Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories:

Gen, M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett/Harris Drover, Troy Barrett & Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander & Yuna Hollander

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett, Harris Drover, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Zane Boodram, Nick Chouinard, Evan Dykstra, Boyle (Game Changers), Luca Haas, LaPointe (Game Changers), Young (Game Changers), Holmberg (Game Changers)

Additional Tags:

Hurt Shane Hollander, Angry Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Shane Hollander Gets a Hug, In chapter 2, Protective Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander-centric, Let Shane Hollander Crash Out, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Troy Barrett Faces Consequences, it’s not bashing to point out that he really did suck at one point even if he’s better now, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Racism, Homophobia, Slurs, Post-Book 6: The Long Game (Game Changers), Based on a Tumblr Post, Shane Hollander Walks Ilya Rozanov Like A Dog, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Whipped, Ilya Rozanov is Whipped For Shane Hollander, Tagging it twice because he really is that whipped actually, Panic Attacks, Shane Hollander Has Panic Attacks, Anxious Shane Hollander, Troy Barrett Critical, Shane Hollander Deserves Better, Montreal Voyageurs | Montreal Metros Being Assholes (Game Changers), Implied Sexual Content, Fade to Black, Sorry i thought kinky sex would be too much tonal whiplash for this chapter but maybe as a separate fic lol, Fanwork Creator Knows Nothing About Hockey, Shane Hollander Has an Eating Disorder, Autistic Shane Hollander, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Unreliable Narrator, Supportive Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), Protective Ottawa Centaurs (Game Changers), (well kind of), Inclusion & Sensitivity, Ottawa Centaurs Player Ilya Rozanov, Ottawa Centaurs Player Shane Hollander

Language:

English

Series:

Part 1 of Shane Hollander Deserves The World

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-01 Updated: 2026-08-11 Words: 26,365 Chapters: 4/5

Turn The Other Cheek

Summary

“I turned the other cheek every fucking time. I still got tossed on my ass the second I went too far over the line, and threatened by the commissioner, and told to kill myself on just about every social media platform because my nightmare that I’d get outed came true. And you, after everything you did, got to come out to a supportive team and fans, get a slap on the wrist, and have your happy fucking ending.”

Or:

An exploration of Shane Hollander's struggle against racism and homophobia in hockey, and how others come to understand it

Chapter 1: Your Happy Fucking Ending

Chapter Notes

whispers @ shane hollander: aren't you tired of being nice? don't you just wanna go apeshit?

cw for slurs - i’ve only used the ones that have been used against me, so take that as you will

partially inspired by this post

will take this off anon once i've sorted out stuff with my new account :) in the meantime, come say hi on twitter!

Troy is shoulder-deep in the fridge when he hears someone walk up beside him.

“Oh, hey, Barrett.”

It’s Shane’s signature monotone, maybe with a bit of surprise, but there’s just enough of a bite for Troy to notice. Something that seems to be reserved for Troy alone, as far as he can tell.

“Hey, Shane.” He must heave himself out of the fridge too fast because Shane visibly flinches away. “Sorry, I was just looking for the last of the beer.”

“It’s outside in the second cooler.” Shane says, eyes boring holes into the fridge door. He pauses, then seems to make a decision, hand darting past Troy to snag a can of ginger ale before retreating quickly.

“Oh, cool.”

The atmosphere is thick with tension, and Troy scuffs his shoe on the floor awkwardly. He winces when it leaves a visible mark, praying Shane hadn’t noticed.

“So… How are you?” How are you? God, Barrett, what is this, a first date? It’s like you’ve never talked to a teammate before.

The thing was, he hadn’t. Not this teammate, at least. In the three months since Shane had joined the team, Troy could count on one hand the number of one-on-one conversations he’d had with Shane, and all of them had been some variation of your edges need work or please pass me the iPad. Everything Troy knew about Shane, he knew from Ilya.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know what the problem was. On a particularly drunken night, when Harris had called it quits early and Shane hadn’t shown up at all, Troy had sat beside his best friend and listened while Ilya waxed poetic about Shane. At some point during that long and rambling love letter (with an alarming amount of detail), Ilya had let it slip that Shane was worried about getting along with the Centaurs – and, in particular, Troy.

“We just had so little time together,” Ilya had said, uncharacteristically solemn, “and I think it was hard for him to hear that I had gay best friend who I spent all my time with when he wasn’t around. Also, Montreal sucked.”

So when Shane joined the Centaurs, Troy hadn’t been surprised that Shane was a little frosty around him. What did surprise him was how long Shane took to warm up. The rookies were following Shane around like ducklings by the end of the first practice, and Bood and Hazy had taken him under their wings, but every overture Troy made was met with cool indifference.

Ilya had talked endlessly about how excited he was to go on double dates with Troy and Harris, but Shane always seemed to be busy whenever they had a night off. He made himself scarce whenever Troy showed up at their house to play video games, and when Troy had cracked a joke about Shane being homophobic for not using the pride tape, instead of laughing or calling him an asshole, Shane had turned around and walked out of the room. The discomfort had gotten so blatant that Harris had had to change the interview groupings for media day, and that was when Troy knew he needed some help.

“I think you need to talk to him and get to know him, babe. Ilya can’t do it for you.” Harris had murmured, tucked comfortably under their covers. “He’s probably still dealing with being outed – things like double dating or gay jokes might be too much for him right now. Maybe start small, just make small talk at the next team outing without Ilya around and see how it goes. He knows you as Ilya’s friend, he just needs a chance to get to know you as you.”

That had been a month ago. Troy had attempted to put his boyfriend’s plan into motion, but Shane was a well-practiced introvert and an expert at avoiding social situations. It was pure luck that he’d walked into the kitchen when he did.

“I’m… fine? You’ve been in my house for the last few hours, you should know.” Shane cocks his head, still not meeting Troy’s eyes, but his demeanour makes it clear exactly what he thinks of this sad attempt at conversation.

“Yeah,” Troy chuckles weakly. “Do… How do you like it here?” Do you like me at all, he wants to say, but even Shane Hollander wouldn’t be able to politely steamroll past that.

Shane side-eyes him like Troy’s an unusual creature he found in the bin. “I mean, I grew up here, and Ilya and my parents are here. What’s not to like?” There’s a slightly bitter undercurrent to his reply that Troy doesn’t know how to unpack.

Shane shakes his head like he’s shaking off a daze and turns to leave. Troy jerks forward, startling Shane again. “Wait—um… let’s hang out for a bit!”

Let’s hang out? Troy wishes he could melt into the floor the second the words are out of his mouth, but it’s too late to take them back. He ploughs on, unsure. “Figured we should get to know each other a little better since we see a lot of each other now.”

An unreadable expression crosses Shane’s face before settling on aggrieved compliance. Troy gets a stiff nod for his valiant efforts then is promptly ignored in favour of the can of ginger ale cradled in Shane’s hands. Troy didn’t think it was possible for him to look any more disinterested, but Shane is giving it his best shot.

He knows he’s grasping at straws, but, “I don’t know if Ilya ever told you, but I was going to ask you out when I first joined the Cens.”

That gets him his first honest reaction. Shane’s face is the picture of disbelief. “What?”

“Yeah, I mean, I had just accepted that I was gay, and I was single, and you know there were rumours about you, so I thought I’d shoot my shot! I thought Ilya was going to kill me on the spot. That’s around the time he came out to me, actually.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m sure you get it, being in the closet for so long really fucks you up.” Troy rambles on, searching Shane’s face for any hint of mercy. “I had a really hard time in Toronto, and I just wanted to find somebody, you know? I’m so lucky I managed to find Harris, and—"

He’s abruptly cut off by the sound of a loon from Shane’s pocket.

“One second, sorry.” Shane doesn’t look particularly sorry. His whole face lights up when he answers the call – it’s only now that he’s smiling that Troy can see how tense he had been. “Hey, baby, what’s up?” Troy can just about hear Ilya’s signature Shane voice, a syrupy sweet and slightly whiny tone that never fails to make Shane blush. “I’ll be back in a minute, I’m just in the kitchen with Barrett. Okay. Okay. Love you.”

Shane gives him a tight smile and turns to leave. “See you outside, Barrett.”

The words burst out of Troy before he can think to stop them. “Man, you know you can just call me Troy, right?”

Shane looks at him again, brow furrowed. “What?”

“I’m just saying. All of my friends here call me Troy when we’re not at the rink. Isn’t it kind of weird we’re still on a last-name basis? We’ve been teammates for months.”

“I don’t know you like that, Barrett.” Shane’s jaw flexes like he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t continue.

Troy blinks, taken aback by the ice in his tone. He abandons the pretence to get to the point. “So? You can get to know me. You didn’t know most of the guys here either until you talked to them. Plus, Ilya’s my best friend, dude, I think you have more reason to get to know me than the rest of the guys.”

“I just said I don’t know you like that.” Shane huffs, running a hand through his hair. “You might be Ilya’s new best friend, but that’s not who you are to me.”

“Look, Shane…” Troy’s getting a little frustrated. What was Shane’s problem? Ilya was all over him constantly; it was a miracle Troy was able to catch Shane alone. Troy and Ilya had barely hung out in the last few months because Ilya was so wrapped up in his husband. “Ilya mentioned you might be a little jealous because he and I got to spend so much time together while you were stuck in Montreal, but you’re here now, and—"

The can of ginger ale creaks dangerously under Shane’s fingers. “Jealous? You think I’m jealous?”

“I’m just trying to bury the hatchet for Ilya’s sake. I don’t think he likes running interference all the time.”

“Oh, you’re doing this for Ilya.” Shane’s voice is flat but his eyes are blazing. Pinned to the wall by his stare, Troy can work out that he’s mis-stepped somehow. He fiddles with the sleeve of his hoodie, wants to cut his losses and run, but Shane is blocking his path to the door. “You’ll have to forgive me for not believing a word of your bullshit.”

It’s Troy’s turn to be confused. “What?”

“You don’t think I know you’ve been trying to corner me? Why can’t you fucking leave me alone?”

“What the fuck?” Troy repeats, dumbstruck. Then he gets angry. “I’m trying to befriend you!”

Shane scoffs. “I think I’ve made it clear I have no interest in being friends with you. Why the fuck would you think I would want that?”

“For Ilya, you asshole! You think he likes that his husband can’t stand his best friend?”

“Well, given his best friend spent the better part of a decade calling me every slur in the book, I think he can let this one go!”

For a moment, Troy is speechless. He hadn’t felt this small since he’d found out Adrian was cheating. He searches desperately for the right thing to say. “I—I apologised for that.”

“Oh, that fixes it! You apologised, so everything’s forgiven, right? And maybe my eyes were so small I missed the memo, because I didn’t get a stop on the Troy Barrett apology tour!” Shane hisses.

The words land like a slap. “I didn’t…”

“What, you don’t remember doing any of that? I do! I was there for all of it!” Shane’s hand is fisted like he’s seriously considering punching Troy in the face.

Troy feels a familiar swell of shame before he swallows it down. He’s changed. He knows he has. He spent time working on himself, and surely Shane will understand if he just explains himself properly. Shane wasn’t wrong; Troy had never actually apologised to him directly. “I know how I behaved back then was fucked up, but I really am sorry. I felt so trapped in the closet and I was trying to protect myself—"

“You think I give a fuck? You high-fived Dallas fucking Kent when he joked about my mother being a “geisha whore”! I know you were there when the guys stole my jersey and left a cheap fucking sumo wrestling costume in my locker at All Stars! How many times did you talk about me bending over for Hayden or JJ, or being a fairy because obviously I had a small dick? How many jokes did you make about me eating dogs or being a half-breed? That doesn’t go away just because you’re gay!”

“Shane…”

“Oh, now you know my name? I assumed you thought it was chink or faggot since that’s all you ever seemed to call me!” Abruptly, Shane slams his ginger ale down on the counter, and some of it sloshes out onto his hand. He swears, turning to the sink to rinse it off and wiping down the counter, ignoring a shellshocked Troy.

Troy finds his voice eventually. “Shane… Hollander. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. I know I said a lot of fucked up things. It’s just… Now that I’m out, I get it. I can see how much further the league has to go. There are so few of us out there… I just… I just want to put this behind us. I really hope you can forgive me.”

“You don’t get it.” Shane just sounds weary now, all the rage peeling away until only exhaustion is left. “Ryan was isolated and harassed. Ilya can never visit his mother’s grave ever again. I had to—” He stops, sucking in a breath that seems to catch in his chest.

“I turned the other cheek every fucking time. I wanted to kill you when you talked about my mom, but I walked away because that’s what I had to do, okay? I’m the Asian guy and I couldn’t make things worse by standing up for myself or I wouldn’t even be able to play fucking hockey even if I’m the best fucking player in the league, but I still got tossed on my ass the second I went too far over the line, and threatened by the commissioner, and told to kill myself on just about every social media platform because my nightmare that I’d get outed came true. And you, after everything you did, got to come out to a supportive team and fans, get a slap on the wrist, and have your happy fucking ending.”

“So, no, Barrett, I don’t like you. I don’t like that my husband told you about us, but I would never begrudge him that, and I’m still grateful you supported him how you could. I guess it’s a good thing that you’ve changed, and that people have forgiven you, but it’s a lot harder for those of us who had to bear the brunt of the things you were too afraid to say to my husband. It fucking sucks that Ilya’s best friend is one of the people who terrorised me in the closet, no matter how much you’ve turned over a new leaf.”

Shane scrubbed a hand over his eyes. The next breath he took came out sounding like a sob.

“Solnyshko…”

They both startle, whirling around to see Ilya and Harris in the doorway. Both men look glassy-eyed, but Ilya’s face is thunderous in a way Troy hasn’t seen since the FanMail video.

“Ilya, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you could hear,” Shane says, voice shaking. Ilya doesn’t respond verbally, sweeping into the kitchen to pull Shane into his arms so quickly they both stumble a little. Ilya tucks Shane’s face into his shoulder and turns them around so that he’s planted firmly between Troy and Shane.

“Party is over.” Ilya bites out, pressing a kiss to Shane’s hair. “Harris, please tell the others Shane is not well. You can let yourselves out.”

“Ilya…” Troy tries weakly.

Ilya snaps to look at him. The expression on his face is impossible to pin down: guilty and angry and apologetic all in one. “Not now.”

He gestures for Troy to go, shuffling slightly so there’s just enough room. Troy squeezes by as fast as he can without jostling Shane, but he’s still close enough to hear Shane sniffling into Ilya’s chest. He staggers past the counter and into Harris, who reaches out to tangle their fingers together, even if he hasn’t looked Troy in the eyes since he arrived.

Harris abandons him in the entryway to go break the party up. Troy can hear the disappointed groaning from the backyard, but they start scurrying around obediently. There’s some loud (concerned) speculation about Shane, but Harris reassures them that he’ll be fine and warns them off going into the kitchen.

Troy slips out of the house, beelining for the car. He fumbles a bit with the radio, eventually settling on some easy listening channel, while he waits for his boyfriend to come deliver his reckoning. There’s a hot ball of shame-disgust-loathing in his chest that feels like it’s choking him; it takes all he has to remember everything he learned in therapy.

The car jostles as Harris slides in beside him. A hand lands gently on his back - Troy didn’t even realise that he’d hunched over, forehead to the dashboard, but he peels himself away now, needing to see his boyfriend’s face while he got dumped.

Harris’ expression is a mixture of sympathy and disappointment. It’s a testament to how caring he is, that he isn’t just looking at Troy like dirt under his shoe, instead just staring straight ahead. “Troy…”

“I’m different now,” he blurts out, and immediately regrets it. Harris makes a face, starting the car and pulling away from the Hollander-Rozanov house.

They drive in silence for a while, radio droning in the background. Then Harris speaks up again. “I know you’ve changed. I guess I just had no idea what you were like back then. I can’t say I don’t understand why Shane wants nothing to do with you.”

It’s another dagger to the heart. “I just… I never really meant any of it. I was just following the rest of the guys, you know?”

“It sounds like you did more than that.”

The worst part was that Troy barely even remembered any of it until Shane had thrown it in his face. He knew he’d been awful, cozying up to all the wrong people, but he’d never stopped to think about the things he’d actually said and done. Hearing what he’d done to Shane, realising that he’d never apologised and instead spent months complaining that Shane wanted nothing to do with him, made him sick. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if anyone had targeted Harris like that and it just made things worse.

“God… I’m such a piece of shit.” It still hurts a little when Harris stays quiet, not disagreeing, but Troy knows he deserves it. He’d privately started to think of himself as a bit of a tragic hero, reformed and doing his best to fight for good against the odds, but that had all gone down the drain tonight. “I have to do something to fix this.”

Harris hums thoughtfully. “Give him some time. He deserves a genuine apology from you, but you shouldn’t force him to listen to it. Let him make that choice for once.”

Troy nods, and they lapse back into silence. Shane’s words echo in his ears. And you, after everything you’ve done, got to have your happy fucking ending.

I really haven’t earned it, Troy thinks, watching the streetlights go by. But I’m going to. He thinks about Ilya, who had looked heartbroken and incensed all at once when he’d found out how awful Troy used to be; about Shane, who’d flinched whenever Troy moved too quickly; about Harris, who gave him so much grace but still couldn’t look straight at him. I have to fix this somehow.

Chapter End Notes

oh troy. you mean well but you're so clueless.

just to head things off here, i don't hate troy. i think he's an interesting character. but he also doesn't get a free pass for being a piece of shit because he was going through something. this is a study in how good intentions aren't enough.

shane is probably the character who has the most license to hate troy, along with ryan. troy barely gets a slap on the wrist for all his past behaviour. years of calling people slurs with his BFF, making bigoted jokes… that doesn’t go away just because he’s gay. yet he gets to come out to a supportive team, all of whom seem to forgive him pretty easily, and live happily ever after. meanwhile, shane, already having to deal with being one of the only asian guys in the league and all the discrimination that comes with that, gets outed over and over again, iced out by his team, and just in general is treated so much worse. and that’s on top of the fact that shane as a POC had to be a model minority or get crucified. he wouldn’t have been able to get away with 1/10th of what troy did, and he still faces way worse consequences.

also, before anyone says that there's no textual evidence that troy was racist, you're technically right, but there's absolutely no way a man who was fine with homophobia and misogyny would suddenly draw the line at racism. dallas kent, and therefore troy barrett in his asshole era, are clear representations of the dark side of hockey, which absolutely includes racism. just look at how people are treating nick suzuki in 2026. there's no way shane hasn't been dealing with racism from day 1; it's just not in the text because RR refuses to address the implications of shane's race.

if anything, i think shane deserves a gun. but he would never do that, so he gets to yell here as a treat <3

next chapter is ilya comforting shane and realising there’s a lot he doesn’t know about how his husband is treated in the league!

Chapter 2: What Hockey Is Like

Chapter Summary

Shane takes a shuddering breath. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m just here to make you happy and help the Cens win, and no one cares that I don't have anything beyond that."

-

Ilya is going to fix this. He’s going to make things right with Shane. He’s going to destroy every single person who has ever made Shane sad; he’ll fight the whole damn league if he has to.

Chapter Notes

are y’all ready for 5.5k words of hurt/comfort because i am

also, clock the new chapter count ;) and rumour has it this is going to be a series… with a social media parallel fic... 😳

cw for slurs and harassment as usual

Shane waits until the last person is out of their house before he collapses into a panic attack.

Ilya is right there, hadn’t let go of his husband even when Wyatt stuck his head in the kitchen to check on them, so he’s prepared when Shane’s knees buckle and almost send them both tumbling to the floor.

“Okay, moya lyubov, it’s okay. I am here, I have you, I love you, it’s okay,” he whispers into Shane’s hair, arms locked around him to give Shane the pressure he needs. He sinks down, gathering Shane into his lap and taking exaggerated breaths for Shane to follow, but it’s nearly 15 minutes before Shane stops shaking.

“I’m sorry,” Shane sniffles once his breathing has evened out.

“No,” Ilya says firmly, fingers carding through Shane’s hair. “You do not apologise for this.”

He nudges Shane, testing to see if he’s ready to get up. Ilya’s own legs have gone numb under his husband’s weight, but if it gives Shane comfort, Ilya would never move again.

Fortunately, Shane seems to be over the worst of the panic. He pries himself off Ilya, and together they clamber up from the floor. Ilya yanks him back into his arms again the second they’re standing.

“Ilya…” Shane’s voice is muffled from where he’s pressed against Ilya’s shoulder.

“Later, sweetheart. Why don’t you go wash up, hm? Take bath, while your perfect husband cleans up after horrible guests. I will come up when I’m done.” Ilya sees the relief flooding Shane’s face and knows he made the right call. “Go, I will make sure evil hockey players did not destroy our marital house.”

Shane gives him a wobbly smile. “Ya tebya lyublyu. If you don’t mind, could you also…” He gestures to the floor near the fridge, where a scuff mark mars the pristine tiles. Ilya frowns; the house slippers they gave everyone at the door shouldn’t have left that kind of stain.

“Of course, solnyshko. Ya tebya lyublyu.” He presses a long, sloppy kiss to Shane’s cheek just to make him giggle. “I will take care of everything.”

The adoring look Shane gives him makes him want to melt into a puddle, so he slaps Shane’s ass about it. Shane calls him an asshole on reflex before reluctantly pulling himself away from Ilya and padding out of the kitchen.

Finally alone for the first time in hours, Ilya lets autopilot take over. He goes through the motions of wiping the floor, collecting all the stray cups and plates, and loading the dishwasher as fast as he can while still following Shane’s system. He sorts out Anya’s food and starts defrosting some chicken breast for a quick dinner after afternoon practice, then spends ten minutes engaging their incredibly elaborate security system. All the while, his head is spinning.

Hearing Shane lay out in excruciating detail all the ways Troy had tormented him had shaken him deeply.

It wasn’t as though Ilya didn’t know what Troy had been like. He’d punched Troy for being racist to one of the Bears rookies in 2015, he’d heard rumours of the kinds of things that went on in the Toronto locker room, he’d just never really given him that much thought before he’d joined the Centaurs because the spectre of Dallas Kent had loomed so large. It had been impossible to reconcile that man with the guy who brought Ilya food on his worst brain days, and was the first to reach out when the FanMail went viral, so Ilya just… hadn’t.

It fucking sucks that Ilya’s best friend is one of the people who terrorised me in the closet, no matter how much you’ve turned over a new leaf. If he was honest with himself, Ilya was angry. Angry at Troy, angry at himself, even a little bit angry at Shane for never coming to him for help. But he was also shocked.

Shane had never told him any of those things. Even before Troy was traded to the Centaurs, Ilya had never heard a word about the taunting and mean-spirited pranks and slurs disguised as chirping that Shane had apparently been putting up with for years.

Shane only ever talked about the game, never about everything else to do with hockey. He’d always listened and laughed along to Ilya’s stories about the Bears and the Centaurs, but he only ever brought up the Pikes and occasionally JJ. Was this so normal for Shane that it wasn’t worth mentioning? Did he worry Ilya would commit a crime to defend his honour? Ilya had always assumed Shane didn’t see the darker side of hockey, at least until they came out, but clearly he’d been far more of a target than Ilya had ever realised.

Ilya’s aware he has a reputation in the league. He knows that before he was outed, he was the Russian Menace, the guy who could punch hard enough to back up his chirping, the womaniser who’d slept with so many puck bunnies he couldn’t possibly be a cocksucker. He’s still those first two things - the homophobes who targeted Shane on the ice this season never dared to try the same thing with Ilya for fear of the consequences (although they quickly learned that nothing set Ilya off more than going after his husband). Until now, Ilya hadn’t realised how much that reputation had shielded him. Shane didn’t have that. He was easy prey for people like Dallas Kent and the old Troy Barrett, and he never fought back. Apparently, he’d felt like he couldn’t.

Guilt threatens to crush Ilya into a fine paste. Ilya had spent the last few months wheedling Shane about not spending time with Troy, surreptitiously orchestrating moments for them to be in the same room, but he’d never really considered why Shane didn’t like Troy. In hindsight, of course it wasn’t jealousy - even if Shane had been jealous, he would have said something to Ilya, like he did when he used to be jealous of Sveta. Ilya hadn’t thought to look deeper, so blinded by the joy of having his favourite people in one place that he didn’t see how much Shane was hurting.

That’s not entirely fair, he thinks to himself, Shane didn’t say anything. Like Galina had told him when he was resentful of Shane during the deepest pits of his depression, relationships needed communication to work. But Shane, his kind, beautiful Shane, hadn’t said anything because he didn’t want to mess with Ilya’s support system, even at cost to himself.

It seemed to be something of a pattern, Shane making himself small for the sake of others. He didn’t brag about his achievements to anyone but Ilya, the only person who came close to matching them; he’d hidden himself in the closet for years because he knew Montreal and the league would react badly; he stopped bringing dishes to Bood’s barbeques when Dykstra had carelessly mentioned how gross he thought the natto smelled.

Ilya had just thought he, as Shane’s husband, would be the exception.

He is, to some extent. Shane confides in him about his anxieties, his insecurities. Ilya had joyfully tagged along when Shane went to Japan, trying to ask all the right questions, even if Shane was almost as much of a foreigner there as Ilya. He’d stood by Shane’s side, quietly supportive, when he spent hours deleting every hate comment on their wedding announcement. But Shane is seemingly still holding back anything that he thinks might upset Ilya too much, like he’s afraid of imposing. Like Shane isn’t the best thing in Ilya’s life. Like Ilya wouldn’t burn the world to the ground to keep Shane warm.

They’re a team now. Spiritually, occupationally, legally. Ilya won’t let Shane deal with things alone anymore.

His husband is tucked comfortably in bed by the time Ilya gets upstairs, glasses on while he reads a book wrapped in an old Boston Bears shirt that’s two sizes too big. Ilya is pleased to see his hands have stopped shaking. He gives him a teasing wolf whistle and ducks under the throw pillow that comes flying at his head on his way to the bathroom.

One three-minute shower and ten-minute skincare routine later (Ilya is helpless to defy his husband, and the moisturiser does smell really good), he’s sliding into bed next to Shane.

Like magnets, they’re immediately drawn to each other. Ilya slings an arm around Shane’s waist under his shirt and Shane stuffs his face into Ilya’s neck, glasses and book abandoned on the nightstand. Their legs tangle automatically.

“How are you feeling, Shanya?” Ilya trails his fingers up and down the naked skin of Shane’s flank, relishing in the shudder it earns him.

“M’tired.” Shane mumbles into his collarbone.

Ilya coos at him. “Long day.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk now or in the morning?” Ilya asks gently.

Shane stiffens a little, refusing to look up at him. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Ilya doesn’t let him get away with it. “I think there is, sweetheart. I think there are many things you have not told me, and things I maybe should have noticed also. I am your husband, da? You can be honest with me.”

Shane’s hand twists in the string of Ilya’s shorts. “You won’t like it. It’s… it’s better if I don’t say anything.”

“Is a bit late for that, no?” Ilya snorts. “Anything that hurts you is no good. It will never be better if my Shanya is upset.”

“I don’t want to ask for too much,” Shane whispers into Ilya’s skin. “You’ve already… you’re so good to me.”

“No.” The word bursts out of him with enough force that Shane looks a bit startled. “You deserve everything. Everything good in my life is because of you. If you asked me for the moon, I would build rocket ship in our backyard, and then you would make angry kitten face at me for destroying our fancy grass.” He squirms when Shane nips at his collarbone in reproach, then settles back into serious mode. “Please talk to me, solnyshko. I need to know. I want to help.”

Because he knows him like the back of his hand, Ilya can feel the exact moment Shane caves.

“Okay. Okay. I guess you’ve already heard half of it anyway.”

“If we are doing this, then come here.” Ilya sweeps the blanket away and pulls his squawking husband into his lap. Shane gives a token protest before melting into him, head on his shoulder and legs taut around his waist. “I need to see your beautiful face, hmm? Most beautiful man in the whole world.”

“Ilya,” Shane whines, but his cheeks are pink.

Ilya kisses him softly. “Okay, sweetheart. Tell me everything.”

Shane takes a deep breath, visibly steeling himself. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Maybe we start with Troy. Why did you not tell me why you don’t like him?”

“I– he’s your best friend, Ilya. I know how much you care about him. How could I say anything?” Shane’s big brown eyes are already glistening with tears.

“Were you… were you worried I would not believe you?” This is the thing Ilya dreads the most.

Shane hesitates slightly. “No… No, I think I knew you would.” He shakes his head. “Maybe you didn’t know, but I never thought you would side with him. I just didn’t want you to have to choose. It wasn’t fair to you.”

“It’s not fair to you, lyubmiyy.”

“That’s just hockey.” There’s a bitter tone in Shane’s voice that Ilya has never heard before.

“What do you mean?” Ilya asks carefully. He feels a bit wrong-footed, listening to Shane talking about hockey like it’s something bad instead of the second love of his life.

Shane is glaring at the wall, tears spilling over. “It’s just… sometimes everything feels so fucking unfair. Like my whole life I’ve had to give up one thing after another. Everyone else gets to be happy, and I can’t have one thing without caveats, or having to sacrifice everything else that matters to me.”

Ilya tries not to be hurt by that. “Sweetheart…”

Shane sniffles, turning back to look at Ilya. “I know you sacrificed so much too. I can't imagine how hard it was for you. I know you did it first, and I'm so grateful, Ilya, you know I am. It's just... you got to choose to do that. It might have been my idea, but you knew you had options, and you had everyone who knew supporting you and telling you how brave you were and how much you must love me to do all that. So I was the villain for making you do it. I didn't get to choose any of this, and everything I've worked for outside of this relationship is just ashes in the wind, and everyone's acting like it's crazy that I'm not blindingly happy about this, like there were no negative consequences for me, so I'm the bad guy this time too. I don't get to have negative feelings about things without people questioning why I'm not happy enough, like I should be grateful to get more than the bare minimum.”

He takes a shuddering breath, then another, and another. Each one sounds more painful. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m just here to make you happy and–and help the Cens win, and no one cares that I don't have anything beyond that.”

God, if that isn’t the most devastating thing Ilya has heard in a long time.

He had given up a lot, Russia and Boston, his first and second homes, but that hadn’t been for Shane, not entirely. He’d had to do it for himself, too, to let himself chase happiness and believe in the happy ending. It had been difficult, but Shane, David, Yuna, and the Centaurs had stood by him while he muddled through, coming out on the other side with so much more to show for it. He’d only ever resented Shane for it at rock bottom, when his depression had twisted his own agency in the matter into something uglier, but he’d thrown himself into therapy to try to deal with it as well as he could, and he’d weathered the storm and landed in his paradise with the man of his dreams.

Only, it seems like Shane isn’t there with him. Ilya had uncharitably compared his move to Ottawa with Shane’s, but Shane’s had been less of a step forward and more of an exile. He hadn’t really considered how Shane must have felt about it, assuming he would be relieved to get away from the toxic haze that consumed Montreal in the weeks following their outing. And Shane had been relieved, had been happy to finally get to be with Ilya, but Ilya hadn’t seen just how much Shane had given up in the process.

Shane had worked his whole life to get to where he had been. He’d worked far harder than Ilya thought he needed to, as if making up for some invisible shortcoming only Shane could see. He’d poured his heart and soul into Montreal for over a decade. When Ilya had left Boston, they’d given him a tribute during his first game back in TD Garden. When Shane had fled Montreal, the fans had burned his effigy outside the Bell Centre, and half the team had been photographed posing with it.

They shouldn’t have had to give anything up to be together, but nonetheless Ilya knew how much Shane appreciated the sacrifices he had made for them. Had Ilya even considered what Shane had given up for him?

Shane looks more and more frantic as Ilya stays silent, stewing in his own head. “I do know you gave up so much for me, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful, or like… like you’re not worth it. You are worth it to me, Ilya, you have to know—but I just wish that–I’m sorry–”

“Sweetheart, you need to breathe,” Ilya says, panicked.

“Ilya–” Shane is gasping for air, clutching at Ilya’s t-shirt. He pants, doing his best to follow Ilya’s directions. Tears trickle from his eyes, seeping into Ilya’s shirt. Ilya can feel his heart jackhammering where they’re pressed chest to chest.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, lyubmiyy.” Ilya tries to be soothing, but Shane shakes his head violently.

“I know–I know I didn’t! I did everything right and I’m s-still not enough!” He cries.

“Shanya–” Ilya can feel his own thin veneer of calm slipping away. His arms are cramping from holding Shane up in this position, but there’s nothing in the world that would pull him away right now, not when Shane is crumbling apart and only Ilya is holding him together.

“Ilya– I can’t–” Shane is barely getting any air in between heaving sobs. Ilya has never seen Shane like this, and it terrifies him. He clings on, drawing patterns on his back, listening to his husband wheeze and cry more desperately than the day they’d been outed. His own eyes are hot with tears.

“Solnyshko, please. Try to follow my breathing, I don’t want to take you to hospital, please.” Ilya’s heart feels like it’s in a vice.

Shane’s fingers dig into Ilya’s skin in a way that’s sure to leave a mark. He’s rocking back and forth, just a little, and Ilya joins him, picking up a steady rhythm. He slides a hand up to cup the back of Shane’s head, tugging gently on his soft black hair, which elicits a soft whimper from his husband, and just holds him as tight as he can.

Gradually, painstakingly, Shane’s sobbing peters out, and his heartbeat slows to a normal pace.

When Shane finally speaks again, it’s not the relief Ilya had been praying for. “I’m sorry, Ilya. I don’t know how… Sometimes it hurts so much and I don’t know how to handle it.”

“Maybe you explain to me, then.” Ilya wants to know. He wants desperately to understand his husband, to crack open his chest and tear out everything that’s been hurting him and replace it with Ilya’s adoration. “I will fix for you. My Shanya… I want to understand. I want to help you like you help me.”

Shane hums, face tucked into the crook of Ilya’s neck. He takes a few minutes to start talking, probably overthinking every word. Ilya soothes himself by following the steady rhythm of Shane’s breathing.

“Something I think you don’t realise is… I— I can’t do anything wrong. I’m not allowed. If I fuck up even once, if I make one tiny mistake, it erases everything good I’ve ever done.” Shane’s voice sounds hollow and wrung out. “I trip once after spending an entire game fighting alone and suddenly all my cups and awards don’t matter; I’m just a guy who cheats and throws matches because I want to get bent over. And I’m not just me, I’m every Asian hockey player who has or will ever play for the league, so if I fuck up, I’ve fucked it up for all of them too. And I can’t be upset about it because I’m just supposed to be grateful for whatever I have.”

Shane turns his face into Ilya’s chest for a moment. His hands are trembling where they’re trapped between them. “God, Ilya… you don’t see the way they look at me. You’re… you get to be the big macho sex machine, and I’m the pathetic one who’s barely a man because I take it up the ass. That’s why Kent and Barrett used to go after me and not you. It doesn’t even matter if it’s true because that’s what people assume when they look at us, the same way they assume I have a small dick or love rice or am good at math. And now I’ve lost everyone’s respect that I fought so fucking hard to get, and I was iced out of my team, and I’m on the second line and not a captain and being paid half what I’m worth, and I know it shouldn’t matter but it’s just proving them right again that I’m not worth it… and I’m supposed to be happy about it.”

He tilts his head up to look at Ilya, eyes plaintive. “I don’t want you to think— I am happy, being with you here, but every other part of my life has just collapsed around my ears. You’re worth it to me, but I just fucking wish I didn’t have to lose everything else so I could have you, and I wish just once I could have had a fucking choice about how this all went down.”

“And now I’m here,” Shane closes his eyes, like he can’t bear looking at Ilya as he continues, “and I still have to turn the other cheek because of Troy fucking Barrett, who struts around like he belongs in my own home, who did everything I couldn’t do and so much worse and still got to have everything he ever wanted, and my face gets rubbed in it every fucking day. All I can think about when I see him wearing the pride jersey is how he used to call me a pussy or a faggot or a chink, and he gets to be celebrated while I have to pick up the pieces of my life. It— it makes me—”

Shane’s breath picks up again, but he doesn’t get to continue, because Ilya crushes their bodies together so hard it knocks the wind out of his sails. He sags in Ilya’s lap, completely out of steam, and lets his husband hold him together.

“I’m sorry.” Ilya’s voice is wet and rough, heartbroken. He shakes his head sternly when Shane goes to interrupt. “No, Shanya, I am so sorry. I have been so happy that I got to have everything I wanted that I didn’t stop to think about everything that happened to you.”

“It happened to you, too,” Shane murmurs, twisting his fingers in the soft cotton hem of Ilya’s shirt.

Ilya hums, pressing a soft kiss to his temple. “Not really. I think… I think we are having a very different experience this whole time. I know Voyageurs were terrible, but maybe I did not know how terrible it was for you all the time even before we were outed by second best Voyageur.”

Shane lets out an involuntary wet giggle. “When did Hayden get promoted?”

“When you left, there were no more good Voyageurs. So now Pike is number two. Number one is Mike the janitor, obviously.” Ilya noses at Shane’s hair, relishing in being able to make him laugh.

They sit together in silence for another few minutes before Ilya breaks it again.

“Why did you not tell me?” Ilya asks quietly.

“What?”

“I know you did not say anything about Troy for me.” Ilya replies. “You did not need to do this, I never want anything that will hurt you, but I understand why you did not say anything. Why did you not tell me about the rest of it?”

Shane chews on the collar of Ilya’s shirt. His left hand reaches up to interlace with Ilya’s. “I guess… some of it I thought you knew? This is just what hockey is like.”

“No, sweetheart, it’s not.” Ilya bites down the instinctive anger, knowing it won’t be helpful now. “This is not normal.”

“It is for me.” Shane says. He’s so matter-of-fact about it, like Ilya’s heart isn’t shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, like it’s expected to be called slurs and mocked and just have to take it. “And… sometimes it’s tiring to explain. If I bring it up, then I’m difficult, or too sensitive, or I’m supposed to be able to answer every question about microaggressions and teach people to be allies when I just want to play hockey.”

This, Ilya doesn’t really understand. He’s off-balance in the same way he had been when Sveta had torn into him about how he treated women his first few years in America and stormed off when he’d asked her what to do about it. He’ll need to call her and beg for help after all this. His father-in-law, too - if anyone would know how to be the kind of support Shane needs right now, it would be David. He doesn’t think Yuna would be able to make it understandable any better than Shane can. He isn’t sure it would be fair to ask her, anyway.

“I will learn,” he says, determined. “As your husband, I will protect you, including from micro-gressions.”

“Microaggressions,” Shane corrects, but there’s a hint of a smile on his face, which is good enough for Ilya.

“Yes,” Ilya nods, “I will fight the microaggressions with my aggression. Like biting.”

“Please don’t bite anyone,” Shane says fondly.

“No?” Ilya ducks his head, ghosting his teeth over the hollow of Shane’s throat. “Are you sure?”

He earns himself a laugh. “Not now, baby, I’m all snotty and gross.”

“My Shanya is never gross,” Ilya says, even as he backs off.

“Not even that time I got food poisoning and threw up on your shoes?”

Ilya grimaces. He’d really liked those shoes. “Maybe just one time.”

Shane’s face has lost the haunted look, though, so he counts it as a success. He gropes around on his nightstand for the wet wipes he keeps for nighttime activities, snags one, and gently wipes the tear tracks off Shane’s face.

He tosses the wipe and rolls them over until Shane’s back is on the mattress, pinned down by Ilya’s body weight. They kiss lazily for a few minutes before Ilya pulls back.

“Go to sleep, solnyshko. We can figure this out later.”

Shane is so obviously exhausted that he doesn’t have a retort, eyes sliding shut just moments after Ilya rearranges them into a more comfortable position. Ilya is sure he won’t be able to sleep, too keyed up by Shane’s confessions, but the second he closes his eyes, he’s out.

Ilya sleeps fitfully. He jolts awake more than once, remnants of dreams slipping through his fingers, even though he knows with absolute certainty they’re about Shane. The warm weight in his arms is comforting.

In his sleep, Shane looks so much younger. It’s the peaceful expression, sweet and unguarded, the way he rarely is anywhere but alone with Ilya. Ilya’s heart hurts thinking about all the times Shane had to bite his tongue or make himself smaller and Ilya hadn’t noticed. Instead, Ilya had been inviting someone he hated around so regularly that Shane had had to hide away in his own home. The guilt gnaws viciously on his stomach.

In the privacy of his own thoughts, Ilya had sometimes considered Shane selfish and melodramatic. Ilya had arguably been the one with more to lose, with Russia looming large over their relationship, and he had been all for coming out, sick of hiding in the shadows. He’d been sure the league couldn’t be that bad, not when the Bears and the Centaurs had provided such warmth and safety in spite of everything, except…

Shane had been right, in the end.

Every worry that Ilya had dismissed as catastrophising, every fear that choked Shane whenever Ilya brought up coming out, had come to pass. Ilya had witnessed the Voyageurs’ gradual, inexorable decline from bad teammates to genuine threats to Shane’s safety once he had come out; it had only gotten worse once Ilya was added to the equation, and the less said about the fallout of their playoff series, the better. The commissioner’s relentless homophobia had been their proverbial sword of Damocles for months until Farah and Yuna had fended him off with whispers of a discrimination lawsuit. Online blowback had been deafening, and even those who supported them asked such invasive questions that Ilya had uninstalled Twitter for the first time in his career. They had weathered it together, but Ilya could see the toll it had taken on Shane, who had barely eaten or slept for weeks before the frenzy died down. It was becoming more and more clear to Ilya that Shane had a lot more to worry about than Ilya had ever been privy to, if he had been treated so badly even before being outed.

He’d been right to worry about Ilya, too. They had gotten the ball rolling on his Canadian PR application when he’d moved to the Centaurs, but it had still been up in the air when everyone found out about them. If it hadn’t been for Shane’s doomsday planning (which Ilya, ashamedly, had never paid attention to - he’d never even opened that tab on the spreadsheet), Ilya would have been in serious legal trouble. Russia had revoked his passport within a week, but Shane had been armed and ready with asylum paperwork and his father’s contacts in the IRCC. Ilya hadn’t wanted to think of Russia as a threat anymore, convinced that the bubble of a supportive Canadian team would protect him, that he could just marry Shane if all else failed. If Shane hadn’t loved Ilya so much, if he hadn’t been Hollander-level prepared… Ilya didn’t want to think about it.

All this throws every argument they’ve ever had into harsh perspective. Ilya winces internally when he remembers how savage he had been that Boxing Day. He’d been at the end of his rope and taken it out on Shane, who’d given as good as he got, but they’d never really talked about it after. Ilya had never apologised for that, or for any of the other times he’d tried to rush Shane out of the closet at Ilya’s pace. He’d never seen how much Shane had been going through on his own, how much he was also risking just to be with Ilya. It makes him queasy to think about it now.

Ilya is going to fix this. He’s going to make things right with Shane. He’s going to destroy every single person who has ever made Shane sad; he’ll fight the whole damn league if he has to.

By the time his alarm goes off, he has some semblance of a plan. His first priority is to take care of his husband, so he lunges for the phone, silencing it before Shane wakes up, then slips out of bed to start the day.

When he gets back to their bedroom, Shane is sitting upright against the headboard, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “What time is it?” The tightness around his eyes betrays his incoming migraine. He’s still adorable with his puffy face and bedhead.

“11:30am. Will need to leave for practice soon.” Ilya hands Shane his smoothie and some ibuprofen, getting a kiss for his efforts.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Shane grumbles. He downs the pills and sips his smoothie, humming happily when he tastes the mango.

Ilya brushes Shane’s bangs away from his eyes, then traces a line over his freckles. “You are not going to practice today.”

“Ilya, it’s not optional.” Shane bats his hand away, but there’s a ghost of a smile on his face.

“Sweetheart, you had two serious panic attacks in one night.” Ilya reasons. “You are not well enough for practice.”

“What if I want to go?” Shane says, staring Ilya down.

Ilya sighs. “If you want to go, lyubmiyy, then you go. I am not your keeper. But your husband is worried about you. You did not get any good rest last night.”

Shane slumps, giving in so easily it’s clear he didn’t want to go anyway. He’s probably not even aware that he’s pouting, lips red from where he’d been worrying them. “You don’t think it makes me look weak?”

Ilya feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “Solnyshko, you are the best player in the league. You will survive without one practice.”

Shane gives him a watery smile. It’s a testament to how awful they both feel that they’re not up to their usual banter. “Okay. Just this once, I’ll listen to my captain.” Or maybe not.

Ilya growls, stalking forward to crowd Shane against the headboard. “My baby is bratty today, hm?”

Shane presses a quick kiss to Ilya’s lips before pushing him away. “You’d better get going, baby. Don’t want to be late.”

“Hmm,” Ilya bullies his way back into Shane’s space, nosing at his neck and making him laugh. “Maybe you should come after all. Need more time to work on your terrible backhand.”

Shane scoffs, tugging gently on Ilya’s curls. “Asshole. You know my backhand is the best in the league.”

They kiss for a few more minutes before Ilya reluctantly peels himself away. He loves hockey, but leaving Shane behind feels like torture every time. He’d crawl right back into bed with Shane if he didn’t think both of them missing practice would stress Shane out more. Besides, he has some business to take care of. “I’ll be back straight after practice. I fed Anya already so you don’t have to get up properly yet. Please try and sleep, okay? And maybe call your mama later. I love you.”

Shane smiles indulgently at him. “Thank you, baby. Ya tebya lyublyu. I’ll call Mom for lunch.” Another kiss and Ilya finally gets up to go.

“Also, Ilya?”

Ilya stops in the doorway. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“Don’t kill Barrett. We need him for the power play.”

Ilya huffs a laugh. “No promises.”

Chapter End Notes

kinda living for ilya realising he is, in fact, a white man

i don’t think ilya is a selfish guy, but it does feel like he minimises shane’s problems sometimes in the books (especially his ED and his fear of being out). even here, he’s limited by his own worldview, no matter that shane is trying to lay everything out for him. he's still thinking things like "shane works harder than he needs to" because to him it's a given that shane will be afforded the appropriate respect for things he's achieved, whereas shane's reality is that he has to work twice as hard to get half the credit. it’s a failure of their mutual communication that they couldn’t explain themselves well enough to help the other understand so they could compromise (until now, kind of), but miscommunications happen. many of their miscommunications can be exacerbated by their mental illnesses as well (anxiety and depression can make it hard to reach out and to be receptive). however, i will not stand for shane slander for not wanting to come out. there’s NOTHING selfish about wanting to stay in the closet, even if shane didn’t have very compelling reasons to do so (and he definitely does).

so much of this is rachel reid not knowing what it’s like to be the identities she assigned to shane, and the weight he carries and challenges he faces as a result. i think it’s important that ilya has this revelation about what shane has been dealing with, or he’ll never understand shane the way he needs to to make their relationship work.

onto chapter 3! apologies, allyship, and violence against voyageurs <3 it’s not finished yet, so if you guys have anything you want to see, let me know! can’t promise i’ll do it but we’ll see :)

come say hi on twitter, i need more friends who are into HR so i don’t go crazy (sorry L for always harassing you with ideas at 4am or while we’re at work)

Chapter 3: Twice As Good

Chapter Summary

“Thank you for telling me this, solnyshko,” he says. “I don’t know how much I can help, but I will be by your side no matter what. There is nothing I will not support you for, okay? You tell me everything from now on.” Ilya strokes a thumb over Shane’s cheek.

Shane leans into his hand. Ilya’s touch is so warm, so protective, and it settles over Shane like a weighted blanket, soft and cozy. If Shane has to deal with a world that hates him, at least he has Ilya by his side; Shane wouldn’t give him up for anything.

Chapter Notes

buckle up, folks, this chapter has it all! existential doubt about your purpose in life, struggling to understand and relate to your parents who tried their best but are still flawed, and long-overdue conversations between husbands

anyway, tread lightly: shane hollander is not a reliable narrator in terms of his own experiences because he’s been taught to minimise and internalise everything. take his self-deprecating thoughts here with a huge helping of salt - thanks to therapy, shane is trying to as well, but it’s slow going

this is the longest chapter by FAR - i did want to edit it down more but i couldn’t find anything more to cut. i think the conversation between shane and ilya is so important and needed to be long and gratuitous, so hopefully you guys like it!

please note that the chapter count has changed again. i’ve completely lost control of this fic… this chapter is a lot of talking and getting everyone to finally be on the same page, the “fix” (as much as things can be fixed) and promised violence against voyageurs will now come in later chapters :)

p.s. i'm glad so many people noticed the thing about troy's shoes in chapters 1 and 2! removing shoes in households is a common asian custom, and having troy ignore that and dirty the floor thoughtlessly felt like a good microcosm of his careless attitude towards shane's identity and how he inflicts damage that means nothing to him but so much to shane. there's lots of these little tidbits throughout all 3 chapters and i love when you guys talk about them in the comments!!

The next day, practice is run-of-the-mill. No one seems bothered by him skipping the day before; Shane braces himself when Wiebe pulls him aside, but their coach just wants to check up on him. Theriault would rather have been shot point-blank in the face than ask Shane how he was doing.

The only major change is how protective Ilya is being. He’s been hovering over Shane’s shoulder, just barely in reach, non-stop since they’d arrived at the rink. He’d damn near growled when Chouinard had checked Shane into the boards during a scrimmage, even though Shane had been playing for the opposing team. Something on Ilya’s face must give away that he’s not in the mood for teasing, because the chirping is kept to a minimum, even if Shane can hear the rookies tittering in the corner when Ilya trails after Shane like a lost dog.

Barrett, conversely, has all but blended with the wallpaper. He seems to be making a concerted effort to ensure Shane can’t even see him, which is a weird if not unwelcome change of pace. This has the added consequence of Ilya and Barrett not speaking at all despite playing on the same line, and their usually impeccable passes are abysmal. The urge to apologise and help them make nice is eating away at Shane, though he knows Ilya wouldn’t let him.

All in all, it’s not the jovial atmosphere the Centaurs are used to, and Shane feels two centimetres tall when he realises he’s the catalyst (again, his mind reminds him traitorously, you’re always messing up team dynamics). He carefully doesn’t say anything to Ilya when they curl up together that night, but Ilya is paying him more attention than ever before and picks up on it anyway.

“Lyubmiyy, you cannot be guilty about this. It is not your fault,” Ilya reasons when they’re in the privacy of their bedroom, and Shane wants to believe him.

The problem is, it’s always on Shane to make things work for others. He hadn’t been a loud kid, but he had tried to stand up for himself in the beginning. In Timbits, he reported when the older kids stole his stuff and dumped it in a pond, and Coach Lindon had marked him as a ‘poor team player’. Third grade, he told a teacher about how some of the other children were making fun of his lunch and had gotten a scolding for his trouble. By the time his U13 team defaced his locker after a scout spent the entire session ignoring them in favour of watching Shane, he’d figured out how to bite his tongue and slink home alone.

His dad had wiped his tears and his mom had made him a hot chocolate. “Chin up,” she’d told Shane, breath fogging in the winter air. “You just have to be twice as good so they can’t push you aside.”

Those words had become a mantra for him. Twice as good, and they’ll give you a chance. Twice as good, and they’ll finally see you. Except he had been ten times as good, and it hadn’t really mattered, in the end.

Shane doesn’t know how to tell Ilya any of this in a way that might help him understand. He settles for a noise he hopes sounds convincing enough.

Ilya isn’t in a mood to let things go. “Shanya, tell me it is not your fault.”

He does this sometimes, when Shane is stuck in his own head. Saying the words aloud helps Shane internalise them a bit better than when they come from Ilya, who loves him so much he can barely give him a genuine critique. Usually, Shane is eager to follow orders and soak up Ilya’s praise, and sometimes ends up believing it by accident. Unfortunately for Ilya, Shane isn’t in that headspace right now.

“You need to be a good captain, baby. You can’t prioritise me over the team.”

Ilya sits up abruptly, dislodging Shane. He turns his bedside light on and Shane squints at him, offended by the glare.

“No, Shane,” Ilya says, and Shane knows it’s serious because Ilya barely uses his actual name anymore. “When I said vows, I told you you are the most important thing in my life. Not hockey, not the team, you. I will never put someone else before you.”

The raw sincerity in his voice makes Shane flush. Ilya’s declarations of love are so open and straightforward that there’s never any room to doubt him. Not that Shane would. He squeezes Ilya’s hand three times, a silent I love you.

Still, that doesn’t address the elephant in the room. “Me too, baby, but we can’t continue like this. The others have realised something’s wrong, and we won’t be able to win against LA next week if we don’t get it together.”

Ilya sighs. “You are right as always, lyubmiyy.” He drums his fingers against Shane’s thigh. “I will talk to Troy again tomorrow.”

“Again?” Shane yawns. “When did you talk to him before?”

Ilya just gives him a look. Right, the day Shane stayed home. Shane isn’t sure how much of Barrett avoiding him is his guilt and how much is genuine fear Ilya might kill him.

“Can you play with him?”

“I’ve been playing with him the whole time, Ilya.” It’s Shane’s turn to give his husband an exasperated look.

Ilya frowns. “Right.”

“I think the question is whether he can play with me.” Shane plays with his husband’s fingers, contemplative. Ilya and Barrett are acting like Shane is a ticking time bomb, liable to explode if he makes eye contact with another bigot, but Shane had been serious earlier when he’d said this was normal for him. As far as he’s concerned, not much has really changed other than those two, at least in terms of hockey.

Ilya turns the light off and lies back down, draping himself over Shane like a limpet. “I will talk to him tomorrow,” he repeats. They drift off to sleep together.

Ilya is as good as his word. By the next morning, he and Barrett are back to their usual level of synchronisation, though perhaps a degree frostier than normal. Barrett actually approaches Shane a few days later when they’re about to exit the building.

“Listen, Hollander,” he says, nervous but determined. “I know you don’t like me, and I get it. I’ll make myself scarce as much as I can when you’re around, but I won’t do you the disservice of making this a problem on the ice. And… if you ever do want to hear it, I’d like to apologise to you. Properly, this time.”

Then he skitters away like a particularly anxious crab.

The sentiment should make Shane happy, or at least pleased, but it nags at him long enough for Ilya to notice and threaten to kill Barrett again. It’s not that Shane thinks the apology is unwarranted, but he’s torn about whether he wants to hear it at all.

Apologies are weird for Shane. He’d been forced to give more than one for being too ‘disruptive’ or ‘not trying hard enough to fit in’, and most he’d received were either cloyingly insincere or more about absolution than forgiveness. Shane just doesn’t know what he wants from Barrett, and it makes his insides twist uncomfortably when he thinks about it too long. Nicole, his therapist, had said something about feeling responsible for managing others’ guilt when he’d panic-booked an emergency session after stewing alone at home. She’s probably right; it feels almost like a responsibility he has to shoulder instead of an olive branch he can accept.

Nonetheless, he can’t help but be relieved. Barrett’s penance has helped him mend bridges with Ilya, who is almost back to his usual self. Shane feels a bit less wrong-footed now that the dark cloud hovering over Ilya has mostly dissipated.

Barrett’s jittery overture is actually the third apology he’s received in as many days, not counting Ilya; both Hayden and JJ had reached out to him to talk yesterday. That itself isn’t unusual, except they had been especially profuse about their contrition: JJ for feeding the post-trip Montreal locker room frenzy, Hayden for holding out on accepting Ilya and therefore Shane, both for having any expectation that they were owed a coming out (either as a gay man or as a gay man in a relationship). They had been almost forceful in their conviction that they loved him and wanted him to be happy, even if he wasn’t playing hockey with them any longer. Their earnest reassurances had nearly brought him to tears, and he’d spent the rest of the evening with his face buried in Anya’s fur, trying to fit all his big feelings into his body.

Too many pieces are shifting all at once, even though Shane himself has tried not to, and so many people are acting outside of the boxes he’s put them in. Yelling at Barrett, then coming clean to Ilya, then reliving his hurts with JJ and Hayden had been exhausting, and now that he’s come out the other side of the social minefield of his own creation, he just feels empty. None of what’s happened has been especially bad, but it’s a lot to deal with at the same time.

As with all things he doesn’t know how to handle, he goes to his mom.

Yuna Hollander is a force of nature by whom Shane spent his whole life sheltered. The ‘tiger mom’ comparisons people made constantly never daunted her, only spurred her to throw more effort into protecting Shane whenever she could. Now that he’s an adult, he can appreciate how she isn’t perfect, how sometimes her encouragement warps into pressure, but there isn’t a single problem Shane could face that she couldn’t tear to shreds.

She arrives in a flurry of schedules and sponsorship emails, but they work through those quickly. They end up curled up together on the couch, Shane’s head in her lap like he’s six again and crying over a bruise. Ilya has disappeared to hang out with his dad (it warms Shane’s heart, the relationship they have, especially when he knows how awful Ilya’s own father had been), probably to cook or do puzzles, leaving the house to Shane. He’s grateful for it now, unsure how to balance his mom’s solidarity with Ilya’s heartfelt but clumsy desire to understand him.

His mom’s hand cards through his hair gently. She clearly knows something’s wrong, probably has ever since Shane had called her for lunch last week instead of going to practice, even if he hadn’t said anything incriminating. “What happened, baby?”

She lets him sit quietly for a moment. She’s good about that, knowing when to push and when to pull back - hard-won skills from a lifetime of getting it wrong.

Shane doesn’t know where to start. He says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Do you think I was a bad captain?”

His mom seems taken aback by the non-sequitur but takes it in stride nonetheless. “No, honey, I don’t think so.”

Shane keeps going anyway. “I think I might have been. I couldn’t even tell they hated me.”

Shane didn’t have the best track record with telling when people actually liked him. His closest childhood friend, Joshua, had been adamant they would be friends forever, right until he decided Shane was a freak and didn’t want to play with him anymore. His youth hockey team had all promised to come to his birthday party then bailed, leaving a ten-year-old Shane to skate circles on the rink with just his dad. The less said about the first few years of his relationship with Ilya, the better.

The Voyageurs had been family to Shane. Then they had turned around and spat on him for falling in love.

“I’m not sure that matters,” she replies. “All those guys are assholes, anyway.”

For Shane, it isn’t as simple as hating his old team - that’s what Ilya could never really understand. They had been assholes, but they had also been so important to him. He spent a decade with those men, and it would never stop hurting that they had been able to throw him away so easily. Shane had made a speech at Andrew’s wedding. He had been among the first to hold Carson’s baby, and had gifted little Shannon the blanket she still slept with now. He had sat with Patrice for hours when he found out his father passed away during a roadie. He really had loved them. He’s just humiliated that they didn’t love him back.

This too is a sore spot for Yuna Hollander, who had, until 2021, been the number one Voyageurs fan in the country.

His mom had been the biggest advocate for putting in the hard work to bond with his team, insisting that things would fall into place if he did. What she didn’t say, but Shane had always heard, was that he needed to work at being more palatable, more normal, less of an outsider in every possible way, so that he could fit in with them. When he’d told her he wanted to come out to them, she had reminded him to bring it up as little as he could so he didn’t alienate himself too much. She had been positive the Voyageurs would rally behind Shane; he felt like he had let her down when they didn’t. She hates them now, but she had loved them too, and she’d been vocal about not understanding why they weren’t there for Shane without realising she was accidentally twisting the knife.

“Shane?” His mom asks, pulling him back to reality. “Not that it’s not important, but why are we talking about this now?”

So Shane caves and tells her everything that had happened in the last week. Haltingly, stumbling through the worst of it as fast as he can, doubling back to give context, but he thinks he gets the point across. Barrett, Ilya, Montreal, the league, everything he had kept from her or watered down to spare her feelings. The tight knot of hurt-confusion-anger-guilt that throbs in his chest like a living thing. He bares his soul, steadfastly avoiding her eyes.

His mom looks devastated. “Oh, baby… why didn’t you tell me?”

The thing Shane doesn’t know how to explain is just how fucking ashamed he is. He’s sure everyone will tell him not to be, that he didn’t do anything wrong, that others should be ashamed instead, but he can’t help it. It was already mortifying, to be given the cold-shoulder following his coming out, to realise that the solid team he had built around him was just a house of cards. Over and over again, Shane gets slapped in the face with the reality that he just doesn’t understand people, like when Hayden had to gently point out all the ways Shane had been left out by the Voyageurs since rookie season while Shane had been living in blissful ignorance in his delusion of camaraderie. He had been blindsided when they outed him to the entire league, even before they knew about the Ilya of it all, after he trusted them to come out, though he really shouldn’t have. He had known they could be shitty, had heard the slurs thrown around, but he’d always believed (hoped, prayed) that they would be different if it was him, that they would look past it to see their star centre, their captain, their friend. Every time something happens, Shane realises that he’s so fucking stupid, but then he goes and makes the same mistake again.

The FanMail incident had been less of a violent explosion and more of an earthquake shaking the foundations of Shane’s life. It had been the final nail in his coffin, getting fucked by Ilya Rozanov next to faggot, chink, freak. The curtains had been violently pulled back and Shane had had to come to terms with the rot underneath, while dealing with pressure on all sides from management, fans, and the league in the span of a few months. The worst part was that all of it was Shane’s fault - Shane had been too dumb to see the inevitable, too stubborn to acknowledge what was happening right in front of him, too naive in assuming everything would proceed according to plan, too selfish to let Ilya go. And now it’s landed him here, where he should be happy enough, but he’s fumbling with that too, messing with Ilya’s friendships, stressing his husband out, playing hockey on the second line with no letter on his chest to show for it.

He’s spent his whole life trying desperately to be perfect, and he keeps failing, again and again and again. He’s a failure, and he’s so deeply ashamed of it.

The words choke him. He doesn’t know how to say any of this to his mom, who’s been his biggest cheerleader since day one. She and his dad are the reason he worked so hard in the first place - he wanted to make them proud, but he failed at that too.

Shane doesn’t realise he’s crying until he feels his mom’s fingers gently sweeping tears off his face.

“Honey,” she says, eyes soft, “take a deep breath. We can fix it together, okay?”

He closes his eyes and nods, sniffling.

When Shane has calmed down enough, he opens his eyes to look up at her. She’s staring down at him, sadness etched deep into her face.

“Mom…” he trails off, voice wrecked.

She blinks back tears. The hand in his hair is shaking a little. “Baby, I’m so sorry you’ve been going through this alone.”

He could never stand to see her cry. “No, mom, don’t, it’s my fault for not saying anything–”

“Shane,” she says sternly. “None of this is your fault.” She says it like it’s an absolute truth, and it hurts because Shane wants to believe her. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t see how much you were struggling. I know that I… I always had high expectations of you, and that probably didn’t make things easier.”

Shane turns his face into her leg, guilty and ashamed and angry. “It’s not your fault either.”

His mom sighs, bone-deep and weary. “And yet these fucking things keep happening, huh.” She coaxes him into a sitting position, and he goes, hugging his knees and leaning on her just a little. “What do you want to do, then? How do we play this?”

Shane honestly isn’t sure. He wishes he could go back in time and avoid Barrett so he could continue to dodge the issue. He wishes the commissioner and all the other bigots would just give up so he and his husband could exist in peace. A tiny part of him wishes he could just stop playing hockey and run away with Ilya where they would never be bothered again. None of these wishes have any hope of coming true.

“I don’t know,” he says, resigned. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.” He looks up at her. “I guess I just wanted to talk to my mom about it.”

She gives him a watery smile. “When you were born, I swore to David that I would become Prime Minister if I had to, just so I could make sure nothing would ever get in your way.”

Shane laughs. “You still could.”

His mom pinches his thigh. “Maybe league commissioner would be more relevant.” She’s silent for a moment. “I used to pray that you would look like him, not me.”

“Who, Crowell?” Shane says, just to be annoying.

She swats at him. “Your father, obviously. I thought it would be easier for you, with your last name, but then you came out looking like a tiny version of me. I never wanted that for you. I always hoped that the league would catch up enough that it wouldn’t matter, but…” The rest goes unsaid.

“What should I do, mom?” He toys with a loose string on the sleeve of her jacket. “I feel like everything I do just makes things worse, but I can’t un-open this can of worms, especially now that Ilya is involved. I don’t even know if I want to, but I’m scared things will get worse if I keep pushing.”

She hums thoughtfully. “Logistically… Changing anything with the team will be messy, and it’ll draw a lot of attention. We both know you’re an exceptional player, and that you took more than a few hits coming here - any sports analyst without their head up their ass can see that’s true - but I don’t know how we make any meaningful change this season. Maybe next season, or in two years when your contracts are up again.” She takes his hand. “You deserve better, honey. I know Ilya thinks so too. But before we can take any steps, I think you two need to have a long discussion about everything first.”

Nothing she’s said is news to Shane; he’d gone over the issue dozens of times in his head and always arrived at the conclusion that there’s not much he can do. It hurts that there’s no magic solution that lets him have what he wants without tearing Ilya down, then he resigns himself to that hurt because he’s learned that this is his lot in life, then he feels guilty for his resignation when everyone else seems to want to push for more for his sake. It’s a vicious cycle that always ends the same way: with Shane feeling like shit.

His mom is right, though. He does need to talk to Ilya.

He spends the rest of his afternoon basking in the warmth of his mother’s care and workshopping ways to explain himself and his needs to Ilya tactfully. By the time she leaves, he does feel a little lighter; it’s a small comfort to know Shane’s hurts are now in the open, and the important people in his life are or will be on the same page about it, even if a fix seems so far out of reach.

When Ilya gets back home, he seems almost as wrung out as Shane. By mutual unspoken agreement, they decide to put a hold on addressing the problems hanging over their heads, instead having a quiet dinner and collapsing into bed so early that Anya gets confused. Shane blacks out near instantly and dreams he’s drowning, over and over and over again.

When his alarm goes off at 6:30am, it doesn’t feel at all like he’s slept for nine hours, but he drags himself out of bed anyway, determined not to break routine. He goes for a run, makes breakfast, showers with Ilya, and powers through practice, all the while thinking about the inevitable Serious Conversation awaiting him at the end of the day.

They’d driven in separately because Ilya was supposed to have a routine medical check-up after practice, but that gets rescheduled once they find out Terry has the flu, so they leave for home at the same time. Shane pulls into their driveway a reasonable half an hour later only to discover his husband is nowhere to be seen, despite almost certainly speeding on his way back. Shane shrugs it off, greeting a boisterous Anya and getting a head start on reheating the dinner their chef had made; Ilya will explain when he gets home.

Not ten minutes later, Shane hears Ilya’s Audi roar into their garage. As always, Ilya enters the house with a racket, keys jangling and footsteps thudding against their entryway rug.

“Lyubmiyy, where are you?” He calls.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Shane replies. He waits for Ilya to round the corner. “Where were you? You took ages, you’re getting slow in your old age.”

When Shane turns around, Ilya is standing in the doorway, holding a huge bouquet of amaryllis. Shane melts at his cheeky grin. His husband is so sweet, even if getting flowers while he stands in their kitchen doing dishes makes him feel a bit like a 1950s housewife.

“Thank you, baby. You didn’t have to.” Shane gives him a quick kiss. He takes the flowers from Ilya, peeling away the wrapping so he can slip them into a vase, while Ilya takes over the cooking.

Ilya scoffs. “What, I cannot spoil my beautiful husband? You bought me flowers two weeks ago.”

Shane had. They had been lilies, too, because Shane is a sucker for a good motif.

“Oh, so you’re just trying to one-up me, is that it?”

Ilya doesn’t take the bait. “I just wanted to show that I love you.” He reaches over the counter to pull Shane onto his tiptoes and into another kiss.

The domesticity smooths over something jagged in Shane’s soul. They fall into their usual groove, working around each other habitually, and dinner is ready on the table before too long.

Ilya pulls Shane’s chair out for him with a flourish, embellishing with a deep bow when Shane rolls his eyes. He lets Ilya fuss over him, pouring him a ginger ale and serving him food before he finally sits down.

“Are we going to talk now?” Ilya asks, looking at him steadily.

Shane sighs. “This is as good a time as any, I guess.”

“Okay,” Ilya says. “I have something that I need to say to you first. I am invoking cottage honesty rules.”

Shane makes an encouraging noise as he tucks into his salad so Ilya ploughs on.

“I think…” Ilya speaks slowly, like he’s trying to find the best way to voice his thoughts. “I think honesty is not enough. I think we have not lied to each other, but we are still not so good at saying what we need to say.”

Shane nods. He’s self-aware enough to know he and Ilya aren’t the best at communicating - they’re working at it, individually and together, but sometimes they’re coming from such different places that they miss each other entirely.

Ilya continues. “There are many things I have assumed about you, and maybe you have assumed about me, and I think this is maybe why I missed the things that were happening to you. I talked to David today, and he told me he spent many years learning how to see through Yuna’s eyes. Shanya,” he reaches out to place his hand over Shane’s, “I will spend my whole life learning how to see you better if I have to. I’m sorry I wasn’t trying before.”

Shane can’t swallow around the lump in his throat. He feels completely, utterly naked, and yet he knows that it’s always been safe for him to be bare before Ilya. The weight on his hand is grounding, and Ilya gives him a moment to collect himself before he goes on.

“I want to finish saying this before you stop me, because I think you will say I don’t need to apologise, okay?” He waits for Shane’s nod. “I am sorry for pushing you to come out of the closet.”

Shane’s protest is quelled by a look from Ilya. “For a long time, I did not know why you didn’t want to come out. Of course there was the league and Russia, but I was always thinking that it was worth it for me, and that you did not have as much to lose, so I could not understand why you wanted to be secret. I was worried for long time that you did not think I was worth it, so I wanted it like… like proof. I know I pushed you very hard, and I am seeing now that it was selfish.”

“I was selfish then, too.” Shane murmurs. “I couldn’t see how much you were suffering.”

“I was good at hiding it,” Ilya says wryly.

“So was I.”

“We both hid because we did not want to cause problems, yes?” Ilya squeezes his hand and Shane gives him a sad smile. “For me, I worried I was too much, but then I was upset that you could not see.”

Shane strokes his thumb over the back of Ilya’s hand. “You’ve never been too much. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Ilya responds automatically. “And I am sorry. Talking to you, and to David and to Troy… I did not realise then how much you also had to deal with. If I had known then, maybe I would have been kinder to you.”

“You were always kind to me,” Shane argues. “I don’t blame you for being upset with me sometimes. I know… I know you gave up a lot to be with me.”

Ilya smiles. “You are worth everything. But I should not have kept score.”

Finally hearing Ilya say it aloud both validates and terrifies Shane. He had been petrified, for a long time, that Ilya would look back at the things Shane had cost him - his home country, his first team, his safety - and decide Shane wasn’t worth it. Now that they’re married, that’s been mostly put to bed, but the lingering worry Ilya could grow to resent him wars with Shane’s sad but vindicated belief that he had had just as much to lose. He had never known how to say any of that to Ilya.

“When the video came out,” Ilya goes on, “I know it was so bad at first. But after some time, it became good again. I got to be with you, and tell my team the truth, and everything was mostly good for me, so I thought that maybe it wasn’t so bad in the end.”

Shane stays quiet, not sure what to say. The video had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He had already been living on the edge, adrift ever since his teammates had “accidentally” let it slip to other locker rooms that Shane had come out, and the FanMail had dealt the final blow. Ilya had been his only anchor as one by one Shane’s footholds had disappeared beneath him - his team, his legacy, his reputation. Then he had spiralled into feeling guilty for being so self-pitying when Ilya had lost access to his mother’s grave. It’s jarring to hear Ilya's perspective be so different.

Ilya pauses to take a sip of his coke. “When I first moved to America, a lot of people made fun because of my accent. I know they thought I was stupid. But they still did not say half the things to me that they said to Sveta, and I only realised because I visited her at her office. When I said this to her, she told me of course, Ilyusha, because you do not look properly.” He looks at Shane balefully. “I did not look properly again this time. I did not see how things were so bad for you, with Montreal, or now with being on new team and not captain or top-paid player.”

“Baby…” Shane starts, but trails off. He wants to assure Ilya, but he also wants him to continue. He feels seen for the first time in a while.

“I say this because I know there are many things I do not know about you and the things that happen to you.” Ilya says resolutely. “I want you to know that you can tell me, even if it is hard. I do not want you to try and spare my feelings about this and then suffer alone. Tell me how I can support you, solnyshko.”

Shane blinks. Ilya is watching him expectantly.

“I don’t want to post so much about our relationship.” Shane blurts out, instead of following the neat bullet-point list.

Ilya looks a bit hurt so he rushes to continue. “It’s not that I don't want to talk about us at all. I love you and I do love that we can just be open now. It’s just… people online are so invasive. Even the people who support us are always digging into our personal lives like we’re not really people. I hate that, and the videos Harris makes usually make it worse. I want to be the guy who has a husband he can talk about without it being a major headline every time.”

“So… that we are married is okay, but nothing too private?” Ilya asks. “We can talk to Harris and make sure he only posts things that do not make you uncomfortable.”

There’s a small part of Shane that wants to be able to post Ilya all over his socials and shout about his love from the rooftops, the way Ilya does for him. He knows that he loves Ilya a lot more privately, that his devotion is less visible, and he does want to prove that he adores his husband just as much, now that he can do it for everyone to see, except…

Shane is frequently uncomfortable with social media in general, because it feels like being put under a microscope and dissected for the whole world to ogle. It doesn’t help that there’s no reliable way to seal off the bigotry that inundates his comments section, let alone the supposedly supportive comments he receives which are mystifying at best and backhanded at worst.

Shane has always had some trouble parsing out when people were being insincere or sarcastic - the apparent loathing everyone has for speaking plainly drives him mad. Even his mother had had to sit him down and explain that she was chirping him by calling Ilya her favourite son, when, on a particularly bad day, with Shane deep in a spiral about always falling short, her saying she would choose Ilya over him had hit too close to home.

“I love you both,” she had said, voice gentle but firm, “and Ilya is like a second son to me, but I could never replace Irina in his heart, just like he could never replace you in mine. You will always be my baby boy. I’m sorry that I haven’t said that enough.”

(It’s one of the things he loves most about Ilya. He’s clear and direct with Shane, and he never makes Shane feel bad about it.)

Social media amplifies all of this to a horrifying degree. In person, Shane can get by - he might not be the most savvy, but he can handle himself socially. Navigating Instagram or Twitter by comparison is like stumbling through a minefield of weird metaphors, bizarre ideology, and disingenuous insults that leave Shane dizzy and frustrated. Regardless of how they present it, hundreds of thousands of people feeling entitled to comment on the most private parts of himself and his relationship makes him nauseous.

Whether they worship or revile him matters little to Shane. He hates how being with Ilya changes him in other people’s eyes, never mind that they had found each other before they started their careers. They make assumptions about who he is, just because he’s gay and married to Ilya; none of his achievements seem to matter much anymore. Even his parents had questioned his competitive integrity when they had found out, despite being the people who knew him best - it shouldn’t be so surprising that people still accuse Shane of cheating even now, but it never stops feeling awful. Yet another subsection of fans are voracious for content of Shane and Ilya, holding them more akin to dolls they can play with than full-grown professional athletes. His clean-cut reputation had been a shield for a long time, a way to say nothing to see here, and now it’s in tatters, leaving him exposed to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who see him as a concept to exalt, vilify, or rally behind.

Shane would rather not deal with any of it - not the haters, not the fans, not the discourse - but he knows that’s not the world he lives in, and more importantly, he knows how important being open is to Ilya.

“You can keep posting whatever you want,” he says instead of trying to explain any of that. “I trust you. It’s mostly the Centaurs content for now - I want us to just get to be Shane and Ilya, you know?”

Ilya nods. “This makes sense.” He hesitates a bit, looking a little sheepish. “I looked through all the comments on your posts.”

“Oh?” Shane isn’t sure where Ilya is going with this.

“I did not realise,” Ilya says, a smidge guilty, “that people online treated you so differently from me.”

Shane is hyper-aware of the difference, even if he prefers not to go online much. It’s the same difference that weaves through their careers, their fan interactions, their standings among the league. It’s the reason Shane always works himself so hard.

Twice as good so they can’t push you aside.

Since his rookie season, Shane had always been under more scrutiny than all the other players around him, and he had no delusions as to why. He had done whatever he could to build himself into someone they couldn’t ignore, partly out of necessity, but mostly because he couldn’t settle for less, and it had mostly worked.

For a long time, hockey had loved Shane Hollander, even if no one really cared about Shane. Now, even Shane Hollander isn’t good enough.

“Right.” He shrugs a little.

Ilya studies him. “You are not upset by this.”

“What’s the point? This is how it’s always been.” Shane pushes his salad around with his fork, not picking anything up.

“You said that the other day,” Ilya continues, “that it is normal for you. But it should not be.”

“I know that, Ilya.” Shane breathes deeply, trying to stay calm and collected. “It shouldn’t, but it is.”

“Yes, but it should not–”

“I know!” Shane realises he’s raised his voice, and he closes his eyes briefly before giving Ilya an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I just– I know that. But it’s always like this, and that’s not going to change. The fans or even other players aren’t going to be nicer just because someone tells them off. The league isn’t going to back off just because we ignore their statements and win games.”

Ilya looks at him, concerned. “You think the league is going to make trouble?”

Shane makes a face. “I think they’re watching and waiting for us to slip up. Mom told me earlier that Crowell’s office has been regularly requesting ‘updates’ about us and any ‘personal campaigns’ we might run, and the league has put out more statements about us than every other player combined in the last few months. They don’t like who we are or what we represent. Crowell is a dinosaur.”

“No, Crowell is disgusting pig-man,” Ilya disagrees, “the real dinosaur is–”

“Scott Hunter,” Shane finishes his sentence, rolling his eyes fondly. “But really, they are scrutinising us - watching us closely, looking for problems,” he explains, seeing Ilya’s expression. “Definitely more than they are anyone else, including Hunter and Barrett. And it pisses me off, because we’re the best players in the world, but they act like we should be grateful to them for letting us play.”

With the dozens of obstacles they had to push past that don’t exist for other couples, Shane thinks he and Ilya have more than earned their happy ending. He’s tired of constantly having to defend himself and his husband just so they can do their jobs.

“I just worry…” The piece of chicken breast tastes like ashes in Shane’s mouth, and he puts down his fork hastily. “I worry that the league will try something, and the Centaurs won’t back us up.”

He can see Ilya swallow his instinctive denial, and he’s grateful for it. Shane has a preponderance of evidence that shows how quickly a team - from management to players - can turn on you. The Centaurs have walked the walk so far; Shane hasn’t heard any slurs, any barbs, just the usual careless comments thrown around in the locker room, but there’s no way to know if they’ll change their tune the moment Shane isn’t useful enough to outweigh his baggage (not Ilya, though, they love Ilya, and Shane is happy about that, he really is).

Ilya is watching him carefully. “Did anyone say something to you?”

“No,” Shane says, “not really, just… even if the players and coaches back us up, can we really trust management? What if they decide we’re more trouble than we’re worth?”

Ilya thinks for a bit. “We cannot know for sure,” he says finally, “but I do not think there is anything we can do more than what we are doing now. We are the best players in the world, Shanya, this must be worth something.”

As he speaks, his eyes keep drifting to Shane’s food, slowly getting cold. Shane picks up his fork again silently, stomach churning. Ilya’s plate is already empty.

“We both have no-trade clauses,” Ilya continues, not drawing attention to it to Shane’s relief. “And because we come together, we have more leverage.”

“We come together?”

“We always come together,” Ilya waggles his eyebrows and laughs when Shane kicks his shin lightly. “Yes, we are package deal. I will not go anywhere without my husband, I will wither and die without him.”

Shane smiles wanly. “Sounds like he’s pretty lucky.”

He takes a bite. The food sits heavy in his chest, but he’s able to get it down.

“I am the lucky one.” Ilya’s adoration is crystal clear in his blue eyes. He can still make Shane’s heart flutter like they’re seventeen again.

Shane feels the sudden urge to apologise. “I know this is a lot, and we had a long practice today, so we don’t have to keep going if you want to talk about something else–”

“Sweetheart, this is important.” Ilya interrupts him firmly. “If you want to take break, we can stop, but I am okay to continue.”

“Okay,” Shane echoes, the word curling just like when Ilya says it. “I want to continue. I’ll go crazy if I don’t say everything I wanted to say.”

If they’re going to do this, Shane needs to do it right instead of just saying what comes to mind. He gets up, ignoring Ilya’s questioning noise, and retrieves his laptop from the office. Ilya looks faintly amused when he sees the carefully formatted list on the screen.

Shane sees the first bullet point on the list and winces. He’ll come back to it, he decides, scrolling to the second subtab to address the more obvious issue first.

“I’m going to say this because I think it’s important that you’re aware exactly how I feel about it, even if I’ve already kind of explained,” he starts.

“Okay.”

“Hockey is… I still love it, and I love playing with you, but it’s also work.” Shane says. “I know the line is really blurry because we’re friends with so many of our teammates and staff, but I think it’s important to have boundaries between our work and personal lives.”

“Okay.” Ilya repeats.

“I don’t want anything to do with Barrett outside of work.”

Ilya looks, thankfully, unsurprised. “Of course.”

“I’m not saying I won’t talk to him, and I’m not even saying I might not forgive him eventually, but I just don’t want him around. I can look past it at work, and for team events, but he… Having him around makes me feel awful, Ilya. I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty, I just… I don’t really want him in my home when I’m here. I know he said he feels bad, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. He’s your friend, and I’m fine with that, but I need you to support me about this.” Shane rushes out.

Ilya nods solemnly. “Of course, moya lyubov. I can go to his house if we hang out. This is your home, you should not have to be unhappy here.”

Shane had known deep down how much Ilya loved him, what he would do for him, but he’s still relieved when Ilya doesn’t push back. “Thank you.”

He checks that item off the list, then scrolls down to cross off everything they’ve already covered. It leaves one major topic left, and it’s the one Shane has been dreading the most.

He decides to be Cottage Honest. “I’m worried about this next part.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want this to make you feel like you have to fix things for me and… and make things worse for yourself in the process. I just want to tell you, I guess, and then maybe we can figure it out together?” Shane fidgets with his laptop. His plate of food has been pushed to the side, out of sight behind the screen.

“Okay, sweetheart. Please tell me,” Ilya says.

Shane chews on his lip. “I know I haven’t really said anything until now, but I hate that I’m not captain or on the first line or the top-paid player anymore.”

Ilya hums. “Yes, you did say this the other day. Do you… I can give up the captaincy. Say I got bored.”

“Ilya…”

“No, I am serious. The captaincy is fun for me. I love the team. But I can love the team without leading it. I do not want it to hurt you anymore. You are always more important.”

“Thank you for saying that. You’re more important to me too,” Shane says, and thaws a little at the besotted look on Ilya’s face. “Even if… even if I did want that, I don’t think it would be a good idea. People would accuse me of stealing the captaincy out from under you, and the press would turn it into a circus… I don’t think I could deal with that now.”

Ilya looks a bit abashed. “I did talk to Bood. Not anything with details!” He hurries to reassure Shane when Shane furrows his brows. “I just asked him what he thought about captains. He told me he thinks you should at least have an A, and is not unusual to change during season, so we can do it now. Then maybe, in the summer, we can talk about next season.”

“I don’t want to take anything from you,” Shane asserts. “You earned your captaincy, you’re a good captain, I just… I don’t know. I wish we could both have it.”

“You’re a good captain too, sweetheart. You carried that team for years on your back. I understand why you want the C.”

Ilya probably does understand some of it, but Shane is at a loss to explain the rest. It's not about the letter or the role or the chance to run some pre-season skates. It’s about the respect that’s automatically built into the position, the recognition you wear on your chest like a badge, the authority of being the best guy for the job. Losing that was a physical sign that people believed he didn’t deserve it anymore, and they treated him accordingly.

Shane is under no illusions. He knows he'd been a good captain; no one knows hockey like Shane does, except maybe Svetlana and his mom. When people say he had captained the Voyageurs to three cups, they don’t realise how literal it was. For all Shane knows he’s averse to admitting the Voyageurs’ weaknesses during his tenure there, Theriault had not been a fair coach - he had a good eye for the game, but he hadn’t bothered to build the team up beyond what was needed to get the puck to Shane. It had been Shane who had bolstered the Voyageurs into a true dynasty, and there's now a gaping hole in their strategy after his departure.

The part Shane struggled with was people. That's what Hayden had been for, as his alternate. Shane had tried his best to be there for his team as a friend and mentor, but he'd never been able to break down the walls completely, and he hadn’t really wanted to see what was so obvious to everyone else. Shane had carried those men close to his heart for a decade while they saw him as nothing more than a ticket to glory. He had lost control of the room, and he had paid the price with his letter. It didn’t matter that Shane hadn’t done anything wrong; it was just more proof that they thought he didn’t deserve it.

Ilya had asked him once, just after they played Montreal for the first time as husbands, why Shane hadn’t stopped the Voyageurs from using slurs once Shane was out and hadn’t needed to hide behind a thin veneer of heterosexual indifference.

“I tried,” Shane had replied, pensive. “I couldn't. They wouldn't listen to me. The guys didn't listen to me on that stuff, not when I was the only one in the room saying anything.”

“Did Pike not…”

“No.” Shane had said shortly. He hadn’t felt like elaborating.

Hayden had never said anything, but that was the problem. It wasn't until the stakes got personal that Hayden or JJ were willing to jump in, and the guys in the locker room knew enough not to call Shane names to his face, just sending it to the secret group chat he wasn’t supposed to know about.

If looks could’ve killed, Jackie Pike would have been a widow. For once, Shane hadn’t really been in the mood to defend his best friend's mistakes. After coming out to his team, Shane had felt so alone. He’d hoped, naively, that things would change because of him, for him, but most of the guys had just learned to mock him more quietly with their new ammunition. That had been the first deep crack in the foundation of Shane’s captaincy, then it had all come crashing down just a few months later, along with the rest of Shane’s life.

Shane is parched suddenly, and he reaches for his glass of ginger ale only to find it empty. Ilya offers him his cola, but Shane declines with a grimace - he can’t stand the taste, it makes him sick. He scrambles up from his chair to get a new can and take a breather with his head buried in the fridge, cool air grounding him in his body.

By the time he gets back, he’s more composed.

“I just hate how it looks,” he says, sliding back into his seat. Ilya is eyeing him with an unreadable expression. “No letter, second line, middling salary… every hockey pundit has a thinkpiece about the downfall of Shane Hollander.”

“You are playing even better hockey than before!” Ilya protests hotly, offended on his behalf.

“I know, baby, but they only care about how things look, not reality. And it looks like I’ve taken hits pretty much everywhere.”

Ilya objects, mouth twisted into a scowl. “Our second line is better than most teams’ first lines.”

Shane sighs. “But it’s still the second line. That’s good, maybe even great for some people, but for me? It looks like I’m losing something.”

“I can move to your wing,” Ilya says stubbornly.

“We’d be giving up our depth at centre just to manage my feelings.” Shane murmurs. “It wouldn’t make sense.” He looks away, crumbling under the weight of Ilya’s stare. “It feels stupid to complain… I don’t know. I don’t even know how we could fix it, because there’s so many logical reasons things are this way, so I feel unreasonable for being upset about it, but it really really sucks, Ilya.”

Ilya stands up abruptly, moving around the table. He gently moves the laptop and ginger ale aside and pulls Shane into a hug. Shane gasps, tension he didn’t even know was there seeping out of him. He buries his face in Ilya’s stomach and just breathes him in.

Shane feels Ilya’s voice rumbling through his torso. “I am sorry it sucks, moya lyubov. I wish I could make it better for you.”

“You already are,” Shane mumbles.

Ilya pets his hair softly. “Let me help, okay? I will talk to Wiebe. Sometimes you can be first line, or we can play together, or you will be my co-captain, prettiest in all of Canada. Maybe I say I play for free because my husband who earns one hundred million dollars wants to be my sugar daddy. Maybe we run Crowell over with car and let your mama take over the league.”

Shane’s laugh is muffled by Ilya’s shirt. “You have to ask her first.”

“Okay, I ask. Cannot tell you or David, you will give up the minute police ask you anything.”

“Probably better I don’t know,” Shane agrees. At least if Ilya has Shane’s mom on his side, Shane won’t have to handle the cleanup to keep Ilya out of jail.

The gurgling of his husband’s stomach is bizarrely comforting. Shane sinks into his embrace and lets himself pretend for a moment that Ilya really can fix all his problems just like that.

Eventually, Ilya starts shifting uncomfortably and Shane’s arm falls asleep, so they pry themselves apart. Ilya kindly doesn’t mention the dampness on his t-shirt. He sits down in the chair beside him instead, closing the laptop definitively.

“Thank you for telling me this, solnyshko,” he says. “I don’t know how much I can help, but I will be by your side no matter what. There is nothing I will not support you for, okay? You tell me everything from now on.” He strokes a thumb over Shane’s cheek.

Shane leans into his hand. Ilya’s touch is so warm, so protective, and it settles over Shane like a weighted blanket, soft and cozy. If Shane has to deal with a world that hates him, at least he has Ilya by his side; Shane wouldn’t give him up for anything.

“I love you so much, baby,” he whispers into Ilya’s palm, giving it a small kiss just to fluster his husband.

“I love you so much too.” Ilya says, feigning a cool demeanour like Shane can’t see him blushing. He tilts forward and steals a quick kiss. “Enough sad talk for today, okay? Only happy things now.”

“Okay,” Shane agrees.

Ilya moves to clear their plates but pauses when he sees Shane’s, still half-full. His eyes flick up to Shane’s face, and his eyebrows furrow, but he doesn’t say anything, just stacking the plates neatly. Shane gets up to help, legs feeling a bit like jelly from sitting still for so long, and wipes down the table while Ilya loads their dinnerware into the dishwasher the way Shane likes it.

The minute they’re done, Ilya tackles him into a deep kiss. Shane actually staggers with the force of it, but Ilya braces him to stop him from cracking his head open on the floor. They kiss hungrily, Shane pressing forward because he needs to feel Ilya against him, solid and steady. Their kitchen counter creaks under their weight, but Shane can’t bring himself to care.

Ilya’s hands wander lower and lower until he grabs Shane by the thighs, hoisting him up. Shane wraps his legs around Ilya’s waist automatically, breathless with the sudden change in position. Ilya manhandling him always makes something stir deep in his belly. His mouth waters a little when Ilya carries him to their bedroom with little apparent effort, so Shane busies himself with nibbling little bruises into Ilya’s skin.

Ilya dumps him on their bed unceremoniously, and Shane bounces a little, laughing. Ilya crawls on top of him, kissing him between giggles.

“How shall I reward moya lyubov for being so honest today, hm?” Ilya purrs, fingers dancing on Shane’s belt buckle.

Shane whines when Ilya pulls away teasingly. “Please touch me.”

Ilya presses indulgent kisses to Shane’s neck and chest. “Okay, sweetheart. I will take care of you.” He slowly peels off the layers between them, leaving no inch of Shane’s skin unexplored.

Shane shudders and sags into the mattress under Ilya’s insistent touch. Tomorrow, he’ll have to be Shane Hollander again, and muddle through dealing with the team and the league. His responsibilities will rear their ugly heads again, and he’ll have to stand up under the pressure of everyone’s judgment and keep going, because that’s what he has to do. Tonight, though, he can hand the reins over to his husband, stop thinking, and let Ilya take him apart piece by piece before putting him back together; tonight, he can just be Shane.

He closes his eyes blissfully and lets Ilya take over.

Chapter End Notes

they’re trying so hard you guys!!!

anyway, highly recommend the memoir “The Best Little Boy In The World” by John Reid. it’s rooted in the 1970s and has remnants of the thinking at the time, but there’s a lot of parallels to shane’s psyche here, though that is focused purely on the stress of being in the closet, and shane also has racism to contend with. another concept that definitely applies to shane is the idea of the model minority - that you can just be quiet and compliant and ‘good’ and the oppressing class will let you exist peacefully. i don’t think shane is necessarily doing these things consciously, but he’s not totally unaware either, as i hope you can see here

something else i wanted to explore was yuna and her relationship with shane. she experienced and therefore coped with bigotry differently than her son, but still passed those lessons along and wanted him to follow her advice. she means well, and she’s not in the wrong for that, but what works for her might not be what’s best for shane, and she might not be in a position to see that. as a gay, autistic, mixed asian man playing in a professional sport, his experiences with bigotry will necessarily differ from hers as a straight (more visibly) asian ?neurotypical woman with an “exotic” name. accordingly, shane needs a different approach. there’s also the additional layer of her being his manager - the consequence of the overlap of her roles of “mom” and “manager” is that the boundaries of what she’s trying to protect - her son and her son’s image respectively - can blur, which is its own issue. her role in his life should have naturally diminished as shane grew up, but she’s still very involved because she’s his manager, and man is she holding on tight, for better or for worse. yuna is such a good character, y’all. her relationship with shane is so important to who he is, and i hope i illustrated that well here

i’ve been trying my best to balance everything shane is dealing with at once, but frankly i won’t be able to do all of it justice within the scope of this story - to that end, i will be referencing shane’s autism and orthorexia, but it’s unlikely that i’ll be doing as deep a dive as i am into the racism and homophobia aspect of things. hope y’all understand

anyway, the chapter count went up again………… do subscribe to the fic/series! if you enjoyed seeing shane be treated with the kindness and get the justice he deserves, you’ll love the upcoming bits (probably only after i finish this one, but there’s a mixed media parallel fic/sequel, david and ilya’s talk, hayden/jj’s apologies, sveta’s lecture, who knows what else!). next chapter, we’re getting bood’s opinions, and oh boy does he have a lot to say

thank you for all of your amazing and thoughtful comments!! i’m going to try and reply to all of them as soon as i can. come say hi on twitter (or if you want to see what happened on poor baby shane’s birthday, i’ve written a fic here!)

Chapter 4: Something To Be Proud Of

Chapter Summary

Wyatt is good people. So are Ilya and Shane, and the rookies, and most of the Cens, really. Maybe, someday, that list might include Barrett. Maybe things aren’t as set in stone as he’d once believed.

Maybe one day, by the time Milo is old enough to play in it, this League might be something to be proud of.

Chapter Notes

white guilt, the chapter

sorry this took so long, my health has been kinda bad :( btw please read this note! i think it’s important

i saw a lot of comments on the previous chapter disappointed that ilya stayed in contact with troy at all. i do have something planned for that, but also, ilya isn’t perfect, and the real world isn’t a vacuum. troy did shitty things but is genuinely trying to atone here, and ilya will always be walking the fine line of being righteously angry about his husband’s past hurts and giving his (former) best friend SOME benefit of the doubt. in the end, their relationship will never be the same, but it isn’t just going to vanish (especially given their forced proximity as linemates)! ilya will ensure shane is never put in an uncomfortable situation, however. he’s just really struggling to find the right thing to do, and who can blame him? it’s so complicated.

i’m a queer woman of colour and i’ve experienced hella bigotry in my life, but i’d still consider myself an optimist. there will always be tension between holding people accountable and giving them enough grace to let them evolve. this is really my personal thesis, but if someone is genuinely sorry, and is genuinely trying to change and do better, i think we should let them. of course, we have the advantage of troy being a fictional character, so we KNOW he really means it, and irl it’s impossible to know for sure - nonetheless, i think there’s value in being open to people changing. if we never leave space for that to happen, we will never get the allyship and support we deserve. there is no obligation to forgive or to forget (just like shane doesn’t here), or even to ever interact with them again, but also, we need to pay attention to the big picture. troy isn’t the villain of this story - he did bad things that are finally being dealt with, but he (and even dallas kent, to some extent) is a symptom of the bigger problem that is systemic discrimination. individuals need to be held accountable for their actions without losing the forest (hockey culture being garbage) for the trees (one guy being a bigot)

anyway, i believe in redemption & troy trying to be better, but also yes, even if shane never forgives him, they have to be able to work together at the bare minimum. shane has every right to not talk to troy outside of hockey but the reality is that troy will likely stay in his life regardless. fear not, we ARE going to be addressing the implications of the hockey "family" & forgiving vs moving on. shane will be happy and get catharsis, and ilya will step up and do what needs to be done, but i'm exploring bigotry towards shane because i wanted a realistic take on the universe and that doesn't stop with just opening the can of worms and not dealing with the implications

note: shane is an unreliable narrator about himself - here we see someone else’s POV on how things went down

also, it was pretty important for me that shane doesn't feel obliged to lead the charge and that some of his white counterparts step up. so here they are, stepping up while bood watches, fond and exasperated! they’re a little confused but they got the spirit

Seven years ago, Zane had been drafted to the Ottawa Centaurs. He’d gone in the second round, pretty good but not spectacular, and had had an expectedly normal career following that. He’d dipped in and out of the top quarter of players for goals, been invited for All Stars a handful of times, plays a good enough game that he commands some respect as a veteran player, and he has no complaints about how his career has turned out.

In those seven years, however, Zane has seen a lot of bullshit.

Zane had been born in Canada, but he rarely felt Canadian enough. He was too dark-skinned, too into ‘exotic food’, too connected to his motherland. Hockey had been his in, and he loves it for helping him to belong, but he’s not blind to its faults. In many ways, hockey culture is a microcosm of all the racism he and his family have ever faced.

Hockey is set in stone, decades behind the rest of society, and with good reason. For all that being a Black man in the league has become more common, hockey is still overwhelmingly white, and so the culture follows. Zane will give the benefit of the doubt that most players and fans are just ignorant, but the vocal minority of actual racists steamroll everyone else, and Zane, a decent player on a shitty team, hadn’t had the luxury of being able to push back much.

Zane likes to think he’s built a reputation as a good guy in the league, despite it all. He’d done his best to avoid falling into the trap of becoming one of those hockey players - narrow-minded and ignorant to anything outside of hockey - and he’d shaped a team with that in mind.

The tone had already been set by the Centaurs’ captain during Zane’s rookie year. Munroe had been one of the rare white hockey players who was aware of his own privilege. It helped that his sister was married to a man from Iran, but Munroe stood by his principles even when his brother-in-law wasn’t around, and he had tamed the Centaurs locker room with his glower, iron fist, and zero-tolerance policy for slurs.

It wasn’t perfect by any means - there were a number of players who bristled in the corner when Zane had received the A then the C, or scoffed a little too loudly when one of the kids recommended an Indian restaurant for team dinner. But Zane had friends in other teams, knew what it meant to look like him and play hockey where he did, and the Centaurs were mostly good, which in the NHL meant their locker room was basically a utopia.

For a long time, that had more than made up for being the laughingstock of the league. Then Ilya Rozanov came along.

Ilya was one of the league’s biggest superstars, and he had signed with little old Ottawa. Suddenly, all eyes were on the Centaurs to see what Ilya Fucking Rozanov could do with their ‘hapless backwater team’. And sure, they’d still lost more than they’d won, but they were winning reasonably often, and that had been a big change for them. Zane had been over the moon with their middling standing in the league, but he had seen how it weighed on Ilya.

Going from a team near the top of the game to the Centaurs was an undeniable downgrade, and Zane wasn’t blind to Ilya’s disappointment every time the buzzer proclaimed another loss. It just made things more confusing, because no one could agree on why Ilya had signed with them in the first place if not for the ego boost of gradually rekindling a struggling franchise. But the Ilya Rozanov Zane had gotten to know was very different from the one he’d seen in interviews and across the ice, and Zane had suspected there was something else going on. His bet in the pool of Ilya having a girlfriend in Ottawa had definitely been the most plausible, especially compared to Chouinard’s “run out of Boston by the bratva” entry, even though the boys had disqualified him for being technically incorrect in the end.

Regardless, Ilya had settled in well with them, despite Zane’s private concerns that Ilya’s infamous ego would counteract the skills he brought with him to the Cens. It had stung when Wiebe had pulled Zane into his office and told him Ilya would be captain; the bigger part of him had understood that Ilya’s leadership was tried and tested with a Stanley under his belt, but Zane couldn’t help but privately resent the demotion, though Ilya’s enthusiasm and genuine care for the team and their development soothed the sting just enough. For all that he sometimes looked a little sad and occasionally kept a bit of distance, he’d revitalised the team on the ice and endeared himself to them off of it. The team had grown closer than ever, and with Ilya’s particular brand of aggressive tolerance, even the quiet dissension had been sanded down until there was just camaraderie and gradually improving hockey.

Troy Barrett’s unexpected addition had threatened to undo all of that.

When he had found out about Barrett’s trade, Zane had been livid. Barrett was the embodiment of everything Zane despised, and Zane had been afraid he would drag their locker room back to the dark ages.

Zane had seen the videos circulating online. He’d been willing to concede that it took some guts to stand up to your best friend and the face of the franchise that paid your salary, but to Zane it seemed too little too late, and he wasn’t feeling especially charitable towards the (maybe) reformed man.

Barrett had been the League’s proverbial bigoted bogeyman - or, at least, the bogeyman’s slightly less irritating sidekick, since no one came close to Dallas Kent - for a long time. It was bullshit like his “chirps” and “pranks” that gave other players the courage to be openly racist. Barrett’s attitude, and importantly, the fact that he got away with it over and over again, was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the League’s inbuilt discrimination, but Barrett helped to put a pretty white face to the problem, so the only lasting consequence was that every player of colour in Toronto begged for a trade within a year.

In the end, though, Barrett had turned out surprisingly tolerable. He’d been silent and contrite for the most part, a big change over the man who’d laughed loudly as his best friend made monkey noises whenever Zane got the puck. He kept to himself at first, then gradually came out of his shell to become front and centre of the gay rights movement within hockey. It didn’t erase anything he’d done, and Zane is still quietly indignant that he gets celebrated for doing the bare minimum, but Zane is a consummate professional, and, more importantly, he’s used to having to work with assholes.

A small part of Zane can summon a shred of pity for Barrett, having heard rumours of his family situation and seeing first-hand the aggressive homophobia rampant in the league, but it’s never enough to override Zane’s disgust. Barrett’s thin shield took blow after blow as more hockey players who came out (or got outed) didn’t make the same excuses, and, rather more importantly, hadn’t been throwing around slurs in the first place.

As always, Shane Hollander sets the standard.

Pre-FanMail Incident, Zane had gotten to know Shane somewhat when he had been pulled into a group chat by Carter Vaughn - he hadn’t been given any warning, just suddenly added to a chat called ‘Affirmative Action’ (he is not ashamed to admit the name had made him laugh). Carter and JJ Boiziau had apparently spent years collecting the ‘chill POCs’ in the league, and Zane would now count them amongst his friends, although they had lost a handful after Shane had been outed. Shane had always been helpful and sneakily hilarious in equal measure whenever he chimed in in the chat, and, after he had found his footing in Ottawa, had been a great source of Zane and Wyatt’s entertainment in the locker room. Zane always enjoys the solidarity they quietly share whenever a teammate says something particularly obtuse.

Shane understands Zane’s position in a way almost no one else on the Centaurs can. Ottawa is an overwhelmingly white city, and though some of the team are open and progressive and willing to throw down on the ice at the sound of a slur, they don’t really have a clue otherwise. The differences in how Shane and Zane (and LaPointe) get treated are stark - the Kents of the world have pretty specific racial stereotypes, and they like to dip into the same wells over and over and over - but the core experiences remain similar enough. Shane knows what it’s like to be scrutinised harder by fans, questioned more by refs and coaches, made into an example in the media. That the face of hockey is Shane’s face, that Shane is in contention for the best player possibly of all time while still in the prime of his career, is an uplifting story for marginalised fans (and Zane too, if he’s being honest) and just another weight on Shane’s shoulders trying to drag him down.

All else being equal, Zane isn’t sure how Shane handles it all. Back when Shane had been in Montreal, Zane had assumed it was Shane’s teammates who’d formed a stalwart shield against the inherent bigotry of the sport. For all that many of them seem to despise him now, Zane knew that a lot of them had loved or at least respected Shane a great deal, but their affection had been mostly conditional, tied to his hockey prowess or pristine reputation. Shane had weathered all the bullshit with grace, even after being outed and having the rug pulled out from under him along with the protection of Montreal, but he’d clearly been fighting (mostly) alone, those last few months. At least he has the Centaurs to back him now, captained by the biggest Husband Guy in North America.

Well, most of them. Some of the Centaurs hadn't liked Ilya's mysterious partner when they’d first found out, thinking them controlling and selfish, but Zane had warned them off making assumptions. When Shane and Ilya had been outed, Zane had understood the dynamic almost immediately; a handful of the team, chief among them Barrett, maintained their critical stance, but couldn't say anything because Ilya had been incandescently happy when Shane joined the Cens. Nonetheless, Shane had quickly won over the team at large, his kind, earnest manner refreshing for someone most would consider far out of their league, though a small group still consider him more ‘Ilya’s husband’ than another teammate.

Zane himself has grown deeply fond of Shane. Over and above being an absolute beast at hockey, he’s just a good guy, and he and Ilya are sickeningly sweet. They’re all over each other every moment they can be, and Zane can’t begrudge them some workplace affection when they’d had to hide for so long, though they’re pretty good at staying professional. Ilya particularly has to walk the fine line of being both captain and husband, and though Zane isn’t delusional enough to believe Ilya would ever put the team before Shane if it really came down to it, Ilya’s self-aware enough that it’s never been a problem (he’d even pulled Zane aside, on Shane’s first day, and asked him to step in if Zane ever thought Ilya was favouring Shane. Zane had been impressed by the mindfulness and convinced it wouldn’t be necessary, and he had been right). If anything, the Centaurs might have over-corrected - Zane still doesn’t understand why Shane doesn’t have an A (in truth, you could probably make a good case for him to have the C, or at least a functional co-captaincy, but that’s for Wiebe and Ilya to discuss). Regardless, Shane had settled in nicely, slipping right into the Centaurs’ dynamic like he’d always been there.

Recently, though, that dynamic has shifted.

It’s subtle, Zane will grant them, but it’s Zane’s job to pay attention to these things. The Rozanov-Barrett duo had been nigh inseparable for years, and now Ilya hovers over his husband while Barrett skulks at the sidelines. It would have been unsurprising if it had happened when Shane first joined, since Zane knows exactly why Shane wouldn’t like Barrett, but there had been no change in Ilya’s relationship with Barrett even after the wedding, and Zane had come to the conclusion that Ilya had no clue, so Zane kept his comments to Shane out of Ilya’s earshot and minded his own business at first.

Ilya has a bit of a reputation for being erratic on the ice - it’s one of his greatest strengths, how unpredictable he can be, and sometimes you never knew if he would throw a punch or humiliate you with a play so good it made you feel like you should get demoted to Timbits. Still, in the last few weeks, he’s easily lived up to the ‘Russian Menace’ nickname, absolutely flattening anyone who went near Shane. Interestingly, Barrett was often right behind him, checking the players who ran their mouths about Shane before staring balefully at the bench where Shane sat in stony silence. Their second line (or, well, their Hollander line - the designations ‘first’ and ‘second’ have little meaning for the Cens these days with how even they are) has since eclipsed them in goals because both of Zane’s linemates are busy taking things just a little too far defending Shane’s honour on the ice. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Shane and Barrett had had it out at the party a few weeks ago, and Ilya is obviously taking his husband’s side - it just hadn’t been an issue Zane needed to care about until it slowly started affecting the team. Privately, Zane is sure Barrett deserved it, but he steels himself to be neutral because Ilya can’t.

Zane goes to Ilya first, both because Ilya is their captain and because Shane hasn’t actually done anything wrong (he’s hoping to get a bit more context before talking to Barrett or escalating things to Coach).

He catches Ilya alone after a rare Captain’s meeting - the last one with just the two of them, if Shane says yes - falling in step with him on the way to the parking garage.

“Hey, man,” Zane starts, a little unsure on how to broach the topic.

“Ah,” Ilya says wryly, “it is time to talk about the issue, yes?”

Zane takes the olive branch as gracefully as he can. “What’s going on? I have some idea, but I’m gonna need more information if we wanna fix our line.”

Ilya sighs. “Shane told me you would notice. I do not think the rest really know what the problem is, besides maybe Hazy.”

“Part of the job,” Zane says, tapping the A on his sweater. He lets Ilya take a beat, clearly deciding what to tell him.

“You know something happened at the party.” It’s a statement, not a question. Zane did know, had seen Barrett trying to corner Shane that day and even intended to talk to him about leaving Shane alone. The abrupt end to the night, and Shane’s excuse of just a minor bug, don’t worry about it, hadn’t been slick. “Shanya told me some things about Troy, and I am… trying to figure out how to fix it.”

Zane feels a small stab of irritation at that. It’s not Ilya’s fault, not really, but the idea that Shane had to explain anything at all is aggravating, the concept of trying to ‘fix it’ even more so.

Ilya must see his expression, because he wilts a little. “I know, I am a bad husband.”

“Nah,” Zane reassures him. “Shane adores you, dude. But these things aren’t really things you can just… fix. You just gotta figure out how to live with it.”

Ilya eyes him closely. “Troy must have said things to you too, right?”

Things. It’s a pretty way to say “slurs”. Zane nods.

“Why…” Ilya runs a hand through his hair. “Did you not think I would do anything, when he joined? Or Coach?”

The answer is a lot more complicated than that. Truth be told, Zane had no reason to assume either Ilya or Coach would endorse Barrett’s racist bullshit, had he continued in Ottawa, but also… he had no reason to believe anything would be done, either. Not to a talented white boy who was good at looking apologetic.

There’s really no way to explain any of that to Ilya without needing to justify himself, though, so Zane doesn’t try. “It wasn’t about that. Just didn’t think there was any point.”

“If–If playing with Barrett is a problem, we can fix, yes? I can talk to Coach, or we can–”

“Roz,” Zane says, stopping Ilya mid-ramble. “Are you familiar with the concept of a white saviour complex?”

From Ilya’s face, it’s obvious he’s not.

“I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing,” Zane continues carefully, “but don’t… I don’t know, swoop in to be a hero if Shane doesn’t ask you to. Sometimes it can make things worse. Shane has been dealing with racism the whole time - so have I - he should get a say in how things play out.”

The reminder that this is a longstanding issue is clearly not comforting for Ilya, who gradually deflates while Zane is talking. “I want to help,” he says plaintively, and Zane feels for him.

“You’re in a tough spot as a captain and a husband, man. I can’t speak for Shane, but I don’t think this is sustainable. If you can’t wear your captain hat for this one, I’ll talk to Wiebe.”

Ilya shakes his head. “No, it should be me to talk to Troy again. If it’s not okay after that, then maybe we talk to Wiebe.”

Zane has to hide a smile. He’s pretty sure Ilya’s last ‘talk’ with Barrett hadn’t ended particularly well, given the shiner Barrett had been sporting for the next week, but as alternate, he is hoping this one goes better.

They’ve reached their cars now, but Zane holds out a hand to stop Ilya before he gets in his Jeep.

“And, speaking as a friend of yours and Shane’s? Maybe do some research on what to watch out for, yeah? It’s not just slurs, not always, and it shouldn’t be on Shane to point it out. You know he won’t, anyway.”

Zane had done his own research when Scott Hunter had come out. He’d known bits and pieces about the LGBT+ community from his nephew and Harris, but once he started educating himself and paying attention, he’d been kind of appalled at how much he missed (even from his own locker room), so he can empathise with Ilya, at least a little. It’s not lost on him that Shane is the only out player of colour - their opponents always seem to find creative ways to incorporate both race and sexuality into their chirps, with Shane once again serving as reluctant trailblazer and lightning rod.

Ilya nods seriously. “I know there is much I don’t know. I am… trying to learn, but is hard. And it makes me so angry for Shane and you and Pointy. I didn’t realise how much I had missed before.”

Zane takes the apology for what it is. “Now that you know, you can do something about it.” He claps his despondent-looking captain on the shoulder. “We all gotta start somewhere. Now go home and tell your husband about his new letter.” He nudges Ilya, who finally cracks a smile at the mention of seeing Shane. God, is the man whipped.

Zane walks away from that conversation patting himself on the back, utterly unaware of the can of worms he’d just torn open and dumped all over the ground. He really should have known better. If there’s one thing about Ilya Rozanov, it’s that he’s determined. Now that he’s been clued in, he’s like a dog with a bone when it comes to his mission of eradicating racism from the league - it’s endearing, if a little naive. He watches their teammates and opponents like a hawk, hovers near refs talking to Zane, polices reporters who overstep in their questions to Shane, but he and Barrett do back off their on-ice vigilantism, so Zane lets them do their thing.

The crusade hits its peak in their match against Chicago. Zane is at centre ice during warm-ups chatting with Jackson Morgan and James Baptiste when Shane skates over to say hi, chest adorned with his brand new (well-overdue) A.

“Hey, guys!” he says, sliding to a graceful stop beside Zane. “How’s it going?”

“Hey, Hollzy,” JB greets him, pulling his glove off for a fistbump. Morgan waves. “Looking forward to getting your ass kicked?”

It’s baseless bravado and they all know it - the Centaurs are on a hot streak and the Blackhawks are down their starting goalie for a few weeks after a brutal-looking knee injury.

Shane’s grin is sharklike. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

They don’t get the chance to say much else before another Chicago player skates by. “Wrap up with your DEI squad, boys, we’ve got a game to win.” He turns heel and heads off before any of them can retort.

“God,” Zane says, annoyed. He takes note - #41, Warren. It’s another name to add to the list.

Morgan grimaces. “Sorry about him.”

“Not your fault,” Shane demurs. “But I hope you don’t mind if we embarrass him later.”

“Go right ahead,” JB says, slipping his glove back on. “He’s a real piece of shit. Coach is looking to trade him, anyway.”

They part ways, Zane and Shane heading to the tunnel. Ilya meets them halfway.

“Did 41 say something?” he asks, voice low.

“Just the usual,” Shane replies. “Don’t do anything please, I’ll handle it.” Zane sees him squeeze Ilya’s arm gently.

Ilya looks at Zane then nods reluctantly. “Okay, Shanya. Tell me if you want my help.”

He’s been good about it, to his credit. Zane had only been partially serious when he’d mentioned the white saviour complex, but Ilya, for all that he clearly wants to do something, has let Zane and Shane (and LaPointe, who prefers to be more passive because of his rookie status) call the shots and set the tone for when to react and when to dismiss, and Barrett has followed his lead.

The conversation peters out as they get to the locker room, going through their pre-game rituals. Ilya gives a rousing speech, and even gets Shane to say something as a newly-minted alternate. They skate out into the stadium with high hopes and to raucous cheering.

The game pretty much goes exactly as expected. Chicago gets one in, slipped past their back-up goalie Andrews, but the Centaurs dominate the rest of the game, with two goals from Shane and one from Barrett. Shane thrives in his captaincy, volleying back and forth with the refs like he was born to do it. Zane is pretty sure he knows more about hockey than most of the refs, and he gets them out of a few minor infractions by citing rules down to chapter and verse, the stubborn bastard. Zane pretends not to notice the heated looks Ilya keeps throwing around when Shane uses his Captain voice.

It’s just after the game when things go a bit downhill. Shane’s second goal happened in the last minute of the third period, and the Cens are still celebrating when the buzzer goes off. Holmberg and Chouinard collide with Shane, Haas, and Young like a celebratory hurricane. They’re on their way off the ice when Zane gets close enough to hear their conversation.

“–was so cool, Hollzy! Your hockey IQ is seriously off the charts! ” Young enthuses, practically bouncing along as he chatters Shane’s ear off. Shane just nods, smiling indulgently.

“Of course it is,” Chouinard says, clapping Shane on the back. “With a mom like that, how could he not be smart?”

Zane sees Shane’s shoulders tense, and he hurries over to try and head things off before Chouinard can put his foot in his mouth, skate and all.

“What do you mean?” Shane asks slowly.

“Just, you know! It makes sense that you’d be really good with stats and numbers and things, right?”

Young looks back and forth between them, unsure.

Zane watches a myriad of emotions run across Shane’s face before he settles on cool indifference. “Sure, yeah. Excuse me, I was tapped for press earlier.” He nods at Zane and strides off, leading Chouinard and Young behind.

Young shoulders the locker room door open. “Kinda uncool, dude.”

Chouinard looks at Young, brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Hollzy didn’t like it,” he continues. “I don’t think he likes when guys talk about his mom.”

“Actually,” Zane cuts in, “I think it was because you made it about him being Asian.”

“I was just complimenting him, though!” Chouinard says. He does seem distressed at the thought that he might have upset Shane, so Zane is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then he continues and pisses Zane off again. “It’s true that Asians are just smarter than us, that’s why they’re like, taking over the world. I heard it on a podcast.”

“Is that so, Chewy?” Ilya’s voice is silky and dangerous. They all turn around to see their captain staring them down. Chouinard has enough sense to realise Ilya’s irate, so he stays quiet.

“Asians are not automatically smart because they are Asian, that is stereotype. If you were Asian, you would still be stupid.” Ilya doesn’t mince his words. “Shane is more than just Asian hockey player, he is the best hockey player. Saying things like that is disrespectful to Shane. I would say this to you even if he was not my husband.”

“Jeez, Cap, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” Chouinard frowns, genuinely contrite. “I’ll apologise to Shane when he’s back.”

Ilya nods, satisfied, but Zane catches a troubled look on his face as he turns away, getting pulled into a quiet conversation with Barrett. The noise in the locker room picks back up, everyone done with their eavesdropping, and they all start meandering into the showers. By chance, Zane ends up next to Chouinard, chatting with him and trying not to hold a grudge. He lets it go once he sees Chouinard, looking grave, having a chat with a freshly-showered Shane that ends with Shane smiling, but he doesn’t forget.

Neither does Ilya, it seems, because Zane’s inbox is inundated with emails from HR the next day. He worries for a moment that Ilya has reported Chouinard, initiating a complaint that will lead to more paperwork than action, but breathes a sigh of relief when he actually reads the thread.

Ilya (and apparently Barrett, who’s CC’ed on the thread) had reached out to Centaurs management, requesting for sensitivity training for the players in view of the “increasingly diverse team”. After a few emails’ worth of back-and-forth, including a very politely-worded inquiry on whether Ilya had been hacked, they’d actually gotten the ball rolling on finding an appropriate vendor.

“This will be a wonderful look for the Centaurs’ public image,” reads one email from the Director of Marketing. He seems to have missed the point entirely, Zane thinks, but at least they hadn’t said no.

Zane had thought about some form of this on and off for years, but as a Black captain, he was always conscious of the fact that he couldn’t push too hard without losing the support of his white peers. Maintaining a hard line on slurs was already seen as overly strict, and it was hard to do much else without alienating himself further. He’d tried to ask Shane about how he’d handled it once, but it hadn’t been long after Shane’s transfer and he’d backed off after realising it was a bit of a sore topic.

Ottawa is generally good about diversity, but Zane had always suspected it was more that their niche is profitable, despite the team not doing well until recently. They had the lionshare of queer fans until Scott Hunter came out, after all - the Cens had maintained a careful reputation of being inclusive. For the most part, it was true, but they’d really had to put their money where their mouth was after gaining 3 queer players (not to mention having 3 non-white players, which is still seen as above average representation). They’re probably relieved the players are asking for this sort of training, instead of waiting for one of them to accidentally say something stupid and get the whole team cancelled.

By the time a date is set, Ilya has successfully strong-armed the entire team into attending with his usual brand of casual intimidation. Zane is happy to see that most of them are on board willingly, with only a few needing to be threatened by bag skates before caving. It’s more than he hoped, but fewer than he expected, so he chooses to take the win.

The training takes place on a Thursday at 4p.m., at the end of a bye week.

Zane arrives late, sidling into the room just before 4. The only empty seat left is right at the front next to Shane, and he plops down beside him while the rest of the team, looking out of place in the cramped board room, stares in awe at the wordy powerpoint on the screen.

The woman standing at the front of the room introduces herself as Carolyn Baker. She’s a tall woman with box braids and a stern but kind demeanour; her colourful dress and deft handling of their loudest members (Ilya, Boyle, and the rookies) give off the vibe of ‘kindergarten teacher for grown-ups’, which Zane thinks is appropriate given his expectation of how this session is going to go.

“Now,” Carolyn begins, “I’m here to conduct a sensitivity and inclusion session for you. Some of the things you hear might make you uncomfortable, or put you on the spot, especially if you’re in the majority groups, but it’s important that you examine that instinctive reaction and deconstruct it so you know where it comes from and how to fix it. To that end, I ask that you all pay close attention to not just what I’m saying, but how it makes you react, so we can have a productive session together.”

Looking over the crowd, she grimaces slightly, obviously noticing the lost expressions on more than a few faces. She walks over to her laptop and toggles to a different set of slides. Zane sees the name ‘S&I - Teen Ver.’ before she full-screens it. The new set of slides has fewer words and more cartoons; everyone’s faces light up in response.

They make it as far as the section on microaggressions before devolving.

“Can anyone give me an example of a microaggression?” Carolyn asks. She’s carefully not looking at Zane, Shane, LaPointe, Ilya, or Barrett.

Everyone looks at each other, shifting. Each one of them has an expression that screams “please don’t pick me”. Zane, bizarrely, feels like he should be writing things down in a three-ring binder.

After ten seconds of excruciating silence, Dykstra clears his throat. “It’s… is it like when people are surprised that people of colour speak English?”

“Yes, exactly!” Carolyn says, and Dykstra absolutely beams.

She clicks to the next slide. “Microaggressions are comments or actions that are prejudicial towards a minority group. They’re usually indirect and subtle, and can sometimes be unintentional, so they’re a lot harder to spot than slurs. Most of the time, they’re based in particular stereotypes, like that people of colour can’t or won’t speak English well.”

The next slide has a list of common microaggressions. She pauses to let them all read it. “It’s important to remember that even positive stereotypes can be harmful, so you need to think twice even if you think you’re giving someone a compliment.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?” Chouinard has his hand in the air. “What do I do if I want to tell someone I think they’re really smart but he’s Asian? Should I just not say anything if that’s a microaggression? Even if I really think he’s smart?”

Shane sighs. Zane tries desperately to bite back a laugh.

Carolyn responds with a saint-like level of patience. “It depends. If someone is smart, it’s usually fine to just say that, but it’s important to be aware of the context in which you’re saying it. You need to make sure you’re complimenting them as a person, not as a member of a particular group - Asian, in this case.”

Chouinard nods seriously. Somehow, Haas has manifested a notebook and started taking notes.

Carolyn waits to see if there are any other questions before moving on. “People in minority groups are also often held to extremely high, if impossible standards, in comparison to their counterparts. This amplifies any perceived mistake, and is often used to generalise and bring down the minority group as a whole. Does anyone know a good example of this?”

“Oh, like how everyone assumed Hollzy tripped in that playoff game on purpose and they said it was because he was gay!” Boyle exclaims.

Zane feels Shane wince next to him. Ilya whips his head around, glaring daggers at Boyle.

Carolyn looks nonplussed. “Would you like to elaborate?”

“No,” Boyle says slowly, looking for all the world like a deer in headlights. “I sense I’ve made a mistake of some kind.”

The entire conference room rings with uneasy silence, everyone studiously staring at the table like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Someone coughs awkwardly. A misshapen paper plane flutters to the ground. Carolyn decides to cut her losses and forge on.

“The last thing I want to touch on is intersectionality,” Carolyn says as she navigates to the next slide. “Very often, we mentally group people into categories based on their identity, but the world is more complex than that. Many people have multiple identities, or don’t fit neatly into the boxes created by society. I myself am Black and I identify as a lesbian. These things both affect how I’m seen by others, and cannot be perceived in a vacuum. It’s likely that I would face more criticism as a lesbian compared to someone who is white, for instance.”

Young raises his hand sheepishly. “Is this the same thing as the oppression olympics?”

Carolyn considers it for a moment. “I suppose so. In theory, the concept of the oppression olympics is just referring to the fact that some people might try to one-up each other by comparing their suffering, which really defeats the purpose of the solidarity we were talking about earlier.”

“There are oppression olympics now?” Ilya pipes up, grinning. He’s staring at Shane like he would do anything to get him to crack a smile. “This is good news. My husband is very competitive, but he is gay and Asian man so he will win oppression olympics too, da? Champion no matter what!”

He smacks a loud kiss to Shane’s cheek but Shane barely reacts. Zane notices him squeeze Ilya’s hand, and Ilya quiets immediately.

“Sorry,” Ilya backtracks. “Is not funny. I am taking this seriously. Please continue, Miss Carolyn.”

Carolyn takes the segue gracefully while Ilya rubs a soothing hand over Shane’s back. Shane leans into him just a little more, just enough to still maintain a thin veneer of professionalism, as Carolyn switches over to an open Kahoot! page and the kids start hollering.

By the time they reach the end of the hour-long seminar, Zane feels a bizarre mixture of relief, gratitude, and exhaustion.

“Okay, hopefully you were able to learn something from today. I want to see if things have sunk in, so, let’s practice. What would you do if you heard someone say something bigoted or inappropriate?” Carolyn asks.

Holmberg raises his hand, bouncing in his seat like a grade-schooler. She points at him. “Tell someone you trust!”

Young scoffs. “That's only if the racist is touching you, dickhead.”

Carolyn closes her eyes. Wyatt, exasperated in the way only a dad can be, snags the hood of Holmberg’s jacket before he can launch himself across the table at Young.

“If we hear someone say something, we would speak up and tell them this is unacceptable, yes?” Ilya’s gaze sweeps across the room. “We will not allow this to be normal because we are better than that. And we cannot leave it to only a few people to speak up.”

Zane and Shane both nod when he glances at them. “Your captains will back you up, but we must all do this, okay?”

He gets a few scattered agreements. “I said, okay?”

“Yes, captain!” The room roars, as if by reflex. Carolyn looks startled by the sheer volume of a full hockey team, but she seems reluctantly endeared by their enthusiasm.

They picked the right kindergarten teacher, Zane thinks, amused, even as he accepts one of the candies she hands out to everyone who got a question right. He slips the Coffee Crisp into his pocket for Cassie and sees Shane do the same. Boyle already has chocolate smeared across his mouth as he holds the empty wrapper aloft in victory, Dykstra complaining loudly next to him. We should get her hired as a ref.

The month that follows is one of the weirdest of Zane’s life. It starts out pretty normal, because he’s not especially present on social media the way Ilya or Wyatt are, but then the group chat starts getting… unusually active.

Apparently, the rookies have decided to collectively attend a class at uOttawa on queer culture. It’s cute, how excited they seem to be about it, and anything which makes Shane, Ilya, and even Barrett more comfortable is a win in Zane’s book. Only, it doesn’t stop there.

Boyle goes semi-viral for fighting with a racist fan in the comments of the Cens’ latest video (in the process, he gets himself blocked by the Cens account auto-filter and spends the next few days trying to get a follow back). Ilya gets papped at the same Japanese restaurant five days in a row where he’d (allegedly) been badgering the chef to teach him how to make Shane’s favourite mochi (Zane thought it was sweet until Ilya made too many dirty jokes about the cream filling). Every Centaur updates their social media bios to include pronouns (Zane was late and had to rush to do it before the fans accused him of being homophobic, and so accidentally wrote he/he; the boys are still calling him Michael Jackson). Chouinard and Selena spend the entire weekend hopping from gay bar to gay bar and befriending Shane Hole-ander and Ilya Suckingoff (Shane is mortified until Ilya goads him into an argument about whose drag impersonator is more talented). Dykstra follows a feminist blog on Twitter and immediately gets accused of having an affair with the woman running it; he’s saved when Caitlin follows it too (although a few fans still think the anonymous poster is their third). That’s not to say anything of the Tuesday incident - Zane is still trying to pretend it didn’t happen.

The most pro-active person, perhaps unsurprisingly, is Barrett. It’s like a switch flipped after the training and he’s now actually doing the activism work he’d been lauded for earlier. According to Cassie, who’d heard from Caitlin, Barrett had reached out to the women’s shelter to donate as well as volunteer, and had apparently started coordinating with You Can Play to do some outreach. He’d also posted a long statement on his socials about his previous behaviour, taking accountability in a way Zane hadn’t seen him do until now. Zane had gotten his own awkward but sincere apology in the form of a stilted speech in their stadium carpark after the game with Boston - he’d walked away from it a few degrees less frosty towards Barrett, which was progress. The new Barrett is a great deal better than how he’d been before, and Zane even toys with the idea of forgiving him somewhere down the line, though he certainly won’t forget. He doesn’t know if he will, but the fact that he’s considering it at all is something.

Shane is clearly considering it too, if the way he corners Zane coming out of the showers one day is any indication.

“What do you think about Barrett recently?”

Straight to the point as always; Zane appreciates that about his fellow alternate. They’re alone in the locker room, having stayed late for Shane to help Zane perfect his slapshot. Ilya’s away at his yearly physical, so Zane has no reservations about speaking freely.

“He’s… better. It’s something, I guess.” There’s a lot more Zane wants to say, but it’s not easy to articulate. He thinks Shane gets it regardless.

“Yeah…” Shane says, staring into his locker contemplatively. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to forgive him, but I sort of feel like I have to.”

There’s no question in there, but Zane hears one anyway. “You don’t have to.”

Shane sighs. “I know. Ilya tells me the same thing too, but…”

“I get it.”

They sit in silence for a second before Zane breaks it again. “He apologised to me a few days ago.” Shane looks up, curious. “It was a pretty good one, as far as these things go. Made me less angry at him, at least a little.”

“That’s… good,” Shane says. “Being less angry sounds nice. I don’t like feeling this way.” Zane has never heard anything more relatable. “Do you think he actually means it, this time? Not just because he’s, I don’t know, worried about his place on the team, or hopping on the bandwagon, or something like that?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Zane replies, “no way to be sure it’s not lip service, but–”

He doesn’t get to say anything else before the door to the locker room swings open. Harsh fluorescent light spills in from the corridor, illuminating Barrett where he stands tense in the doorway, staring at them.

“Sorry, I’ll just…” Barrett stammers, and Zane is wryly amused at his terror to be alone in a locker room with two non-white players. Not for the same reasons he might have been before, but still.

“Barrett,” Shane says, and Barrett freezes, gobsmacked that Shane is addressing him outside of the rink. “I saw the post you made last month, and the stuff you’ve been doing recently. If… if you still want to apologise, and make amends… I’m open to hearing it now.”

There’s a beat, and then Barrett scrambles over to face Shane, somehow both eager and hesitant at the same time. Shane flinches away, ever so slightly, but stands his ground.

Before Barrett can open his mouth, Zane cuts in. “Hey, I’ll just… head out first. This seems like a private conversation.”

Two sets of eyes snap to him, both panicked.

Shane chews his lip. “Actually, Bood, if you don’t mind…”

“Do you want me to stay?” Zane says plainly.

Shane nods. “Yeah, if it’s okay with you.”

Decision made, then. In lieu of a response, Zane ambles over to stand beside Shane in a silent show of support.

Barrett watches the entire exchange quietly. He seems a bit more wary now that there’s two of them, but soldiers on anyway. “Hollander… I’d like to apologise to you properly.”

His voice is flat, like he’d written everything down and is carefully picking his way through the script. “I don’t want to make any excuses. I mean, fuck, you’ve probably heard all the bullshit I said about why I behaved the way I did. Those were my reasons, but that’s not an excuse for anything I said or did for years.” He bites his lip. “Shane… I’m so sorry. I don’t think I could even begin to say how sorry I am. I’ll probably never understand how awful it was from your perspective. I was a hypocrite, and- and I’m not racist, but I get why you would think that. Not that you’re wrong! I just–”

Barrett blows out a frustrated breath. “I’m going about this all wrong. Look, I said and did racist, homophobic, sexist shit, and that’s as bad as believing it. I haven’t done enough to earn forgiveness, and I didn’t realise how entitled I’d been until you pointed it out. I’m sorry for all of it. It was awful and there’s no excuse. I’m not asking you to forgive me, I just… I’m sorry.”

Shane looks conflicted. He makes eye contact with Zane, but Zane shrugs helplessly. It’s your choice, man, he tries to convey, and he thinks Shane gets it.

Shane turns back to Barrett, who’s watching both of them cautiously. “Thank you for apologising. I know I don’t have to thank you but… at least now I can see you’re trying.” He stops for a moment and Barrett doesn’t interrupt. “I don’t… I honestly don’t know what to say. I believe you, but I don’t know if I can forgive you. I don’t know if I want to. I’m s–” he cuts himself off. “Yeah.”

Awkward silence hangs between the three of them. Seemingly against his will, Barrett does look disappointed by Shane’s response, but he rallies fast enough that Shane, staring at the ground, doesn’t notice.

“That’s… yeah, of course.” Barrett gives them both a tight smile. “It’s your choice. Thank you for… uh, for hearing me out, I guess. I’m sorry again.”

The mood is rapidly deteriorating from somewhat tense to wildly uncomfortable, and Barrett deserves to sit in it, but Shane doesn’t, so Zane, out of sympathy for Shane’s plight, steps in.

“Well, then. Time to shower.” He nudges Shane gently, just enough that his shoulders come down from his ears. “Come on, man, you stink.”

“Sure. Um.. see you, Barrett.” Shane says, looking anywhere but at the two of them.

Barrett gives them both a wide-eyed nod, then books it out of the room as fast as he can without looking like he’s running. He trips on the way out, almost faceplanting, but doesn’t slow down at all as he makes his escape. With him goes Zane’s tenuous grasp on his self-control, and he just loses it. The sheer ridiculousness of the last few weeks finally catches up to him, and he laughs so hard he starts wheezing. Shane’s concerned expression just sets him off again, and eventually Shane joins in, chuckling lowly.

That’s how Ilya finds them later.

“Oh?” He says, stepping into the locker room. “What is so funny? Share the joke, please.” He gives Shane a quick peck then noogies Zane like an asshole.

“Nothing, baby,” Shane says, stopping Zane from retaliating. “Just an inside joke. You wouldn’t get it.”

“How can you say this to your husband?” Ilya gestures dramatically. He tries to drape himself over Shane, who dodges expertly, stripping off his layers and heading to the showers. “We are supposed to share, moya lyubov! You are setting bad example for husbands everywhere!”

“I can’t hear you!” Shane calls back, having obviously heard the entire thing.

Ilya turns to Zane; his grin is shit-eating, but his eyes are grateful. “Everything okay?”

Zane nods, a little surprised that he means it. “Yeah, I think so.” He loads the rest of his gear into his bag with practiced efficiency. “I’m gonna head home, Roz. Take care of our boy.”

Ilya’s whole face softens. “I will, thank you, Bood. Go home to beautiful wife and son.” Then his smile warps into a smirk and he turns toward the showers. “Actually, maybe I will go take care of Shanya right now…”

“Nope,” Zane says. He doesn’t even wait to see if Ilya had been serious - he’s learned his lesson by now, leaving the hockey husbands to their business for his own peace of mind and heading out before he gets caught in the crossfire.

He’s just gotten into his car when his phone goes off. It’s a message from Cassie - a photo of Milo in his baby skates, toddling around a rink, using a miniature stick to keep his balance. It’s captioned Future Hall of Famer!!!. He reacts with a heart and forwards it to the ‘Dads Chat’ (which inexplicably includes Ilya, who only sends photos of his dog, or, on occasion, some cool rocks that he likes to give to Shane). Wyatt is already threatening to convince Milo to be a goalie before Zane even puts his phone down.

Wyatt is good people. So are Ilya and Shane, and the rookies, and most of the Cens, really. Maybe, someday, that list might include Barrett. Maybe things aren’t as set in stone as he’d once believed.

Maybe one day, he thinks as he pulls out onto the driveway, by the time Milo is old enough to play in it, this League might be something to be proud of.

Chapter End Notes

i just love my babies so much :') ilya is doing his best, and so is shane, and so is everyone in this chapter. i just think they're neat!

again, i’m so sorry this is so late, life just ran me over with a truck. the ao3 author curse is real. i hope the update makes up for it!! 10 points to whomever spots the superstore and ben 10 (yes, i know, but i promise it makes sense) references

please subscribe to the series as well - there will be a companion socmed fic coming soon (it includes scenes from the ‘affirmative action’ chat and an explanation of the Tuesday Incident if you’re interested hehe)

anyway, how are we all feeling about the new casting announcement? i really hope justice’s experience with the fandom will be better than the other poc actors (hudson, ksenia, ben etc.) but i don’t have high hopes. i also have Thoughts about the implications of the reformed white bigot dating a poc but i guess we’ll have to see how they handle it

some very important posts to share with you all that articulate issues with canon in a way i couldn’t (especially from people who are much more knowledgeable about hockey than i):
on the hypocrisy of shane’s narrative arc
on how shane is likely treated by the media
on the inherent humiliation of shane’s move to ottawa
on why the salary does matter (original tumblr post deleted)
on shane’s professional ambition
on how the fandom sometimes treats shane (and the racial implications)
on the ilya chose shane over hockey narrative
on hollanov and ilya’s relationship with the closet
on happy endings

come say hi on twitter or check out my other fics (ilya's two-puck birthday bonanza, baby shane birthday angst, and murder husbands) :) thank you to one of my fav people in the world for betaing this at 1am, see you on friday for dinner!!