking softly in Japanese, and the constant ache settling deeper into his shoulders every hour he sat on an airplane seat clearly designed by people who hated the human spine.

When the plane finally descended through thick clouds over Kansai International Airport, Shane stared quietly through the window while Japan unfolded beneath him in muted shades of grey and green beneath the rain.

It was raining again. Lately the weather seemed to mirror his turbulent feelings, and the irony was not lost on him.

The thought almost made him laugh.

The airport itself felt strangely familiar despite how many years had passed since he had last spent real time here. Japanese signs surrounded him as he made his way through, black kanji against white walls directing passengers toward immigration while formal airport announcements echoed softly overhead.

And somehow, to Shane’s disbelief, he understood all of it perfectly.

He had honestly expected his Japanese to be rustier after spending so many years almost entirely surrounded by English and French. English dominated most of his life now while French had slowly embedded itself into him through Montreal interviews, locker room conversations, and press conferences until half the time he caught himself thinking in French hockey terminology without even realizing it anymore.

Japanese mostly belonged to phone calls now.

Conversations with his grandparents. Holiday greetings. Occasional visits squeezed awkwardly between seasons and playoff runs.

But even without any real practice, the language came easily to Shane.

Formal and polished, maybe a little stiff from lack of use, but still fluent enough that by the time he reached immigration control, the customs officer barely slowed him down at all. Shane answered questions automatically in careful polite Japanese while the older man stamped the passport with visible approval at the formality built into Shane’s speech patterns.

His grandparents would probably laugh themselves sick hearing how formal he sounded now. The thought was bittersweet and filled with nostalgia, making him smile sadly as he followed the signs toward baggage claim because he had spent years convincing himself he would come visit them properly later.

Later once the season ended.

Later once playoffs finished.

Later once things finally calmed down.

But hockey seasons never really calmed down. There was always another training camp afterward, another recovery schedule, another playoff run demanding every piece of him until entire years disappeared faster than he could process them.

And eventually later became never.

The guilt threatened to overpower him while he watched suitcases roll endlessly across conveyor belts beneath fluorescent lighting. He used to come here constantly as a kid because his grandparents had always welcomed him during summers, and suddenly memories kept surfacing one after another while he stood there half-asleep in the middle of the airport.

Humid Kyoto afternoons beside narrow rivers lined with old restaurants. His grandmother teaching him kanji at the kitchen table while cicadas screamed outside loudly enough to drown out the television. Running through narrow streets with convenience store popsicles melting down his hands while his grandfather yelled at him to slow down before he cracked his head open somewhere.

Back then Japan had felt like his second home. Then hockey happened, and somehow entire years started disappearing at a time.

Shane rubbed tiredly at his face while another suitcase rolled past him on the conveyor belt. The strange thing about Yuri was that she barely even felt like a cousin to him. She was more like a niece.

His family’s genealogy had always been slightly ridiculous. His grandparents had Shane’s mother incredibly young, barely out of high school themselves, and then years later, after Yuna moved to Canada for college, and eventually met Shane’s father, they unexpectedly ended up having another child around the same time Shane himself was born.

Which meant Shane and his uncle had basically grown up together, spending their summers under the same roof despite technically belonging to completely different generations of the family. Then while Shane was already becoming one of the NHL’s biggest stars, his uncle got married young and had Yuri soon afterward.

And then came the accident.

A wet road and a truck driver falling asleep at the wheel was all it took to destroy a fledgling family. One phone call later, Shane and his parents were on a plane to Kyoto for the first time since he had been drafted.

And even then, Shane could only take a couple of days for the funeral, returning to Montreal for the playoffs, while his parents had stayed behind.

What a fucking joke.

After that, Shane’s grandparents raised Yuri themselves because there had been nobody else left to do it.

Now they were gone too.

Eventually his duffle bags appeared rolling slowly around the conveyor belt, and Shane grabbed them, propping them over his carry-on, before making his way toward the arrivals area while warm humid air drifted faintly through the automatic doors every time they opened.

For the first time in his life, Shane had no schedule or plan for the next year. The uncertainty should have terrified him but standing there beneath airport lights with exhaustion weighing down every inch of his body, it almost felt peaceful instead.

The taxi ride into Kyoto passed in a blur of rain-streaked windows, neon reflections, and exhaustion heavy enough that Shane occasionally caught himself drifting halfway asleep whenever the car stopped at red lights.

Outside, the city unfolded slowly beneath the grey morning sky. Narrow streets crowded with convenience stores and tiny cafés. Electrical wires tangled overhead between buildings while bicycles lined neatly beside sidewalks still wet from the rain. Businessmen hurried beneath umbrellas toward train stations with coffee cups balanced carefully in their hands while convenience store signs glowed softly against the gloomy weather.

Shane rested his head briefly against the cool glass of the window while the taxi slowed near an intersection crowded with early morning traffic, windshield wipers moving steadily through the rain.

He was making his way to Yuri.

And what a fucking irony it was.

His cousin’s name was Yuri, which is the Japanese word for Lily.

Shane had left one Lily behind in the West only to cross half the planet toward another waiting for him in the East. At least, this Lily would actually belong to him.

The taxi eventually stopped outside the Canadian embassy, modern and sterile against the older architecture surrounding it. Security escorted him through the entrance after checking his identification, and within minutes Shane found himself being guided through quiet hallways toward a conference office already occupied by embassy staff and several Japanese lawyers seated around a polished table covered in folders and paperwork.

Everyone stood politely when he entered. The Canadians recognized him immediately while the Japanese lawyers mostly just seemed aware he was famous without entirely understanding why. Shane bowed automatically before shaking hands, earning several visibly pleased reactions from the older Japanese officials who clearly appreciated that he still remembered proper etiquette despite spending most of his life abroad.

The meeting itself unfolded far more smoothly than Shane expected. Because he was Yuri’s closest remaining blood relative, most of the adoption process had already been simplified considerably before he even arrived in Japan. Embassy staff explained documentation requirements while lawyers reviewed timelines involving custody transfer, residency procedures, school enrollment, and eventual citizenship applications.

One of the Canadian representatives smiled reassuringly while flipping through paperwork. “Honestly, Mr. Hollander, the process should move fairly quickly given the circumstances.”

Especially after the media disaster back in Canada, Shane thought privately.

Thankfully nobody at the table seemed particularly interested in discussing hockey beyond recognizing his name. Instead, the Japanese representatives focused heavily on stability and seemed genuinely relieved that Shane intended to remain in Kyoto for the year rather than immediately uprooting Yuri and taking her to Canada after the adoption finalized.

Several lawyers explained carefully that allowing her to finish the school year and transition gradually toward English-speaking education would make the adjustment significantly easier for a child her age.

Shane agreed immediately.

Yuri apparently understood basic conversational English already, though nowhere near enough to suddenly survive life in Canada without preparation.

“She’ll need time,” one of the lawyers explained gently before hesitating slightly. “Especially after… everything.”

Shane agreed quietly while his gaze lowered briefly toward the paperwork spread across the table. Nobody directly mentioned the deaths after that, but they still lingered heavily over the room anyway. His grandparents, his uncle, his aunt, an entire household gone within a couple of years.

Through the entire discussion, he answered questions carefully while lawyers slid paperwork back and forth across the table and embassy staff clarified timelines in both English and Japanese.

The Canadian embassy staff reassured him repeatedly that citizenship and documentation for Yuri would likely be straightforward once the adoption finalized. Between Shane’s citizenship status, financial stability, and direct biological relationship to the child, most immigration concerns barely seemed relevant.

Eventually, near the end of the meeting, Shane cleared his throat quietly. “There’s something I should mention,” he said in Japanese.

The room noticeably quieted after that.

Shane kept his posture calm despite the tension slowly building inside him while several people around the table glanced toward him expectantly. “I don’t want this becoming a problem later in the process,” he continued carefully. “So, I would rather address it directly now. I’m gay.”

Silence followed his declaration.

Not hostile exactly, but uncomfortable nonetheless. The Japanese lawyers exchanged brief glances with one another while one of the embassy representatives shifted awkwardly in his chair like he desperately wanted to interrupt the conversation before it became politically complicated.

“Mr. Hollander,” one of the Canadians began cautiously, “there’s been… discussion online recently, though obviously nothing confirmed—”

“I don’t care about the discussion online,” Shane interrupted calmly, and the room quieted again after that. “I care whether this creates problems for Yuri later.”

One of the older Japanese lawyers adjusted his glasses slowly before speaking in careful, measured Japanese. “In Japan,” he began delicately, “these subjects are… handled differently than in Western countries.”

Shane remained silent, as the lawyer studied him for another second before continuing.

“However, you are still her closest remaining relative.” He folded his hands neatly together atop the table. “And from everything presented here, you appear more than capable of providing stability.”

Another lawyer nodded slightly beside him.

“You speak multiple languages, which shows your academic acumen, and have financial security. You also intend to remain in Japan during her transition period.” The older woman glanced briefly toward the paperwork before looking back at Shane again. “And you clearly loved your grandparents very much.”

The lawyer offered him a small polite smile afterward, something gentler settling into her expression now.

“You are formal,” she added, almost faintly amused. “Very respectful and responsible.” Her smile softened slightly. “Children require kindness and structure. From what we see, you are capable of both.”

The atmosphere inside the room eased noticeably after that. Even the Canadian officials looked relieved now that nobody seemed interested in turning the conversation into a political problem.

“There should be no issue moving forward,” the older lawyer concluded.

Somewhere underneath the exhaustion and grief and fear still clawing at him from every direction, the pressure inside Shane eased. For the first time since leaving Montreal, the future he wanted no longer felt entirely impossible.

After leaving the embassy, Shane asked the taxi driver to make one more stop before taking him to the house.

The cemetery rested on the quieter side of Kyoto, tucked between narrow streets and old trees still heavy with rainwater from the morning storm. By then the clouds had started thinning apart, pale sunlight filtering weakly through the grey sky while water still clung to stone pathways and dark wooden gates.

Shane lingered near the entrance for a moment after stepping out of the taxi.

Ever since he was a child, cemeteries in Japan had felt different from the ones he’d seen anywhere else in the world. They never had that cold, morbid feeling people seemed to associate with death. Instead, they felt almost peaceful and alive, with incense smoke drifting through the damp air while rainwater gathered inside stone basins beneath overhanging trees and the entire place blended softly into the landscape around it.

Before entering, Shane stopped beside the small flower stand outside the gates and bought lilies.

Of course he did.

Some deeply ingrained Canadian instinct still refused to let him arrive anywhere empty-handed.

The bouquet rested beneath his arm while he walked slowly through the cemetery, shoes scraping softly against wet stone paths lined with old family graves. Somewhere nearby, water dripped steadily from tree branches while distant traffic murmured faintly beyond the cemetery walls.

When he finally reached the family plot, Shane stopped walking.

For a second, he could only stare at it.

The grave stood unchanged beneath the thin silver traces of rain still sliding slowly across the stone pillar. The familiarity of it hit harder than he expected because suddenly he could picture himself much younger standing here beside his grandparents during Obon, listening carefully while they explained traditions he used to worry he might eventually forget.

Turns out memory lingered longer than he gave it credit for.

Shane crouched automatically beside the grave and reached for the ladle and cloth resting nearby.

His grandparents had taught him this too.

Clean the stone first.

Wash away the dirt and rain.

Care for the grave properly before speaking.

The motions returned naturally despite the years separating him from his last visit. Water slid slowly across the stone while Shane wiped it carefully with steady hands, the smell of damp earth and incense lingering softly around him.

Only after everything was cleaned properly did he place the lilies before the grave and bow his head.

Then he spoke.

Quietly.

His grandparents always said the dead were already listening, so there was never any reason to raise your voice for them.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.” Rainwater dripped softly from nearby branches while Shane kept his eyes lowered toward the stone. “I kept saying I’d visit later.”

After training camp.

After playoffs.

Always with an excuse.

One season bled into the next until whole parts of his life vanished behind schedules, expectations, and obligations that demanded every piece of him. And somewhere inside all that noise, Shane convinced himself there would always be more time.

“There wasn’t,” he murmured, his voice barely rising above the wind moving through the trees. “I should’ve called more too.”

The guilt almost drowned him after admitting his faults out loud.

His grandparents always sounded so happy whenever he called that sometimes the homesickness afterward became unbearable. Hearing their voices reminded him how far away he lived now, how many pieces of himself he left behind every time he boarded another flight back to North America.

So sometimes he called less instead.

How selfish was that?

Shane rubbed briefly at his eyes before continuing, his gaze still fixed on the grave in front of him. “I’m sorry I never really knew him properly either.”

His uncle.

Shane still remembered loud summer afternoons where his uncle acted more like an older brother than anything else, always trying too hard to look cool while Shane followed him around asking endless questions about everything.

Then hockey swallowed his entire life.

And after that, time simply kept moving faster.

“I barely knew his wife either,” Shane admitted softly. “I always thought there’d be another summer.”

For a while Shane only stared at the lilies resting before the grave.

“I spent years terrified,” he confessed eventually. The words came out so quietly they almost disappeared into the wind. “Terrified of failure. Terrified of people finding out who I was. Terrified one mistake would destroy everything I worked for.”

His hands tightened slightly together in his lap while emotion caught painfully somewhere deep in his throat. “And I got so obsessed with surviving that I stopped realizing something important.”

He swallowed hard before continuing.

“I was already surrounded by people who loved me.”

His grandparents loved him.

His parents loved him.

Hayden and JJ loved him.

Even Ilya, complicated and impossible as he was, loved him in his own messy way too.

And somehow Shane still spent years acting like acceptance was something he had to earn through perfection.

Rain slid slowly down the stone while the smell of incense lingered softly through the damp air around him.

“I’ll do better with Yuri,” his voice was steadier this time. “She’ll grow up knowing there’s nothing wrong with who she is. Nobody gets to make her feel ashamed for existing.” His voice weakened slightly afterward. “Nobody gets to convince her she has to earn love.”

Maybe part of that promise belonged to himself too.

“Thank you,” he bowed deeply. “For taking care of her until now.” His eyes burned with unshed tears. “I’ll take care of her from now on.”

His grandparents’ house waited at the end of a quiet street lined with rain-darkened stone walls and carefully trimmed hedges. By the time the taxi finally stopped outside the gate, the clouds had started clearing properly, pale afternoon sunlight spilling softly across tiled rooftops while rainwater still glimmered along the wooden engawa wrapping around the house.

For a moment, Shane simply stood there beside his luggage without moving.

Home.

Or at least the closest thing to it he had ever known outside Canada.

The traditional house looked exactly the same as it had in his childhood memories. Dark wooden beams, sliding shōji doors, and the carefully maintained garden stretching around the back with smooth stones and trimmed Japanese maple trees surrounding the koi pond his grandfather used to clean every Sunday morning without fail.

Standing there now, memories returned all at once.

He could practically smell matcha lingering in the kitchen again. Could picture his grandmother kneeling beside him while teaching him the proper way to whisk tea during summers humid enough that cicadas screamed from morning until sunset. He remembered running barefoot across the engawa as a child while his grandfather watered the garden outside, remembered falling asleep beneath open windows listening to rain hit the roof during typhoon season.

The front door slid open before he could even knock, and his mother appeared in the doorway with his father one step behind her.

Shane barely had time to lower his duffle bags before his mother wrapped both arms around him hard enough to nearly crush the air from his lungs. His father followed a second later, one hand gripping tightly at the back of Shane’s neck while Shane buried his face briefly against his shoulder.

And suddenly, after days of grief and endless emotional exhaustion, something inside him finally cracked, and he cried in his parents’ arms like he used to as a child.

Eventually his mother pulled back just enough to cup his face between her hands. “You look exhausted,” she whispered.

“I am exhausted.”

That earned the faintest wet laugh from her.

For a second Shane simply stood there looking at both of them in the entranceway, and another wave of guilt crashed through him because he knew exactly how badly he had hurt his mother during that final argument before leaving Ottawa.

At first, she had wanted to handle everything herself. Wanted Shane to keep focusing on hockey while she and his father took care of Yuri permanently instead. Shane still remembered how fast the anger rose during that conversation, sudden and sharp enough that even he had been startled by it.

Because he loved his mother.

God, he loved her so much sometimes it physically hurt.

She had sacrificed everything for him growing up. Early mornings driving him to practices before school. Long weekends spent inside freezing arenas. Endless encouragement whenever pressure threatened to crush him entirely. Even now, part of Shane still instinctively looked toward her whenever he felt uncertain about any decision, he was about to make.

But somewhere along the way, especially after juniors, things had started changing between them.

Not all at once.

Just slowly enough that Shane barely noticed it happening.

Conversations became schedules. Interviews. Contracts. Endorsements. Training plans. Decisions about what would be best for his future, his image, his career. Sometimes lately it felt less like talking to his mother and more like talking to someone managing the most important investment of her life.

And maybe that wasn’t entirely fair.

Maybe hockey had done that to all of them.

Still, the feeling lingered.

Even years ago, when scouts first started circling him seriously, Shane remembered quietly admitting he wanted to go to college first. Just a little more time before the NHL swallowed him whole. He had been seventeen and terrified beneath all the praise and expectations piling onto his shoulders. Part of him wanted one last normal experience before becoming whatever everyone else already believed he would be.

His mother pushed for the draft instead.

Pushed because she believed in him completely. Because opportunities like that did not wait. Because she thought he was ready even when Shane himself knew damn well he wasn’t.

And honestly?

He hadn’t been ready at all.

Not even close.

The pressure nearly destroyed him during those first years in Montreal. The loneliness. The scrutiny. The constant feeling that one mistake would get him booted out of the team. But the draft was also how he met Ilya.

And suddenly even the worst parts of Montreal became tangled together with something Shane could never regret. Because somehow, against all logic, all the chaos and pain and disaster had still led him there.

Led him to love.

So no, Shane did not regret the path his life had taken. But for once in his life, he had wanted something entirely for himself. And somehow hockey still found a way to stand in front of it.

“What about what I want?” he had snapped after years of swallowing every frustration whole. “What about me deciding something for myself instead of what’s best for my career?”

His mother had looked genuinely stunned afterward because Shane almost never raised his voice at anyone.

Then came the apologies. The tears. The exhausted understanding settling painfully between all of them afterward until eventually they reached a compromise. Shane would try speaking with Montreal first. Try negotiating time away properly before making permanent decisions.

Then Theriault happened, and suddenly everything exploded beyond repair.

Now they were here instead.

His father squeezed Shane’s shoulder once before speaking quietly. “She’s in the living room.”

A nervous knot twisted immediately in Shane’s stomach, and his mother noticed at once, as a soft smile crossed her face. “You’re more scared of meeting a five-year-old than you are of NHL playoffs.”

“That’s because five-year-olds are terrifying,” Shane muttered automatically. “I should know, I helped Hayden raise two of them.”

His father barked out a startled laugh while his mother rolled her eyes fondly before guiding him farther inside. The house smelled exactly the same as he remembered. Tatami mats and tea leaves, as rain drifting faintly through open garden windows.

Shane slipped his shoes off automatically near the entrance before following his parents through the hallway, every step pulling another childhood memory loose somewhere deep inside him.

Then he saw her.

Yuri sat quietly beside the low living room table surrounded by coloring books and folded paper cranes, wearing a soft black dress clearly chosen for mourning visits and formal meetings over the past week.

At first Shane could only stare because she looked so much like his mother it almost hurt.

The same dark eyes.
The same soft cheeks.
The same straight black hair falling carefully around her face.

And because Shane had always taken after his mother more than anyone else in the family, suddenly he could see himself there too. Not the adult version reflected constantly through cameras and advertisements and magazine covers, but the little boy he used to be.

The only real difference were the freckles scattered across Shane’s own nose and cheeks, inherited from his father’s side of the family, something neither Yuna nor Yuri had.

Yuri looked up slowly after noticing him standing there. Wide curious eyes studied him carefully while Shane crouched instinctively so they stood closer to eye level. For a second, every introduction he had rehearsed during the flight vanished completely from his mind.

All that remained was this impossibly small grieving child staring back at him while pale sunlight filtered softly through the garden windows behind her.

“Hi, Yuri,” Shane said gently in Japanese. His voice came out steadier than he expected. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Yuri kept watching him carefully without speaking.

Shane smiled faintly despite the nervousness clawing through his chest.

“I’m Shane.”

The title caught briefly in his throat afterward because suddenly everything became painfully real all at once.

Every decision.

Every sacrifice.

Somewhere between Montreal and Kyoto, his entire life had changed completely. And somehow, for the first time, that realization no longer frightened him anymore.

“From now on,” he said softly, “I’ll be your tōsan.”

Chapter 4: He had absolutely no idea how to relax

Living in Japan turned out to be different than Shane had expected. It was quite peaceful, and that took some getting used to.

Ever since high school, every decision in his life had somehow circled back to hockey. Classes got scheduled around practices. Summers disappeared into camps, development programs, and private coaching sessions. Then came the draft, then Montreal, and after that there was never really a point where hockey stopped occupying every single minute of his life.

Even when he wasn't playing, he was recovering, training, traveling, answering questions, leading meetings, solving problems, or preparing for whatever crisis waited around the corner next.

Being captain only made it worse. Every losing streak became his responsibility whether it actually was or not. Every playoff disappointment landed partly on his shoulders. Even the good years were exhausting because captains never really got to enjoy anything for very long before somebody needed something from them.

For years he kept moving simply because stopping never felt like an option, and then suddenly he found himself in Kyoto watching bicycles roll past old wooden storefronts while schoolchildren walked home beneath blooming cherry trees and somehow nobody expected anything from him at all.

At first there wasn't much time to think about it because there were still problems that needed solving. Lawyers, immigration paperwork, embassy appointments, adoption meetings, signatures, translations, approvals. Endless documents requiring slightly different versions of the same information over and over again. Shane handled all of it the same way he'd handled hockey for most of his life, quietly and efficiently, working through one issue at a time until eventually there were no issues left to work through.

Meanwhile he and Yuri started building routines, as they got used to living under the same roof. As embarrassing as it was to admit it, Shane had a harder time at it. He has not lived with someone ever since he turned eighteen, so sharing space with a five-year-old girl was a novel experience.

Every morning they walked to school together through the narrow streets of Kyoto, lined with convenience stores and tiny cafés preparing for the day. Sometimes she held his hand. Sometimes she walked several steps ahead while swinging her backpack, as she explained classroom politics with the seriousness of somebody negotiating an international treaty.

Shane rarely understood why one classmate refusing to share crayons had apparently become a major diplomatic incident, but Yuri always presented the evidence with complete confidence, so he listened accordingly.

Afternoons usually ended up spread across the living room floor with homework books, pencils, and English worksheets scattered between them while an anime played quietly in the background. Yuri corrected his Japanese constantly whenever he slipped into the overly formal speech patterns he'd picked up from textbooks and government offices. Apparently, there was nothing funnier than watching a grown man accidentally sound like somebody's eighty-year-old grandfather.

Five-year-olds were terrifying.

God be good, Yuri takes so much after his mom, that it was both frightening and hilarious. At least, he won’t have to worry about her not speaking her mind or not fitting with other kids.

The therapist was a choice that Shane made almost immediately. Not only for himself, but also for Yuri. While he had not believed in speaking to a shrink about his problems, preferring the method of sucking it and ignoring the hurt, every now and then he'd find Yuri standing in a doorway staring into an empty room for a second too long. Or looking over her shoulder after hearing a sound that wasn't there, like some part of her still expected her grandparents to walk back into the house at any moment.

So, yeah, they were both seeing a therapist.

The adoption was finalized faster than anyone expected, followed by citizenship paperwork and enough official documentation to fill several drawers. His parents stayed nearly two months helping them settle into the old house before eventually returning to Canada after deciding Shane probably wasn't going to accidentally burn the place down or lose track of a child.

The fact that they had apparently considered both possibilities was mildly insulting. He has been an independent adult since he turned eighteen, captain of his own team, which he led to two Stanley Cups.

Back-to-back at that!

However, to his parents’ eyes, he will forever be a kid.

When they left, the paperwork ended, he no longer had any appointments to attend, and for the first time since arriving there was nothing urgent waiting for him the next morning. That was when Shane discovered something deeply unfortunate about himself.

He had absolutely no idea how to relax.

At first, he approached free time the same way he approached everything else. He made lists. He reorganized half the house. He learned more about gardening from his grandfather's old books than he ever thought possible and spent entire afternoons outside trimming, planting, watering, and rearranging things that probably would have survived perfectly well without his intervention.

He started cooking simply because nobody was monitoring his meals anymore. After years of nutritionists treating sugar like a controlled substance, there was something deeply satisfying about making whatever he wanted and eating it without having to explain himself to anybody.

Some afternoons he sat across from Yuri at the low living room table helping her improve her English. Other days, after dropping her off at school, he wandered through Kyoto with nowhere particular to be. He bought groceries from neighborhood markets. He stopped for coffee. He learned which bakeries opened earliest and which shop owners gave him extra vegetables because they worried he looked too thin.

The anonymity never stopped feeling strange.

Back in Canada, leaving the house almost guaranteed somebody would eventually recognize him. There was always a camera somewhere nearby and someone waiting with a question, hoping for a comment, or an opinion, or worse, a reaction. Here, recognition happened occasionally because hockey still had an international audience, but most people simply smiled, asked for a photo, bowed politely, and continued with their day.

Nobody wanted him to explain a losing streak, address a controversy, or stand in front of a room full of frustrated players and convince them everything would be fine. For the first time since he graduated high school, Shane was no longer Montreal’s star player.

He was simply Hollander Shane, Sato’s grandson, and Yuri’s tōsan.

And that turned out to be a lot harder than he'd expected.

Because there was nothing left between him and his own thoughts. The garden only needed so much attention, and Kyoto only contained so many streets. Eventually the silence stopped feeling peaceful and started feeling overwhelming.

Some mornings after dropping Yuri off at school he caught himself mentally planning training schedules that he no longer needed. On other days he woke before sunrise simply because decades of hockey had taught his body that sleeping past six o'clock was a sign of moral failure. He'd lie there staring at the ceiling while the house remained dark and silent around him, restless and with absolutely nowhere he needed to be.

Somewhere along the way he realized he missed skating.

That irritated him more than it should have.

Because hockey had taken plenty from him. Montreal had taken plenty from him. Theriault had taken plenty from him. Years of making himself smaller, quieter, easier to tolerate had taken plenty from him too. He had every reason in the world to walk away and never look back.

Yet some stubborn part of him still missed the sound of blades cutting into fresh ice.

What a fucking joke.

With nothing else to do, he signed up for a tea ceremony class.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision; one he agonized over afterward despite how confident he had felt when he made it. Having nothing to do was driving him crazy. How had he spent twenty-seven years of his life without a hobby besides hockey?

Then again, his grandmother had loved tea ceremonies, and she had been his instructor during the summers. Shane had forgotten most of what she taught him over the years, and that made him feel so guilty. Maybe the classes wouldn't be so bad.

Famous last words.

Shane found himself sitting across from an instructor who reminded him so strongly of his grandmother that it occasionally felt heart wrenching. She was older, soft-spoken, observant in the way elderly Japanese women often seemed to be, noticing everything while somehow giving the impression they hadn't noticed anything at all.

During the first lesson she watched him prepare the matcha for several seconds before setting her own bowl down beside him. "Your moves are so smooth, have you done this before?"

The observation caught him off guard. Shane glanced down toward the bamboo whisk resting between his hands and immediately understood what she meant. The motions had come back instinctively, his wrist settling into familiar angles as the bowl turned smoothly in his hands, details he hadn't consciously thought about in years returning on their own.

"My grandmother taught me," he explained. "Though I haven't practiced properly in a long time."

The instructor nodded slowly. "A lot of people leave home," she said. "That does not mean they lose it."

The conversation lasted less than a minute, but her words stayed with him for weeks.

Because that was the strange thing about Kyoto. The city kept handing pieces of himself back to him when he wasn't looking for them. Sometimes it happened through language. Years of speaking mostly English meant his Japanese still slipped toward textbook formality whenever he got distracted, which usually earned amused smiles from cashiers wondering why a man in his twenties sounded prepared to negotiate a business contract over a bottle of yuzu juice.

Other times it happened through food, routines, or habits he hadn't realized were still there. He still bowed automatically during phone calls with older relatives, still preferred baths over quick showers, and for some reason always opened the windows when it rained. That one always surprised him.

In Canada, rain usually meant traffic, delays, slush, miserable commutes, and eventually snow. Somewhere along the way he'd forgotten that as a kid he used to sit by open windows listening to storms because the sound made him feel safe.

Kyoto seemed determined to return parts of himself he had spent years ignoring, regardless of how he felt about it. The longer he stayed, the more he realized hockey hadn't erased those parts of him nearly as completely as he'd believed.

It had just buried them.

Years of schedules, travel, media obligations, training camps, playoff runs, and constant noise had piled so much weight on top of everything else that eventually he stopped noticing what remained underneath. Kyoto, for all its crowds and trains and tourists, somehow felt quieter than any city he'd ever lived in.

Quiet enough to hear himself think.

Not that the quiet solved everything.

Some nights restlessness still crawled beneath his skin, and he ended up pacing through the house after Yuri fell asleep. Other nights he sat alone in the living room watching last season’s NHL highlights with the volume barely audible, feeling sick in the stomach every time a Montreal jersey appeared on the screen.

The first time Yuri caught him, she climbed onto the couch beside him without saying anything and tucked herself against his side while players raced across the television.

"You miss it."

It was not even a question.

Shane stared at the screen for a moment before sighing.

"Yeah."

Yuri watched the game for another few seconds.

"Then why did you leave?"

God.

Children never wasted time talking around a problem.

The commentators erupted in the background during a goal replay while Shane tried to sort through the tangled mess of emotions in his head. "I think..." He rubbed a hand across his jaw. "I think sometimes you can love something and still realize it's hurting you."

Yuri considered that with complete seriousness, then she nodded once. Apparently that explanation was sufficient. Thirty seconds later she stole half his blanket and demanded ice cream.

The emotional whiplash of parenting was genuinely impressive.

Winter settled over Kyoto while Shane adjusted to all of it. Mornings grew colder, and before most movies reached the halfway point, Yuri was asleep against his shoulder despite insisting she wasn't tired. He learned which convenience stores carried her favorite snacks, which anime appeared during bad days, and exactly how long she could insist she wasn't tired before bursting into tears because a sock felt wrong.

Apparently that threshold was seventeen minutes.

Shane only knew because he'd tested it repeatedly.

Sixteen minutes? Perfectly fine. Seventeen? Complete disaster. Somewhere around that point Yuri's ability to function collapsed without warning and suddenly the world became deeply upsetting. Sometimes it was socks. Sometimes it was homework. Sometimes it was a snack she hadn't wanted ten minutes earlier and desperately needed now.

The trigger changed constantly, but the outcome never did.

Parenthood turned out to be strangely ordinary. For years he'd imagined becoming a parent as some enormous transformation, the sort of thing that arrived all at once accompanied by certainty, wisdom, and whatever instincts everyone else seemed convinced parents possessed naturally.

Instead, it happened gradually. One routine settled into place, then another, until he found himself making bentōs, reading bedtime stories, writing grocery lists, keeping track of Yuri's ever-changing food preferences, and memorizing the very specific order her stuffed animals had to be tucked into bed each night.

Getting used to Kyoto, was also a gradual process, until one day Shane realized that he didn't stand out.

Not the way he always had in a hockey rink.

Nobody thought it was strange that he was quiet. Formality wasn't treated like a character flaw, and politeness wasn't mistaken for weakness or distance for arrogance. People simply respected each other's space, something that still caught him off guard after years spent inside locker rooms.

Even crowded areas felt calmer.

Conversations moved differently. Trains packed with commuters somehow were quieter than most NHL locker rooms after practice. People paid attention to the space around them. They noticed each other.

One day, Shane simply stopped editing himself before speaking.

During his years playing hockey, he always felt slightly out of rhythm with everyone else. Present, but never entirely comfortable. Teammates got louder when they were all stuck together, and Shane usually ended up listening more than talking, present without ever really becoming part of it.

Here, nobody expected him to become somebody else just to fit in.

Canada would always be home; nothing would ever change that. Hockey was too deeply ingrained in his bones for him to ever completely separate himself from it, and he already knew that eventually he would return to the game, even if not to Montreal.

But sitting beside an open window while rain tapped softly against the garden stones, tea cooling near his elbow and Yuri sounding out English vocabulary across the table from him, Shane found himself considering something he'd never really allowed before.

Maybe home didn't have to be only one place.

By the time five months had passed, he'd also developed an embarrassingly strong affection for Japanese elementary school uniforms.

Every afternoon he waited outside the school gates while children spilled into the streets beneath a sea of bright yellow hats and oversized randoseru bouncing against tiny backs. Parents gathered with bicycles and umbrellas. Teachers stood near the entrance reminding students about forgotten homework and bentō containers while clusters of children drifted toward side streets together, their voices carrying through the cooling autumn air.

Yuri's randoseru was dark red, and far too large for her.

The thing practically swallowed her whole.

"Tōsan!"

Then came the collision.

Every day.

Without fail.

Shane barely had time to brace himself before Yuri launched forward hard enough for the randoseru to slam into his ribs while both arms wrapped around his waist. "Careful," he laughed, steadying her automatically.

" Gomenasai."

"English, sweetheart."

"Sorry, tōsan."

As always, they switched immediately into English the moment they left school grounds. That had become one of Shane's rules early on. Yuri would speak English with him whenever possible and only use Japanese whenever she got stuck. Practice makes perfect, after all. And if they wanted her to be ready for school in Canada next year, they needed all the practice in the world.

She improved much faster than he'd expected. Years of video calls between his grandparents and his parents had already given her a stronger foundation than most children her age, so confidence became the biggest obstacle rather than vocabulary. Unfortunately, she seemed to have inherited the exact same tendency Shane had when speaking Japanese.

Her speech pattern was way too formal.

Today she spent most of the walk explaining a crisis involving a rhinoceros beetle, another student, and what sounded like a complete collapse of the classroom hierarchy.

"And then Tanaka-sensei climbed into the bushes to search for it," Yuri explained seriously while holding his hand. "But she screamed because the beetle landed on her sleeve."

“That must have been very scary,” Shane nodded gravely. “Rhinoceros beetles are big.”

"Yes. Emi cried for twenty minutes when Tanaka-sensei crushed it."

"That feels excessive for an insect."

"It had a name."

"Oh." Shane considered that. "Then the emotional devastation makes sense."

Yuri looked satisfied by the answer and continued her story while they waited at a crosswalk crowded with bicycles and office workers heading toward the station. Shane listened with half his attention on the conversation and the other half on the strange familiarity of the moment.

Five months ago, he would have laughed if somebody told him his afternoons would revolve around school pickups, grocery lists, homework, and detailed updates about beetle-related emergencies.

He was still thinking about that when Yuri continued the story.

"You see, all of this started because Emi brought him for show-and-tell," Yuri explained while adjusting her randoseru. "But she still wanted everybody to see him because he can lift things."

"That seems fair."

The traffic lights changed and they crossed together while autumn wind moved through the trees beside the canal.

"But then Tanaka-sensei opened the box too fast."

"Ah."

"And then the beetle escaped."

Shane nodded solemnly.

"She should not have done that; everyone knows that sudden movements scare beetles."

"They do! Everybody was screaming while he flew around the classroom, before escaping through the window."

"I assume the beetle was also screaming internally."

That earned a bright laugh loud enough that an older woman cycling past glanced over with a smile before continuing down the street. Around them Kyoto settled into its usual afternoon rhythm. Shop owners swept leaves away from storefronts, as traffic hummed somewhere farther down the road, and the smell of roasted sweet potatoes drifted from a nearby stand.

Halfway through the story Yuri slowed slightly. "How do you say komakai in English?"

"Detailed," Shane told her, slowing down his pronunciation so she could copy it.

"Detailed," she repeated carefully.

"You could also say specific depending on the context."

Yuri nodded as if filing the information away for future use.

"Emi gave very detailed instructions about how to hold the beetle," she continued proudly. "But everybody ignored her. Even Tanaka-sensei!"

"That sounds exactly like my elementary school."

He reached over automatically to fix the strap of her randoseru where it had started slipping off her shoulder and realized, not for the first time, that these walks had quietly become his favorite part of the day. They gave him an excuse to slow down, to listen, and to watch her grow more comfortable speaking English one sentence at a time.

That was why her next question caught him completely off guard.

"Tōsan?"

"Hm?"

"Can we go skating someday?"

Shane blinked.

"Skating?"

Yuri nodded.

"I watched your videos."

For a second, he just stared at her.

"My videos?"

"On YouTube. Obaachan showed me before."

His heart ached at her answer.

Of course she had.

He could picture it immediately. His grandmother sitting beside Yuri, proudly explaining hockey rules while Shane skated across a computer screen on the other side of the world. The image arrived so clearly that for a moment he could almost hear her voice.

"You look very beautiful when you skate," Yuri continued. "I want to learn too."

Five months had passed since arriving in Kyoto and he still hadn't stepped onto the ice once. At first the distance felt necessary. Then skating gradually became tangled together with everything else he'd left behind: exhaustion, expectations, responsibility, years spent carrying so much weight that eventually he forgot what life felt like without it.

Part of Shane feared stepping onto the ice again might shatter the peace he had spent months building around himself. But walking beside Yuri beneath red maple leaves while she talked excitedly about learning to skate, he found himself realizing that those things weren't necessarily the same.

Yuri walked quietly for a few seconds after asking before glancing up at him again. "We don't have to," she said quickly. "I just thought maybe—"

"No."

The answer escaped him before he fully thought it through. Yuri immediately looked guilty, so Shane sighed before looking back down at her. "We can go."

The smile that spread across her face afterward was worth all the agonizing he would be doing later that night.

By Friday evening he had already researched every public skating rink within reasonable train distance of their house. Unfortunately, there were far fewer than expected, which was how they ended up spending nearly two hours on trains Saturday morning while Yuri bounced between excitement, questions, and increasingly unrealistic expectations about how quickly she would become an Olympic-level skater.

"Tōsan, will you teach me spins too?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because spins are evil."

"That’s very dramatic."

"Well, I am a hockey player, not a figure skater."

Yuri narrowed her eyes suspiciously while Shane looked back out the window before she could catch him smiling. She spent the rest of the ride asking questions that became progressively more impossible to answer while Shane worked through a vending machine coffee and tried very hard not to think about where they were going. That strategy lasted right up until the entrance doors opened and cold air rushed toward them carrying the familiar smell of ice, sharpened steel, and old rink equipment.

His body recognized it before his mind did.

Shane slowed slightly as they stepped inside. Somewhere beyond the lobby walls, blades carved across ice in steady rhythmic patterns and his heart ached at the sudden nostalgia that hit him like a puck to the head.

"Tōsan?" Yuri tugged lightly on his sleeve.

Shane blinked and looked down at her. "I'm okay."

It was mostly true.

The rink itself was small compared to the arenas where he'd spent most of his adult life skating on, though that probably helped. There were no cameras or reporters there. No security staff directing people through restricted hallways. Just families, with teenagers wobbling uncertainly near the boards, exhausted parents carrying coffee cups, and children throwing themselves enthusiastically across the ice with varying degrees of success.

Yuri stopped beside the glass almost immediately, staring out at the rink with wide eyes, and something about that expression pulled him backward through years he hadn't thought about in a long time.

He could still remember his first skates. They had been too big because his parents refused to spend money on expensive equipment for a child who might decide hockey was boring six months later. His father spent entire sessions skating backward in front of him reminding him to bend his knees while Shane ignored every instruction because he'd somehow convinced himself standing taller made him impossible to knock over.

All while his mother filmed everything from the boards and celebrated every successful glide like he'd accomplished something extraordinary. "There he goes! Look at him go!"

Even now he could hear her voice.

Back then the rink had felt enormous. Endless. He remembered pushing harder and harder just to see how fast he could go, convinced there had to be a point where speed turned into flight if he could only figure out the secret.

One memory led naturally into another.

Early mornings half asleep in the car while snow drifted past the windows. Hot chocolate after practice. His father discussing edge work with complete seriousness while his mother rolled her eyes from the passenger seat. Being scooped up and spun around until somebody inevitably complained they were both going to break something.

Watching Yuri now, he realized that he had forgotten how much fun skating used to bring him.

The years after his early childhood blurred together. Coaches became scouts, and scouts became executives. Expectations accumulated gradually that he never noticed the weight while it was happening. Hockey never stopped being important to him, but somewhere along the way it became tangled together with responsibility and pressure so completely that remembering where one ended and the other began became difficult.

Yuri knew none of that.

She stood with both hands pressed against the glass, completely captivated by the skaters circling the rink. "Tōsan," she said quietly, tugging his sleeve again. "Look how fast they go."

Shane followed her gaze across the ice. Children raced each other near the boards while older skaters moved easily through the center, blades flashing beneath fluorescent lights. The excitement on her face reminded him so strongly of those old memories that he found himself smiling before he realized it.

For Yuri, skating was still magic in a way it hadn't been for him in years.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I know."

Chapter 5: The chaos goblins?

Six months had passed since Shane moved to Kyoto, and during the last month a new routine had settled into his life.

Most mornings he woke before sunrise and jogged through the neighborhood while the city slowly dragged itself awake around him. The streets stayed quiet that early. Mostly older women walking tiny dogs and elderly men already outside working in their gardens. Some of them had started recognizing him after months of seeing him pass through the same streets every morning, greeting him warmly whenever he slowed down enough to bow politely and exchange a few words.

When he returned home, Yuri usually remained asleep for another half hour, curled beneath her blankets while pale morning sunlight filtered through the old house. After a quick shower, Shane went to the kitchen to make breakfast and put together Yuri's bentō for school.

During the first few weeks after arriving in Japan, his cooking attempts had been genuinely awful. He somehow ruined rice multiple times, overcooked fish often enough that Yuri started watching him nervously whenever he picked up a frying pan and once made miso soup salty enough that even he struggled finishing it.

Things were easier now, and a lot of that was thanks to Nakamoto-sensei and the introductory Japanese cooking class she taught.

The kitchen usually filled with the smell of steamed rice, grilled salmon, broth, and soy sauce while he packed bentōs beside the counter. Helping Hayden and Jackie with the twins over the years turned out to help a ridiculous amount too, especially on school mornings when Yuri changed her mind about hairstyles every other day.

Some mornings she wanted braids. Other days she wanted pigtails because somebody in her class wore theirs that way. Sometimes she wanted little buns. Other times she wandered into the kitchen still half asleep and announced that she wanted her hair to be loose that day instead.

Breakfast together had somehow become one of Shane's favorite parts of the day. He wasn't entirely sure when it happened. Maybe somewhere between learning how to make decent tamagoyaki and discovering that Yuri thanked him for every meal like he'd personally performed a miracle.

She complimented his cooking constantly too. Not in the way adults did when they were trying to be polite. Yuri genuinely meant it.

"Tōsan, the salmon is perfect today."

Or:

"Tōsan, your miso soup is improving rapidly."

Or:

"Tōsan, this rice is excellent."

Nobody should have been able to sound that sincere before eight in the morning.

Shane always felt absurdly proud afterward, partly because Yuri somehow remained one of the sweetest children he'd ever met. He also felt guilty, though, because when he had first become her father, he had spent months cooking Western food before Yuri finally admitted she missed Japanese food.

She had apologized when she told him, as if asking for the meals their grandmother used to make was too much. As if she should simply be grateful for everything else. For him taking her in. For leaving Canada. For changing his entire life for her. She spoke like wanting one more thing made her spoiled.

It had broken his heart because that was the first thing she had ever asked of him.

The only thing, actually.

At least until the day she asked him to take her skating.

That conversation was how his journey into Japanese cooking had started. Every successful meal still made him ridiculously proud, but so did the fact that Yuri never took other people's efforts for granted.

After breakfast he walked Yuri to school while the neighborhood gradually filled with students, cyclists, and office workers heading toward train stations. She carried her bentō carefully against her chest every morning like it contained classified government documents, waving goodbye at the gates before disappearing inside with her classmates.

From there Shane usually headed toward the gym.

Five months away from training had done horrifying things to his athletic pride. The stamina disappeared first, then muscle tone, until even his flexibility took a hit. During the first few weeks back in the gym his entire body hurt badly enough that sitting down occasionally felt like a personal attack.

Thankfully muscle memory kicked in, and even being as out of shape as he was, Shane recovered quickly.

One month of stubborn consistency made a difference. He ran, lifted weights, did his cardio, stretched, complained about all of it, and then did it again the next day. Eventually training started feeling natural again instead of frustrating.

Afterward Shane usually showered, changed clothes, and stopped by his favorite café before heading home. At this point the owner already knew his order by memory. Espresso beside something matcha-flavored and usually whichever seasonal dessert Shane had become obsessed with that week.

Today it happened to be matcha mochi.

He sat near the windows, slowly chewing another bite while people moved through the street outside. A cyclist rolled past carrying groceries balanced in a front basket. Across the road a shop owner watered plants arranged neatly outside the entrance while a delivery truck crawled through the narrow street looking for somewhere to park.

The longer Shane stayed in Japan, the more he realized that desserts here suited him perfectly. Most sweets back in Canada lost him after a few bites because everything tasted overwhelmingly sugary. While there were still overly sweet desserts, he found more variety in Kyoto.

Matcha became a favorite almost immediately. So did yuzu. Japanese desserts seemed to aim for balance, letting bitterness, citrus, cream, and fruit share the spotlight instead of burying everything under sugar.

Honestly, Japanese desserts were becoming a legitimate problem.

He'd spent most of his life around nutritionists who treated sugar like a controlled substance, only to move across the world and develop an embarrassing weakness for seasonal pastries at twenty-seven years old. Every few weeks another bakery introduced something new, and somehow Shane always found a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he needed to try it.

The fact that he once spent twenty minutes on a train because somebody mentioned a limited-edition yuzu dessert was something he planned on taking to the grave.

His phone suddenly buzzed against the café table, dragging him away from his thoughts. The second he saw Hayden’s name across the screen, Shane smiled slightly before answering the call.

“Ohayō gozaimasu,” he greeted automatically before switching languages almost immediately afterward. “Bonjour.”

There was a brief pause on the other side before Hayden burst out laughing. “Man, hearing you casually answer the phone in Japanese is still weird as hell.”

“Sorry to traumatize you,” Shane snorted softly under his breath while taking another sip of espresso.

“I’m serious,” Hayden continued, amusement still obvious in his voice. “You know you could’ve spoken Japanese around us before, right? Like, JJ and I never would’ve made racist jokes or weird comments about it.”

Shane’s expression softened slightly at that.

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted while absently turning the little ceramic coffee cup between his fingers. “At least with you guys. I always knew you and JJ wouldn’t care.” He hesitated briefly before continuing more quietly. “Honestly, I think it had more to do with me than anyone else.”

Outside the café windows, cyclists rolled past slowly while pedestrians moved through the narrow Kyoto streets carrying shopping bags and iced coffees beneath the afternoon sun.

"I kind of lost touch with my Japanese roots growing up,” Shane admitted. “Spent most of my life trying way too hard to fit in as Canadian.” A quiet laugh escaped him after that, bitter and amused at the same time. “Funny thing is, like six months ago I was literally telling JJ to stop trying to fit in with teammates who clearly didn’t like him because he was Black.”

Hayden immediately groaned on the other end of the line.

“Oh my God.”

“And meanwhile,” Shane continued, “I was basically doing the exact same thing without even realizing it.”

“I’m glad Kyoto helped with that,” Hayden commented, and Shane noticed the undertone of pride in his best friend’s voice.

Shane looked down at the half-finished matcha mochi sitting beside his coffee. “Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “Me too.”

“You deserve it, man.” Hayden sounded completely sincere now. “You deserve to reconnect with your culture and all that stuff.” Then his tone brightened slightly afterward. “And we seriously can’t wait until you come back to Canada someday so you and Yuri can teach us Japanese.”

Shane laughed softly.

“You guys would be terrible at it.”

“Probably,” Hayden admitted immediately. “JJ especially. That man can barely pronounce French properly.”

“Okay, first of all, rude. We both know that he is the best of us in French.”

Both of them burst out laughing, until Hayden went quiet for a second before speaking again, his tone turning more serious this time.

“So, I know you basically wiped hockey off your phone after leaving Montreal,” he said. “But I wanted to make sure you knew the Metros made playoffs.”

“Seriously?” Shane’s fingers tapped nervously on his coffee cup.

“Barely,” Hayden admitted immediately with a tired laugh. “We basically crawled there bleeding.”

That startled a quiet snort out of Shane before he leaned back slightly in his chair. “I kind of needed the distance,” he admitted. “Everything around Montreal got so exhausting near the end.”

“Yeah,” Hayden said softly. “I figured.”

Shane took another sip of espresso while the sunlight of the afternoon filtered through the café windows beside him. The bitterness from the coffee mixed pleasantly with the lingering sweetness of matcha still sitting on his tongue.

“How’s the team doing after Theriault’s mess?” He asked after a moment.

Hayden let out a long sigh.

“I still don’t fucking know who to trust half the time.” His tone carried exhaustion underneath it now. “A lot of the veterans got traded or pushed out after everything happened. Half the locker room feels completely different.” He laughed weakly afterward. “Right now, it’s basically second-liners, third-liners, and rookies trying to figure themselves out while the organization scrambles to rebuild the entire team.”

Shane remained silent, as he listened to his best friend talk attentively.

“I’ve been shutting down any racist or hazing bullshit immediately,” Hayden continued more firmly. “Somebody crosses a line, they’re out. Management actually backs it up now too, which helps.” Another sigh escaped him afterward. “Honestly though, I think some of these guys genuinely are trying to grow out of that old locker room mentality. Hockey culture taught a lot of them really toxic crap for years.”

Outside the café, a couple crossed a street while the sunlight reflected softly across shop windows.

“A bunch of the guys apologized to JJ too,” Hayden added. “Like actual sincere apologies. Some of them even asked me to pass apologies along to you.”

That caught Shane slightly off guard.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Hayden laughed tiredly. “I have no fucking clue how you managed to captain that team for years without losing your mind. I barely managed to keep things together long enough for us to scrape into playoffs, and every week feels like I’m trying to stop the locker room from imploding.” Another laugh escaped him, this one self-deprecating. "Meanwhile, you somehow managed to drag the disaster that was Montreal to two Cups in a row."

Shane took one bite of his remaining green matcha mochi, before admitting quietly. “It wasn’t easy.”

There were days back then where being captain felt less like hockey leadership and more like trying to hold together an entire collapsing ecosystem with duct tape and sheer force of will.

“I can send you some of my captain notes if you want,” Shane offered after a moment. “Actually, I’ll ask my mom to send them over instead.” A small laugh slipped out afterward. “I’m still trying to avoid turning hockey back into my entire personality.”

“You had captain notes?” Hayden groaned dramatically on the other side of the call.

“Obviously.”

“You are genuinely one of the scariest people I know.”

Shane smiled slightly into his coffee.

“Some of the statistics stuff probably won’t help anymore since the roster changed so much,” he continued, “but the organization notes might. Leadership structure, communication habits, conflict management, routines, stuff like that.” He shrugged lightly. “Maybe something there helps you figure things out.”

“Man,” Hayden muttered softly, sounding relieved as hell, “you seriously have no idea how much I need that right now.”

Hayden stayed quiet for a second before laughing softly.

“Honestly, I still can’t picture you completely disconnecting from hockey.” His amusement lingered underneath the words. “Like, Shane Hollander taking his time, relaxing, living peacefully somewhere? That sounds like Twilight Zone shit.”

That startled a chuckle out of Shane.

“Yeah,” he admitted, leaning back slightly in his chair, “it felt weird for a while.” His fingers turned absently around the ceramic coffee cup again. “At first I honestly kind of felt lost without hockey to focus on.”

Suddenly waking up one day without practices, meetings, travel schedules, media obligations, or constant pressure left this weird empty space in his life that he genuinely didn’t know how to fill at first.

“But I kind of found my footing eventually,” Shane continued more quietly. “Learned how to slow down a little. Learned how to actually take my time with things.” A small sigh escaped him afterward. “Honestly, talking with my therapist helped a lot too.”

Hayden hummed softly in understanding.

“I’m really glad to hear that, man.”

Shane smiled faintly at the warmth in his voice. “And,” he continued, “taking Yuri skating kind of kicked my ass back into gear too.”

Hayden immediately laughed.

“Oh God.”

“No seriously,” Shane said, laughing softly too now. “Hayden, seeing that tiny little girl on the ice for the first time was an out of body experience.”

“Already dramatic about it.”

“You don’t understand,” Shane insisted. “She was so excited.” His expression softened without him noticing. “The second she got on the ice, she had this expression on her face… like she was seeing magic everywhere.”

“Oh, you’re doomed,” Hayden groaned loudly.

“Completely doomed,” Shane agreed unashamed. “She spent half the session wobbling around like a baby deer and the other half trying to do spins she absolutely could not do yet.” Another laugh escaped him afterward, quieter this time. “I’m pretty sure I’m eventually going to have to find her an actual figure skating coach.”

The idea filled him with so much pride that his heart felt ready to explode.  Because Yuri looked so happy out there. Completely fearless and free.

“Seeing her skate kind of reminded me why I loved the ice in the first place,” Shane admitted after a moment. “So now I take her every weekend to practice.” He shrugged lightly. “And while she skates, I started getting myself back into shape again.”

“Seriously?” Hayden sounded very interested with that tidbit of knowledge.

“Yeah. Mostly conditioning at first. Cardio, strength training, and rebuilding muscle.” Shane glanced down briefly at his hands. “And now I’m back on the ice too. Stickhandling and puck control drills.”

A surprise snort escaped Hayden.

“Holy shit.”

“I mean,” Shane added quickly, amused now, “I’m never becoming as insane about it as I was with Montreal again. That version of me genuinely needed psychiatric intervention.”

“That version of you terrified the entire league.”

“Fair.”

“But,” Shane continued more quietly afterward, “it feels different now.” He paused briefly while gathering the thought together properly. “Before, hockey used to feel tied to the pressure of winning all the time. With expectations and responsibility. Now it kind of feels…” he searched for the word for a second, “fun again, I guess.”

And maybe that sounded cheesy as hell. But it was still true.

“So, how’s your momager handling all this?” Hayden teased.

Shane groaned immediately.

“Jesus Christ.”

“I’m serious,” Hayden continued, clearly enjoying Shane’s suffering a little too much. “Because there’s absolutely zero chance Yuna Hollander let her internationally famous son disappear into the mountains of Kyoto without already planning ten business opportunities around it.”

That startled another laugh out of Shane while he leaned back farther in his chair.

“You’re unfortunately kind of right,” he admitted. “Most of my old sponsorships already had campaigns lined up months ago anyway, so those mostly run themselves.” He took another sip of espresso before continuing. “Honestly though, my mom’s been getting a lot better lately about separating being my manager from actually being my mom.”

“Holy shit!” Hayden made an exaggerated shocked noise. “Character development.”

“I know. Terrifying.”

He was not even lying; it really had gotten better.

Six months ago, almost every conversation with his mother somehow circled back toward contracts, appearances, press, sponsors, or hockey. Now she actually asked how he was sleeping, about Yuri’s school projects, and whether they were eating enough vegetables.

It still felt mildly surreal sometimes.

“She’s trying,” Shane admitted more quietly. “I think coming back to Japan helped with that too.”

Hayden hummed softly.

“But apparently Kenzo’s interested in me now,” Shane added as an afterthought.

That immediately made Hayden choke laughing.

“Of course they are.”

“For the perfume campaign first,” Shane explained, unable to stop smiling slightly now, “but apparently the clothing side too since I’m living in Japan now.”

“Oh my God,” Hayden said dramatically. “Our very own hockey Hollywood star continues getting hunted down by luxury fashion brands while living through his mysterious Japanese healing retreat.”

Shane laughed hard enough that a couple sitting farther across the café glanced briefly in his direction. “You make my life sound way cooler than it actually is.”

“Because objectively it is cool.” Hayden sounded deeply offended now. “You’re literally living in Kyoto raising a tiny adopted daughter while luxury brands fight over you.”

When he put it like that, the situation did sound like it was right out of a movie.

“I’m actually considering taking the deal,” Shane admitted after another moment. “I’ve got a ridiculous amount of free time while Yuri’s in school anyway.” He shrugged lightly despite Hayden being unable to see it. “And after six months of not working, fashion photoshoots have started to feel kind of fun.”

That probably sounded strange coming from him considering how much he used to hate press appearances.

Still, photoshoots for fashion brands felt completely different from standing in front of microphones after games while reporters searched for controversy in every sentence he spoke.

“Plus,” Shane continued, amusement slipping back into his tone again, “my mom looked about five seconds away from ascending directly into heaven when Kenzo contacted her.”

Hayden burst out laughing again.

“Yeah, that tracks.”

The conversation drifted for another couple of minutes after that, easy and familiar in the way conversations with Hayden always seemed to become eventually. Then, right before hanging up, Hayden suddenly spoke again.

“Actually, before I forget,” he said, “do you know what the fuck is going on with Rozanov lately?”

Shane nearly choked on his coffee.

For one horrifying second, genuine panic shot straight through him so fast that his brain completely short-circuited. His stomach dropped violently while about seventeen different worst-case scenarios flashed through his head at once.

Had someone found out?

Had somebody seen them together before he left for Japan?

Did Ilya say something?

But Hayden kept talking before Shane could fully spiral.

“Clearly you’re really serious about avoiding hockey news because you would have known otherwise,” he continued. “Montreal barely scraping into playoffs isn’t even the only disaster this season. Boston’s struggling too.”

Shane forced himself to relax again slowly, gripping the coffee cup a little tighter while trying desperately to sound nonchalant. “What happened?”

“I honestly don’t even know,” Hayden admitted. “Rozanov’s playing like a complete animal right now. His scoring numbers are insane, but he’s also getting into like three times more fights than usual.” He paused briefly. “And apparently he got carted off the ice during one game a couple weeks ago.”

Shane’s expression immediately grimaced.

“What?”

“Yeah. Nobody really knows what happened.” Hayden sighed. “There’s a bunch of rumors floating around that his father is sick or something, but nobody’s confirmed anything officially.”

A strange uncomfortable feeling settled heavily in the pit of Shane’s stomach after hearing that. Because despite everything that happened between them, despite how abruptly things ended before he left for Japan, he still cares about Ilya Rozanov.

“I figured maybe you heard something,” Hayden continued. “You always kind of kept tabs on him more than the rest of us did.”

Shane immediately looked down toward the café table.

“I have no idea, man,” he admitted carefully. “When I tell you I completely disconnected after leaving Montreal, I mean it.” He let out a quiet breath afterward. “At this point I basically only answer calls from my parents, my agent, you guys, and that’s it. Half the time, my phone stays permanently muted.”

Which sounded mildly insane when said out loud. But it was the truth. Ignoring the outside world became disturbingly easy once he settled into Kyoto.

And maybe that was healthier for him.

Or maybe he was still hiding from things.

Possibly both.

Before Hayden could continue talking about Ilya, Shane quickly changed the subject because he suddenly trusted himself significantly less than usual, not to blurt out that he had been secretly hooking up with his archrival since rookie season.

“So, wait,” he interrupted, “if Montreal and Boston barely crawled into playoffs, who the hell ended up at the top of the standings?”

“Dude, you are never going to believe this.”

Shane could hear the shit-eating smirk on his best friend’s face.

“What?”

“The Admirals.”

Shane stared blankly ahead for a second, then he let out a snort of disbelief.  “No fucking way.”

“Yes, fucking way.”

“The New York Admirals?” Shane repeated, still sounding shocked as hell. 

“I know,” Hayden said between chuckles. “Apparently miracles are real.”

Shane leaned back farther in his chair, shaking his head in disbelief while grinning helplessly now. “Holy shit.”

Hayden kept laughing for another few seconds after that while Shane shook his head helplessly into his coffee. “That might be the most shocking thing you’ve told me during this entire call.”

“Right?” Hayden sounded equally offended by it. “The universe makes zero sense anymore.”

Shane snorted softly.

“Alright, I should probably let you go before Yuri finishes school and finds out I spent an entire afternoon gossiping with my best friend instead of being productive.”

“Oh my God,” Hayden gasped dramatically, “listen to you sounding like an actual responsible parent.”

“Tragic character development.”

“Seriously though,” Hayden continued, warmth slipping back into his tone again, “we should do dinner together soon. Like a video call or something. Jackie misses you, and the kids keep asking when Uncle Shane is coming back. Ruby might even start a riot at home, if she does not get her weekly chat with Yuri.”

“Yeah,” Shane agreed without missing a beat. “Let’s do that.”

“You, me, Jackie, the chaos goblins, Yuri—”

“The chaos goblins?” Shane repeated, laughing again.

“You know exactly which children I mean.”

“Ruby is not that bad."

“She behaves when you are around, only because she likes you!” Hayden snorted derisively. “Maybe sometime next week?”

“Works for me.”

“Alright,” Hayden sighed again. “Go enjoy your peaceful Kyoto café while the rest of us suffer through playoffs.”

“Sounds like a skill issue honestly.”

“Fuck you.”

Shane grinned fondly.

“Bye, Hayden.”

“Bye, man.”

The call ended a second later.

For a moment, Shane stayed sitting there quietly with his phone still resting in his hand while the noise of the café drifted softly around him. Cups clinked somewhere behind the counter, as the espresso machine hissed in short bursts.

And despite himself, Shane’s thumb hovered briefly over his notifications.

Should he call Ilya?

Should he ask what happened?

Ask if he was okay?

Ask why he got carted off the ice?

Because despite everything, despite six months of distance and silence and trying to rebuild his life into something healthier, the idea of Ilya being hurt still broke Shane’s heart. The fact that he was still this attached… that scared him a little too.

His gaze dropped toward the dark phone screen again.

One call.

That was all it would take.

One moment of weakness and suddenly he would get dragged right back into that entire mess again. The secrecy. The emotional whiplash. The constant intensity between them that always seemed to consume every rational thought in Shane’s brain whenever Ilya got too close.

Slowly, Shane took a deep breath instead.

Then another.

Outside the café windows, Kyoto carried on peacefully around him. Bicycle wheels rolled softly against pavement. Wind stirred gently through hanging banners outside nearby shops. Somewhere farther down the street, someone laughed loudly enough for the sound to drift faintly through the open café door.

And gradually, little by little, Shane allowed himself to settle back into the present again. Japan had taught him how to do that.

How to breathe properly.

How to slow down.

How to center himself before his thoughts spiraled too far ahead of him.

By the time he finally looked down at his phone again, the sharp panic sitting on his chest had softened into something quieter and easier to manage. Without opening his notifications, Shane locked the screen and slid the phone back into his pocket.

Then he stood, carried his empty dishes toward the counter, paid for the coffee and desserts, and stepped back outside. Because he made a promise to himself when he came here.

A fresh start.

A real one this time.

He spent too many years allowing hockey, pressure, guilt, and whatever chaotic thing existed between him and Ilya Rozanov to consume entire pieces of himself until there was barely anything left underneath it all. Yuri deserved better than that version of him.

And so did Shane.

For the first time in a very long time, he finally had a chance to build something healthier for himself. Something peaceful and good.

And he refused to let himself lose that now.

Chapter 6: He could choose happiness

Boston felt suffocating lately.

His house was too quiet whenever Ilya came home after games, but the arena was even worse. Everything there seemed louder than he remembered, from skates carving into the ice and sticks hammering against the boards to reporters yelling questions across locker rooms. Even his own breathing inside the helmet sounded wrong after another fight he could barely remember starting in the first place.

At some point during the last six months, hockey stopped feeling fun entirely and turned into something ugly and exhausting that he kept throwing himself into anyway because he genuinely did not know what else to do with himself anymore.

Ever since Shane left for Japan, Ilya felt like he’d been unraveling slowly from the inside out.

For months, he kept trying to convince himself that whatever existed between them had only been sex. A bad habit. A reckless little secret that had gotten out of hand after years spent orbiting each other.

It was a convincing explanation right up until Shane left. Then suddenly it wasn't. Because sex didn't leave someone feeling so hollow that some days even getting out of bed felt like more effort than he could manage.

And the worst part?

Ilya understood exactly why Shane walked away.

He understood it every single miserable night he laid awake staring at the ceiling at three in the morning thinking about all the ways he sabotaged whatever existed between them before it ever had the chance to become real.

Every time Shane got too close emotionally, Ilya pulled away immediately afterward. Every time things started feeling serious, he turned cold on purpose. Every conversation somehow circled back toward rivals, sex, secrecy, temporary arrangements, boundaries neither of them actually respected anymore.

Because admitting the truth terrified him.

A relationship with another man meant accepting that he would never be able to go back to Russia. For years, that had been enough of an excuse. Lately, though, even that had stopped feeling acceptable. Because what exactly was he preserving anymore?

His father barely recognized him nowadays.

The disease progressed faster every month. Some days his father recognized him. Other days he didn't. Watching the man who had spent decades making him afraid become confused, fragile, and dependent left Ilya tangled in a mess of anger, guilt, and something even worse. Because part of him hated seeing it, and part of him couldn't ignore the relief that came with the fact that, for the first time in his life, his father was no longer the one holding all the power.

The rest of the team assumed that was the reason Ilya had turned into such a violent disaster lately. Coaches blamed stress, while reporters blamed grief. And his teammates blamed exhaustion. Cliff definitely suspected something deeper was wrong though.

The entire locker room did. Whenever Ilya walked into a room, dead silence followed for a beat before his teammates started talking again.

Nobody wanted to grab drinks with him anymore after games because he spent half the season acting like a complete fucking animal. Boston barely clawed their way into the playoffs while Ilya simultaneously led the league in scoring and spent enough time in the penalty box to qualify for a second address because apparently losing his mind had become part of his weekly routine now.

One game ended with him getting carted off the ice after a fight so brutal he barely remembered parts of it afterward.

And still none of it helped. Nothing shut his brain up anymore, least of all at night. At nearly two in the morning, Ilya sat alone on his couch with only the light from his phone illuminating the apartment while insomnia hollowed him out from the inside. His thumb moved slowly through the Instagram comments beneath the new Kenzo campaign.

---

@KENZO • 2 minutes ago

Movement. Discipline. Strength.

Introducing Olympic medalist and Stanley Cup champion Shane Hollander as the new face of KENZO Homme.

From Montréal to Kyoto.

#KENZO #KENZOHomme #ShaneHollander

[photos attached]

— Shane standing on a quiet Kyoto side street at night wearing a long black Kenzo wool coat, rain catching in his hair while neon signs glow behind him

— sitting on the floor of a traditional Japanese engawa in loose cream trousers and an open dark sweater, staring off-camera with a calm expression

— black-and-white close-up photo with wet hair pushed back, wearing a simple chain necklace and Kenzo Homme fragrance resting beside him

— Shane walking through a bamboo forest at sunrise in an oversized charcoal coat and gloves

— candid-looking photo of him at a small ramen shop wearing glasses and a black hoodie under a designer jacket

— final image is just him leaning against a vending machine at 2am, hands in pockets, looking exhausted but peaceful

Comments:

@hollanderupdates

PROOF OF LIFE AFTER SIX MONTHS 😭😭😭

 

@kenzofashionlover

KENZO REALLY SAID “let’s get the most beautiful hockey player alive”

 

@BostonRaidersHQ

Okay respectfully this man is offensively attractive

 

@nhlchaos

Why does he somehow look MORE expensive in Japan? 😭

 

@fashionpuck

The man used to look like he was always gym-ready, and now he looks red carpet–ready 24/7!

 

@CanadasCaptain

Hope he’s doing okay honestly ❤️

 

@jjdefenseleague

Good. Let him rest. Let him wear pretty clothes and disappear into the mountains for a bit.

 

@icedcoffeefan

No because the vending machine picture just changed my brain chemistry

 

@hockeyfan22

SHANE HOLLANDER IN GLASSES???

HELLO???

 

@fashioninsider

Kenzo got insanely lucky with this casting.

 

@MontrealBurner

Bro disappeared for half a year and came back looking like a luxury heartbreak campaign 😭

 

@NHLWatcher

He genuinely looks healthier here than he did the entire last hockey season

 

@AdmiralsEmpire

New York would treat you right king, just saying

 

@BostonBorn

Boston fans staring at these photos like divorced dads at a custody hearing

 

@hollandernation

The fact he chose a Japanese campaign first after everything happened with his family 🥺

 

@skatingandhockey

Hope his cousin is okay ❤️

 

@raidersfan88

I know this is supposed to sell Kenzo, but I forgot to look at every outfit immediately

That face! 🥵

 

@hockeynight

This man accidentally became the most talked-about athlete on earth by trying to take care of his family

 

@fashiontokyo

The bamboo forest shot belongs to a museum.

 

@PuckEmpire

Not to be dramatic but this is the best athlete campaign I’ve seen in YEARS

 

@sportscenterfan

The way the entire internet collectively went “Oh thank God he’s alive”

 

@hollanderdefenseleague

He deserves peace.

 

@nhlgossip

Still laughing at the fact, he went offline for six months and came back as a high fashion campaign model 😭

 

@LAKingsWest

Okay but Shane Hollander in Kyoto aesthetics makes TOO much sense

 

@canadianwinter

He looks tired but… lighter? If that makes sense

 

@goalhornchaos

KENZO HOLLANDER IS REAL 😭

 

@hockeyfan1998

The Montreal organization really lost THIS man because they couldn’t let him take care of his family. Absolutely insane.

 

@KenzoOfficialFan

The Kenzo Homme fragrance ad shot???

OH, THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING.

 

@NHLmemes

Shane really said “I survived a hockey scandal and now I’m gonna stand at a ramen shop looking gorgeous” 😭

 

@hollanderupdates

Take all the time you need, Captain ❤️

---

Ilya stared at the photos long enough for his eyes to start hurting. Shane looked different. He was still unfairly beautiful, but that wasn't what kept catching Ilya's attention. There was a lightness for him now, a quiet confidence that hadn't been there before.

The exhaustion visible in some of the photos looked different from the version Ilya remembered from Montreal. Back then Shane always looked stretched painfully thin, like somebody trying to hold together twenty collapsing pieces of his life simultaneously while pretending everything was fine.

In the photos, whether he was sitting outside of a ramen shop in an oversized coat or standing beneath Kyoto's neon lights with rain caught in his hair, Shane somehow looked more at peace than Ilya had ever seen him.

And that realization made something twist painfully inside his chest because Ilya knew he had contributed to the exhaustion Shane carried for years, maybe more than he wanted to admit. His thumb paused over one specific comment.

He deserves peace.

For some reason, that one hurt the most. Because Shane did deserve peace, and Ilya didn't know if he had ever given him anything except chaos.

His gaze drifted upward toward one of the photos again, the black-and-white close-up with Shane’s wet hair pushed back while the Kenzo fragrance bottle rested beside him. Shane’s expression looked distant there, beautiful in a way that made Ilya’s chest ache so violently he had to lock his jaw afterward.

What the fuck did Shane mean when he said goodbye like that?

That what they had was a beautiful dream?

They were real. Every second between them had felt painfully, terrifyingly real. The fights, the sex, the tenderness Shane always tried pretending meant less to Ilya than it actually did. The nights spent tangled together in hotel beds, talking about things neither of them ever acknowledged again once morning came.

None of it felt fake to Ilya.

If anything, that was the problem. Because if it had all been a mistake, if it had only been sex or obsession or two idiots making the same bad decision for years, then maybe he could have lived with it.

Instead, it had been real, and maybe that terrified him most of all.

Because six months later, Shane still consumed his mind so completely that Ilya found himself sitting awake at two in the morning stalking fashion campaigns from another continent like some unhinged ex-boyfriend.

Which, unfortunately, he probably was.

“You’re going to burn a hole through your phone at this rate.”

Ilya startled so violently that his phone nearly slipped from his hands.

He looked up to find Svetlana standing near the doorway wearing one of his old Boston hoodies, dark hair hanging messily over one shoulder while she watched him with an expression so painfully full of pity that irritation immediately flared hot inside his chest.

He hated that look, mostly because Svetlana was the only person he allowed to see him like this. He felt so weak and pathetic, falling apart over some boy.

Then again, Shane Hollander had never been just some boy.

Svetlana crossed the living room quietly before dropping beside him on the couch, her gaze flicking briefly toward the glowing Instagram post still open on his phone screen. “Oh, Ilyusha,” she said softly, sounding genuinely heartbroken for him now. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“Doing what?” Ilya looked away, jaw tightening hard.

Svetlana stared at him for a long moment, then she snorted quietly.

“Please.” She gestured toward the phone still clenched in his hand. “Do you honestly think I’m stupid?” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “You really thought I never realized that your lovely Montreal Jane is Shane Hollander?”

Ilya froze.

Svetlana leaned back farther into the couch afterward, crossing her arms while looking deeply unimpressed.

“Who do you think Marleau called every time his captain ditched the team after an away game in Montreal? Or did you actually think I never put it together? Every time the Raiders played the Voyagers, you disappeared after the game, skipped the celebrations, and suddenly weren't interested in hooking up. As if you had somewhere else to be.”  She shook her head slowly. “Ilyusha, you are many things, but subtle has never been one of them.”

Heat crawled unpleasantly up Ilya's neck. For years, he had genuinely believed he hid it well. Apparently, he didn't. Although, in fairness, this was Sveta. She had known him since childhood and could read him better than most people read books.

“And now he’s all the way in Japan,” Svetlana continued more quietly. “And you’re here.”

“What do you mean by that?” Ilya frowned immediately.

“It means why are you here?” she shot back. “Why are you sitting alone in Boston at two in the morning staring at pictures of somebody you clearly love instead of actually doing something about it?”

Ilya physically flinched at the use of the word love, his stomach twisting painfully.

“Because of Russia,” he snapped, the familiar surge of defensive anger rising before he could stop it. It always did whenever this conversation happened. “I can't be with a man. I can't go back there if people know.”

Svetlana stared at him like she genuinely could not believe what she was hearing anymore. “You barely live there now.”

“That’s different.”

“You spend maybe two months there every year,” she continued firmly. “And every single summer I watch your father and your brother make you miserable the entire time.”

Ilya’s expression darkened instantly.

“My father is sick.”

“Yes,” Svetlana cut him off immediately. “Now he is sick. I know.” Her voice sharpened afterward. “But before the dementia?” She shook her head. “He was so cruel to you. He was cruel to your mother too.”

Ilya looked away again without responding, because, like always, Svetlana was right.

“And Alexei?” Her tone became even more disgusted now. “Please. That man treats you like a walking bank account.” She leaned forward slightly. “Do you honestly think the money you send home actually reaches your niece?”

Ilya's silence answered that question by itself because deep down he already knew. Alexei burned through money faster than Ilya could send it, losing it to drugs, gambling, debt, and an endless parade of excuses.

So many excuses.

“You keep sacrificing your entire life for people who would never sacrifice anything for you,” Svetlana continued more softly this time. “And meanwhile the one person who genuinely loved you finally got tired of waiting for you to choose him.”

Something cracked painfully inside Ilya's chest after hearing that because Shane had chosen him, over and over again. He had chosen him despite the mixed signals, despite Ilya's endless hookups, despite all the times the Russian pretended what existed between them meant less than it did.

Eventually, though, Shane reached his limit.

Svetlana watched his expression carefully before speaking again.

“You need to cut them off.”

Ilya’s head jerked upward immediately.

“What?”

“You heard me.” She sounded completely serious now. “Set up a trust fund for your niece when she turns eighteen if you’re worried about her.” Her gaze hardened afterward. “But your father and your brother are destroying you.”

“They’re still my family.”

“Ilyusha, that's not how family is supposed to treat each other.”

Ilya physically recoiled at her frank words.

“You need to stop hiding behind Russia,” she said quietly. “Because honestly? I think you already know what you want.”

Ilya stared down at the phone still resting uselessly in his hand. Another photo of Shane filled the screen. Rain glimmered in his dark hair beneath Kyoto's neon lights, and despite the exhaustion visible in his eyes, he looked calm. Content in a way Ilya had never managed to give him. His chest ached so badly it almost felt unbearable.

Svetlana’s voice softened again afterward.

“Get on a plane,” she told him gently. “Go to Japan.” A small sad smile crossed her face. “And win your boy back before somebody else does.”

Svetlana left shortly after that.

The house fell quiet again once the front door closed behind her, leaving Ilya alone with the dim light from the city outside the windows and Shane’s face still glowing from the phone screen in his hand.

Go to Japan.

Win your boy back.

The words kept replaying in an endless loop in his head long after she left. And much to his own shame, he never did.

He did not call Shane. He did not buy a plane ticket. He did not send some impulsive confession at three in the morning while half-drunk and emotionally destroyed. Instead, Ilya did the one thing he could manage.

He cut off Russia completely.

The process took weeks and left him feeling hollow afterward, but once he started, he refused to stop halfway through. Every account involving his father and Alexei was frozen, and the apartment in Moscow went into his niece’s name with her mother listed as beneficiary and legal protector over everything connected to it.

Because if Alexei truly became anything like their father, then Ilya wanted his sister-in-law to have somewhere to go. Somewhere safe waiting for her. Something their mother had never been given.

After that, every future interaction with his family went through attorneys. No more emergency phone calls in the middle of the night. No more money disappearing into Alexei's addictions. No more being made to feel responsible for everyone else's problems every time he tried building a life outside of Russia.

And honestly, once the noise disappeared, the silence felt horrifying.

But lighter too.

The problem was that hockey became the only thing left afterward.

Svetlana looked at him with so much pity and disappointment that some days it made Ilya feel physically sick. He had cut off his father and brother. Shane was halfway across the world building a peaceful life in Kyoto without him. And the Boston Raiders, at least in Ilya's mind, tolerated him more than they actually wanted him around.

Lately, it felt like every bridge in his life had either burned down or been left behind. So, he threw himself into hockey with enough violence that eventually even the coaches started getting concerned.

Winning was the only thing that still made sense. It gave him something to chase, something that drowned out the noise for a few hours and kept his thoughts quiet long enough to breathe.

Unfortunately, the anger had started spilling into everything else. The penalties kept piling up, his knuckles were constantly bruised, and more games than not began with him stepping onto the ice already furious before the puck had even dropped.

After another brutal fight nearly got him suspended, the coach finally cornered him after practice and essentially forced him into therapy under threat of disciplinary action from management.

Ilya had hated the entire experience from day one.

He hated the questions that dug too deep. Hated the long silences that forced him to sit alone with thoughts he had spent years avoiding. Mostly, though, he hated how quickly the therapist saw through him. It had taken less than a handful of sessions for her to realize that whenever he got too close to being happy, he found a way to sabotage himself.

Eventually, during one particularly miserable session, she explained it to him while Ilya sat there staring at the carpet and wishing the floor would open up beneath him.

His mother's illness had not skipped him after all.

Years of childhood abuse, instability, fear, and emotional neglect had left damage far deeper than he ever wanted to admit. PTSD. Anxiety. Severe depressive episodes. Emotional avoidance so deeply rooted that half the things Ilya considered normal were actually defense mechanisms.

Hearing it out loud made him feel sick.

At the same time, it was the first explanation he had received that actually made sense. For months his mind had been a constant mess of exhaustion, frustration, and progressively darker thoughts he could never quite shut off. Now, at least, he understood why.

The medication helped.

Slowly, but it helped.

Still, little by little, the pressure in his chest eased. His thoughts stopped spiraling quite so violently, and the constant paranoia was easier to manage. With said progress came a realization that hurt almost worse than the depression itself.

His teammates did not hate him.

If anything, they had been worried the entire time.

Cliff kept checking on him because he cared. The younger players walked on eggshells around him because they were nervous about saying the wrong thing, not because they despised him. Trainers hovered after fights because they were genuinely concerned.

It turned out depression was a lying piece of shit.

For months, Ilya had convinced himself nobody wanted him around. Every awkward conversation, every strange look, every awkward silence became proof that people hated him, were tired of him, or were only putting up with him because they had no choice.

The reality was a lot less dramatic.

Realizing that was its own kind of awful because it meant he could not even trust his own brain anymore. Unfortunately, therapy and antidepressants do not magically fix things.

He did not suddenly become stable or emotionally healthy overnight. Most weeks still leaned heavier toward bad days than good ones, and sometimes the medication only dulled the sharpest edges instead of truly helping. There were mornings were getting out of bed still felt exhausting and nights where his thoughts spiraled so bad that sleep became impossible.

Still, it was progress.

Small, but progress, nonetheless.

Somehow, even after the disaster that had been the start of the year, Boston clawed its way through the playoffs out of pure spite. Beating Montreal in four games was the most cathartic experience they had had all season.

But then came the Admirals. By the end of the series, Ilya was half-convinced his ribs had permanently fused after one particularly vicious hit in Game Five, but he still dragged Boston as far as he could. It still wasn’t enough.

The Admirals went on from there and somehow; they won the Cup.

The fucking Admirals.

Of course it had to be Scott Hunter’s team. Of course. A dinosaur who should’ve retired a decade ago, still out there ruining everyone’s life. Ilya was offended on principle.

“I still think this entire league should be ashamed of itself,” he muttered darkly while sprawled across his couch with one arm wrapped carefully around his ribs. “Losing to Scott Hunter in the year of our Lord 2017 is embarrassing for everybody involved.”

Svetlana snorted from beside him before pouring more vodka into both their glasses.

The house lights remained dim except for the television glow reflecting across the living room. Between them sat a bottle of expensive Russian vodka Svetlana smuggled back months ago during her last trip overseas.

Ilya cut his father and brother out of his life completely, that, however, did not mean he suddenly lost his standards.

“Please,” Svetlana drawled lazily, curling deeper into the couch cushions. “You only hate him because he beat you.”

“I hate him because he is an ancient, bad hockey player that should have retired years ago.”

“And yet he won.”

“Miracles do happen.”

Svetlana snorted into her drink.

Honestly though, beneath the dramatic complaining, part of him almost felt relieved.

Boston’s season started catastrophically enough that half the media spent months predicting they would miss playoffs entirely. Instead, they fought their way back into contention, and somehow, somewhere along the way, Ilya managed pulling himself together enough to become a decent captain again.

Or at least less of a complete disaster.

His teammates trusted him again now. The younger players started gravitating toward him more naturally during practices and road trips. Cliff stopped hovering constantly like he expected Ilya to spontaneously implode at any second.

Even the locker room atmosphere felt easier lately.

Not perfect.

Then again, nothing is ever perfect.

“You know,” Svetlana said eventually, quieter this time, “a year ago you probably would have punched somebody after losing to Hunter.”

The vodka burned pleasantly down his throat as he answered, “I still might.”

“Instead,” she continued, completely ignoring my quip. “You’re sitting here complaining like the drama queen you are.”

“God bless therapy and its wonders,” Ilya snorted derisively.

He might be grateful for the medication, but that did not mean he enjoyed the process. He was snapped from his thoughts when he heard Svetlana suddenly gasp beside him.

Ilya turned towards her immediately. “What?” he asked sharply. “Sveta, are you okay?”

But Svetlana did not answer.

She only stared at the television, one hand covering her mouth as tears gathered in her eyes. Her other hand lifted slowly, pointing at the screen, and the look on her face made something sink in Ilya’s stomach.

He followed her gaze.

And then, he froze.

The arena on television had exploded in a cacophony of noise as the crowd celebrated the Admirals’ victory, Scott Hunter was supposed to be circling the ice with the Stanley Cup raised over his head, doing the slow victory lap the cameras were waiting for.

Except he wasn’t. There was no lap happening at all.

He had stopped near the boards instead, right at the edge of the ice where the glass met the stands, like he had forgotten the rest of the arena existed.

And he was kissing a man.

Right there in front of the entire world.

The crowd around them screamed loud enough that the noise distorted through the television speakers while cameras flashed wildly across the ice. Reporters tried to push closer, as players shouted and laughed somewhere behind it all.

And Scott Hunter, old-school dinosaur Scott Hunter, stood there holding another man’s face in his hands and kissing him like none of it scared him.

Ilya stared at the screen so hard his eyes started to burn. For a moment his brain refused to catch up with what he was seeing. Hockey players didn’t do that. They were not allowed to love other men, but Scott Hunter was doing it.

And that broke something loose in Ilya’s chest.

Because it meant it was possible.

It meant he could do it too. He could love Shane without fearing for his life or his career. He could have Shane, hockey, and Boston. He could have it all.

Beside him, Svetlana suddenly grabbed his hand tightly, pulling him out of his spiraling thoughts. Ilya looked away from the television and toward her instead. Tears had fully spilled down her cheeks now, but she was smiling too, squeezing his hand so tightly it almost hurt.

And for the first time in years, Ilya realized this was not some impossible fantasy he invented inside his head.

This was real.

The fear was real.

The love was real.

The possibility was real too.

Svetlana laughed shakily while wiping at her face with her free hand. “Go to Japan,” she whispered, her voice breaking by the end.

Ilya stared at her silently.

“Go get your boy.”

Slowly, Ilya looked back toward the screen one last time before lowering his gaze toward the vodka glass resting forgotten between his hands. For so long he had allowed others to tell him what kind of life he was allowed to live.

It reached a point where he forgot he could choose something for himself.

He could choose happiness.

He could choose Shane.

Svetlana squeezed his hand harder.

And this time, finally, Ilya listened.

Chapter 7: I love you

The taxi had been gone for nearly ten minutes and Ilya still hadn't rung the doorbell.

He stood in front of the traditional Kyoto house with a suitcase beside him and stared at the wooden gate like it personally offended him. A small plaque with neat Japanese characters hung beside the bell, and for all he knew it could have said Hollander, welcome, private property, or idiot Russians go home.

He had absolutely no idea.

Getting to Japan had already felt like an impossible task. Half the airport announcements sounded incomprehensible to him, his English became progressively worse with every hour of travel, and by the time he reached Kyoto he was running entirely on caffeine, stubbornness, and whatever insanity had convinced him that flying across the world for Shane Hollander was somehow a reasonable life decision.

Now that he was actually here, standing in front of Shane's house, a different thought kept repeating itself.

What the fuck am I doing?

The panic grew stronger the longer he stood there.

Maybe Svetlana had been wrong.

Maybe this had been a terrible idea.

Maybe Shane had moved on months ago.

Maybe…

Something suddenly yanked on his coat, causing Ilya to nearly jump out of his skin.

Looking down, he found himself face-to-face with a tiny girl in a school uniform, an oversized backpack slipping off one shoulder, and huge dark eyes that were the dictionary definition of doe eyes, if Ilya had ever seen them in real life.

She blinked up at him curiously and Ilya immediately panicked.

"Oh."

The girl continued staring.

"Uh."

Still staring.

His brain scrambled desperately for words. He knew exactly three phrases in Japanese and was fairly certain two of them involved ordering food. Then the girl spoke.

In English.
Perfect English.
Better English than his.

No. He was not jealous. Who even said that? That was nonsense.

“I know you! I saw the videos of your skating online. You’re my tōsan’s rival.”

Ilya blinked, startled, his brain lagging behind. He had no fucking clue what was happening and it felt like he had stepped straight into what Americans called the Twilight State.

No—zone. Twilight Zone. Right.

“Your what?”

“My tōsan.”

The word took a second to register.

Tōsan.

Didn’t that mean father?

His eyes widened in realization, as he gaped down at the girl. The girl, who simply ignored his mental breakdown and nodded with grace. "You're Ilya Rozanov."

“You’re Hollander’s kid?”

The girl looked genuinely pleased to be called Hollander’s kid. And part of Ilya was weirdly glad to realize Shane had apparently settled into fatherhood. Even if another part of him felt like he might puke from nerves.

Before either of them could continue, another voice drifted from farther down the street. "Yuri, how many times do I have to tell you to stop running ahead of me?"

The familiar voice hit Ilya like a punch to the chest.

He looked up, and there he was.

Shane rounded the corner carrying grocery bags in one hand and a reusable shopping tote slung over his shoulder. He looked different from the last time Ilya had seen him. His shoulders were still broad, and he had the same infuriatingly attractive face.

But the tension was gone.

For years, Shane had always looked like somebody carrying twenty responsibilities at once. Now there was a lightness to him that Ilya had never seen before.

Shane sighed as he caught up to Yuri. "One day you're going to give me a heart attack." Then he muttered mostly to himself. "Now I understand every complaint Hayden ever had about Ruby."

Yuri giggled in return, completely unashamed, as she said. “Tōsan we have a visitor.”

Shane looked up, and the grocery bags nearly slipped from his hand. His eyes widened, and his jaw went slack at the sight of the Russian standing in front of his house.

"Ilya."

He sounded almost disbelieving, as if the blond would disappear if Shane blinked.

Ilya swallowed hard, his nerves getting the better of him.

"Hi."

The silence stretched awkwardly. There had been months of distance, filled with regret and conversations that never happened. And all of it seemed to hang between them like an axe. Unexpectedly, it was Yuri who broke the silence.

"Isn't it rude to leave guests outside?" She looked from one of them to the other like she was watching a tennis match. Neither man answered, so Yuri placed her hands on her hips in a bossy manner. "Tōsan we should invite him in."

A muscle twitched in Shane's jaw, as he let out a deep sigh. "You're right, sweetheart." Then the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "Come in."

The house was completely different from anywhere Ilya had ever lived.

He took his shoes off at the entrance, unsure for a moment if he was doing it right, then left them by the doorway before stepping inside. The floor was wood and smooth under his socks. It didn’t give out the familiar sounds he was used to. There was no creaking, or echo that carried his steps down long hallways.

A faint smell of tea lingered in the air, as if it belonged to the house itself. Light came in through paper-covered sliding panels instead of glass windows, breaking into soft blocks across the floor and walls.

Yuri disappeared into her room after Shane instructed her to change out of her school uniform and put away her backpack. The moment she vanished, the awkward silence returned.

Shane disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later he returned with a tray and two cups of green tea. Should Ilya call it green tea? Or matcha, as he had heard it called in Japan?

As lovely as the scent was, neither of them touched the cups. They sat across from each other at the low dining table, tea steaming gently between them in silence.

It should have felt awkward. Hell, it had felt awkward at the start. But as time passed, it became familiar in a way Ilya didn’t quite know what to do with. He mostly felt fondness at their inability to communicate, and a quiet, self-deprecating amusement that some things had not changed.

A year had passed since their phone call, and every logical part of Ilya’s brain understood that jumping back to how things used to be would be impossible. Under normal circumstances, showing up unannounced on another continent, at someone’s front door at that, would have earned him a restraining order.

And yet, sitting across from Shane, all of that somehow felt secondary.

Because Shane was here.

And God, Ilya had missed him.

The realization struck with embarrassing force.

He found himself studying every detail almost greedily, taking in the familiar shape of his hands around the teacup, the dark hair that had grown slightly longer, the small crease between his eyebrows that appeared whenever he was thinking too hard.

It felt ridiculous and a little pathetic. Possibly bordering on a religious experience.

Ilya knew he was exaggerating. He knew perfectly well that Shane Hollander was a human being and not some divine revelation sent specifically to torment him. Still, after everything that had happened, seeing him again felt a little like drawing a full breath after spending months underwater.

The silence stretched long enough that eventually Ilya forced himself to break it, his fingers tightening slightly around the teacup.

“I owe you an apology.”

One of Shane's eyebrows climbed upward.

“For a lot of things,” Ilya continued before he could lose his nerve. “For how I handled everything between us, especially at the start. For pretending what we had was only ever sex.” A humorless laugh escaped him. “For acting like I could somehow want you and keep you at arm's length at the same time.”

His gaze dropped briefly toward the table.

“There was always too much going on inside my head. Russia. My family. Hockey. You.” He shook his head. “Whenever things started feeling real, I would panic and push you away. Then I would miss you and come back.”

“That sounds about right.”

The corner of Shane's mouth twitched.

Ilya groaned, already knowing exactly which memory Shane had landed on.

“Las Vegas.”

“You were an asshole in Las Vegas.”

“I know.” Ilya smiled wryly. “So was I in Sochi.”

Shane was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “I understand Sochi a lot better now than I did back then.”

Ilya looked up.

“After everything I learned later about Russia and what life is actually like for LGBT people there, a lot of things started making more sense.” Shane shrugged lightly. “It didn't make your choices any easier to deal with, but I understood why you were scared.”

His expression softened slightly.

“And eventually I realized you weren't just protecting yourself. Still, I would like to remind you that I am no damsel in distress, and I do not need a hunky Russian to protect me.”

Ilya rolled his eyes so hard it almost hurt.

“Duly noted.”

The words came out dry, but he couldn't quite hide the fondness behind them.

Shane looked entirely too pleased with himself, as he took a sip of tea before continuing. “Las Vegas still qualifies as one of your worst moments, though.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

The exchange lasted only a few seconds, but it felt achingly familiar. Shane took a shot at him, Ilya took one back, and neither of them could ever resist returning the favor. For years they had hidden affection inside sarcasm, arguments, and insults that weren't really insults, both of them giving as good as they got.

The ease of it almost startled him.

Then Shane tilted his head slightly.

“Wait.” His eyebrows pulled together. “You thought I left for Japan because of you?”

Ilya looked up. “You didn't?” he asked, genuinely startled.

For a second Shane just stared at him, before bursting out laughing.

The sound wasn't cruel, which somehow made it worse.

Ilya knew what cruel laughter sounded like. He had spent most of his childhood listening to it. His father's. His brother's. Later there had been hockey players, reporters, strangers, all too happy to laugh whenever his English failed him.

Shane never laughed like that.

Whenever Ilya used the wrong word or completely butchered an expression, Shane would usually giggle first, his laugh fond and endeared rather than cruel. Then he would help, patiently offering the word Ilya had been looking for or untangling whatever disaster of a sentence he had accidentally created.

There was always warmth underneath it.

There always had been.

“No, Ilya,” Shane finally said, after calming down. “You were never the reason I left Canada.”

His smile softened.

“I left because of Montreal.” Shane's fingers traced the side of his teacup. “Because of Coach Theriault. Because of everything that happened to Hayden and Jackie. Because of what happened to JJ.” He paused briefly before looking back up. “Somebody needed to stand up and say enough.”

Ilya did not speak, as he listened attentively.

“I left for Yuri. I left for my family. I left because I couldn't keep sacrificing myself for an organization that expected loyalty while giving none in return.”

Then Shane's expression shifted slightly, into something more vulnerable.

“But I never left because of you,” Shane looked down for a moment before lifting his gaze again, his eyes were suspiciously bright. “Did you know I didn't even want to be at the draft?”

The question caught Ilya completely off guard.

“What?”

“I wanted to go to college first.” A small laugh escaped Shane. “Play for McGill for a few years, grow up a little, and spend some time figuring myself out. Maybe understand my dad a bit better.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I was always a lot more like my mother, so I thought going to the same university as him might help with that.”

His smile was wry but filled with so much love for his parents, that it made Ilya’s heart ache.

“I always wanted to make the NHL eventually. I just didn't feel ready for it at seventeen.”

Ilya stared at him blankly.

Did Shane understand what he was even saying? How his words were affecting him?

Meeting Shane at the draft had saved him. The possibility that, in another reality, they might have never met at all was a nightmare Ilya did not even want to consider.

“My mom had other plans,” Shane snorted and kept talking, completely oblivious to the fact that Ilya was quietly coming undone across the table from him. “She pushed me toward the draft, and honestly? There are plenty of things in my career that I regret.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward the garden outside.

“I regret staying quiet when I should have spoken up. I regret some of the choices I made as captain. I regret how long it took me to reconnect with my Japanese heritage and not coming to visit my grandparents more often.”

When he looked back at Ilya, his expression was impossibly open.

“But meeting you was never one of those regrets.”

Ilya stopped breathing.

Or at least it felt that way.

The world narrowed until there was only Shane sitting across from him and the certainty in his voice.

“Going to that draft changed my life,” Shane admitted with a shrug. “A lot of things happened afterward that were difficult, and some of them were even painful.” His smile returned, small and genuine. “Still, if you asked me whether I would do it all again knowing I'd meet you there, the answer would always be yes.”

Something shattered inside Ilya, though not painfully. If anything, it felt like the opposite—a wall finally giving way after years of carrying more weight than it had ever been meant to hold.

For so long he had thought of their first meeting as some gift from fate, from his mother, or from whatever force in the universe occasionally took pity on him. Maybe it was, because if it had not been for Yuna Hollander, Ilya would have never met Shane.

He opened his mouth, only to realize he had absolutely no idea what to say. Because what exactly was he supposed to do with something like that? Thank you, felt absurdly inadequate, while sorry somehow felt even worse.

So, he sat there staring at the man he had crossed an ocean to find, feeling his carefully prepared speech crumble into dust while his heart performed increasingly concerning gymnastics somewhere inside his chest.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Ilya Rozanov had absolutely no words.

Shane seemed content to let the silence sit for a while.

He took another sip of tea while Ilya slowly attempted to recover from having his entire emotional stability demolished in the span of five minutes. There was something deeply unfair about it. Shane had a habit of saying things that completely rearranged Ilya's understanding of reality and then carrying on as if nothing had happened.

Eventually, Shane tilted his head slightly.

“Hm.”

Ilya looked up to find something thoughtful settling across his face.

“What?”

Shane studied him for another moment before saying, “Something changed.”

That startled a laugh out of Ilya.

“You can tell?”

Shane shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea what, though.”

Now it was Ilya's turn to stare.

“You don't know?”

“Know what?”

“About what’s going on in the League?”

Realization immediately crossed Shane's face.

“Oh.” He looked faintly sheepish. “Right.”

Ilya started laughing.

“You're serious.”

“I am.”

“Shane Hollander. Captain Canada. Hockey addict since childhood.”

“Former hockey addict.”

“You don't know what happened?”

Shane shook his head.

“I had some pretty serious conversations with my family and my therapist after moving here.” His fingers traced the rim of his teacup absentmindedly. “At some point I realized hockey occupied every corner of my life. News, social media, podcasts. Everything.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“So, I turned it all off.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Ilya looked genuinely horrified, which immediately made Shane laugh again.

“The only people I really talk to are my parents, my agent, Hayden, JJ, Jackie, and the kids. Everybody else gets ignored, and I turned off notifications for basically every app I own.”

"That was reckless and very unlike you."

"It has actually been wonderful."

The ease in his voice made Ilya pause.

Because he meant it.

"My life has been pretty boring since moving to Kyoto," Shane continued. "I did the Kenzo campaign, but that's about it." He smiled slightly. "Most of my time went toward Yuri. Helping her practice English, teaching her a couple of words in French." His smile widened. "Although somehow she's the one correcting my Japanese half the time."

Ilya could believe that. From what he had seen so far, the girl had no problem making her opinions known.

"And reconnecting with my maternal culture helped a lot too," Shane confessed, leaning back into his chair. "It was healing."

His gaze drifted briefly toward the garden.

"And therapy," Shane added. "Therapy helped a lot."

Of course.

Ilya felt his mouth twitch, as he recognizes the look on Shane’s face.

Here we go.

"I think every professional hockey player should be required to see a therapist."

Ilya pressed his lips together, trying to keep the laugh at bay.

"The pressure starts when we're children. Then we spend years getting told to bury every emotion we have." Shane gestured with one hand. "And afterward everyone acts surprised when half the league develops substance abuse problems or emotional issues."

Ilya was already smiling, but Shane ignored him, as he continued his speech, completely seriously.

"We need somebody to talk to. Maybe I should start a program and get the new commissioner to sponsor it. Hell, I will sick my mom on him. Everyone is scared of my mom."

Ilya finally gave up and laughed.

The sound filled the room.

God.

Of course, Shane would say something like that.

Of course, the man who spent years getting targeted by racism, homophobia, toxic coaches, and league politics would somehow come out of the experience wanting better support systems for everybody involved.

Even the people who had hurt him. Because at the end of the day, that’s the kind of person Shane was.

When he finally calmed down, he leaned back slightly. "The Admirals won the Cup."

"The Admirals?" Shane repeated incredulously.

"The Admirals."

A look of genuine shock crossed his face. "Scott Hunter's team?"

"Unfortunately."

"Wow." For a moment Shane looked completely thrown off. “I mean Hayden told me that they were at the top of the charts going into the playoffs. But to win? How long has it been since New York won the cup?”

“Sixteen, like Montreal before you,” Ilya answered, fighting the urge to grin. “Then Hunter kissed his boyfriend in front of the entire world.”

That got a much stronger reaction. Shane's eyebrows shot upward, and for several seconds he simply stared at Ilya while the surprise settled in. Then, gradually, his expression softened into something more thoughtful, and after a moment he nodded.

“Good for him.” Shane glanced down at his tea. “I was already planning to come out when I got back. At least Hunter made it a little easier.”

Ilya froze at the confession. Shane had said it so casually. As naturally as if he were discussing future travel plans. He found himself feeling strangely inadequate, as he stared at the man sitting across from him.

A year ago, they had been standing in remarkably similar places. Both of them had been terrified of being seen for who they really were, burying themselves in hockey because it was easier than confronting everything else. They had spent years carrying expectations that seemed impossible to escape.

Yet somehow Shane had crossed an ocean, rebuilt his life from the ground up, adopted Yuri, reconnected with his heritage, gone to therapy, and came out the other side looking calmer and stronger than Ilya had ever seen him.

Meanwhile, Ilya still felt like he was learning how to stand.

Svetlana's voice echoed faintly in the back of his mind.

Go be happy.

Shane had just told him that meeting Ilya was the one thing he had never regretted about hockey. So, maybe there was still hope.

Maybe.

"Come to Boston."

The words escaped before he could stop them, and the second they did, Ilya wanted to launch himself through the nearest wall. That had absolutely not been what he intended to say.

Across the table, Shane's eyes widened in surprise.

"What?"

"Come to Boston."

"I heard that part."

The embarrassment only grew worse, but now that Ilya had started, stopping felt impossible.

"You need a new team."

A small smile appeared on Shane's face.

"Do I?"

"You do. Every team in the league is trying to contact your agent right now. Half the internet has already decided where you're signing next, and every fanbase thinks they're the chosen one."

"And Boston is among them?"

"Boston is very much among them."

"Boston can't afford me,” Shane leaned back slightly. “They are well over their cap."

"They were, but that will change for next season."

Ilya was relieved to finally be discussing something straightforward.

“Three veterans retired. One destroyed his knee, another finally admitted he was old and should have hung his skates up years ago, and the third wants to spend more time taking care of his parents. The cap space is there now, and Boston can match what Montreal paid you.

Shane considered that for a moment, but then another problem occurred to him. "You're still the first-line center."

"I can move to wing."

Shane was now gaping, and Ilya had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from making an extremely inappropriate comment.

"Ilya."

"I'm serious."

"You hate wing."

"I hate many things."

"You complain every single time they move you."

"I would survive,” a reluctant grin tugged at the corner of Ilya's mouth.

Something in Shane's expression shifted. "Ilya..."

"You should play center," the words came out easier this time. "You should be captain as well."

That earned an actual disbelieving laugh. "You are literally the Raider’s captain."

"I think you'd be better at it."

The humor faded from Shane's face. The warmth remained, but now there was curiosity underneath it.

“This season has been hard for me.” Ilya looked down at his hands. Saying it out loud should have been difficult. Instead, the words left him with an unexpected sense of relief. “Then again, I can't remember the last one that wasn't.”

He turned the teacup slowly between his fingers.

“Hockey has never been the same thing for me that it is for you. You love it in a way I never could.” His eyes lifted toward Shane. “For me, hockey was an escape route. It got me out of Russia and gave me a future.”

A faint smile appeared.

"I started to enjoy the game later."

"When?"

The answer was embarrassingly easy.

"When you started driving me insane."

That got another laugh out of Shane, but this one was fond. Filled with warmth, and dare Ilya say it, love. The sound eased some of the nerves the Russian was feeling, giving him the courage to continue.

“Competing with you did something to me. For the first time, hockey was fun instead of just being a way to make a living. I actually looked forward to games. Especially, against Montreal.”

His smile faded.

“Then you left and I went completely off the rails.” He shook his head. “The team had to practically drag me into therapy.”

This time Shane didn't laugh, but he did smile. He sat there, with the teacup between his hands, smiling encouragingly at Ilya.

"The therapist put me on antidepressants, and I hated every second of it."

"That sounds about right."

"It turns out she was smarter than me."

"That also sounds right too."

Ilya rolled his eyes.

"The medication helped. Fuck, therapy helped too. Things aren't perfect, but..." He searched briefly for the right words. "For the first time in years, I'm looking at the damage instead of pretending it isn't there."

"And that includes Russia?" Shane asked gently.

"Yes," Ilya grimaced. "I cut my father and my brother off."

Shane looked surprised. “I was asking about the propaganda laws. What do you mean you cut off your dad and brother?”

"Yeah, well, they were abusive," Ilya stated bluntly.

“Ilya,” Shane whispered, his eyes suddenly bright.

“Don’t,” Ilya shook his head. “I will tell you more about it another day. But they are not important now.”

Would Shane think he was a horrible person?

His father died of dementia, and instead of attending the funeral in Russia, Ilya was in Kyoto trying to win Shane back.

But the truth was that, in Ilya's heart, his father had died long before that. Whatever love existed between them ended the day he found his mother in the bathroom with a pill bottle in her hand.

"I spent years fearing what would happen to me if my bisexuality was discovered. Fearing not being able to go back to Russia," he finally decided what to say. "I don’t care anymore.”

The room became very still.

Then Shane spoke. 

"What will happen if I choose Boston?" Shane's expression remained calm, but there was something vulnerable underneath it. "We can't go back to what we had before." His eyes flickered briefly toward the door. "I have Yuri now, and she will always be my priority."

The statement carried so much certainty that it made Ilya's heart ache.

"I know," his voice came out quieter than he had expected. "I wouldn’t blame you if you decide I am a bad influence to have around your daughter. Seeing you be a great dad, is simply another reason to love you."

Shane froze at the confession, and Ilya's heart attempted to leave through his throat.

"I don't care about Russia anymore," he repeated. The confession was still terrifying but liberating as well. "Scott Hunter kissed his boyfriend in front of the entire world and is still allowed to play hockey. Why can’t we do that too? You told me you were planning on telling people one day anyway."

A nervous laugh escaped him.

"I love you."

The words felt astonishingly simple after everything else.

"I think I've loved you for a very long time."

And sitting there across from Shane Hollander, thousands of kilometers away from Boston, Montreal, Russia, and every excuse he had ever hidden behind, Ilya finally stopped running from the truth.

For a moment, Shane simply looked at him.

Then he smiled.

"I love you too, Ilya."

The words knocked the breath out of him badly enough that he almost missed everything Shane said next.

"I've always loved you, even if it took me a while to figure it out. At first, I didn't want to," he snorted humorlessly. "You spent years insisting everything between us was casual, and whenever I started believing there could be something more, you'd panic and disappear again."

The familiar guilt immediately returned.

"In my defense, I was an idiot."

"You were."

The answer came so quickly that Ilya couldn't even argue. Shane was smiling though, and somehow that made the embarrassment easier to survive.

"For a long time, I thought I cared more than you did," he admitted. "Then I left for Japan and realized that moving to the other side of the world hadn't actually changed anything."

His fingers moved slowly around the teacup.

"I spent my days taking care of Yuri, learning things about my family and my culture that I should have learned years ago. I built new routines and allowed myself to be happy."

His gaze lifted.

"And somehow you were still there."

Shane’s honesty disarmed Ilya, it always did. Every time Shane said something like that, it felt less like a confession and more like being trusted with something fragile.

"I hate how happy that makes me."

And Ilya did feel guilty.

For years he slept his way across Boston, and he knew he had never technically cheated on Shane. He had never promised him exclusivity, never offered anything beyond casual hookups. Yet the thought of Shane being with someone else still made him sick.

The hypocrisy of it was not lost on him.

"You should."

"I probably should."

Shane laughed softly, and the sound was like a balm to Ilya’s soul.

“I only really feel alive when I'm with you.”

Shane said it with the same straightforward certainty he used whenever he talked about something important, and the words hit Ilya hard enough that he almost forgot what they were discussing.

He had spent an entire year imagining this conversation. In every version, he was the one saying reckless things, the one putting his heart on the table first.

Somehow Shane kept getting there before him.

“As crazy as it sounds,” Shane continued, “I never worried about you and Yuri.”

That shocked him.

"What?"

"I know the kind of person you are," Shane shrugged slightly. "Half the reason therapy was such a miserable experience is because you're incapable of carrying only your own problems."

Ilya looked away.

Being understood this thoroughly should probably have been illegal.

"I know you'd care about her."

When he looked back, Shane's expression had changed again. There was still warmth there, but something more thoughtful sat underneath it.

"But I need something first."

The nervousness returned tenfold.

"What?"

"I need to know what we're outside of hockey," Shane glanced around the house before looking back at him. “Our whole relationship revolved around hockey and our rivalry. There had always been a game approaching, a flight waiting, a season hanging over our heads. Even our happiest memories carried some kind of deadline attached to them.”

Shane sighed and shrugged sheepishly.

“Getting together and figuring out if we are compatible with a domestic life, should be the worst decision to make right now,” Shane snorted derisively. “We are still finding our footing and identities outside of the great archrivals, the greatest of hockey, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.”

Ilya smiled, completely disarmed by this honest and straightforward Canadian.

“But,” Shane continued. “I believe that if it is us, we can do it. So, stay."

Ilya frowned.

"What?"

"Stay for the summer," Shane’s smile returned. "I will show you Kyoto, maybe you will fall in love with the city as I have. Though, I believe Tokyo would be more your style. You will get to meet Yuri, and we’ll find out how the two of you interact."

"That sounds terrifying."

"My daughter is a lioness; you should be terrified."

Ilya could only smile, because it all sounded lovely.

Then Shane looked toward the garden.

"I want you to see the life I've built here. I want you to understand why I love Kyoto so much. And I want to see whether we can wake up every morning, make breakfast, argue over stupid things, take care of Yuri and come home at the end of the day still wanting to be around each other."

His gaze returned to Ilya.

"Because if we can do that, I think we can survive anything."

Looking at Shane across the table, Ilya couldn't imagine wanting anything more.

If spending an entire summer in Kyoto was the price of finding out whether they could build a life together, he would have agreed before Shane had even finished asking.

Chapter 8: There was a safety in boring that Ilya will never again take for granted

The guest room turned out to be at the end of a short hallway overlooking the small garden behind the house. Shane slid the door open and stepped aside to let him enter.

"It's yours for the summer."

Ilya set his suitcase beside the wall and looked around. The room was decorated in a minimalist style, with one of those floor beds that seemed common in Japan. After taking in what would be his room for the next few weeks, he turned around and noticed that, for the first time since he had arrived, Shane actually looked embarrassed.

"About the sleeping arrangements." Shane rubbed the back of his neck. "I wouldn't mind sharing a room."

That immediately got Ilya's attention, but before he could say something, Shane continued speaking. "But Yuri still has nightmares sometimes."

He didn't understand where Shane was going with this, though that was partly because he was distracted by the charming blush spreading across his boy's face, a lovely shade of rose that made his freckles stand out even more.

Ilya found himself staring at them for a second before Shane continued. "Usually once or twice a month. Sometimes more if she's stressed about school or something happens that upsets her. She'll wake up and come looking for me."

Then it clicked.

"I'd rather avoid giving her lifelong psychological damage because she walked into my room at two in the morning."

"Reasonable." A laugh escaped Ilya before he could stop it.

"I thought so too." Shane looked visibly relieved that he hadn't needed to explain any further. "I'll go tell Yuri you're staying with us for the summer."

"You think she's going to be okay with that?"

"I think she's going to have approximately six thousand questions."

"Only six thousand?"

"You're right. That's optimistic." The smile widened. "I'll also start dinner, so take your time."

Then Shane hesitated. For a brief moment he looked as though he wanted to say something else. Instead, he simply squeezed Ilya's shoulder as he passed him.

The touch lasted barely a second, yet it still managed to leave Ilya standing there like an idiot long after Shane had disappeared down the hallway.

The silence that settled over the room afterward felt different from the silence he had grown used to in Boston. Back there, the silence was usually packed with exhaustion, loneliness, or the weight of thoughts he didn't particularly want to have. Here, it felt comfortable, almost welcoming.

He began unpacking before he could think too hard about it.

Most of what he had brought consisted of clothes, training gear, and several things Svetlana had aggressively insisted he take because, according to her, he possessed the survival instincts of a concussed pigeon.

He was halfway through hanging shirts in the closet when his phone started vibrating. The sight of Svetlana's name made him smile. Of course, she hadn't even waited a day before calling for a full report.

He answered before the second ring.

"Well?"

Her voice exploded through the speaker in Russian.

"Hello to you too," Ilya sat down on the edge of the futon.

"What happened?"

The grin spreading across his face felt impossible to contain. For months it had seemed as though happiness belonged to other people. Now it was down the hallway, making dinner for him.

"I confessed my feelings."

There was a beat of silence.

Then another.

Then a noise that sounded suspiciously like Svetlana choking.

"You what?"

"I told him."

"And?"

The word came out almost shrieked.

Ilya laughed.

"He loves me too."

The scream that followed nearly blew out his eardrum. He had to pull the phone away while Svetlana apparently lost her mind.

"I knew it," she yelled. "I knew it. I am always right."

"That is unfortunately true."

"Oh my God!" She sounded close to tears. "So, you're together?"

Ilya opened his mouth.

Then closed it again.

"Kind of."

"What does kind of mean?"

"It means kind of."

"Ilya."

"It means we're figuring it out."

The silence on the other end lasted exactly three seconds. "Did he reject you?" The outrage arrived so quickly that Ilya almost laughed.

"No."

"Then why are you figuring it out?"

The protective fury in her voice sent a familiar rush of affection through him. Before meeting Shane, Svetlana had been the closest thing he had to family. She had watched him drag himself through some of the worst years of his life.

Of course she was ready to fight on his behalf.

"He didn't reject me."

"Then explain this bullshit to me."

"Things are different for Shane now," Ilya laid down the futon, the smile never really left his face. "He has Yuri to consider. I can make last-minute decisions, like flying across the world. Every choice Shane makes has to include his daughter."

His gaze drifted toward the door. Somewhere down the hallway he could hear faint movements from the kitchen. A cabinet opening, footsteps, the ordinary sounds of a home.

"And," he continued, "he's right."

"About what?"

"He said we've never actually had a relationship. And he is completely right," Ilya explained. "We had feelings and chemistry. We had years of dancing around each other like complete idiots."

"Accurate," Svetlana snorted.

"But we never dated or spent any real time outside our roles as captains of the Raiders and Voyagers."

He thought about everything Shane had said. About learning whether they still wanted each other's company when there wasn't a game waiting around the corner or a flight leaving in the morning.

"We don't know who we are together outside of hockey. So, I'm spending the summer here to figure that out."

"In Kyoto?"

"In Kyoto."

"With Shane?"

"With Shane."

"And Yuri.”

Svetlana was silent for a moment, then her tone softened. "And after that?"

Ilya looked up at the ceiling for a moment. "If everything works out," he answered quietly, "he'll come to Boston." A smile spread across his face. "And maybe we'll become a family."

The silence on the other end stretched longer this time.

When Svetlana finally spoke, her voice sounded thick with emotion.

"I'm sorry."

That caught him off guard.

"For what?"

"For getting angry," she laughed softly. "I forgot that this isn't only about you anymore."

"No, it isn't."

Another pause followed.

Then she added, much more gently, "I'm happy for you, Ilyushka."

Looking around the small guest room, listening to the sounds of Shane cooking down the hallway and Yuri joining him, Ilya realized he was smiling so hard that his face hurt.

"Yeah," he admitted. For once, he was not lying when he said: "I'm happy too."

After finishing the call with Svetlana, Ilya put his phone away and finally unpacked the rest of his suitcase. Just in time for his stomach to growl at the delicious smell of food coming from the kitchen.

Following it through the hallway, he found himself in the kitchen, where Yuri was carefully setting the table while Shane stood over a large pot, slowly stirring whatever was inside. The scent hit him immediately, warm and rich and filled with spices he couldn't identify. He wanted to ask what Shane was cooking, but the question slipped his mind as he found himself watching instead.

There was something strangely mesmerizing about seeing Shane cook.

Maybe because he looked happy.

Actually happy.

The realization brought back a worry Ilya had carried for years and never spoken aloud. There had been times during their careers when he had wondered if Shane had an eating disorder. The suspicion always felt ridiculous, impossible to prove and even harder to ask about. Especially, back when they were so careful about only being casual hookups.

But the worry never completely went away. No matter how much Ilya tried to keep things casual, he had always cared about Shane. And the idea that Shane might be starving himself scared him in a way nothing had since his mother was still alive and spending days in bed, unable to get up.

Shane had spent so many years under pressure to perform, to train, to maintain the body his sport demanded of him, and there were periods when he looked so exhausted that Ilya couldn't help wondering if he was taking care of himself properly.

Watching him now, making dinner without a second thought, it was hard to reconcile that worry with the man in front of him. Shane moved around the kitchen with the ease of someone who enjoyed being there. He tasted things as he cooked. He adjusted ingredients without measuring them. Most importantly, he looked comfortable in his own skin.

His attention shifted when he noticed Yuri had gone completely still. She stood beside the table holding a stack of bowls and looking directly at him. Being stared down by a five-year-old child should not have been as intimidating as this felt.

Then again, Hollanders seemed to have a knack for making him nervous.

"Hello." He internally winced at how overly formal he sounded. "I'm Ilya Rozanov. It's very nice to meet you, Miss Yuri."

Yuri tilted her head.

Then she tilted it a little further and continued staring at him in silence.

Ilya waited. Yuri, however, seemed perfectly content to keep staring. After a few seconds, he found himself wondering whether he had somehow offended her within the first ten seconds of meeting her.

A laugh came from the stove. The sound immediately drew Yuri's attention away from him, ending the silent inspection at last.

"Don't worry," Shane assured him. "She's trying to figure out why you're talking to her like that."

Ilya frowned.

"What did I do?"

"You used her first name."

That only confused him more.

"In Japan, people usually use family names unless they're relatives or close friends." Shane glanced over his shoulder while continuing to stir the pot. "It's considered more polite. In Canada and the States, it's almost the opposite. Outside of hockey, most people switch to first names pretty quickly."

"And inside hockey, we use last names to annoy each other, not to be respectful."

"Exactly."

Ilya nodded slowly.

That, at least, made sense.

Russia had plenty of social rules that seemed obvious until a foreigner pointed them out. Apparently, this was simply his first cultural lesson in Kyoto, and if he wanted to become part of Yuri's life, he would have to learn a lot more where that came from.

Turning back toward her, he offered an apologetic smile.

"Then I'm sorry."

Yuri shook her head.

"It's okay."

Relieved that he hadn't accidentally ruined everything within the first minute of meeting her, Ilya decided to try again. "Would you prefer that I call you Hollander?"

Yuri tilted her head again. The resemblance to Shane was becoming increasingly alarming.

"Or..." He hesitated. "Did you keep your grandparents' family name?"

"My grandparents' name was Sato. My dad was Sato too." She said it with the matter-of-fact certainty only children possessed, then brightened slightly. "But I'm Hollander now."

For a brief moment, something flickered across Shane's face. Ilya couldn't quite place it. Pride, or perhaps paternal affection, maybe a mix of both. Whatever it was, disappeared before Ilya had a chance to examine it properly.

"You can call me Yuri," she continued. "Or Lily. That's the English version of my name."

Ilya froze and slowly lifted his eyes toward Shane.

Shane was already looking at him.

Neither of them said a word, but the expression on Shane's face mirrored exactly the storm that was happening inside Ilya's head.

Lily.

Of course, it all came back to their stupid nicknames.

After years of chasing each other across the NHL like complete idiots, after finally confessing their feelings, after flying halfway across the world, Shane's daughter turned out to be named Lily.

The universe clearly has a twisted sense of humor.

Judging by the twitch at the corner of Shane's mouth, he had reached the same conclusion as him. Apparently, Shane now had two Lilys in his life.

Ilya wasn't sure whether to laugh or file a formal complaint with fate. Instead, he crouched down until he was eye level with Yuri. "Then which one would you like me to use?"

"Yuri."

The answer came immediately.

"Yuri it is."

A smile spread across her face so quickly that Ilya suspected he had passed some sort of test. The reward arrived seconds later in the form of approximately a thousand questions.

“Do hockey players really travel all the time?”

“How fast could he skate?”

“How many fights had he been in?”

“Had he ever met famous figure skaters?”

“Could he do spins?”

“Could he jump?”

“Why couldn't hockey players do jumps?”

That naturally evolved into a detailed explanation of why figure skating was superior.

"Hockey is cool," Yuri informed him generously while arranging the utensils around the table. "But figure skating is prettier."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Even though you're his rival, my tōsan is still the best."

"Debatable. Hollander is the second-best hockey player in the NHL," Ilya could not help teasing.

Especially when Yuri seemed to have inherited Shane's angry kitten expression. She was clearly trying to look intimidating, but the pursed lips, puffed cheeks, and watery eyes full of frustration only made her look adorable.

"He would still beat you!"

Oh, this was bad. He was already helpless against one pair of big brown eyes. Now there were two of them, both fully capable of weaponizing their appearance whenever it suited them.

He was never going to survive this.

Worse, he was never going to win another argument again.

Ilya looked toward Shane, silently begging him for help. But the traitor refused to look up from the pot.

"I see," he finally hummed in agreement.

Yuri nodded with a smile, happy to have finally “convinced” Ilya that Hollander was superior. Then she delivered the final verdict. "But figure skating is still better."

This time Shane lost whatever battle he had been fighting and laughed outright. The sound filled the room, warm and easy and entirely free of the weight that had followed him through so much of their lives.

Yuri immediately joined in.

A moment later, Ilya found himself laughing too.

Dinner ended up being served a few minutes later.

Shane brought the large pot to the table, setting it down in the middle. The smell immediately became even stronger, rich and warm and unlike anything Ilya had ever eaten before. He watched as Shane spooned white rice into each bowl before ladling a thick brown sauce over the top.

Chunks of carrot and onion peeked through the sauce, along with pieces of meat that had clearly been simmering for hours.

Ilya eyed the contents of the bowl before glancing at Shane.

"What is it?"

Yuri reacted as though he had just admitted to never having seen a tree.

"You don't know what curry is?"

The disbelief in her voice made Ilya feel unexpectedly judged.

"Should I?"

"It's one of the best foods in the world."

The declaration came with such absolute conviction that Shane rolled his eyes fondly. "I think what Yuri is trying to say is that curry is very popular in Japan."

"It's the best food in the world," Yuri repeated.

"There are people who would agree with you."

"There are smart people who would agree with me."

Shane ignored his daughter’s sass as he explained to Ilya. "It's different from Indian curry. Japanese curry is usually thicker and milder. The spices are cooked into a sauce that ends up slightly sweet, slightly savory, and a little spicy depending on who's making it."

"A little spicy?" Yuri questioned suspiciously.

"I made it with you in mind."

"Good."

Ilya picked up his spoon and took a cautious bite. The moment the food touched his tongue, he understood why the smell had filled the entire house.

The sauce was rich and comforting in a way he couldn't quite describe. He could taste the sweetness from the onions, the earthiness of the spices, and the slow-cooked depth that came from letting everything simmer together for hours. There was warmth to it, though not the aggressive heat he usually associated with spicy food. Instead, it spread gradually across his tongue and settled comfortably at the back of his throat.

A second bite followed before he consciously decided to take one.

Then a third.

Across the table, Yuri was watching him closely.

"Well?"

He looked at her.

"I think you might be right. This might be the best food in the world."

Her face lit up instantly.

"I know."

Shane laughed into his own bowl. "You'll have to try my dad's chicken pasta alfredo recipe one day. It's the food of Kami-sama, as my mother likes to say."

Ilya's heartbeat immediately picked up.

Shane wanted him to meet his parents? He was already thinking that far ahead? The possibility was mentioned so casually that it almost sounded taken for granted, as though Shane had already made room for Ilya in his family.

"I cannot wait." Ilya smiled sweetly.

And he truly couldn't.

The conversation drifted naturally after that.

Yuri spent most of dinner bouncing between topics with the speed only children seemed capable of managing. One moment she was talking about school, the next she was describing a figure skating routine she had watched online, then she was explaining why her best friend Yuki was the coolest girl in class.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Yuri stumbled over an English word. The pause lasted barely a second before Shane supplied the correct one. She repeated it immediately and continued speaking as though nothing had happened.

A few minutes later it happened again, then again. Each time Shane gave her the word she was looking for without interrupting her train of thought, quietly fitting it into the conversation and letting her continue.

Watching them melted something in Ilya's chest. Maybe because he knew exactly what it felt like.

English had always been a battlefield for him. Even now there were moments when a word escaped him, when grammar tangled itself inside his head, when he knew exactly what he wanted to say but couldn't find a way to say it. Through all those years, Shane had helped him in much the same way. He never made Ilya feel small or stupid for struggling, never turned a mistake into a lesson or a source of embarrassment. He simply offered a hand whenever it was needed and waited to see whether Ilya wanted to take it.

Now he was doing the same thing with Yuri.

It was such a small, ordinary interaction that most people probably wouldn't have noticed it, yet Ilya found himself unable to look away. Shane's nature had always been that of a caregiver. Anyone who knew him for longer than five minutes could have predicted that he would make a good father.

Still, knowing it and seeing it turned out to be two completely different things.

There was patience in the way Shane listened to her and pride in the way he watched her talk, along with a quiet attentiveness that seemed woven into every interaction between them. Nothing about it felt forced or performative. It was simply who he was.

At some point, Ilya realized he had barely paid attention to the food during the last several minutes, which was a shame because the curry was excellent.

Then again, the curry wasn't really what he found himself enjoying most.

The meal was warm, but somehow the ambience felt warmer.

The three of them sat around a table in a house halfway across the world from everything Ilya had ever known, sharing dinner while Yuri debated the relative merits of figure skating and hockey with absolute certainty.

As Shane reached over to refill Yuri's water glass without even looking up from his daughter, Ilya found himself thinking that if this was what a normal life looked like, he could understand exactly why Shane had fallen in love with it.

There was a safety in boring that Ilya will never again take for granted.

After dinner, the evening settled into a comfortable routine that Ilya quickly realized everyone else in the house already knew by heart.

The dishes were washed together. Yuri dried them while Shane put them away, occasionally supplying an English word or answering one of the endless questions she seemed capable of generating from thin air. Eventually Shane announced that it was bath time, which led to yet another cultural experience Ilya was slowly growing accustomed to.

When he had first moved to Boston, almost everything had felt unfamiliar. It had been stressful, frustrating, and liberating all at once. Kyoto felt different. Here, he had Shane and Yuri patiently guiding him through each new discovery, including the surprisingly complicated subject of Japanese baths.

The basic idea was simple enough: you washed yourself before getting into the bath because the bath was meant for soaking, not cleaning. What complicated matters were all the details surrounding it. There seemed to be an expected order to everything, along with enough unspoken etiquette that Ilya quickly became convinced he was one mistake away from accidentally offending an entire nation.

By the time Shane finished explaining, he felt less as though he was preparing for a bath and more as though he was cramming for an exam.

Somehow, he passed.

More importantly, he understood almost immediately why Japanese loved their baths.

The water was hot enough to melt muscle straight off bone. Weeks of travel, months of stress, years of carrying tension in his shoulders seemed to dissolve the moment he sank into it. By the time he finally climbed out, his body felt heavy, relaxed, and completely useless.

Honestly, it was an amazing experience. One he was looking to repeat during his time in Kyoto.

As he made his way back to the guest room, dressed in clean clothes and feeling boneless, Ilya found himself wondering whether he should have something similar built in Boston. The idea seemed increasingly brilliant the more he thought about it. Yuri would probably love it, Shane definitely would, and after tonight Ilya had absolutely no intention of living without one ever again.

By the time he started unpacking the last few things from his suitcase, he was already considering whether he could get a contractor involved while he was still in Japan. If everything went smoothly, the bath might even be finished by the time they returned.

The thought lingered pleasantly in the back of his mind as he prepared for bed, right up until a soft knock interrupted him.

He crossed the room and slid the door open, only to find Yuri standing on the other side instead of Shane.

"Oh."

For a second, he remembered what Shane had mentioned earlier about Yuri having nightmares from time to time. Concern immediately chased away his surprise. Dropping into a crouch so he wouldn't loom over her, he asked, "Do you want me to take you to your tōsan's room?"

"I didn't have a nightmare," Yuri shook her head.

"Then what's wrong?"

She paused briefly, seeming to gather her courage before continuing. "I wanted to talk to you."

That wasn't the answer he had expected.

Still, he stepped aside and let her enter properly before sitting down on the floor. Yuri settled across from him, folding herself into a neat seiza position that made his knees hurt simply from looking at it.

For several moments she remained unusually silent. It was hard to reconcile this hesitant little girl with the chatterbox he had met at dinner.

Then she looked up.

"Do you hate me?"

The question came so far out of left field that he genuinely thought he had misheard.  "What?"

Yuri lowered her gaze before asking again, "Do you hate me?"

"Why would I hate you?" Ilya asked, staring at her in disbelief.

The question came out more bewildered than he intended. Across from him, Yuri fidgeted with the sleeve of her pajamas. "I heard you and my tōsan talking."

Understanding dawned slowly.

Then dread followed immediately afterward.

Oh.

Oh no.

"You said you loved each other." Her voice had dropped to almost a whisper. "And then he left you behind to come here for me."

Ilya felt his heart shatter in a million pieces. "You think that's your fault?"

A tiny shrug.

The kind children used when they were trying very hard to be brave. Ilya should know, it was his default mode back in Moscow.

"It's okay if you do," her voice cracked slightly. "But my tōsan is really nice. So, please don't hate him."

That nearly killed him.

The tears gathering in her eyes finished the job.

Ilya knew perfectly well that Japan was not a country where people casually touched each other. Physical contact was generally reserved for family and close friends, and he had known Yuri for less than a day.

He hugged her anyway.

Yuri froze from surprise before immediately burying her face against his shirt.

"I don't hate you," Ilya told her firmly. "I could never hate you."

A small sniffle answered him. Not for the first time, Ilya found himself completely defenseless against crying Hollanders. Shane was bad enough. A miniature version of him was downright unfair.

He carefully rubbed a hand over Yuri's back.

"Yuri, before Japan, your tōsan and I weren't doing very well." That was probably the gentlest possible way to describe years of emotional stupidity. "We cared about each other, but neither of us knew what we were doing."

Another sniffle.

"And then you came into his life and he became happier."

More importantly, he found peace.

Ilya had seen it the moment he stepped into this house.

Seen it in the way Shane smiled.

Seen it in the way he cooked.

Seen it in the way he talked.

Seen it in the way he looked at her.

"You didn't take anything away from us," he said, his throat tightening. "If anything, you helped both of us."

Yuri finally looked up and her eyes were red. 

"I did?" she asked, sounding confused but hopeful.

"Absolutely."

A watery laugh escaped her before she launched herself forward and wrapped her arms around him again. This time Ilya hugged her back without hesitation.

Neither of them noticed the door sliding open until Yuri suddenly lifted her head. Following her gaze, Ilya looked up and found Shane standing in the doorway.

For a moment nobody spoke.

The look on Shane's face suggested he had heard enough to piece together what had happened. Judging by the flicker of embarrassment that crossed his features, he had probably been standing there longer than he intended.

Yuri, however, seemed entirely unbothered by the discovery. She climbed to her feet, crossed the room, and took Shane's hand before returning to grab Ilya by the sleeve. Then she began dragging both of them toward the futon.

"I think," she announced with the unwavering certainty of a five-year-old making an executive decision, "that tonight we're all sleeping here."

Looking between Yuri's determined expression and Shane's resigned one, Ilya had a feeling the matter had already been settled for them. Not that he was about to complain. Yuri was back to her bossy self, and if the arrangement happened to involve sharing a bed with Shane again, well.

There were certainly worse ways to spend the night.

Chapter 9: Somehow that felt like progress

Ilya had been perfectly willing to sacrifice a few hours without Shane if it meant Yuri got to spend more time with her friends before the move.

The closer September came, the more often the reality of it surfaced around the house. Conversations about Boston happen more frequently. School paperwork had started appearing across tables and countertops. Yuri spent more afternoons arranging plans with classmates she had known for years, determined to squeeze every last moment out of the life she was preparing to leave behind.

He understood it easily enough. Moving across the world was a lot for anyone. For a child, it had to feel enormous.

Shane had taken Yuri and her best friend to see one of the newest anime movies playing in theaters, leaving Ilya alone in the house with a mug of coffee and absolutely no responsibilities for the afternoon.

He had settled at the engawa, lazily scrolling through his phone while sunlight spilled across the garden outside. The house felt strange without Yuri's constant energy bouncing from room to room and without Shane inevitably appearing every twenty minutes to ask whether Ilya had remembered to eat something besides coffee.

His phone lit up with an incoming call.

Cliff.

"Somebody better be dying."

“Captain!” The volume of Cliff's voice made him pull the phone slightly away from his ear, otherwise he would have gone deaf.

"Jesus Christ. What happened?"

Normally, Ilya would have solved the problem with a well-placed fuck or several similar words. Unfortunately, after letting one slip in front of Yuri while stubbing his toe and then being asked by the sweet young girl what it meant because it had not appeared in any of her vocabulary lessons, Ilya learned that lesson very quickly.

Especially after Shane gave him a detailed and thorough scolding afterward. It should not have turned him on as much as it did, but a disciplinary Shane was a hot Shane, in Ilya's humble opinion.

"We just got out of a meeting with management."

"Oh?"

"Nothing official yet," Cliff added quickly. "They're keeping everything quiet for now, but apparently we're probably getting Hollander."

Ilya nearly laughed. Apparently, the Raiders management had finally started informing the team despite Shane still dragging his feet over the contract. Which was particularly ridiculous considering he had already spent weeks researching international schools in Boston.

"Hollander, huh?"

"Captain, are you okay?"

"What do you mean?"

“Management informed us that if we get Hollander, there will be some changes...” Cliff hesitated. “With the captaincy.”

The team had probably been informed that Shane would be taking over, which meant the locker room had immediately started worrying about him.

What a bunch of worrywart idiots.

He loved them.

"Cliff, I'm currently in Kyoto drinking coffee."

“What… CAPTAIN WERE YOU THE ONE TO SCOUT HOLLANDER? WHAT THE FUCK?!” Cliff exclaimed, forcing Ilya to once more pull his phone away from his ear.

Ignoring the barrage of questions, Ilya kept on speaking. "I loved being captain. I loved leading you guys to the Stanley Cup and being part of the Raiders. But after everything that happened this year, I needed to start taking care of myself and put hockey second."

He looked out at the small garden. A Japanese maple spread its branches over a patch of moss, while carefully placed stones formed a narrow path between neatly trimmed shrubs.

"For the first time in a long time, I picked something because it made me happy. And being captain is not what I need when I am focusing on my mental health."

The silence stretched for a few seconds.

Then Cliff said, "I'm proud of you."

The sincerity caught Ilya completely off guard.

"What?"

"I'm serious. If this is what you need, then nobody's going to hold it against you." Cliff snorted. "Although I may have to talk the rest of the team down from a ledge first."

“I am leaving you in charge of that bunch of idiots.” Ilya snorted. “Somebody has to stop the rest of the team from staging a mutiny.”

“Our bunch of idiots,” Cliff corrected cheekily.

A smile tugged at the corner of Ilya's mouth.

"Thanks."

"Honestly," Cliff added, sounding considerably lighter, "I'm mostly surprised you haven't been arrested."

"What?" Ilya chuckled incredulously. “Where did that even come from?”

"Everybody knows you and Hollander hate each other."

That only made Ilya laugh harder. "Right."

"I'm serious. I figured if you two ended up in the same city without supervision, eventually one of you would commit a felony."

Ilya nearly choked on his coffee.

"Yeah, about that."

Cliff immediately sounded suspicious.

"About what?"

"The rivalry wasn't exactly real."

A brief silence followed.

"What does that mean?"

“It means that on the ice we were competitive as fu—fudge. Off it, we never hated each other. We just found it useful to let everyone think we did.”

“Useful for what?” Cliff asked in disbelief.

Ilya could practically hear the what the fuck? buried beneath the incredulity in his friend's voice.

“For hiding the fact that we've been together for years,” Ilya answered, taking another sip of coffee as if he had not just detonated a bomb in the middle of the conversation.

The line went so quiet that Ilya checked the screen to make sure the call was still connected.

Then Cliff exploded.

"WHAT?"

Ilya winced.

"Jesus Christ."

"YOU AND HOLLANDER?"

"Yes."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YES?"

"I mean exactly what I said."

The strangled sound Cliff made resembled somebody being physically struck.

"Captain."

"Former captain."

"CAPTAIN."

Ilya laughed.

"Oh my God."

"You're telling me you and Shane Hollander have been secretly together this entire time?"

"More or less."

Several seconds passed.

Then:

"So, you're gay?"

“I'm bisexual. At this point, you've walked in on me with enough women that this shouldn't be news.”

Cliff sounded personally betrayed.

"Fucking shit."

"Language, Cliff."

"No, seriously. What the hell? I spent ten years thinking you were the straightest guy in professional hockey."

"That sounds like a personal problem."

"I need a minute."

Ilya grinned into his coffee while Cliff apparently reevaluated everything he thought he knew about the universe. When he finally spoke again, the humor had disappeared from his voice entirely. "You know what?"

"What?"

"Good."

Ilya blinked.

"Good?"

“Yeah, if you're happy, then good.” Before Ilya could think of a response, Cliff continued. “Everybody's talking about Scott Hunter right now and how the Admirals have his back. The Raiders will be the same. Hell, we'll be better! Let's decorate the arena in rainbow colors!”

Ilya burst out laughing. It was impossible not to when Cliff sounded so genuinely enthusiastic about turning the Victory Ice Arena into the world's largest Pride parade.

"If anybody has a problem with you being bisexual, then they've got a problem with all of us. If anybody has a problem with you and Hollander being together, they've got a problem with all of us. The Admirals stood behind Scott," Cliff continued. "We'd stand behind you."

Ilya looked down at the coffee in his hands. For a moment he couldn't think of anything clever to say back. After years of hiding, years of carefully controlling what people saw and what they didn't, the easy acceptance was overwhelming.

We'd stand behind you.

"Thanks."

The conversation drifted naturally after that, moving from teammates to training camp, from training camp to old road-trip stories, then somehow to an argument about which rookie had once managed to microwave an entire fork. By the time they finally hung up, Ilya was smiling.

The feeling lingered afterward.

He remained seated at the engawa, idly turning his coffee mug between his hands as he watched the garden outside. Hockey was getting closer every day. Soon there will be training camps, preseason games, and media obligations. And this time, Ilya will be doing it all beside Shane.

The thought made him smile.

The front door sliding open pulled him from his thoughts. He looked up automatically, expecting Yuri to come racing inside with a detailed retelling of the movie and at least three completely unrelated stories. Instead, Shane stepped into the house alone before carefully sliding the door shut behind him.

Ilya frowned immediately as he stepped into the house and changed into his indoor footwear. “You're back early. Where's Yuri?”

A smile appeared on Shane's face as he greeted Ilya with a chaste kiss. It made Ilya's heart flutter like a teenage girl with her first crush. Before, every kiss was a prelude to sex, usually ending with somebody pressed against a wall or dragged toward the nearest bed. Now they kissed simply because they could.

A quick peck before leaving the house. Ilya ducking down to brush his lips against Shane's shoulder while they stood side by side in the kitchen arguing over whose pickles were better. Ilya always won, because he was Russian and Russians pickled everything short of eggs.

A lingering kiss after Shane handed him a cup of tea in the afternoon, often ending with the two of them rubbing their noses together like a pair of lovesick fools and smiling so hard their cheeks hurt.

"Yuki-chan's mother decided to supervise the rest of the outing. Apparently, the girls wanted to keep hanging out after the movie."

That sounded exactly like Yuri. It was difficult to blame her for wanting to spend more time with Yuki. Soon enough her friendships would have to survive through messages, video calls, and school breaks instead of seeing each other every day.

Then again, Yuri was a very sociable child. Give her a week and she would probably be friends with half of Boston.

Shane’s smile lingering briefly before something more thoughtful settled across his expression. "Do you want to go somewhere?"

Ilya looked at him curiously.

"Somewhere?"

"Just us."

The meaning became obvious immediately.

A date.

A real date.

“You're asking me on a date?” Ilya could not keep the awe out of his voice.

It was ridiculous when he thought about it. They had shared hotel rooms, crossed continents for each other, and spent years dancing around whatever this was. Yet somehow, they had never gone on an actual date.

"I'm asking you on a date."

Ilya laughed.

"Well, when you put it like that, I don't think I can say no."

The look Shane gave him made the answer worthwhile all by itself.

Less than an hour later they were walking through the grounds of Nijo Castle beneath the warm summer sun while tourists and locals drifted around them. The place was beautiful, though perhaps not in the way Ilya usually appreciated beauty. There were no towering skylines, no crowded streets glowing beneath neon signs, no restaurants packed with people talking over music late into the night.

That had always been more his style. Boston and New York were cities that felt alive to him. He loved the nightlife and the endless possibilities waiting around every corner.

Shane, meanwhile, genuinely enjoyed peace and quiet. He liked Japanese gardens and historical sites. He liked spending entire afternoons wandering through nature, where the loudest sound was the wind moving through the trees. The man was, in many respects, incredibly Canadian.

Years ago, Ilya probably would have found that baffling. Now he found it oddly endearing.

As they wandered through the castle grounds, Shane occasionally pointed out details that caught his attention, whether it was something about the architecture, the gardens, or a historical fact he had somehow managed to remember.

At some point, he launched into an unexpectedly detailed observation about the castle’s design, reminding Ilya that Shane was physically incapable of looking at a building without immediately turning into Mr. Real Estate.

Ilya listened to every word. Not because he cared all that much about architecture, but because he loved watching Shane talk about something he enjoyed. There was a brightness to him in those moments, a spark in his eyes that made it impossible to look away.

It allowed him to appreciate Kyoto better, the quiet pace of the city, the stillness of nature, and the kind of peace that normally would have driven him out of his mind. Then again, as long as Shane was enjoying himself, Ilya usually found that he was too.

By the time Shane reached for his hand, the gesture felt so natural that Ilya barely thought about it before intertwining their fingers. They continued walking without breaking stride, another couple enjoying an afternoon together while the world carried on around them. Nobody paid them any special attention. Nobody cared who they were or why they were there.

It was only after a few moments that Ilya realized they were holding hands in the middle of a crowded street.

His heartbeat immediately went haywire, and without thinking, he tightened his grip on Shane's hand. His boyfriend glanced over, and their eyes met. A small smile appeared on his face, mirrored by one of Ilya's own. Neither of them said anything, but they didn't have to.

The wonder in their eyes spoke for them. They were holding hands in public while on a date, something so ordinary for most people and yet so impossibly precious to them.

For the first time, they were a normal couple.

Ilya felt tears threatening to gather in his eyes but stubbornly blinked them away. He was not going to cry and ruin the moment, not when he still had a date to enjoy.

Eventually, the summer heat convinced them to leave in search of something cold to drink. A few streets away from Nijo Castle, they found a small café that was exactly the sort of place Shane gravitated toward, quiet and welcoming, tucked away from the busiest parts of the city as though it had been waiting to be found.

They were shown to a table near the window, and Ilya accepted the menu with confidence that lasted approximately three seconds.

Then he opened it.

Rows of kanji stared back at him.

Ilya stared back.

Neither side made any progress.

Across the table, Shane took one look at his expression and immediately started smiling.

"Don't."

"I'm not saying anything."

"You were about to."

"I absolutely was."

Ilya rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the menu as though a few more seconds of concentration might suddenly reveal its secrets. Unfortunately, the page remained just as incomprehensible as it had been when he first opened it.

This issue was not new. That was the annoying part.

He had dealt with worse when he first moved to Boston as a teenager, alone, only able to speak and understand the language while reading was still difficult as he tried to learn a whole new alphabet. There had not been many restaurants with menus in Cyrillic script, and more than once he had ended up pointing at something at random just to avoid looking like an idiot in front of his new team. More often than not, he ended up eating a meal he did not particularly enjoy with a smile on his face.

Here in Kyoto, it should have felt the same. Japanese was a language he did not understand; Kanji was a system that was entirely unfamiliar. It should have made him feel isolated in the same way it had back then.

But it did not.

If anything, it was the opposite. Because this time, he was not left to figure things out alone this time.

"What are you in the mood for?" Shane reached across the table and turned the menu slightly toward himself.

"Something cold and sweet."

The amusement in Shane's voice only grew as he began translating the drink section. "There are iced coffees, fruit sodas, tea lattes, smoothies— oh, the Hōjicha tea latte sounds good."

“That sounds like something you would order,” Ilya teased.

Shane shook his head but obediently continued reading. "They also have melon cream soda."

Ilya’s interest perked up. “With ice cream?”

"Yes."

"Why didn't you start with that?"

"Because I was attempting to present all the options."

"The other options are irrelevant."

The smile that followed suggested that Shane had expected that response.

A few moments later the waitress returned, and Shane effortlessly switched into Japanese. Ilya listened with the same mild fascination he always felt whenever Shane spoke the language.

He might have a language kink, who would have thought?

Their drinks arrived several minutes later.

Shane’s hōjicha latte looked almost like a piece of art, the foam carefully shaped into a leaf at the top. A moment later, Ilya's melon cream soda arrived crowned with an enormous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Now that was a proper beverage.

"You have the taste of a five-year-old."

Ilya took a sip before answering.

"Yuri has excellent taste."

The combination of sweet melon soda and melting vanilla ice cream was absurdly good, immediately proving he had made the correct decision. Across the table, Shane simply shook his head before lifting his own drink, looking entirely unsurprised.

Outside the café window people continued moving through the streets around Nijo Castle while the afternoon slowly drifted towards evening. The conversation wandered from Yuri's increasingly ambitious plans for the remainder of the summer to Boston, hockey, and the countless practical details they would eventually have to deal with once the season started.

For once, none of it felt particularly daunting.

Maybe it was because he had spent the afternoon walking through Kyoto holding Shane's hand. Maybe it was because Cliff's call had reminded him that the people waiting for him in Boston were still his people. Or maybe it was because, somewhere along the way, he had stopped carrying every problem by himself.

Somehow that felt like progress.

Chapter 10: The Best

Chapter Notes

Before we start the chapter, I wanted to talk a little about the direction of this story.

When I first began writing this fic, I had imagined it ending very differently. My original plan was to follow Shane and Ilya back to Boston, spend time with them settling into their new life, and eventually write about Shane leading the Raiders to a Stanley Cup. There were a lot of hockey-related moments I wanted to explore.

However, as I kept writing, I realized that wasn't actually what this story had become.

At its core, this fic is about healing.

Not just Shane's healing, although his struggles with his eating disorder, his relationship with therapy, and his journey into fatherhood are certainly major parts of it. It's also about Ilya's healing and his depression. 

About the trauma both of them carry, the ways they've hurt each other and themselves, and the long process of learning how to move forward. Recovery is rarely linear, and one of the things I wanted to show throughout this story is that healing takes time, patience, support, and sometimes professional help.

As I wrote these last chapters, I found myself becoming more interested in who Shane and Ilya are when hockey isn't the center of their world.

For years, their identities have been tied to the sport. Their successes, failures, relationships, fears, and even their self-worth have often been filtered through hockey. But they are more than athletes. They are partners, fathers, sons, friends, and individuals with lives that exist beyond a rink.

That realization is also part of why this story remains in Japan.

I wanted the opportunity to explore Shane's Japanese heritage and culture, to let him reconnect with a part of himself that often gets overshadowed by his career. Japan became the perfect setting for that growth, for both of them to step away from the pressures that had defined so much of their lives and simply learn how to be people again.

Could I write about them returning to Boston? Absolutely. They will return to Boston. They will be happy. They will continue building a wonderful life together.

But I realized that if I shifted the focus back toward hockey, toward championships, standings, playoffs, and professional success, it would take away from the message I wanted this story to leave behind.

The point isn't whether Shane wins another Stanley Cup.

The point is that Shane and Ilya have value even if they never step on the ice again.

Their lives matter beyond hockey.

Their family matters beyond hockey.

Their recovery matters beyond hockey.

And that's ultimately the story I wanted to tell.

I already have another fic that explores Shane and Ilya building a life together in Boston, and I think covering that same ground here would feel repetitive. More importantly, it would pull attention away from what makes this particular story special to me.

So this story will end where its emotional journey feels complete: here in Japan, where both of them have finally learned how to live for themselves and not just for the game.

As always, thank you for reading, commenting, and caring so deeply about these characters. I appreciate every single one of you.

One of the first rules Shane had given him after arriving in Kyoto had nothing to do with Yuri, hockey, or even Japan.

It was about therapy.

Mental health mattered in this household.

For years Shane had ignored it and paid the price for it. Yuri had suffered through losses that no child should ever have to endure. The past year had been full of therapists, difficult conversations, healing, setbacks, and slow progress, and Shane had made it very clear that he had no intention of watching somebody he loved walk willingly into the same darkness.

That included Ilya.

A year ago, he would have fought the idea.

Six months ago, he would have lied through every session.

Now he found himself sitting at the low desk in the guest room with his laptop open, speaking to Katya through a video call while grinning like an idiot and showing her pictures from his phone.

Honestly, she should have charged Shane extra for this miracle.

"And this," he announced proudly, swiping to another photo, "was when they took me to Ginkaku-ji."

The picture filled the screen.

Yuri stood at the center of it wearing a white summer dress patterned with tiny blue flowers, one hand stretched dramatically toward the Silver Pavilion while the other rested on her hip. Her expression carried the absolute confidence of a child convinced she was the foremost expert on a subject.

Behind her, Shane had been caught mid-laugh.

His head was tilted back slightly, sunlight filtering through the trees above him, one hand still holding the paper map Yuri had spent the entire morning ignoring while insisting she already knew where everything was.

"She spent half the visit acting like a tour guide," Ilya gushed, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice. "Every building had a story. Every garden had a story. Every rock somehow had a story."

Katya smiled.

"Was any of it accurate?"

"Most of it."

"Most of it."

"She is five. Sorry, almost six."

Katya laughed while Ilya swiped again.

The next picture had been taken inside a cafe tucked away in one of Kyoto's quieter streets. Afternoon sunlight spilled through the windows and painted golden squares across the wooden table where he and Yuri sat shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing a strawberry parfait nearly large enough to count as a meal.

Layers of whipped cream, fresh strawberries, ice cream, syrup and cake filled a glass taller than Yuri's forearm.

Both of them were grinning at the camera.

In the background, Shane looked deeply unimpressed.

"Japan has excellent desserts," Ilya informed Katya.

"I can see that."

"And still, my boring Canadian ordered a coffee float."

Katya looked toward the picture.

"He looks happy."

The words caught him slightly off guard. For a moment, Ilya stopped looking at the parfait and looked at Shane instead. "Yeah," Ilya admitted quietly. "He does."

Another swipe revealed a photograph taken beside one of the dessert stands they had stumbled across on an outing. Ilya was holding a taiyaki ice cream almost as large as his head.

The fish-shaped pastry cone was overflowing with cookies-and-cream soft serve, and judging by the expression on his face, he had already decided it was one of the greatest inventions in human history.

Yuri held a chocolate one with both hands, smiling proudly at the camera. Shane stood between them wearing the long-suffering expression of a man who had somehow become responsible for two children instead of one.

"I still don't understand why he would choose matcha."

Katya raised an eyebrow.

"Because he likes matcha?"

"There were twenty flavors."

"People are allowed to have favorites."

"He saw cookies and cream, chocolate, caramel, strawberry cheesecake, and still picked matcha."

Katya's smile widened.

"And this bothers you?"

"He is so boring."

He swapped and landed on a picture that made him laugh every time he looked at it. Yuri had gotten ice cream on her nose, he had gotten ice cream on his shirt, and Shane had somehow remained completely untouched by the entire disaster while watching both of them make fools of themselves.

His perfect and polite Canadian boyfriend.

The unfairness of it still annoyed him.

Katya shook her head, but the smile never left her face.

Neither did the warmth that had slowly settled into the bedroom while Ilya moved from one picture to the next, talking about temples, cafes, train rides, desserts, shrines, and a hundred tiny moments that would have sounded completely insignificant to anybody else.

The strange thing was that they weren't insignificant at all.

A year ago, none of these pictures would have existed.

A year ago, his camera roll had been filled with locker rooms, airplanes, arenas, hotel rooms, and press conferences.

Now, when he scrolled through his phone, he found Yuri's drawings mixed between pictures of dinners Shane had cooked, sunsets over Kyoto, crowded train stations, temples hidden among trees, desserts he still couldn't pronounce, and dozens upon dozens of moments that would have sounded completely ordinary to anyone else.

To Ilya, they felt extraordinary.

For the first time in years, he had photographs of a life instead of evidence that he had lived one.

Perhaps that was why Katya finally interrupted him. Her smile never disappeared, but there was something thoughtful behind it now, something more serious.

"I am very happy that you're having a good time," she said. "And I'm happy things seem to be working out between you and Shane. From everything you've told me, Yuri appears to have accepted you surprisingly quickly."

Ilya's grin immediately returned.

"She likes me."

"I noticed."

"Everybody likes me."

Katya gave him a look. "That confidence is completely unsupported by evidence."

"It is supported by plenty of evidence."

"Sure."

He laughed, then finally put his phone back on the desk.

For a few moments Katya remained silent before continuing. “You also told me that you’ve started some renovations on your house.”

Ilya blinked, surprised by the sudden change of topic. “What about it?”

“You started with the Japanese bath, o-furo style. Then you added a genkan to the entryway, and now you’ve even started renovating the basement into a tatami-style room.”

“Well,” he said, glancing away for a second, “it would be nice to have a full Japanese-style room, somewhere we can keep the kotatsu, and where Yuri and Shane can do yoga or have tea ceremonies.”

"You also told me that Svetlana is the one supervising the entire project while you're in Japan."

"Yes," Ilya furrowed his eyebrows and pursed his lips. “Where are you trying to go with this?”

In the screen, Katya folded her hands together.

"Ilya, listen carefully. I'm genuinely happy for you. You've made more progress in the last few months than you did during the entire time I've known you. You're reconnecting with people and you’re building relationships. You're finally allowing yourself to be loved."

The warmth in her voice made him uneasy.

Experience had taught him that therapists usually sounded like that right before saying something he didn't want to hear.

"But?"

Katya sighed.

"But do you think it's healthy that so much of your happiness revolves around Shane?"

The smile slipped from his face.

“For ten years, Shane has been at the center of nearly every positive memory you’ve described to me,” Katya continued before he could interrupt. “Hockey only became enjoyable because of your rivalry with him. Your worst periods came when you felt disconnected from him. He was the balm you needed after every phone call with your brother or your father. You even went looking for him after coming back from summers in Russia. And then he left, and according to your own description, you went off the rails.”

Ilya felt his body tense under her scrutiny.

The words stung because they were true.

“The dark thoughts got louder,” Katya said gently. “You withdrew from everyone and convinced yourself that everyone hated you. You turned to self-destructive behavior because the one person who kept you grounded wasn’t there anymore.”

The bedroom that only a minute ago had seemed so warm suddenly felt much smaller.

"Now you're with him again," Katya continued. "You're talking about moving in together, and you're even renovating your house for them. All of that is wonderful, but it worries me that Shane seems to be the foundation underneath the future you’re building."

Ilya stared at the desk.

"If something were to happen…”

"No."

Ilya all but barked.

Katya stopped, staring at Ilya in surprise. The Russian had never raised his voice at her like that, not even back then when he had only attended the mandatory therapy sessions because he had been forced to.

"I don't want to think about that."

"Ilya…"

"I don't want to think about that," he repeated, this time more forceful. "Maybe that's childish,” Ilya rubbed a hand across his face and shook his head. “Or stupid, I don't really care. I spent a year believing I'd lost him forever. I will not sit in the house where we made up, imagining the different ways I could lose him again."

Silence settled between them.

Eventually he sighed. "But that's also why you're here."

Katya waited. Half of her job is to be patient and to listen attentively. She is a very good therapist, so she did not say a thing as Ilya continued speaking.

"I know you're right."

The admission tasted bitter, if Ilya's self-deprecating grin was anything to go by.

"I know this isn't healthy. Shane knows it too." He laughed softly, a tired sound. "Trust Shane to figure out our emotional problems before I even left Boston."

"He does seem more self-aware these days," Katya commented gently.

"It's insufferable," the fondness in his voice completely ruined the complaint. "This year changed him. Therapy and becoming Yuri's father changed him. He spent months working on himself and eventually realized how dependent we'd become on each other."

His gaze drifted toward the closed door of the guest room.

"He wants us both to keep seeing our therapists because he doesn't want that happening again."

"And what do you want?"

The question lingered in the air.

For once, Ilya didn't rush to answer.

"I want to be better."

The words came out as barely a whisper, but Katya heard him anyway.

"I don't want Shane carrying my entire happiness on his shoulders. That's not fair to him, and I don't want Yuri growing up feeling responsible for it either."

He looked back at the screen.

"Do I know how to fix that? Nah."

A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth.

"Do I particularly want to? Also no."

Katya laughed, his honesty felt refreshing after months of Ilya lying during every single one of their sessions.

"But I want to try."

What else could Katya say to that?

"Okay,” something softened in her expression. "That's a good start. Honestly, that's more self-awareness than you've given me in six months."

Ilya grinned.

"See? Japan is fixing me."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"Shane, then."

Katya rolled her eyes.

"That is exactly the problem we're discussing."

"Still," his smile widened, eyes sparkling with mischief. "The man is an excellent influence."

"The best?"

"The best."

Katya rolled her eyes so hard that Ilya was fairly certain it counted as a medical emergency. A moment later they exchanged their goodbyes, and the screen went dark.

For a while he remained seated at the desk, staring at his own reflection on the black monitor. Therapy always left him feeling strangely drained. Hockey exhausted his body, while therapy exhausted his spirit. An hour spent untangling thoughts, fears, habits, and old wounds somehow demanded more from him than three periods on the ice ever had.

Eventually he pushed himself upright and stretched. Following instinct more than anything else, he slipped on his outdoor shoes and stepped into the engawa before making his way toward the garden.

The indoor and outdoor shoe system still felt vaguely ridiculous to him, but after nearly two months in Japan, he had accepted that he was the problem and not the shoes.

The afternoon sun bathed everything in gold.

Shane's grandfather had clearly loved this garden.

Ilya could see it in every carefully maintained corner, from the smooth stone paths winding between flowerbeds to the trimmed shrubs and patches of moss that seemed almost deliberately arranged. Near one side stood several lily bushes that, unfortunately for Shane, gave Ilya plenty of ammunition, while at the center rose a magnificent Japanese maple whose branches spread across the garden like an umbrella of green and red.

Beneath it, a blanket had been spread across the grass, with Shane and Yuri sitting on it.

Several bowls rested on top of it alongside bamboo utensils, folded cloths, small ceramic containers, and enough equipment that Ilya briefly wondered whether they were conducting a chemistry experiment.

Yuri spotted him first.

"Ilya!"

She waved enthusiastically.

Shane glanced over his shoulder and smiled. The sight still had the power to catch him off guard.

For years, every version of Shane Hollander that had existed in his mind had revolved around hockey. The rival who challenged him. The man who occupied his thoughts far more than was healthy. The person he loved long before he possessed the courage to admit it.

Yet none of those versions looked quite like the one sitting beneath a maple tree in the middle of Kyoto.

"What are you doing?" Ilya asked as he settled onto the blanket beside them.

"Tōsan is teaching me about tea ceremonies," Yuri practically bounced where she sat.

That explained very little. Fortunately, Shane seemed to recognize his confusion.

"My grandmother loved tea ceremonies," he explained, gently adjusting one of the bowls. "When I visited Japan during the summers, she used to teach me. At first it was mostly because she wanted me to sit still for more than five minutes."

Yuri nodded solemnly.

"That's still very hard for him."

Shane ignored her sass.

"After I moved here, I realized how much I'd forgotten. I ended up taking a class so I could relearn everything properly. Eventually it came back." His hand brushed against a dark ceramic tea bowl. "A lot of these belonged to my grandmother. She collected tea sets for years."

Yuri's eyes brightened with nostalgia. "Obachan had so many."

"Far too many."

"There is no such thing as too many."

"That is exactly what she used to say."

The fondness in Shane's voice softened the teasing. And for a moment, Ilya could almost picture her. An older woman patiently teaching a teenage Shane how to prepare tea, probably while lamenting his inability to sit quietly.

"I always watched Obachan do it," Yuri announced proudly. "Now tōsan is teaching me."

Ilya looked between them.

The excitement on Yuri's face was impossible to miss.

The happiness on Shane's was even harder.

He had promised himself that if he wanted a place in their lives, he would learn. About Japanese culture and the traditions that mattered to them.

So, when the words left his mouth, they felt surprisingly natural.

"Can you teach me too?"

For a second Shane looked genuinely surprised. Then a pleased expression crossed his face. "I'd like that."

The smile Yuri gave him afterward suggested he had somehow passed another test.

Shane reached for a folded silk cloth.

"Okay. First, the tools."

He picked up a small container.

"This is called a natsume. It holds the matcha powder."

Next came a slender bamboo scoop.

"This is the chashaku. You use it to measure the tea."

Then he handed over a delicate bamboo whisk, that looked far too fragile to be useful.

"This is the chasen," Shane explained. "It's probably the most important piece. You use it to whisk the matcha."

Ilya turned it carefully in his hands.

"You would trust me with this?"

The bamboo tines looked impossibly thin.

"I trust Yuri with it."

"That seems irresponsible."

"I am six!" Yuri gasped.

"Almost sweetheart, you still have a couple of weeks to go."

Shane laughed before continuing.

After introducing each tool, he demonstrated how the ceremony began.

The bowl was cleaned first.

Even though everything was already spotless, the process mattered.

Using the silk cloth, Shane carefully purified the tea container and the bamboo scoop. Then he poured hot water into the bowl and placed the whisk inside briefly to soften the bamboo tines.

Once it was ready, the water was discarded and the bowl was dried. Only then did the tea enter the process. Using the bamboo scoop, Shane measured several portions of vivid green matcha into the bowl.

A small amount of hot water followed.

Then he picked up the whisk.

"This part takes practice."

His wrist began moving quickly.

Not in circles as Ilya expected. Instead, the whisk moved in a rapid zigzag pattern, creating a shape that looked almost like the letter M.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

The powder gradually dissolved into the water. A bright green foam formed across the surface. By the time Shane finished, the tea looked smooth and almost velvety. He rotated the bowl slightly before presenting it.

The entire process appeared deceptively simple. Yet the longer Ilya watched, the more he understood why people called this a ceremony.

When Shane handed him another bowl and offered to guide him through the process himself, Ilya accepted without missing a beat.

His first attempt was terrible.

Yuri informed him of this with great enthusiasm.

His second attempt improved slightly.

The third earned an approving nod from Shane, which somehow felt more rewarding than scoring a goal.

And so, he spent the rest of the afternoon stretched beneath the shade of the maple tree, listening to explanations about tea bowls, matcha grades, and family traditions he had never heard before.

The week passed much like that, slow and beautiful.

The sort of days that seemed ordinary while they were happening and yet already felt precious even as they slipped away.

Ilya spent most of them discovering new corners of Kyoto, helping Yuri with her English homework (though most of the time it felt as if he was simply another student of Shane's), accompanying his boyfriend on errands, and attempting to survive a summer that felt personally designed to kill him.

The Japanese summer heat remained his greatest enemy.

Russia had never prepared him for this.

Boston had never prepared him for this.

Every morning began with optimism and ended with him melting into whatever patch of shade he could find while Shane laughed at his suffering and Yuri informed him that he was being dramatic.

Which, admittedly, he was.

Still, none of it managed to dampen his excitement for Yuri's birthday.

Of course she was a summer child.

The little sunshine practically looked custom-made for the season.

Her birthday happened to fall on the same day as one of Kyoto's summer festivals, which meant the entire day had already been planned around celebrations, food stalls, fireworks, and enough excitement to keep a newly turned six-year-old happy for weeks afterward.

Before any of that, however, Ilya had a surprise of his own.

That afternoon, while Shane and Yuri were getting ready for the festival, he carried a large box into the living room and placed it carefully on the floor.

"What’s that?" Yuri demanded to know, her eyes were already sparkling with excitement.

Beside her, Shane looked confused.

"Ilya..."

"It's your birthday, and birthday girls receive presents."

Yuri gasped while Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can already tell this is going to be something ridiculous."

"It is an excellent gift."

"That's exactly what worries me."

Yuri was already tearing into the wrapping paper. The moment the lid came off the box, she let out a squeal loud enough that Ilya was fairly certain half of Kyoto heard it.

Inside rested a beautiful child-sized yukata.

The fabric was the color of a summer sky, a soft turquoise blue decorated with delicate sakura branches that spread across the material in shades of pale pink and white. Folded beside it sat a matching pair of geta sandals, their wooden bases polished smooth, along with a small pink kinchaku pouch embroidered with cherry blossoms and a set of sakura hair ornaments.

For several seconds Yuri simply stared.

Then she grabbed the yukata and hugged it against her chest.

"Oh, my Kami-sama."

Shane’s expression immediately shifted from surprise to horror.

"Ilya."

Uh oh.

"Ilya, this looks expensive."

"It is a birthday present," Ilya tried to defend himself.

Shane looked moments away from developing a migraine. Meanwhile Yuri launched herself across the room and collided with Ilya at full speed. The force nearly knocked him backward.

"Thank you, Papa! You're the best!"

The world stopped.

For one perfectly suspended moment, everything simply ceased functioning.

His brain.

His heart.

His lungs.

Possibly several major organs.

Yuri either failed to notice or chose to ignore the fact that she had just detonated an emotional grenade directly inside his chest. Before he could produce a single coherent thought, she grabbed the box and sprinted toward her room.

"I'M GOING TO TRY IT ON!"

The sound of running footsteps echoed through the house. And just like that, she was gone and silence settled over the room.

Ilya remained frozen where he sat. Across from him, Shane looked equally stunned. For several seconds neither of them spoke. Then very slowly, Ilya turned toward him, as a terrible realization was beginning to form.

"Did I..."

His voice cracked.

"Did I overstep?"

He had spent months trying to be careful, trying to respect boundaries and fit himself into their lives without forcing anything. Maybe he had gotten carried away.

Maybe…

Then Shane smiled.

The expression spread slowly across his face until it became impossible to contain. There was so much warmth in it that Ilya almost forgot how to breathe. As Shane crossed the room, Ilya thought he was going to answer.

Instead, Shane grabbed him by the collar and pulled him down for a kiss.

When they finally pulled apart, Shane remained close enough that Ilya could feel his lips brush against his with every word. "Yuri is right."

The smile on his face only grew.

"You're the best."

And just like that, Ilya felt his heart threaten to explode all over again.

The summer festival somehow managed to surpass every story Yuri had spent the past week telling him about it.

By the time they arrived, the streets were already glowing.

Paper lanterns hung overhead in long strings of warm gold and red, stretching between buildings and swaying gently whenever a breeze managed to fight its way through the oppressive heat. Music drifted through the evening air, and laughter followed it. All while; the scent of grilled food seemed to come from every direction at once.

Ilya stood at the entrance for a moment simply taking it all in. Beside him, Yuri practically vibrated with excitement.

The turquoise yukata fit her perfectly.

The sakura pins sat neatly in her hair, catching the light whenever she moved, while the small kinchaku pouch bounced against her side as she hurried from one thing to the next. Every few steps she would turn around to make sure both he and Shane were following before immediately getting distracted by something else.

She looked happy.

Completely, overwhelmingly happy, and somehow that made the entire festival seem brighter.

The first hour disappeared in a blur.

One moment they were stopping at food stalls and the next they were standing in front of festival games.

Yuri became determined to win prizes.

Unfortunately, she had inherited Shane's competitive streak.

Fortunately, she also seems to have Ilya's inability to quit.

By the end of it, they had somehow accumulated an alarming collection of prizes.

A small fox plush.

A sleepy-looking tanuki.

A round white rabbit nearly as large as Yuri's torso.

A tiny frog wearing a samurai helmet.

At some point Shane had taken over carrying most of them. "I feel like we're becoming a traveling toy store."

"We are winning," Yuri informed him.

"As long as we're clear on the priorities," Ilya agreed with his daughter.

The food somehow proved even better.

Yuri convinced them to share yakitori skewers straight from the grill. After that came takoyaki so hot that Ilya nearly burned his tongue off while Yuri laughed herself breathless.

There was grilled corn cobs brushed with soy sauce, crispy karaage, sweet taiyaki filled with red bean paste, and enough festival snacks that Ilya eventually lost track of what he had eaten and what he had merely stolen from Shane's plate.

Shane stared in abject horror, as Yuri and Ilya ate.

“How are you both not sick?”

An exaggeration, if you asked Ilya. They had only ordered one of everything and shared it between three people. That was hardly an unreasonable amount of food, especially considering that two of them were professional athletes and the third was a growing kid.

Of course, once they were done with the food, they had to go for dessert.

Ilya never thought he would enjoy eating shaved ice, but Japan just seems to be full of surprises. Yuri immediately chose cherry syrup, while Shane ordered yuzu, and Ilya selected the bright blue one almost entirely because he wanted to know what it tasted like.

The answer, apparently, was blue.

He still had absolutely no idea what flavor it was supposed to be. Yuri thought this was the funniest thing she had ever heard. A few minutes later, she pointed at his face and burst out laughing again.

“Your tongue is blue!”

Ilya frowned and stuck out his tongue, only to start laughing when he realized she was right. He bent over cackling when he noticed that Yuri was also a victim of the syrup.

“Your tongue is red as well!”

She immediately stuck out her tongue and grinned at him. Shane rolled his eyes and stuck out his own tongue. Naturally, it was yellow.

The three of them laughed so hard that several nearby festival-goers turned to look. Ilya couldn't remember the last time he had laughed this freely, and he hoped he always would.

Eventually the crowds began moving toward the riverbank where people were already spreading blankets across the grass and waiting for the fireworks.

They found a place near the water.

Yuri settled between them, clutching her fox plush against her chest while the sounds of the festival gradually softened into anticipation. Then the first firework exploded overhead.

Gold scattered across the sky.

A second followed.

Then a third.

Within moments the darkness above Kyoto transformed into a constantly changing canvas of color and light. Entire flowers blooming across the heavens before dissolving into glittering sparks.

As the fireworks continued to bloom overhead, painting the river in gold, crimson, and blue, Ilya found himself watching Yuri almost as much as the sky itself. The six-year-old had spent the entire evening running from stall to stall, collecting prizes, demanding snacks, and proudly showing off her birthday kimono to anyone willing to admire it, yet now she stood completely still between them, her face tilted upward as she followed every burst of light with wide, shining eyes.

She looked so happy that it made something ache pleasantly inside his chest.

“This is the best birthday ever,” she announced, sounding so certain that neither he nor Shane could help smiling.

Then, without thinking much about it, she slipped one hand into Shane's and the other into his.

Around them, the crowd continued to cheer whenever a particularly impressive display lit up the darkness. Children pointed excitedly toward the sky, couples leaned against one another, and families gathered beneath blankets spread across the grass. The entire riverbank seemed wrapped in a warm, easy sort of joy.

Beside him, Shane shifted slightly closer.

“I spoke with Farrah,” he said quietly.

The words immediately caught Ilya's attention. He turned his head, finding Shane still watching the sky above them.

“I'll be signing with the Boston Raiders.”

For a second, Ilya genuinely thought he had misheard him.

Then Shane finally glanced toward him, and the smile on his face carried so much warmth that Ilya felt his chest tighten. “We'll be moving in with you after the summer.”

And suddenly every sound around him seemed distant.

The fireworks.

The crowd.

The river.

Everything faded beneath the overwhelming realization that Shane was choosing him. And standing there beneath a sky full of fireworks, with Yuri still holding both their hands, Ilya could not remember ever being happier.

Chapter 11: Jesus Christ

Shane had spent the last twenty minutes staring at the laptop sitting on his bedroom desk, which felt mildly ridiculous considering the amount of pressure he had handled throughout his life.

He had played through Stanley Cup Finals with half the country watching, stood in front of hostile playoff crowds that wanted nothing more than to see him fail, survived years of media scrutiny, sponsorship obligations, captaincy responsibilities, and an NHL organization slowly tearing itself apart around him.

Compared to all of that, a video call with the people he loved should have been easy. Instead, every time he looked at the screen, the unease only grew. Eventually he rubbed both hands over his face, glanced once more at the clock, and clicked the call button before he could talk himself out of it again.

The screen flickered before splitting into three sections. Hayden and Jackie appeared first from their living room in Montreal, with JJ already half draped over the back of their couch. The second window showed his mom and dad sitting together in Ottawa, while the third reflected Shane back at himself from Kyoto.

The call had barely connected before his dad looked around the screen and frowned. "Where's Yuri?" he asked. "I thought she'd be joining us."

"Now I understand why Shane specifically told me to keep the girls busy during this call," Jackie laughed.

That seemed to draw his dad’s attention, but his mom and Hayden ignored the joke altogether. Years of knowing Shane had apparently made them both alarmingly good at reading him, because their expressions sharpened almost instantly.

"What's going on?" Hayden asked at the exact same moment his mom said, "Shane, what happened?"

"The synchronization between you two is genuinely terrifying," JJ cackled like a madman.

Neither of them acknowledged him.

Their focus was entirely on Shane, which made him swallow harder than he would have liked. For a brief moment he considered lying, making some excuse, postponing the conversation until another day. Then he remembered every conversation with his therapist over the past year, every discussion about trust, vulnerability, and allowing people to know him instead of carefully managing which pieces of himself they were allowed to see.

So, he took a breath and forced himself forward.

"Okay," he began. "There's something I've wanted to tell all of you for a long time."

The mood changed immediately. Jackie sat up straighter, as his dad’s expression grew serious. Even JJ stopped fidgeting long enough to pay attention.

Shane folded his hands together beneath the desk.

"I need all of you to understand that this never had anything to do with trust. None of you did anything wrong. The truth is that for a long time I wasn't ready to deal with it myself. Plus, there was another person involved whose situation was a lot more complicated than mine. Telling people before he was ready could have put him in a dangerous situation."

Silence settled across the call. It was so quiet that Shane swore he could hear his own heartbeat.

"As all of you already know, I'm gay," he continued. "And ever since my rookie season, I've been seeing someone."

For a second, nobody reacted as everyone's brains slowly caught up.

Then Jackie’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. "Since your rookie season?"

"Your rookie season?" Hayden repeated, looking personally offended by the information. "Shane Hollander, that was almost a decade ago."

JJ's jaw had dropped open.

"Almost a decade?" he echoed. "You've had a boyfriend for eight years and somehow never mentioned it?"

Across the screen, his dad looked completely stunned. "Wait," he said slowly. "You've been with the same person this entire time?"

Shane nodded, wincing when he noticed his mother’s stoney silence. Most people would think that she was angry, but he could see the hurt and pain reflected in her eyes.

The silence somehow felt even louder than before.

Then Hayden threw both hands into the air. "No wonder he never accepted a single date Jackie and I set up for you!"

"Oh my God," Jackie gasped beside him as understanding crossed her face.

"No, seriously," Hayden continued, growing more animated with every second. "Do you know how many dates we tried to arrange for this idiot?"

"A lot," Jackie said.

"A lot," Hayden repeated.

"We literally introduced him to people."

"We invited people to events."

“Maybe the fact that he is gay and you guys tried to set him up with women was the main factor,” JJ covered his face. “Not the fact that he somehow had a secret boyfriend all along.”

Despite himself, Shane felt a small laugh threatening to escape as he watched Hayden and Jackie facepalm in unison.

"We did not date for all those years,” Shane rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “At first, we were only hooking up. Then it turned into feelings. Then it turned into years of both of us making increasingly terrible decisions while pretending feelings weren't involved."

JJ snorted derisively. "That sounds exactly like something you would do."

"Thank you, JJ."

"You're welcome, mon ami."

They all laughed, easing some of the tension.

“Anyway… the situation was difficult beyond just my internalized homophobia and the NHL as a whole. My partner had to come to terms with the fact that if we wanted to be together, he would never be able to go back to his country.”

Shane could still feel his pulse hammering in his chest as he prepared himself for the next part. “Being gay in Russia is practically illegal.”

JJ nearly slid off the back of the couch, as Jackie stared at the screen as if Shane had suddenly started speaking an entirely different language, his dad’s eyebrows shot upward, and even his mom looked genuinely stunned. Years of rivalry videos, press conferences, interviews, championships, fights, and endless media narratives suddenly rearranged themselves into something completely different.

"Rozanov?" Hayden looked like he was trying to solve advanced calculus in real time. "Boston Lily is Ilya Fucking Rozanov?"

Shane closed his eyes briefly.

"Yes."

The confession somehow made things worse.

“Since rookie season?” his dad asked, his voice frail and filled with disbelief.

“Jesus Christ,” his mom muttered, getting up and leaving the screen. Shane worried for a second, then grew even more concerned when she returned with an entire bottle of wine and two glasses. "That somehow explains everything and absolutely nothing."

The conversation settled gradually after that, though everyone still looked stunned. Shane used the brief lull to gather himself before continuing.

"Look, Hayden, there's something else I need to say. A few months ago, when we talked about the playoffs, you asked if I knew what was going on with Ilya."

Understanding immediately spread across Hayden's face.

"You lied."

"Yeah," Shane winced. "I did."

The admission hung between them for a moment before he continued.

"I'm sorry for that. Truly. But at the time Ilya wasn't ready for anybody to know. If the situation had only affected me, maybe I would've handled things differently. It wasn't only my secret to tell."

He paused briefly before looking at all of them through the screen.

"As I already mentioned, the main issue was Russia. You all know what would've happened if the wrong person found out before he was ready. I would've survived it… he might not have."

The video call grew noticeably quieter after that. JJ's amusement faded while his dad slowly leaned back in his chair, and his mom chugged an entire glass of wine. Nobody argued the point because they all knew Shane was right.

"Ok," his dad said after a moment. “I get that."

"So do I," his mom added quietly.

JJ nodded with a frown. “I might hate Rozanov, but not even I would wish that on anyone.”

Some of the tension eased from Shane's shoulders. "Thank you."

"Jesus Christ,” Hayden dragged a hand down his face. “This explains so much."

"It explains an alarming amount," Jackie agreed. Then she tilted her head. "So where does that leave things now?"

The question surprised Shane by how easy it was to answer.

"It leaves things somewhere good."

Everyone stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue.

"We were never really monogamous before. The whole thing was complicated, messy, and honestly pretty unhealthy for a long time. We spent years circling around each other making terrible decisions because neither of us wanted to admit what was actually happening."

"That sounds exhausting," JJ snarked.

"It was exhausting," a smile tugged at the corner of Shane's mouth. "But things changed."

Apparently, something appeared on his face because Hayden immediately pointed at the screen. "Uh-oh."

"What?"

"You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The look people get right before they say something disgustingly romantic."

“I agree with him,” his dad said, unable to hide a teasing smile.

Shane groaned. "I hate all of you."

“Continue,” Jackie demanded imperiously. She wanted the tea, and no one was going to stop her from getting it.

Shane shook his head, already smiling despite himself. “When I left for Japan, I figured that was it. That we'd both move on and eventually get over it."

Nobody missed the disappointment lingering in his tone. But they did not get to worry for long as a beaming smile spread across his face. "Apparently Ilya decided that was unacceptable."

Jackie started laughing before he had even finished the sentence. JJ looked personally offended by the implication while Hayden, once more, pointed dramatically at the screen.

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"Tell me he didn't."

Shane laughed breathlessly. "He got on a plane, flew halfway across the world, showed up in Kyoto, and asked me to give us a real chance."

The silence lasted all of two seconds before chaos erupted again.

Jackie collapsed against Hayden laughing. JJ stood up and started pacing behind the couch while muttering French profanity. His dad looked deeply entertained, and even his mom was smiling now.

"Oh, that is infuriatingly romantic."

"I know."

"He really flew across the world?"

"Yes."

"For you?"

"Yes."

"I hate that asshole!" JJ grumbled.

"You hate everything."

“Who the hell pulls a Hallmark movie stunt like that in real life?!”

"Ilya Rozanov."

The laughter gradually settled, though the smiles remained.

Then his mom spoke for the first time in several minutes. "Are you happy?"

The question quieted the video call almost immediately.

Shane blinked.

Out of everything they could have asked, that was somehow the simplest question of the afternoon.

And the most important.

"Yeah," he answered, being completely honest.

The answer came easier than anything else he had said during the entire call.

"Yeah. I really am."

Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Hayden smiled, Jackie reached over and squeezed his arm, JJ finally stopped pacing, his dad’s expression softened, and his mom looked like she had finally received an answer she had been waiting months to hear.

Maybe she had. After all, leaving Shane alone in Kyoto had been the hardest thing she had ever done.

After carrying the secret by himself for almost a decade, Shane realized he had spent years bracing for reactions that never came. The people he loved were still sitting right there on the other side of the screen, listening, laughing, and giving him exactly what he had been afraid to ask for.

Acceptance had always sounded like a big dramatic thing in his head. Instead, it felt remarkably simple.

It felt like home.

Suddenly, Hayden's eyes widened.

"Oh, fuck."

Shane immediately narrowed his eyes.

"What?"

Hayden’s complexion lost all color.

"You signed with the Boston Raiders, didn’t you?"

The horror spread across the call almost instantly.

Jackie covered her face. "Jesus Christ."

His dad blinked.

Then blinked again.

"Oh, they're screwed."

"Who?" Shane inquired in amusement.

"The entire league," JJ answered without missing a beat.

The video call dissolved into laughter again. This time, however, it sounded slightly hysterical.

"No, this is not happening! Jesus Christ!" Hayden looked increasingly more horrified, as he thought about it. "You and Rozanov on the same team? Are you kidding me?"

Jackie was already laughing too hard to speak properly.

"We're all doomed."

"We are absolutely doomed," Hayden agreed with his wife. "Boston somehow looked at the most talented player in the league and thought, you know what this roster needs? Shane fucking Hollander."

"They are making me captain," Shane added cheekily.

"You’re not helping."

“I was not aiming for helpful.”

“Va te faire voir!” JJ cursed at him.

A devious smirk spread across Shane's face, and for a moment he could not believe he was actually going to say it.

“Sorry, but only Ilya gets to screw me now.”

“Okay!” his mom finally called out as Hayden and JJ mimed puking while Jackie cackled. “That is far too much information for my poor ears!”

“Gomennasai, mom,” Shane apologized, tilting his head innocently.

She gave him a pointed look across the screen. “Don’t get cute on me, Shane. And do not try to use Japanese to get away with the fact that you signed up to the Raiders without telling me a thing.”  

“I am an adult,” Shane shrugged, raising an eyebrow.

His mom understood the unspoken challenge and backed down. Therapy had not only helped Shane, but his mom as well. It was easier for her to accept that she could not manage every aspect of his life.

"You realize what's going to happen, right?” Hayden finally spoke up, ignoring whatever was going on between the mother and son duo. “The second training camp starts, the two of you are going to become the most terrifying duo in hockey history."

"Every coach in the league is going to wake up in a cold sweat," JJ bemoaned.

"Every goalie," Jackie corrected.

"Every goalie is going to retire."

"Guys…"

"No, Shane," Hayden interrupted. "Think about this from our perspective. We've spent eight years watching you two treat every game like a blood feud."

"That's because it was a blood feud."

"Apparently it was foreplay."

The entire video call exploded.

Shane buried his face in his hands.

"JJ."

"What? Tell me I'm wrong."

Nobody did.

Even his mom was laughing now, while his dad looked deeply entertained.

Hayden looked genuinely distressed. "They're going to put them on the same line."

"Jesus Christ," Jackie whispered.

"Jesus Christ," JJ echoed.

"Hayden."

"No, I'm seriously scared Shane. You’ll be unstoppable!"

"The playoffs are finished before they start," JJ groaned dramatically.

"Boston is winning the Cup."

"The rest of the league is cooked."

"Guys."

Nobody listened.

"The Raiders are going to become hockey's version of a supervillain origin story."

"Guys."

"Every Eastern Conference team should start preparing their farewell speeches now."

"GUYS."

The laughter continued while Shane groaned in the background to absolutely no sympathy.

Later that evening, the house slowly descended into the organized chaos that always came with a move.

Open suitcases occupied the living room floor, equipment bags crowded the hallway, and various pieces of gear had somehow spread across half the house. Training camp was still days away, yet both of them had already started organizing everything they would need for the trip back to Boston.

Shane sat on the floor beside one of the bags, sorting through spare laces, rolls of tape, stick wax, and a collection of miscellaneous hockey supplies that he had somehow accumulated in Japan.

Across from him, Ilya was supposedly helping, though after several minutes Shane realized he had barely moved anything at all. Instead, he was sitting cross-legged with one of Shane's sticks resting across his lap, staring at it with a level of concentration that suggested he had gotten distracted somewhere along the way.

Eventually Shane stopped sorting tape and looked up.

"What?"

Ilya glanced down at the stick again before running his thumb across the white tape wrapped around the handle. It stood in stark contrast to the black tape covering the blade. "Can I ask you something?"

"You just did."

A long-suffering look crossed his boyfriend’s face.

"Can I ask you a useful question?"

"That depends entirely on the question."

Ilya rolled his eyes before returning his attention to the stick. "You've always written your mother's name here."

For a second Shane simply stared at him. Then he looked down at the faded black marker beneath the tape and felt something unexpectedly warm settle in his chest. "You noticed that?"

"Yeah," a faint flush appeared across Ilya’s cheeks, and suddenly he looked far less confident than he had a moment earlier. "Of course I noticed."

There was something almost absurdly endearing about the answer. Thousands of people had watched Shane play hockey over the years. Teammates, coaches, reporters, opponents, fans. Entire arenas had spent hours watching him handle a puck. Yet almost nobody had ever asked about the name written beneath the tape. Most people probably never even realized it was there.

Apparently, Ilya had.

Then again, Ilya had always paid attention to strangest of things.

A smile pulled at Shane's mouth as he resumed organizing the supplies beside him. "How long have you known?"

"Years."

The answer came so quickly that Shane looked up again.

"Years?"

"I pay attention."

Ilya said it defensively, as though being accused of caring too much was somehow embarrassing. The effect was ruined slightly by the fact that he was still holding Shane's stick and staring at it like it contained state secrets.

A laugh escaped Shane before he could stop it.

"You notice everything."

"Exactly."

The confidence returned immediately, which only made Shane laugh harder.

“My dad wore number 24 when he played hockey at McGill University,” he explained after a moment. “When I got drafted, I chose 24 for my jersey in his honor. That way, whenever I'm on the ice, I'll carry my dad on my back and my mom on my hand.”

"That's disgustingly sweet."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Ilya's expression softened, his eyes practically glowing with fondness. It left Shane wondering if this was what people meant by heart eyes.

For a brief moment neither of them spoke. The house remained quiet around them except for the occasional, distant sound of Yuri moving around her bedroom. The conversation should have ended there.

At least that was what Shane assumed.

Instead, Ilya remained sitting on the floor beside the open equipment bag, turning the hockey stick slowly between his hands. His thumb drifted once more over the familiar black marker beneath the tape before he glanced up.

"So," he said casually, "are you going to start writing Yuri's name too?"

The question caught Shane off guard.

"I don't know," he admitted after a moment. “I haven’t thought about it.”

Across from him, Ilya shrugged as though the question had never been particularly important in the first place and returned to his sorting, content to let the matter drop. Shane tried to do the same.

Unfortunately, Shane couldn't stop thinking about it.

The question lingered somewhere in the back of his mind for the rest of the evening while they finished packing. It followed him through dinner, resurfaced while he cleaned the kitchen, and drifted through his thoughts again when he was lying in bed later that night, cuddled against his boyfriend’s warm chest.

“Are you going to start writing Yuri's name too?”

The thought remained with him the following day as well.

His final commitment before leaving Kyoto was a Kenzo photoshoot scheduled in the city center, and by now he had done enough of them that the process felt almost routine. Stylists fussed over details nobody else would ever notice, photographers asked him to look serious in clothing that probably cost more than his first car, and assistants hurried around carrying garment bags while somebody inevitably offered him coffee every twenty minutes.

A year ago, he would have found the entire thing exhausting.

Now he mostly found it amusing.

The shoot wrapped sometime during the afternoon, leaving Shane free to make his way toward the train station while the city moved around him in its usual rhythm. Office workers spilled out of buildings, teenagers clustered around convenience stores, and cyclists navigated the narrow streets with the confidence of people who had been doing it their entire lives.

Normally he would enjoy a walk like this.

Today his thoughts kept circling back to the same question.

“Are you going to start writing Yuri's name too?”

It surfaced again while he waited at a crosswalk. It returned while he passed a small bookstore. It was still there several minutes later when he turned onto a quieter side street lined with cafes and independent shops.

That was when he noticed the sign.

The storefront itself was small enough that he probably would have missed it under normal circumstances, squeezed between a clothing boutique and a cafe with outdoor seating. A temporary banner hung beside the entrance advertising a tattoo pop-up event, and Shane found himself slowing almost instinctively.

He should have kept walking.

Instead, he stopped.

Then he stood there staring at the sign for several minutes while a thought began forming somewhere in the back of his mind. It hit him so suddenly that it almost made him laugh. Because maybe the answer had always been simple.

Before he could overthink it, before logic had a chance to interfere, Shane pushed open the door and stepped inside.

By the time he returned home several hours later, his chest felt sore beneath his shirt and the skin underneath the protective covering still felt slightly warm.

The house was already settling into its evening routine. Yuri's voice drifted through the hallway as she enthusiastically explained something to Ilya, the laughter followed Shane all the way toward his bathroom.

He closed the door behind him, pulled off his shirt, and carefully peeled back the protective wrap.

The tattoo covered most of his left pectoral.

Fresh black ink stretched across his skin in clean, elegant lines. A snake wound through the entire design, its body weaving around three separate symbols connected together into a single piece.

A maple leaf, a rose, and a lily.

Three lives intertwined together beneath the same winding body. Looking at it now, Shane felt the same certainty he had felt sitting in the artist's chair.

The bathroom door opened before he could think much further about it. "I was going to ask what you wanted for dinner because Yuri has changed her mind three times already and I'm reaching the limits of my…"

The rest of the sentence died in a strangled gasp.

Shane glanced up to find Ilya frozen in the doorway.

For several seconds he didn't move at all.

His gaze remained fixed on Shane's chest as realization slowly dawned on him. First confusion, then understanding, and finally something much softer that settled there with startling openness.

"You got a tattoo," Ilya said at last.

Shane looked down briefly.

"No shit Sherlock."

The attempt at humor barely registered. Ilya was still staring at the design, taking in every detail with an intense attention that sent a shiver of pleasure down Shane’s spine.

Desire sat there completely undisguised. One hand remained wrapped around the bathroom doorframe, his fingers gripping the wood tightly enough for his knuckles to pale, as though holding onto it was the only thing preventing him from crossing the room and pinning Shane against the nearest wall.

For a few seconds neither of them spoke, and the silence felt strangely intimate because every bit of uncertainty Shane had carried since walking into that tattoo studio vanished the second he saw Ilya looking at him now. Whether it had been impulsive, whether it had been stupid, or whether he had somehow gone too far, none of it seemed important anymore.

A slow smile pulled at the corner of Shane's mouth.

"Your question last night kind of stayed with me."

Ilya finally dragged his attention away from the tattoo long enough to look up.

"What question?"

"The one about Yuri." Shane glanced down at the fresh ink before meeting his eyes again. "You asked if I was going to start writing her name on my stick beside my mom's."

Recognition flickered across Ilya's face, and something softer followed immediately afterward.

"Yeah."

"I kept thinking about it all day." Shane rubbed his thumb absentmindedly against his palm. "I've got my dad's number on my back, and my mom's name goes on the tape of every stick I've used since I was a teenager. Apparently, I have a habit of carrying the people I love with me on the ice."

The corner of Ilya's mouth twitched upward.

"So, I started thinking about the people who matter the most now."

His fingers brushed the lily.

"Yuri."

His hand moved to the rose then.

"And you."

Ilya's breath caught.

The reaction was so obvious that Shane almost smiled harder.

“A rose,” he continued softly. “Because Rozanov means rose in Russian, right?” A faint flush appeared across Ilya's cheeks, and Shane found himself ridiculously pleased by it. "Sorry about replacing you as the lily in my life."

That earned an actual laugh.

"I think we’ll survive."

"Yeah," Shane agreed. "I think we will."

For a moment Ilya simply stared at him, and the sight of his blown pupils made Shane’s cock harden. It was ridiculous, really. The man could chirp NHL enforcers, start fights in sold-out arenas, and walk into hostile locker rooms without blinking, yet somehow a tattoo had left him looking completely overwhelmed.

Then Ilya stepped forward, closing the door behind him.

He only stopped when he was close enough that Shane could see how heavily his pupils had dilated. The brilliant blue of his eyes had darkened almost to black, and when his hand lifted it stopped just above the fresh ink, hovering there carefully as though he was afraid touching it might hurt.

“What about snake?” he asked, his voice dropping lower, the accent heavier now, sending a sharp pulse of lust through Shane. “Why is there a snake wrapped around our family?”

Shane looked down at the winding serpent.

"In Japanese culture, snakes represent change, good fortune, and protection."

His gaze lifted back to Ilya.

"This whole year has basically been one giant change. I left Montreal, moved across the world, became Yuri's dad, and somehow ended up building an entirely different life from the one I thought I was supposed to have."

A laugh escaped him.

"And then you showed up."

That finally pulled a smile from Ilya.

"So, the snake felt right," Shane continued. "Because everything changed, and somehow every change brought me something good. I got Yuri. I got a family. I got a life that I can actually call mine with pride."

His voice softened as he looked directly at him.

"And I got you."

Ilya stared at him for another second, his gaze moving between Shane's face and the tattoo as though he still couldn't quite believe it was real.

Then he kissed him.

One hand settled carefully against Shane's waist while the other slid into his hair, and the force of the kiss pushed Shane backward until his hip bumped lightly against the bathroom counter. The laugh that escaped him disappeared immediately when Ilya kissed him again, and again.

"You're ridiculous," Shane murmured against his mouth, smiling despite himself.

Ilya answered by kissing him once more. They were so lost in each other that neither of them heard the footsteps approaching—until the bathroom door was slammed open.

Both of them froze, like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Slowly, almost hesitantly, they turned toward the entrance. Just as they had feared, Yuri was standing in the doorway.

She looked at Shane.

Then at Ilya.

Then at Shane again.

Her gaze dropped briefly to the tattoo.

A few seconds passed.

"I am hungry."

Shane blinked.

Ilya blinked.

Yuri waited.

"I am very hungry."

With that announcement delivered, she turned around and walked away, completely unbothered by whatever she had interrupted and apparently satisfied that her message had been communicated successfully.

The silence that followed lasted until her footsteps disappeared down the hallway.

Then Shane looked at Ilya.

Ilya looked at Shane.

And both of them completely lost it.

Shane laughed so hard he had to brace one hand against the bathroom counter, while Ilya bent forward as the absurdity of it caught up with them both. Out of every possible reaction Yuri could have had, she had somehow chosen the one that made them feel like two teenagers caught sneaking around.

"Jesus Christ," Shane managed between laughs.

Ilya buried his face against Shane's neck, still shaking with laughter. "She did not give a fuck."

By the time they finally managed to compose themselves, both of them were still grinning. "Come on," Shane said, reaching for his shirt. "Before she starts raiding the pantry."

Ilya nodded, though the smile never left his face.

As they headed toward the kitchen together, Shane caught Ilya glancing at the tattoo one more time, and the look in his eyes carried so much love that it melted Shane’s heart into a puddle of goo.

The warmth lasted right up until they reached the kitchen and discovered Yuri already standing on a chair, halfway through helping herself to snacks. At that point, both of them immediately abandoned every romantic thought in favor of preventing a small, hungry six-year-old from breaking her neck.

Chapter 12: @BostonRaidersOfficial

@BostonRaidersOfficial ✓

The Boston Raiders are proud to announce the signing of center Shane Hollander to a long-term contract.

Hollander will serve as Captain of the Boston Riders beginning next season. While Ilya Rozanov will continue in a leadership role as Alternate Captain.

We are excited to welcome Shane, his family, and everyone joining us in Boston.

#RaidTogether

Comments:

@raiders4life

HOLY SHIT WE GOT HOLLANDER.

WE ACTUALLY GOT HOLLANDER.

 

@bostonborn92

MONTREAL FUMBLED THE BEST CENTER IN THE LEAGUE 😭😭😭

 

@StanleyCupWatch

Boston really looked at the rest of the NHL and said, "what if we put Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov on the same line?"

 

@NHLmemesdaily

League office currently drafting emergency legislation.

 

@hockeygirlie88

WAIT.

WAIT.

HOLLANDER CENTER.

ROZANOV WING.

ON THE SAME LINE???

OH THE NHL IS COOKED.

 

@BruinsHistoryGuy

Respectfully, how exactly are teams supposed to defend that?

 

@HabsForever

I am going to throw up.

 

@BostonRaidersFan

MONTREAL REALLY LOST THEIR CAPTAIN AND SENT HIM DIRECTLY TO THEIR BIGGEST RIVAL 😭

 

@CupChaser21

Boston got the Golden Boy of Hockey.

Take that, Montreal.

See you at the playoffs.

 

@goalieunionrep

Every goalie in the Eastern Conference just felt a disturbance in the Force.

 

@RaiderNation

HOLLANDER AND ROZANOV IN THE SAME POWER PLAY?

LORD HAVE MERCY!

 

@oldschoolfan44

Wait.

Why is Rozanov stepping down?

Wasn't he literally the captain that brought Boston back to relevance?

 

@RaiderNation

He brough the Cup back to Boston.

This feels weird.

 

@pucktalkdaily

People are overreacting.

Rozanov clearly voluntarily stepped down.

 

@iceanalytics

Maybe he didn't volunteer.

 

@russianrocketfan

You think somebody TOOK the captaincy from Ilya Rozanov?

Have you ever watched Ilya Rozanov interact with authority?

Be serious.

 

@hockeyhistorynerd

The man once got fined for telling a referee to "develop better eyesight."

Nobody is forcing him to do anything.

 

@skatesandcoffee

Exactly.

If Rozanov didn't want this, it wouldn't be happening.

 

@BostonsBest

Did you guys watch him this season?

His dad was sick.

He looked exhausted half the year.

The guy clearly needs a break.

 

@RaiderFaithful

Thank you.

Everybody keeps talking about Hollander, needing time away.

Rozanov looked like he was running on caffeine and spite for a whole season.

 

@NHLWatcher

People forget captains are human beings too.

 

@eastcoastfan

Also let's be real.

This absolutely sounds like something Rozanov suggested himself.

 

@hockeygirlie88

100%.

I can literally picture the conversation.

Management: "Should we bid for Hollander?"

Rozanov: "Yes."

Management: "What position would he even play?"

Rozanov: "Center, he will be captain."

Management: "But you're the captain."

Rozanov: "And now I am not."

 

@bostonborn92

The funniest part is that Alternate Captain Rozanov somehow sounds more dangerous than Captain Rozanov.

 

@StanleyCupWatch

He gave up paperwork and meetings to focus entirely on hockey.

The league should be terrified.

 

@raiders4life

Shane Hollander gets to lead.

Ilya Rozanov gets to cause problems.

This is literally both of their ideal situations.

 

@NHLmemesdaily

Breaking News:

The rest of the Eastern Conference has requested emotional support.

 

@MontrealBurner

I hate everything.

 

@BostonRaidersFan

Counterpoint:

I love everything.

 

@CupChaser21

September can't come fast enough.

I need to see Rozanov feeding Hollander passes before I die.

---

@airportcoffeegirl • 3 minutes ago

You people are NEVER going to believe who I just saw at Logan Airport 😭😭😭

[picture attached]

The photo is clearly taken from across the terminal.

Ilya Rozanov is standing beside a luggage cart piled with suitcases and hockey bags, wearing an Adidas tracksuit.

Next to him is Shane Hollander wearing a Rebook blue hoodie and carrying a small child asleep against his shoulder. The girl's face is completely hidden against Shane's neck beneath a floppy summer hat.

The picture is blurry.

Comments:

@NHLUpdates

IS THAT SHANE HOLLANDER???

 

@BostonForever

THAT IS ABSOLUTELY SHANE HOLLANDER. HE IS FINALLY BACK!

 

@HockeyFan89

WAIT.

WHY IS ROZANOV THERE???

 

@CupWatcher

Hold on.

Hollander spent the entire year in Japan.

Rozanov spent the entire year in Boston.

Why are they arriving together???

 

@EastCoastPuck

OH MY GOD.

ROZANOV WENT TO GET HIM.

 

@BruinsHistory

HE ACTUALLY WENT TO JAPAN TO PICK HIM UP 😭

 

@RaidersFaithful

This is proof.

Absolute proof.

The reason nobody in Boston is allowed to complain about Hollander getting the captaincy is because this entire thing was clearly Rozanov's idea.

The man literally hunted him across the Pacific Ocean.

 

@PuckAnalytics

Imagine being Shane.

You retire for a year and move to Japan, to adopt a child and avoid hockey.

And somehow Rozanov still finds you.

 

@HockeyMemesDaily

Ilya Rozanov: "Fine. I will collect my center personally."

 

@BostonBorn92

I'M CRYING 😭

 

@MontrealTears

Wait.

Are they friends?

I genuinely thought they hated each other.

 

@GoalHornGuy

We all thought they hated each other. Maybe the media exaggerated their rivalry to oversell fans?

 

@NHLWatcher

I am beginning to suspect that professional athletes occasionally lie to the media.

 

@PuckTalk

Bold theory.

 

@SkatesAndCoffee

Can we talk about how domestic this picture looks???

 

@LuluLives

THANK YOU.

SOMEONE FINALLY SAID IT.

LOOK AT THEM.

LOOK.

AT.

THEM.

Rozanov is literally handling all the luggage.

Shane is carrying the child.

That is a family airport photo.

 

@ScottHunterTruthers

LULU YOU ARE INSANE 😭

 

@LuluLives

OPEN YOUR EYES.

RIVALRIES ARE TEMPORARY.

LOVE IS FOREVER.

 

@NHLMemesDaily

Please stop watching detective TikToks.

 

@LuluLives

THE EVIDENCE IS RIGHT THERE.

THEY ADOPTED A DAUGHTER TOGETHER.

 

@BostonForever

THAT IS NOT HOW ADOPTION WORKS.

 

@LuluLives

YOU DON'T KNOW THAT.

 

@HockeyHistoryNerd

Actually, we do.

 

@PuckTalk

Lulu saw one photo and immediately built a twelve-season romantic drama.

 

@ScottHunterTruthers

The Scott Hunter scandal broke some of your brains permanently.

 

@EastCoastPuck

Every time two male hockey players stand within five feet of each other, Lulu starts connecting red strings on a corkboard.

 

@LuluLives

YOU WILL ALL APOLOGIZE TO ME ONE DAY.

 

@RaidersFaithful

The child is literally Shane's adopted daughter 😭

We already know that.

 

@LuluLives

THEIR adopted daughter.

 

@GoalHornGuy

Please seek help.

 

@MontrealTears

The funniest possibility is that nothing weird is happening.

They're literally friends.

And the internet has completely lost its mind.

 

@NHLMemesDaily

Unfortunately, that has never stopped us before.

 

@LuluLives

I STAND BY MY THEORY.

 

@ScottHunterTruthers

And we stand by our theory that you need hobbies.

 

@LuluLives

THIS IS MY HOBBY.

---

Posted by @LuluLives • 4 hours ago
[THEORY] Preseason hasn't even started, and Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are already acting like a married couple.

Before anybody starts yelling at me:

1. Yes, I know they're "just friends."
2. Yes, I know some of you think the Scott Hunter scandal permanently damaged my brain.
3. Yes, I touched grass this week.

Now.

Exhibit A

[Photo attached]

-Shane Hollander is standing in a grocery store holding a shopping list, while Ilya Rozanov is behind a shopping cart with both hands on the handle. A small child is running next to the cart and between the two of them.

I blurred the child's face because unlike certain paparazzi accounts, I understand that children deserve privacy.

Anyway. What can be more family coded than grocery shopping? I mean, one parent has the shopping list, and the other one is pushing the cart. I’m just saying this is a level of coordination that feels unnecessary for two people who are “heated rivals.”

Exhibit B

[Photo attached]

-Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are jogging side by side on a path in Boston Common. It’s early morning and they are both in running gear. Shane in a Reebok ensemble, and Rozanov in his signature Adidas tracksuit.

Who voluntarily exercises together?

There are trainers and schedules. They see more than enough of each other at the Victory Ice Arena, so there’s absolutely no reason this needs to be a shared activity unless someone is actively choosing it.

Exhibit C

[Photo attached]

Hollander and Rozanov are seated across from each other at a small table by the window. The space between them is small and Hollander has his attention lowered toward the table, hands loosely around a glass, while Rozanov is leaning slightly forward, posture open in a way that suggests he’s mid-conversation rather than just sitting through a meal.

A candlelight dinner. Just the two of them.

At this point, do I need to say anything?

Exhibit D

[Photo attached]

-Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are seated at the counter of a bar, both in stylish suits. Shane has a Moscow Mule in front of him, while Ilya has a White Russian. There are other patrons in the background.

Shane Hollander is historically known for drinking approximately three drops of alcohol per decade.

So, I’m just going to ask again: Why is he at a bar?

Also, Moscow Mule? I see you Hollander 👀

Comments:

@HockeyNerd88

I opened this fully prepared to make fun of you.

Unfortunately, the grocery store photo made me pause.

 

@BostonFaithful

THANK YOU.

That's exactly what I thought.

Why is Shane holding the shopping list?

 

@PuckAnalytics

I hate that this comment made me pause.

 

@HabsForever

You people need professional help.

 

@LuluLives

I HAVE PROFESSIONAL HELP.

SHE SAID I SHOULD FOLLOW MY PASSIONS.

 

@HabsForever

I don't think this is what she meant.

 

@StanleyCupWatcher

The jogging photo is getting to me.

 

@NHLMemes

Please explain.

 

@StanleyCupWatcher

Because who wakes up voluntarily at six in the morning to run with another person?

 

@GoalieProblems

Athletes.

 

@StanleyCupWatcher

Damn.

Good point.

 

@LuluLives

Counterpoint:

Athletes in love.

 

@PuckTalk

LULU.

 

@LuluLives

I'M JUST STATING FACTS.

 

@BostonBorn92

Okay but the dinner photo actually looks pretty normal.

Friends go out to eat all the time.

 

@HockeyHistoryGuy

Thank God.

Someone reasonable.

 

@BostonBorn92

Then I saw the bar photo.

 

@HockeyHistoryGuy

...

 

@BostonBorn92

...

 

@HockeyHistoryGuy

Yeah.

 

@NHLWatcher

The bar photo is rough.

 

@GoalHornGuy

Why?

They're sitting at a bar, friends do that.

 

@NHLWatcher

Look at the drinks.

 

@GoalHornGuy

What about them?

 

@NHLWatcher

You're telling me Shane Hollander voluntarily ordered a Moscow Mule?

 

@PuckAnalytics

WAIT.

HE'S RIGHT.

 

@HockeyNerd88

That man spent fifteen years surviving on protein shakes and ginger ale.

Who introduced him to cocktails?

 

@LuluLives

EXACTLY.

 

@ScottHunterTruthers

Oh my God.

She's spreading.

 

@HockeyMemes

Patient zero has infected the subreddit.

 

@BostonFaithful

Guys.

I hate this.

But I think Lulu might have a point.

 

@HabsForever

NO.

FIGHT IT.

 

@BostonFaithful

I'M TRYING.

 

@StanleyCupWatcher

Same.

 

@GoalieProblems

This entire thread is mass psychosis.

 

@PuckTalk

The grocery store picture is still the funniest one.

 

@HockeyHistoryGuy

The child is literally running around the cart while they shop together.

 

@HabsForever

Families do not own grocery stores.

Friends can buy food together.

 

@LuluLives

Thank you for confirming they are a family.

 

@HabsForever

THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I SAID.

 

@NHLMemes

Lulu arguing like a lawyer who gets paid per emotional damage inflicted.

 

@PuckAnalytics

Honestly my favorite part is imagining Rozanov discovering this thread.

 

@GoalHornGuy

He would either die laughing or commit a felony.

 

@BostonBorn92

Meanwhile Hollander would read exactly three comments before closing Reddit forever.

 

@LuluLives

Or maybe they're reading this together right now.

 

@HabsForever

STOP.

 

@LuluLives

Sharing a couch.

 

@HabsForever

STOP.

 

@LuluLives

Maybe sharing a blanket.

 

@HabsForever

MODS.

 

@NHLMemes

I regret opening this post.

 

@ScottHunterTruthers

The worst part is that preseason hasn't even started yet.

 

@PuckTalk

We're six weeks away from actual hockey.

 

@HockeyHistoryGuy

God help us all.

---

@cliffmarleau • 17 minutes ago

WELCOME TO BOSTON, CAPTAIN 🏴‍☠️

Great food. Great people. Great team.

Can't wait for the season.

Watch out NHL.

[photo attached]

-A typical backyard barbecue. The photo is panoramic and you can see Raider players, wives, girlfriends, children, folding chairs, coolers, and somebody already burning burgers in the background. By the beverage table, front facing the camera, Shane Hollander is smiling at a man. The man has his back to the camera, and you can only see the broad shoulders and blond hair. He is carrying a little girl in a pink sundress sitting on his shoulders. Her face can't be seen at all because she's turned completely away from the camera, hiding behind a large sunhat.

Comments:

@RaidersForever

WELCOME CAPTAIN HOLLANDER!!!

THIS YEAR IS OUR YEAR!!!

 

@BostonPride

The NHL is absolutely cooked.

Hollander and Rozanov on the same line is borderline criminal.

 

@MontrealFan91

Still hurts seeing him in another jersey.

Wish him the best though.

 

@HockeyMom84

This is actually a really sweet picture.

 

@CanadianPuck

It's nice seeing how protective everyone is about the girl’s privacy.

 

@BeanTownLegend

The fact that nobody has leaked this kid's face in almost a year restores some of my faith in humanity.

Then again, she’s mostly been in Japan, let’s see how long it lasts now that she is in Boston.

 

@CaptainsCorner

Look at Shane's face 😂

Man already adopted the entire Raiders organization.

 

@GoalieProblems

I hate to say this.

But Lulu might be right.

 

@BeanTownLegend

NO.

NOT YOU TOO.

 

@GoalieProblems

Listen.

LISTEN.

I am a reasonable person.

 

@BruinsAndChaos

Debatable if you’ve agreed with Lulu.

 

@GoalieProblems

LOOK AT THE WAY HE'S LOOKING AT ILYA.

 

@CanadianPuck

He's looking at his daughter.

Who is on Ilya’s shoulders.

 

@GoalieProblems

Counterpoint.

Why does this look like a family Christmas card?

 

@BeanTownLegend

Because it's a picture of a family?

The Boston Raiders family.

 

@GoalieProblems

You know what I mean.

 

@NHLFan22

I actually don't.

 

@GoalieProblems

The vibes.

 

@NHLFan22

THE VIBES ARE NOT EVIDENCE.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

I've spent months making fun of Lulu.

But today I understood her.

 

@BeanTownLegend

WE ARE LOSING PEOPLE.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

You people saw one hockey player come out as gay and now you're convinced every single NHL player is secretly dating.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

Then explain the grocery shopping pictures.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

They're friends.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

The jogging pictures.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

Friends.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

The restaurant pictures.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

Still Friends.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

The bar pictures.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

How many times do I have to fucking say it? Friends!

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

The fact that Rozanov literally flew to Japan right before Hollander signed with Boston.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

Archrivals that became best friends.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

The fact that he stepped down as captain and handed it to Shane.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

Extreme best friends.

 

@BeanTownLegend

Social media needs adult supervision.

The trash people post.

 

@HockeyHistorian

My favorite part is that the actual hockey story here is being ignored.

Boston got Shane Hollander and Rozanov voluntarily stepped down as captain.

The Raiders might become Stanley Cup favorites.

 

@BeanTownLegend

And instead, we're discussing whether two grown men are secretly married.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

To be fair.

Look at that picture.

 

@BeanTownLegend

STOP LOOKING AT THE FUCKING PICTURE.

---

@ilyarozanov • 12 minutes ago

First day of school.

We are very proud of you. ❤️

Go conquer the world, малышка.

[photo attached]

-The picture shows a little girl from behind standing in front of one of Boston's elite international schools. She's wearing a navy school uniform, polished shoes, white socks, and an oversized backpack that looks almost comically large compared to the rest of her. Her face isn't visible, as the photo was clearly taken from behind.

Comments:

@BostonPride

AWWWWWWWW

 

@RaidersForever

THAT'S ADORABLE.

 

@HockeyMom84

Good luck on your first day sweetheart ❤️

 

@PuckWizard

Wait.

Why is Rozanov posting this?

 

@BruinsAndChaos

Because he's her uncle?

 

@PuckWizard

He's not actually her uncle.

 

@BeanTownLegend

Because they're friends.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

Ah yes.

Friends.

My favorite explanation.

 

@CanadianPuck

You people are exhausting.

 

@GoalieProblems

This is the most father-coded Instagram post I've ever seen.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

You can be proud of a kid without being their parent.

 

@GoalieProblems

Counterpoint:

Look at the caption.

 

@BeanTownLegend

I am begging everyone to touch grass.

 

@Lulu

I have remained silent for weeks.

But the evidence continues to accumulate.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

NO.

STOP IT LULU.

 

@HockeyHistorian

The funniest part is that we're all arguing while Shane Hollander hasn't posted a single thing in like a year.

 

@BostonGirl89

Very on brand with Hollander.

His face is everywhere, but his feed is drier than the Sahara Desert.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

I still think they're together.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

Based on what?

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

The vibes.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

AGAIN, WITH THE FUCKING VIBES!

THAT IS NOT EVIDENCE!

 

@ilyarozanov

I am very proud of my daughter.

 

@PuckWizard

WHAT

 

@BostonPride

WHAT

 

@BeanTownLegend

WHAT

 

@GoalieProblems

EXCUSE ME??? WE WERE RIGHT?!

I mean, of course we were right!

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

I KNEW IT.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

YOU KNEW NOTHING!

 

@Lulu

OH MY GOD.

 

@CanadianPuck

WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

 

@HockeyHistorian

DID ROZANOV JUST CASUALLY COME OUT IN AN INSTAGRAM COMMENT???

 

@GoalieProblems

ANOTHER GAY HOCKEY PLAYER???

 

@ilyarozanov

Wrong.

Bisexual.

 

@BeanTownLegend

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

“Wrong.

Bisexual.”

The words of an icon!

 

@PuckWizard

LIKE HE WAS CORRECTING A SPELLING MISTAKE.

 

@BostonGirl89

THIS MAN JUST DROPPED A DECADE OF HOCKEY DISCOURSE INTO A WOOD CHIPPER.

 

@Lulu

I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE ALIVE.

 

@shanehollander

Gay here.

 

@GoalieProblems

OH MY GOD.

 

@PuckWizard

OH MY GOD.

 

@BostonPride

OH MY GOD.

 

@BeanTownLegend

HE SAID IT LIKE HE WAS CHECKING ATTENDANCE.

 

@CanadianPuck

"GAY HERE."

THAT'S IT.

WHO COMES OUT LIKE THAT?!

 

@ScottHunterTruthers

We have Scott Hunter on one side, who kisses his boyfriend in a dramatic fashion after winning the Stanley Cup, on LIVE television.

And then on the other side, we have these two hockey players who have trolled us all summer, only to post one-liners and then drop off the face of the world.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? 😭

 

@HockeyHistorian

Years of speculation.

Years of rumors.

Years of analysis.

And this man comes out with two words.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

I CAN'T BREATHE.

 

@Lulu

VINDICATION.

 

@Lulu

VINDICATION!!!!!

I WOULD LIKE A FORMAL APOLOGY FROM EVERYONE WHO CALLED ME DELUSIONAL.

 

@BeanTownLegend

NO.

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

YOU WERE RIGHT FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS.

 

@Lulu

I WAS RIGHT.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

YOU THOUGHT A BAR PHOTO WAS EVIDENCE.

 

@Lulu

IT WAS!

CLEARLY, THEY WERE OUT ON A DATE!

 

@BeanTownLegend

I HATE THAT YOU WON.

 

@Lulu

THE TRUTH ALWAYS PREVAILS.

 

@ConspiracyFaceoff

WAIT.

NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT ROZANOV CALLED HER HIS DAUGHTER.

 

@ReasonableHockeyFan

...

 

@BeanTownLegend

SHIT!

Chapter 13: Playlist

Chapter Notes

I'm reading a new series and One More Chapter has got me addicted to reading while listening to the books while listening to the Playlist they organized. So, I decided to create my own Playlist for Tadaima, Okaeri. I hope you enjoy it!

1. nah WHAT is happening in the voyagers organization - Run Boy Run, by Woodkid.

2. But this is me waking up - This Is Me, by Keala Settle (from The Greatest Showman)

3. I’ll take care of her from here - Funeral, by Phoebe Bridgers.

4. He had absolutely no idea how to relax - 春よ、来い, by Yumi Matsutoya.

5. The chaos goblins? - Lemon, by Kenshi Yonezu. 

6. He could choose happiness - Youth, by Daughter.

7. I love you - I Found, by Amber Run.

8. There was a safety in boring that Ilya will never again take for granted - First Day of My Life, by Bright Eyes.

9. Somehow that felt like progress - Kaze ni Naru, by Tsuji Ayano.

10. The Best - Uchiage Hanabi, by DAOKO and Kenshi Yonezu.

11. Jesus Christ - Sweet Creature, by Harry Styles.

12. @BostonRaidersOfficial - Everybody Talks, by Neon Trees.

Do you agree with my selection? Or do you have better ideas? 😉

Works inspired by this one

Epub Cover inspired by “Tadaima, Okaeri” by Kurenohikari by sk_inspired (skargasm), skargasm

Podfic of "Tadaima, Okaeri" by kurenohikari by Kninjaknitter