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, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Ryan Price/Fabian Salah, Troy Barrett/Harris Drover

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Ryan Price (Game Changers), Troy Barrett, Fabian Salah, Harris Drover, Brandon Wiebe, Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri, Victor Nikiforov, Alexei Rozanov's Daughter, Nikolai Plisetsky, Zane Boodram, Wyatt Hayes, Evan Dykstra, Nick Chouinard, Young (Game Changers), Holmberg (Game Changers), LaPointe (Game Changers), Luca Haas, Gillis (Game Changers), Lundin (Game Changers), Baldwin (Game Changers), Yuna Hollander, David Hollander, Ottawa Centaurs Team Ensemble (Game Changers), Ottawa Centaurs WAGs Ensemble (Game Changers), Gritty | Philadelphia Flyers Mascot, Jean-Jacques Leroy, Dallas Kent, Svetlana Vetrova, Carter Vaughn

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack, Fluff, Angst, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Married Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Quebec Nordiques NHL Team, Team Bonding, Homophobia, Racism, Texting, Mixed Media, Social Media, Instagram, Twitter, reddit, Fuck AI, no AI was used in the creation of this fic, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Hockey Fights, Hockey Injuries, Alternative Universe - Montreal Metros Aren't A Bunch of Homophobic Assholes, Hockey Players Mic'd Up on the Ice (Game Changers)

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of in all but name, Part 5 of crackin' open a cold one

Collections:

The Cream of the Crop, depressed rat’s finished works

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-29 Completed: 2026-05-08 Words: 35,000 Chapters: 10/10

sem'ya

Summary

Ilya doesn't go into their game against Philly intending to hate Gritty, contrary to Shane's assumptions. He has it all worked out. It's just going to be a fun little bit that he does. Gritty has a menacing energy that should vibe well with Ilya's everything.

In their second year as captains of the Nordiques, Shane and Ilya have more challenges to face, including a team that is now aware of them as a couple, anxious new additions, flirtatious mascots, and a hockey world that is finally responding to change...

Direct sequel to domoy, wherein Shane and Ilya go to the Quebec Nordiques in this AU’s expansion draft and come out to the world, and Yuri, Yuuri, and Viktor move to Canada.

Notes

Previously on In All But Name:

brátishka:

- Ilya is Yuri Plisetsky’s older half-brother. He’s been functionally adopted by Nikolai Plisetsky as another grandson.
- Irina Rozanova neé Belova was a ballerina trained by Lilia Baranovskaya.
- Through a series of coincidences, the Boston Bears end up thinking that Ilya is in the mob. And that he possibly has rabies, which is more concerning.
- Shane is Katsuki Yuuri’s cousin.
- He and Ilya met for the second time at the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in 2009. They exchanged emails and have been epistolary friends since then.
- They meet up regularly starting after the CCM commercial, playing games and generally becoming friends over email while they hook up in person.
- They have a falling out during the Olympics due to stress and the recent anti-gay propaganda laws.
- They reunite at the MLH Awards in Vegas, and make up from their previous split, deciding to go exclusive at this point.
- Grigori Rozanov passes away mysteriously over the summer of 2014. Ilya deals with the estate and fully commits to the Plisetsky rather than the remaining Rozanovs.
- Alexei Rozanov goes to jail and his daughter ends up in Nikolai Plisetsky’s custody.
- Shane and Ilya come out to the world as friends at 2015 Worlds, where Yuuri takes gold and Yuri takes silver. Also, Ilya and Yuri reveal their fraternal relationship. They get a lot of press around the double family rivalry.
- They get engaged after Shane wins the Cup in 2015.

domoy:

- After a lovely summer at the cottage, Shane comes back to find Theriault and the Voyageurs management cracking down on any behavior they perceived as gay (read: anything they did not want to see from Shane.) Through this, Shane persevered and won his second cup with Montreal.
- Yuuri and Viktor have a commitment ceremony that Shane and Ilya attend together.
- Shane still gets injured by Marleau.
- Scott Hunter wins the Cup and comes out with Kip.
- Shane and Ilya get married in secret, with only their closest loved ones around.
- After the wedding it comes out that Theriault and Voyageurs management have been investigating Shane and Ilya’s friendship to try and find a means of sabotaging Shane/making him less of a star due to racism primarily, and homophobia secondarily.
- Shane and Ilya, along with a host of other characters, are sent in the Expansion Draft to the Quebec Nordiques.
- This includes most of the Ottawa Centaurs line up, plus most of the other queer players at the time: Ryan Price, Baldwin, and Lundin.
- They build the room from the bottom up to be a safer space.
- Ilya saves Duncan Harvey from overdosing, but ends up injured in the process.
- He goes to the Olympics to see Yuri compete while he is on IR.
- The Nordiques make the playoff run of their lives and end up winning the Cup, at which point Shane and Ilya kiss and come out as husbands.
- Montreal has been extremely angry about how Shane was treated. So is Yuna Hollander.
- No one knows exactly what happened to Henri Theriault, but Montreal is certainly looking for a new head coach for the 2018-2019 season.

I would recommend reading the previous fics first, but this should be enough context for you to pick up the first chapter of this fic.

Sem’ya means family :)

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

Shane isn’t really a party guy. He doesn’t drink, usually can’t eat the food, has too many awkward conversations, the list goes on.

In Montreal, he had to go out with the team sometimes, because he needed to build camaraderie. Needed to have something as a barrier against everything going on above him.

It didn’t help, in the end, but he still did it.

Quebec City is quieter, at least. Much more peaceful. Shane usually doesn’t have to worry about going to a party or a club when he can just go home.

But Ilya really is the consummate host. He loves having people over.

So when Ilya says, “We should host the team for a party over Labor Day,” Shane just looks at him for a moment, seeing the visible excitement on his face.

Who could say no to that?

Besides, he knows it won’t be bad. It’s their house. Their food. Their music.

Their families and friends.

He can be a party guy for Ilya.

It’s good that the team’s excited, at least.

Unfortunately, the other thing about hosting is that they need stuff for it.

And getting stuff means that Shane releases Ilya to the bounty of capitalism.

Which is to say Costco.

The garage door opens to Ilya parking Shane’s car with an unmitigated glee.

“моя любовь!” [my love] Ilya cheers once he’s gotten out of the car, sweeping forward to grab Shane’s face and kiss it. His fingers tangle in Shane's hair, longer than he's ever let it grow out before.

Shane kisses back, enjoying for a moment before he pulls back and says, “What were the unnecessary items this time?”

“Nothing was unnecessary!” Ilya protests. “I kept to the list. Mostly.” He goes to open the trunk.

“Then what’s the box for?” Shane says, staring into the completely full trunk of his car.

“Porch swing,” Ilya says, wiggling his eyebrows, before he gets a little more serious. “We need more seating, and you will love putting it together, солнышко. [Sunshine] I will do the party set up while you assemble. Is perfect.”

“I can help you,” Shane objects. 

“No,” Ilya says, as he begins to tote their groceries inside. “I get to watch you get all sweaty lifting and building, and then you man the grill later. You get to have me in the apron. Is the perfect arrangement, Shane. Do not mess with it.”

He’s not wrong, so Shane lets the issue lie, and goes to take the box out to the patio.

By the time that people start actually arriving, Shane has his clothes back on and is stationed in front of the grill with burgers already cooking. Everything from Ilya’s earlier prep session is laid out for him. They’ve cleared space for Bood’s Big Green Egg. 

To no one’s surprise, Shane’s parents are the first to arrive. Yuna swans in with a side hug to Ilya and another to Shane before she’s bustling over to bring more chairs out from the back of the car.

“Mom, you didn’t need to do that!” He calls after her.

“This isn’t like your wedding, honey! You have more people coming! They need seating!”

She and David make themselves busy rearranging the patio furniture. At least she doesn’t move the swing that Shane spent an hour building. And then doing other things on.

Bood slaps Shane’s back as he drags his Big Green Egg in. “Hey, Cap!”

“Hi, Bood,” he says dutifully. “Hey, Cassie.”

“Hi Shane!” She plops into one of the chairs by the patio table. “Your house is gorgeous.”

“Thanks.” Shane is not going to tell her about getting the reno done, and having to redo half the plumbing because new builds are all shoddy these days. 

Fortunately, he’s saved from having to continue the conversation because Bood needs somewhere to plug Brenda in. He lets Bood man the grill while he drags the cord over to the outlet.

“Hello, Boodrams!” Ilya sing-songs as he comes outside, just as Shane returns to the grill.

“The jacket looks great, Ilya!” Cassie says, giggling slightly. “I would have worn mine! Why didn’t you say you would wear it?”

Bood is gaping, his tongs hanging out in space over the open smoker. Shane turns to see his husband.

Wearing a very well-fitted leather WAG jacket with his number on it over a tight white tank top and his tailored slim-fit jeans. With Katsuki-Hollander embroidered on the back over the Nordiques logo.

Shane just bluescreens for a second.

“I wanted to surprise my Shane,” Ilya says, looking straight at him.

Logically, Shane knows Ilya has been talking to the WAGs since last season and helping plan team events. It’s been very convenient for knowing where people are and if there’s something going on in their lives that’s reflected on the ice.

But seeing him with Shane’s name and number on his back sends a rush through his veins.

“You look great, baby,” Shane croaks out, his face flushed.

“He did all the design work,” Cassie says conspiratorially. “Gotta say, it’s paid off. We’re going to look so cool this year.”

Bood whistles. “I’ll say so. Cap can’t stop looking at you, Roz.”

Mortified, Shane turns his gaze back to the grill, only for Ilya to come up behind him, wrap his arms around Shane’s stomach and hook his chin over his shoulder. “Don’t hide, любимый.” [beloved] He leans in closer to whisper in Shane’s ear. “There is one for you too.”

God, now he’s imagining wearing it for Ilya.

The burgers are starting to burn. Shane starts paying attention again and moves them as Ilya detaches to go greet the other guests.

The yard fills quickly as everyone filters in. Shane stays by the grill most of the time, letting people talk around him.

It’s how he learns that Lisa Hayes got hired at CHUL, so she’ll be in Quebec full-time this year. She’s an attending now, after finishing her residency in Toronto.

Caitlyn Dykstra and Selena Chouinard are both pregnant, Caitlyn with her first and Selena with her third. Both of them toast him with ginger ale.

Baldy’s boyfriend Patrick comes over for a bit to chat about some of his new builds, and Shane happily lets him rant about a couple who wants to knock out a load-bearing wall in order for the whole house to be open concept.

The rookies have been playing sewer ball from the moment they arrived, if only because Shane didn’t have Chel already running on the Playstation.

Through it all, Ilya weaves through the party effortlessly, talking, topping up drinks, hiding the speaker so Evan can’t get it, truly in his element.

Even if Shane isn’t a party guy normally, he loves seeing Ilya like this.

He doesn’t get any warning for Coach Wiebe arriving with his wife and daughters.

Instead, he hears a jovial, “Bran? Is that you?” from his dad.

Coach Wiebe laughs as he walks in. “Hi Davey. Good to see you too.” They quickly hug, slapping each other on the back. “Hello Yuna.”

Shane doesn’t know quite what the look on his mom’s face is, but it’s something. “Hi, Brandon. I think you have some people to introduce to us.”

Coach Wiebe huffs out another laugh as he says, “My lovely wife Sarah, and our daughters, Kira, Mia, and Jenna. Sarah, David and I played in college together.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Sarah says with a little bit of a twinkle in her eye. “I’m sure you have some catching up to do, so the girls and I are going to get some food.” She steers their daughters over to one of the serving tables and immediately starts a conversation with Selena Chouinard.

“Bro, your dad played with Coach Wiebe? That’s crazy,” Bood says. 

“He was a goalie at McGill,” Shane says a little robotically.

Wyatt slaps his hand against the table, rattling the utensils. “That’s why you have good energy, Hollzy, your dad’s a goalie.”

“He had to be pretty good if he was playing for McGill,” Choui cuts in.

“He considered the draft, but got his Treasury Board job right out of college,” Shane says, voice falling into a familiar cadence. “He and mom got married and had me the next year anyway.”

“You know, the first time I met Shane, my first thought was he looks like Davey.” Coach Wiebe’s voice carries.

“Not that you had the best player in the league in front of you?” Yuna asks, her smile growing just a little bit.

“Well I knew that walking in. The resemblance really hits you in-person. Took me back to my college days.”

Now half the team is frantically looking between Shane and his dad.

“I can’t take the credit. Yuna did all the work,” David jokes, putting an arm around Yuna. 

“She’s where the hockey IQ comes from for sure.” They keep chatting, but the team keeps looking back and forth between them and Shane.

“Did you…know Coach Wiebe played with your dad?” Evan asks.

“Technically?” Shane winces a little bit. “He mentioned it offhand after I moved to the Diques, but I don’t think they’ve had a chance to meet for a conversation until now.”

Evan shrugs. “Fair enough.”

“So you were shooting pucks against an almost professional goalie as a kid?” Baldy asks.

“Since I was four,” Shane says absently. “My mom wouldn’t let him go easy either.”

They all take a moment, clearly contemplating a four-year-old Shane wobbling on the ice, trying to shoot pucks at his dad.

“They really did grow you in a lab to play hockey,” Wyatt jokes.

“Yes, yes, my husband is perfect.” Ilya slides in next to Shane, putting an arm over his shoulders. Shane sticks his hand in Ilya’s pocket. “We will have to see how you do in goal sometime, дорогой.” [dear/darling/treasure]

Shane lets the laughter waft over him, and takes comfort in the line of warmth that is Ilya pressed up against him.

A little later into the evening, the Plisetskys arrive, toting Yuuri and Viktor with them.

“Dyadya!” Katya calls as she comes barrelling out onto the patio.

Ilya’s head pops up from where he’s been hunched over talking to one of Choui’s daughters. “Katya!”

She slams into his stomach full force, like she always does, squeezing tight around his middle. He pretends to choke before she lets him go and turns to Shane. “Dyadya Shane.”

“Hi Katya,” he says as she comes up and hugs him, much less violently than she did Ilya.

“I need you to race me at the rink,” she says gravely.

“Why not ask Yuri?” He asks, puzzled.

“I’m trying to be fast, dyadya, he’s too focused on clean edges.”

“Oi!” Yuri yells, outraged. “I am not!”

“And you’re faster than dyadya Ilya,” she doggedly continues. Ilya’s dramatic gasp is probably loud enough to be heard in the woods. “So I need you to race me.”

“You have a coach for this,” he points out, trying not to laugh at his husband and brother-in-law.

“Ugh, she’s all focused on technique, dyadya, it’s boring.”

“Rushing won’t make you faster,” he says, amused. “Mastering the technical aspects now will make you faster later, and less likely to be injured. Your coach knows what she’s doing.”

She gives him a mulish look. “I should have known you were going to be boring about it.”

“I didn’t say I would race you. I just said you need to work on technique first. It’s not my primary sport either, Katya. I would have to train for it.”

She waves a hand. “You could pick it up in a week.”

“I also have a job, Katya.”

She makes a little noise in her throat. “Over holiday break, you have to come to Montreal and race me.”

“Deal.” They’re going to visit the Plisetskys anyway, but it’s nice to have an activity.

“And I thought I would be the first to steal you away from hockey,” Yuuri jokes. “What happened to ‘it’s just cross-training’, Shun-kun?”

”Yes, Shane,” Yuri says. “You could do an exhibition piece like Ilyusha did with me.”

“It’s still cross training,” Shane retorts. “Builds stamina for longer shifts. Where would I do an exhibition routine anyway?”

Viktor snorts. “Shenya, they would die to have you perform anywhere in this city. In the country, really.”

"No one is stealing him from hockey," Ilya says firmly. “But we could do something for pregame…”

“That’s valuable prep time, Ilya! Pregame.“

Shane gets so caught up in the argument that he doesn’t hear Bood whisper to Evan, “Shit, they’re all like this,” or see the mildly terrified and awed looks cast between his teammates.

Before their first preseason game against Pittsburgh, Shane doesn’t try to do a big speech. He lets Evan pick from the team’s playlist of hype music. Ilya bounces around the room, his energy and drive infectious.

They’re feeling good. 

So once Shane has his gear on, he walks over to the door and waits.

They don’t notice immediately. That’s fine. It gives Shane a little time to rehearse.

He can tell Wyatt clocks it first because he lets out a cheerful call of, “Benediction!”

It’s echoed through the team, the rookies looking around wildly as they start to line up.

He hasn’t quite figured out how they settle into an order—it seems different most of the time, but some of the guys have settled in one spot. Ilya’s always at the end of the line, of course. The goalies tend to be in the middle. Going first is for whoever they vote in that day, usually for doing well in practice.

Today it’s Young, the rookie center. He looks a little bit scared as the guys jostle him to the front of the line. Come to think of it, all of the rookies are at the front today.

Shane waits until he’s close enough, holds Young’s face, says, “You’ve improved your backcheck,” and plants a kiss on his forehead.

Young goes so red that Shane’s a little afraid he might be having an aneurysm, and squeaks, “Thanks, Dad. FUCK! Thanks, CAP! CAPTAIN!”

That sends the entire team into hysterics. Truly hooting and hollering. 

Poor kid. Shane taps him on the cheek and decides not to layer any further humiliation on top of it by addressing it, or god forbid, making a joke out of it. It’ll only make it worse. He’s a little bit less red as he goes out the door.

Next is Holmberg. “Good job on that wrister, earlier. Keep it up.” Kiss. Out.

Haas. “Shot accuracy is improving.” Kiss. Out.

LaPointe. “All that muscle is doing you good.” Kiss. Out.

Gillis. “Looking forward to seeing you on the power play.” Kiss. Out.

Boodram. “I want to see those pretty edges tonight.” Kiss. Out.

Price. “Kill them on the PK.” Kiss. Out.

Chouinard. “Send them flying.” Kiss. Out.

Dykstra. “Make ‘em sing, D.” Kiss. Out.

Lundin. “Control is the name of the game.” Kiss. Out.

Baldwin. “Let them come to you.” Kiss. Out.

Hayes. “Tell me about Spiderman on the bench.” Kiss. Out. Hayes is suited up but not in for tonight.

He keeps going by sheer muscle memory, right up until Ilya, at the end of the line. Everyone else is already out by now. They’ve gotten better about the blushing. The vets take the compliments with a wink, and directives with solid nods. He’s going to have to work on the rookies.

"я люблю тебя." [I love you] He says to Ilya with a kiss on the forehead, a kiss on the mouth, and then they’re off to the races. Ilya gives him his customary slap on the ass on their way out the door.

Ilya doesn't go into their game against Philly intending to hate Gritty, contrary to Shane's assumptions. He has it all worked out. It's just going to be a fun little bit that he does. Gritty has a menacing energy that should vibe well with Ilya's everything.

The rookies seem to find it funny at least. Fuck. He's trying to entertain children now. The Russian Menace is gone.

It's just that Shane is so persistent about him not getting penalties because "I want you to have a fighting chance in the scoring race Ilya. You don't need more handicaps."

His PIM has never been lower. He's still making the top 5 in the scoring race. It's worth it. He's developed a plan for getting more power plays with their chirp rolodex. Everything is fine and dandy.

When their first game against Philly comes up, in the middle of an October road trip, Ilya is only paying a little bit of mind to the orange freak that made out with the cute little Shane doll.

Which Ilya is mad about, by the way. They've been selling it since before they got the old mascot rights back. Everyone wants a Shane of their own. He tried to as Jen in Marketing about doing a matched set of him and Shane, and the most he's gotten to is limited edition bobbleheads of their Stanley Cup Kiss. Which is very cute, don't get him wrong. But it's not a matched set of huggable dolls that he can gift to every child in their lives and also chuck at Yuri after his performances.

He's gotten distracted.

The freak is hanging from the ceiling of the Wells Fargo Center when they skate out for warm-ups, swinging on a harness and generally looking like a menace.

Ilya keeps his eyes on it as he skates laps alongside Shane, letting Shane maneuver him around the rink. When the spotlight goes off of it, he watches it shimmy out of the harness and disappear somewhere into the rafters.

Safe, for the moment.

They stop on their side and Shane drops to the ice to start his stretches. Ilya follows him down to the ice, politely admiring his husband's impeccable form.

After a few moments, he feels the uncanny sense that they're being watched by a singular being.

The orange eyes glint from behind the glass.

“You good?” Shane asks quietly. He's so concerned.

“Do not turn around,” Ilya grits out.

So of course, Shane simply has to turn around with a coquettish twist of his torso.

Behind him, Gritty is standing behind the glass, his googly eyes staring directly at Shane.

At his phenomenal ass and the arch of his back when he stretches, more like.

“Ilya, it’s just the mascot. Ignore it.”

“He is leering,” Ilya growls under his breath.

“It’s a fucking orange thing. How can it be leering?” 

“Bad energy.” Ilya makes eye contact with the thing. There is at once an emptiness behind those eyes and a sense that something fills the void beneath them.

Shane turns back and keeps stretching, pushing his knees out and making sure his hips are open and loose.

Ilya gets up from stretching.

“Baby, what are you doing?”

“Going to stop Gritty,” Ilya says distractedly. It takes a lot to distract him from Shane's stretches, but by God, this is one of those moments.

“We have a game to play! Stop getting distracted by the mascot!” 

“I will just be one second.” Ilya skates over to the glass that Gritty is behind and makes a ‘cut it out’ gesture. The crowd starts making more noise as they see him getting closer to the orange thing.

In response, Gritty pulls the Shane Hollander doll out of fucking nowhere, holding it out in front of Ilya like a taunt.

Objectively, it’s a cute doll, even if Ilya is mad about it.

Being held by Gritty though? It looks like a threat. Ilya takes it like one, holding up a fist at Gritty to the crowd’s enthusiastic booing.

Instead of anything normal happening, the mascot holds the doll up to its forehead, then to its mouth like it’s making out with it.

The Benediction and harassment. Gritty can't do any worse.

Ilya gets closer and bangs on the glass a little bit.

Then Gritty shoves the doll in his fucking mouth-hole thing and starts gyrating its middle.

Ilya sees red, but can't do anything before he hears his captain speaking.

“Rozanov!” Shane yells. “Get back to warm-ups.”

Ilya comes skating back, the very picture of restraint. Behind him, the mascot points and acts like he’s laughing, the doll’s little legs sticking out of his mouth. He can see it on the jumbotron.

“He ate you, Shane!” Ilya says as he plops back down next to Shane.

“He did not eat me—look. It doesn’t matter. Please just don’t try to fight it, okay?”

“I told you Gritty would be my new rival.” It's a matter of principle now.

“You are not competing against Gritty in anything!”

“Shane–”

“No!” Shane is starting to sound frustrated enough that the bit is no longer entertaining. It's no fun beating a dead horse, or an orange freak who has eaten an effigy of your husband.

“Fine.” He stops, with a final ‘I’m watching you’ gesture.

Later in the game, the Nordiques are up 3-0 at the end of the second period, and heading back to the tunnel for intermission.

Gritty has come out onto the ice to entertain the crowd.

Ilya eyes him with suspicion, and makes sure to stick close to his husband.

Gritty gyrates his belly at Shane, getting ever closer.

Shane, the picture of patience, just ignores him.

He takes the Shane Hollander doll back out. Ilya knew this would happen.

He steps between Shane and the mascot. “Stop flirting with my husband,” 

The orange eyes of the fucking creature look on with madness.

Gritty leans to one side to get Shane back in view and takes another doll out. Of himself. The orange thing.

And then he makes the dolls kiss, before he makes a ‘call me’ gesture to Shane.

Jesus fucking Christ. This is why they need to make a Rozanov doll.

Ilya drops gloves. He is all out of patience, unlike Shane.

The dolls go back into the amorphous something that is Gritty as the mascot holds its hands up in a fighting pose. 

Ilya skates forward and grabs Gritty’s jersey, one fist up in the air.

Without warning, Ilya is arrested in place, his arms clamped down by Shane's as he says, “Don’t you dare, Ilya. Do not fight the orange thing.”

“But любимый—” [beloved]

“No.” He pulls Ilya off and out of the way before he addresses Gritty. “I’m married. Not interested. Pick someone else.”

Ilya basks in Shane proclaiming their marital status for a split second before remembering that he's having to assert it to a fucking mascot.

Gritty looks on freakishly as they leave. Ilya knows two things for sure.

1) The orange freak, and whoever's wearing the damn costume, has a thing for his husband. Everyone does, but this is the first time someone has made a public challenge, however farcical it might seem. Ilya can't let that stand.

2) This is far from over. They have 3 other regular season games to play against Philly. The freak will be there all season. Ilya has to be prepared for a war of attrition. 

He has to tell Harris that they’re going to war.

Chapter End Notes

I’m back again with another installment in this series! This one should be shorter, but we all know how that’s turned out before lol. I hope you like it! Feel free to tell me what you think!

Quick Notes:

- It’s party time!
- If you seen the #shaneslingerie posts on Tumblr recently, I want you to imagine that outfit with a leather WAG jacket layered on top of it, Rozanov across his shoulder blades. That’s what Shane is imagining.
- I made a list of WAG updates to track since I didn't really have them as present in the last fic. CHUL is the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Québec-Universite Laval. It's pediatric hospital too, which works with Lisa's speciality.
- Wiebe is finally meeting David and Yuna again! They’ve had a series of near misses over the past year, mostly because it’s more difficult for David and Yuna to get to games now, with Quebec City being 4.5 hours away.
- I simply love Katya Plisetskaya-Rozanova.
- The rookies’ first Benedictions! I thought it would be fun to show a little bit of Shane’s process for doing it.
- To keep the timeline straight, here’s Ilya’s POV of the Gritty extra.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Watching Fabian perform is like walking into a different world, a lot of the time.

The atmosphere is electric and sensual in a way that Ryan feels in his blood. He follows the bow on the string, transfixed.

Shane and Ilya have already disappeared into the club bathroom. Still, it’s…nice to have them here.

Chapter Notes

@quebecnordiques posted to Instagram!

[Video: Taken on a camcorder, a very small Shane Hollander is dressed in a full snowsuit and balancing effortlessly on his tiny skates. He looks like an orb with his hatted head popping out the top. He tries to score a goal while his dad, David Hollander, is in the net with his full goalie kit from his time at McGill. Shane very diligently hits the puck with surprisingly good aim for a four-year old. David makes no secret of stopping them, wasting no effort to do so. Shane doesn’t react to the blocks, just takes the puck back and tries again, his mouth in a determined line. Towards the end of the video he sneaks one in five-hole, and proceeds to scream at the top of his lungs while skating circles at top speed as his dad leaves the net to chase him.]

quebecnordiques #tbt to our Captain @shanehollanderhockeyplayer first learning to play! A huge thanks to @yunakhollander for sharing this with us!

Liked by shanehollanderhockeyplayer, yunakhollander, rozanov81, vetrovas, whazy, boodzram, lucahaas, cholmberg46, y-plisetsky, y-katsuki, v-nikiforov, and 57294 others 

rozanov81 🥹🥹🥹

↳@yunakhollander why have i not seen this before???

  ↳yunakhollander @rozanov81 When you come to dinner I’ll show you his baby pictures!

    ↳rozanov81 😁😁😁

whazy no wonder @shanehollanderhockeyplayer is such a beast! 

haydenpike35 maybe I should start letting the twins on the ice if this is how Shane got so good…

↳rozanov81 for that their dad has to be good hockey player, sorry :(

cholmberg46 wow @youngboycor this is how ur dad skated when he was ur age

↳youngboycor STOP

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- At last, after consistently letting him be the butt of the joke, we finally have J.J. Leroy POV.
- It's Instagram time! This series has really honed my propensity for imaginary image descriptions.
- If you're a Montreal fan, you may have caught what I've done with Louis St. Martin :)
- It's time for Ryan and Fabian!!!
- Ilya and Katya really could have coexisted in Boston for a bit. :D
- The Nordiques SAPs are all delightful.
- In terms of the names: I wanted to emphasize how Ryan thinks of them on the ice versus off.
- Kent is taking a match penalty for spearing Shane here; there's also a fighting major that Troy ends up serving, as well as a one game suspension and a $10000 fine for instigation in the final five minutes.
- Technically, Ryan should be given a game misconduct for intervening, but since Kent is getting a match penalty, Ryan's is negated (Third Man In Penalty)

Solution on page B7:

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

Suspension Extension? The Kent-Hollander Altercation Revisited

December 14, 2018 • ESPN Daily News • written by Luke Henderson

Chapter Notes

When Ryan finds Fabian after the game, he’s pale and shaking a little bit. So is Ryan, to be fair.

“Ryan,” he says in a rush of air, his arms coming to wrap around Ryan’s middle. “Oh my god that was horrible. Holy fuck.”

“Yeah,” Ryan says. He can’t stop thinking about the blood and Shane struggling to breathe. 

“I hope that asshole Kent gets punished,” Fabian spits out, his face still buried in Ryan’s chest.

“Match penalty and a one-game suspension,” Ryan says, rote.

“So he can try to kill Shane and only be punished for one game? That’s fucking barbaric.”

Ryan thinks back to years of sending guys to the ground with one punch and only getting a fighting major for it, because his match-ups were more…scheduled.

“He called him a cocksucking fucking fairy before the face-off,” Ryan says as his breathing starts to get faster.

“So it’s straight up gay bashing? Fuck. I didn’t think this could get worse. This is why I fucking stopped watching back then,” Fabian rants, pulling his head back from Ryan’s chest.

It’s not like that, Ryan wants to say. He wants to say it so badly. 

But it is like that. Not for the Diques, a new team with different rules, but for everyone else, it’s functionally the norm. Not always as bad as Toronto, but not good either.

“We take the risk of injury in order to play,” Ryan says, his tongue feeling clumsy in his mouth. It’s not the whole of it. It’s not saying that the gay players usually have to work so much harder to make it. That they have to be the best, above it all in order to be accepted, because if they aren't, they're driven out with prejudice and whole lot of violence.

That injury is part of the game. That they have to accept that their bodies are commodities with burning wicks.

“How can this be acceptable risk, baby? It’s not…” Fabian trails off. “Fuck. I know it’s violent. I hated that, coming into this. But there’s the game, and then there’s being targeted, which Shane clearly was tonight. What if that was you?”

“It never is,” Ryan says numbly. “I’m too big for this kind of thing. They’re afraid of me.”

“But they’re not afraid of Shane, because he’s nice.”

There’s an unspoken reason hanging in the air, because the assholes like Kent don’t try their luck with Ryan. They don’t try their luck with Ilya. They don’t try their luck with Baldy, or Lundy, or Scott Hunter on the Admirals. Not with the support they have on their teams.

But they still do it to Shane, even knowing he has the Nordiques behind him.

They still do it to Shane Katsuki-Hollander.

“He’s the best player on the ice,” Ryan says instead, knowing Fabian, of all people, will know the real reason.

Fabian takes a steadying breath, letting it out shakily. “I don’t—I don’t know if I can watch again.”

God, Ryan gets it. He knows why. 

But there’s still a little part of him that cracks at the same place that he did when he heard Fabian say, “I’m not going to date a hockey player,” all those months ago.

“Okay,” is all that he can muster.

“I know you love the Diques. I just—I can’t do it.” There are tears welling in Fabian’s eyes, threatening to fall on the precise stripes drawn on his face in Nordiques colors.

“I get it,” Ryan says, but he feels a tightness in his chest like he’s dying, 

like he can’t breathe, just like Shane, coughing and sputtering blood on the ice, 

like he has to put his fists up because otherwise there’s nothing of worth to him, 

like he's just clusters of pain, flaring bright throughout his body,

like there’s nothing but blackness at the edges of his vision and Fabian in the center.

He shoves Fabian away a little bit and stumbles back, falling to his knees as he clutches at his chest.

“Ryan!” Fabian cries out as he’s shoved away and Ryan falls.

“I’m dying,” he says numbly. “Having a heart attack.”

“Baby you need to breathe, please,” Fabian begs as he drops to his knees, practically crawling into Ryan’s space. “Fuck, should I call 911?”

Ryan tries to listen and remember his breathing exercises from the mental health coach. 

In for 4.

Hold for 4.

Out for 4.

Hold for 4.

In for 4.

Hold for 4.

Out for 4.

Hold for 4.

In for 4.

Hold for 4.

Out for 4.

Hold for 4.

In for 4.

Hold for 4.

Out for 4.

Hold for 4.

In for 4.

Hold for 4.

Out for 4.

Hold for 4.

Fabian is holding his hand and breathing in time with him, the tears cutting through his makeup.

Ryan wants to wipe his tears away, but can’t bear the thought of ruining it further.

"Fuck, that was scary, babe," Fabian says. "Are you okay?"

Ryan works his jaw a little bit as he figures out what to say. "Um. I think so."

"Did I...did I make you panic?" Fabian asks quietly.

"No, no," Ryan rushes to say. "It wasn't you, it was--it was just everything."

Fabian draws him into an embrace, getting upright on his knees in order to cradle Ryan's head beneath his. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that. I did like it, before...your goal was beautiful. Just, watching Shane go down like that, and you stepping in to protect him, I was so afraid you were going to get hurt too."

Ryan just breathes, where his head is tucked in by Fabian's collarbone, listening to his flutter-quick heartbeat as his own heart rate starts to come down.

God, what if it was him? 

Shane is the kind of guy who takes checks to the boards with a grin, who bounces back from injury impossibly quick, who's faster than he was when he was 19 and lighter than air.

Ryan's back and knees and hips and everything flare with pain on a good day. The physio has helped a lot, and he does recovery properly now, but it doesn't erase being 31 and having played for 9 teams in 10 years, most of whom used him as a meat shield.

"I can't promise that I won't get hurt," he says cautiously. "But I will try not to."

Fabian snorts, and then looks a little frustrated at himself for doing it. "You weren't before?"

"I mean--"

"I know what you mean," Fabian interrupts him, before pressing a kiss to his lips. "I love you, Ryan."

"I love you too."

"And I just--I want you to think about yourself. I think--" he cuts himself off for a moment. "I don't think I can watch, for a while. But I want you to tell me how you're doing, and how the team is, because they seem like they like you a lot."

"Okay," Ryan says. "Okay."

He can do that.

The doctor pokes and prods at Shane’s neck while he’s lying in the hospital bed. “It looks like mostly soft tissue damage, with contusions at the site of impact. Thankfully, no significant damage to the blood vessels around the area. Hairline fracture in the hyoid bone that we have been monitoring over the last 24 hours. You got lucky, Mr. Hollander. If you had taken that stick to the back of the neck, we would be having a very different conversation.”

“Why was he coughing blood then?” Ilya demands, sitting at his bedside.

“Minor damage to the trachea that we noted on the laryngoscopy,” The doctor says. “No pneumothorax as of yet, but we will have to monitor for it thoroughly. We do not want to see air collecting under the skin—it could lead to his lungs collapsing.”

Shane tries to speak, but it comes out as more of a painful wheeze.

“Oh yes. Inflammation around the area of the fracture as well, particularly around the larynx.”

“Will he be able to speak again?” Ilya asks.

The doctor consults his notes. “After some time, yes. We’ll be giving you some medication to control the swelling, but you will need to limit movement in order for the trachea to heal properly. No strenuous exercise, no hard foods. Liquid diet. Rest with your head elevated. Please monitor for any significant difficulty breathing or chest pain.” He takes a stack of papers and hands it to Ilya. “These are his care instructions. Given the damage that I saw today, recovery will take at least two weeks, if all goes well. The next few days will be critical. If anything changes in terms of your pain levels, or ability to breathe, you need to come in immediately.”

Shane holds out a thumbs up and the doctor leaves the room.

“How are you feeling, солнышко?” [Sunshine] Ilya asks while running his fingers through Shane’s hair.

Shane starts texting instead of trying to speak. Ilya takes his phone out.

“Shane,” Ilya says sharply. “You cannot seriously be telling me this.”

“But you are my husband before any of that,” Ilya says. “You were coughing up blood, Shane.”

“You could have died, Shane!” Ilya stands abruptly and starts pacing. “If he had hit you any harder, or managed to land a punch, you could have collapsed lung. You cannot think I would want to be on the ice while you are dying in ambulance.”

“Oh, so if I got hit and started coughing blood you would not go off the ice with me.”

“But it is not okay for me to worry about you when you are injured like that. It is not okay for me to care about my husband being hurt.”

Ilya has to take a few deep breaths after that. “I know this. Checks are normal. Muscle strains are normal. Even broken fingers or teeth. But this was serious, Shane.” Serious enough that they have to stay here for another day to make sure Shane doesn’t start bleeding into his chest, or make any air pockets outside his lungs.

“What, моя любовь?” [my love] Ilya asks, a little startled by the nonsequitur.

The laugh that Ilya lets out reading that sentence is tinged with more than a little relief and the absurdity of the magnitude of his love for his husband. “Is fine, my love. You will wear your neck brace, and I will give you more than enough blowjobs to live through it.

At the reminder of how Shane got injured, Ilya sobers a little bit. "Match penalty. Fines and one game suspension for instigation. Everyone was upset that he was taken off the ice by refs before we could hit him." It makes him seethe just thinking about Kent leaving the ice surrounded by linesmen preventing them from starting another fight.

It would have been worth it, Ilya thinks. But Shane never remembers quite how beloved he is by this team, always thinking in hockey terms.

Suspension Extension? The Kent-Hollander Altercation Revisited

December 14, 2018 • ESPN Daily News • written by Luke Henderson

Last night’s Nordiques-Guardians game saw Shane Hollander get speared in the throat by Dallas Kent, in a shockingly violent altercation. This is the Toronto captain’s first stick-related infraction of the season that has resulted in a match penalty.

Initially, Kent came off the ice for the final few minutes of the game, and received a one-game suspension, as well as $10000 in fines from Head Coach Bruce Cooper for instigation during the final five minutes. Earlier in the game, the Guardians were assessed for an unsportsmanlike conduct bench minor relating to abusive language from Kent directed at Hollander, though Aucoin was selected to serve the penalty in lieu of Kent.

Upon further review, MLH officials found that Kent continued to utilize profane language against Hollander during the final incident, and showed intent to harm as the instigator and aggressor within the altercation. In particular, the official conducting the face-off caught Kent’s words on mic*: “bet your Ruski guard dog lets the whole room [redacted] your slant [redacted], you [redacted] [redacted] fairy.”

As a result, Kent’s suspension has been extended to six games as MLH officials review his conduct, and fines have been imposed for his usage of profane and abusive language.

The Toronto Guardians have offered the following comment on Kent’s suspension at this time: "We will be thoroughly reviewing his conduct, and are committed to complying with the official MLH investigation."

Additionally, the $1000 fines imposed on the Guardians’ Troy Barrett and the Nordiques’ Ryan Price for not clearing the area during the altercation have been waived, as “both players were looking to end the altercation and allow medical aid to be administered to Hollander,” according to the MLH’s Deputy Commissioner.

Hollander himself spent the night in the hospital after his injury; no comment has been given on the severity of his injury, though he has been officially placed on LTIR. The Nordiques will be looking to fill out their top lines, with two of the six now out on LTIR. This will be another test of their ability to adapt; they worked through the absence of Rozanov last year and went on to win the Stanley Cup. Time will tell if they can defend their title.

*statement partially redacted for publication

Luke Henderson is a regular correspondent with ESPN Daily, specializing in Major League Hockey.

HockeyNews @hockeynews

Shane Hollander spotted in Montreal at Ice Skating Showcase alongside former Nordiques teammate, Duncan Harvey!

[Image: Shane Hollander sitting in the stands of Maurice Richard Arena next to Duncan Harvey, whose brow is furrowed as Shane shows him something on his phone. Shane is wearing a brace around his neck as well as copious scarves that do not hide the brace. There is a poster propped up against their legs that reads, I can’t cheer right now but you’re doing great! 🧍‍♂️👍]

vicky @diqueswin

oh my GOD why is he funny now

 

vicky @diqueswin

also baby what are you doing out the house right now

 

violet @sk4tingf4n

omg he’s there to support his cousin and brother-in-law!

@shanehollanderhockeyplayer posted to Instagram!

[Image: Shane Hollander and Duncan Harvey sitting in the stands of Maurice Richard Arena]

[Image: Shane Hollander and Yuuri Katsuki in a selfie together with Katsuki holding the phone]

[Image: Shane Hollander at a table inside of Kolya’s with Yuri Plisetsky, Nikolai Plisetsky, and Katya Plisetskaya-Rozanova, with a spread of baked goods in front of them.]

[Image: Shane Hollander in his neck brace, holding up a thumbs up next to his face. His Rolex is on his wrist.]

[Image: Shane Hollander lying on a couch with his head elevated on Ilya Rozanov’s lap.]

[Image: Shane Hollander surrounded by his Quebec Nordiques teammates in the Centre Vidéotron. He is wearing a WAG jacket that has the number 81 on the front.]

[Image: Shane Hollander with Hayden Pike and J.J. Boiziau, sitting on a park bench]

[Image: Shane Hollander with Ilya Rozanov and Yuna and David Hollander, standing next to a Christmas tree.]

[Image: An older photo showing a teenage boy with curly blond hair in a school uniform—Ilya Rozanov pre-twink death. He is standing with a young Svetlana Vetrova, who is wearing a similar school uniform, and an 8-year-old Yuri Plisetsky.]

shanehollanderhockeyplayer Spending time with family and friends and looking forward to getting back out on the ice. Happy Holidays! #rolexambassador

Liked by rozanov81, yunakhollander, vetrovas, whazy, boodzram, lucahaas, y-plisetsky, y-katsuki, v-nikiforov, and 124797 others 

rozanov81 my love where did you find that picture

↳ shanehollanderhockeyplayer Dedushka Nikolai gave it to me!

↳ vetrovas you can never hide from your past ilyusha

y-katsuki It was great to have you in Montreal, Shun-kun!

quebecnordiques Happy to see our captain on the mend!

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Shocking news out of Toronto—Troy Barrett has been placed on waivers following a reported altercation in the locker room.

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Many are shocked at this decision from Toronto’s front office, especially so soon after Dallas Kent’s suspension.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

It may free up cap space for the Guardians, but sending Barrett out to pasture like this may be indicative of underlying issues.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Several teams are looking for a well-rounded forward, including the San Francisco Mission, Montreal Voyageurs, and Quebec Nordiques.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

The question will be who decides to take him on and deal with whatever might have been the cause of the split.

Brandon sits in his office, listening to Michel and Svetlana, while leaning back in his seat.

“...With Hollander and Taylor on LTIR, we have the space for Barrett,” Michel continues. 

“But it’s a matter of hours, not days to decide. Rozanov already has the first line well in hand, and Hollander will be back by mid-January, February at the latest,” Svetlana responds.

“But Taylor just had a second surgery on his MCL. We probably won’t have him back until March, at least. We need someone of his caliber if we want to stay on trajectory.”

“His ability to play isn’t the problem,” Brandon says finally. “It’s that we don’t know what went down in that locker room, and his history with Kent is not promising. He might play just fine, but the boys won’t take bigotry well.”

“Objectively, he is the best option to fill the gap right now,” Svetlana says, scrolling through notes on her iPad. “He would fit well with Rozanov and Haas. That would let Lundin take up more of the defensive work with the rest of the rookie line.”

“I am prepared to take him,” Michel says. “We have the space for it. But I will not make the call until I have your agreement.”

Svetlana pauses in her scrolling of notes for a moment, clicking on something and reading rapidly. “Hm.”

“What?” Brandon asks, interest piqued.

“A number of women have come forward anonymously to report being sexually assaulted by Dallas Kent.”

“Shit,” Michel says, his eyebrows raised. “That’s awful. What a scumbag.”

“Doesn’t make our decision easier,” Brandon says. 

Svetlana’s eyebrows go way up as she clicks an attachment on an email. “Look at this.”

They crowd around the desk as the video starts to play.

12/27 Footage.mov

 

[Dallas Kent stands in the middle of the Toronto Guardians locker room, confronting Troy Barrett while the rest of the team stands around the room. The angle implies that this is security footage.]

 

DALLAS KENT: What the fuck has been up with you, Barrett? Not backing me up on the ice, acting all concerned for fucking pissbaby Hollander, the fuck is your deal?

 

TROY BARRETT: I was stopping you from trying to attack him on the ground, dumbass. Did you want to get the shit kicked out of you for punching Canada’s Little Princess when he was down? 

 

DK: You should have been in there with me, idiot, so I wasn’t getting swarmed by fucking Price.

 

TB: Shut the fuck up, Dallas. You’re the one who chose to attack him. I’m not the one who got suspended for running his mouth like an idiot.

 

DK: The fuck do you mean, running my mouth.

 

TB: You’re a piece of shit, and a fucking rapist to boot.

 

[Noise goes up from the locker room, temporarily obfuscating the audio.]

 

DK: (incredulous laugh) You actually believe those attention whores? Jesus, Barrett, a little too faggy of you.

 

TB: Multiple verified accounts of shit you did while my back was turned.

 

DK: What, are you my fucking mom now? Those women are obviously lying.

 

TB: Then how come every one of these happened on a night when I didn’t go out with everyone, and you came back bragging about getting some.

 

DK: Because you’re a fucking buzzkill, Barrett! Every time you go out, you could have all the pussy you want, and they get turned off when you reject them.

 

TB: They don’t get turned off—that doesn’t fucking matter. You’re a fucking rapist, Dallas, and I should have seen it earlier.

 

DK: Don’t go all SJW on me Barrett, that’s fucking pathetic.

 

[Instead of speaking, Barrett launches forward, landing a solid punch to Kent’s face before he’s dragged off of him by other team members and support staff. Bruce Cooper, having entered the room, bangs on the wall with his fist.]

 

BRUCE COOPER: Kent, go see medical. Barrett, my office.

“Well then,” Brandon says lightly. “At least we know he’s not aligned with Kent. How did you get this?”

Svetlana taps her nose. “I have friends in Toronto. Whatever the case, we need to decide before he gets snatched up.”

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- The chapter count has gone up again.
- Ryan and Fabian are going through it :( but they're in a better place than they could have been.
- On the topic of Shane's injury: he's mostly okay. He has a lot of bruising at the impact site. He has a very rare hyoid bone fracture (his Adam's apple is cracked), but it's closed and not cutting into nearby tissues. There is some damage to his trachea--this is what caused the bleeding. The issue they are monitoring for is pneumothorax; when the trachea is damaged, it can cause air to escape into nearby tissues and cause the lungs to collapse. He has to be very very careful about keeping his head stable and not doing anything to aggravate his throat. Since he did not have to be intubated, and no surgical intervention was needed for the hyoid fracture, I put his initial recovery timeline around 3 weeks for him to be out of the brace and have his voice back, though he may have some persistent issues with swallowing.

Here is what Dallas Kent actually said:

- "bet your Ruski guard dog lets the whole room fuck your slant pussy, you cocksucking fucking fairy.”
- It's bad all around.

- Shane went to the ice show with Duncan! They've been talking about recovering from injury. Now that Duncan is retired, he is advocating for player safety with the union and discussing how drugs were pushed on him to keep him fighting fit.
- On Ilya undergoing twink death; Imagine a curly-haired taller Yuri Plisetsky and you have teenage Ilya. He has to maintain a super specific caloric intake in order to keep his build the way it is and play, because otherwise he loses that mass quickly.
- Troy is sir not actually appearing in this chapter. I wanted to explore why he would not have been aware of Dallas being a rapist before this point--complicit and active as he was in Dallas' bigotry while playing, I couldn't see a reason for him not to know unless he was deliberately being kept out of it. IIRC it's more detail than Reid gives about it in Role Model, so I'm just filling in a gap.
- Svetlana's back in her role as Director of Hockey Analytics!
- This chapter really puts the mixed in mixed media.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

On December 27th, Troy Barrett leaves the Toronto Guardians' practice facility for the last time. 

On December 28th, it comes out that he has been put on waivers, after being a healthy scratch for their last game.

On December 29th, a video of him punching Dallas Kent is leaked on the internet.

Chapter Notes

This chapter discusses sexual assault (Dallas Kent warning) in nongraphic detail. Please be warned.

@adriandelacruz posted to Instagram!

[Image: Adrian de la Cruz on set, sitting in a director’s chair across from Justin Green. Both men are laughing, and Justin has a hand on Adrian’s knee]

[Image: Adrian de la Cruz holding up his left hand with an engagement ring on it.]

[Image: Adrian de la Cruz and Justin Green holding the rainbow flag over their shoulders.]

adriandelacruz I debated a lot about posting this.

The closet isn’t an easy place to live. It feels protection for many, especially in places where it isn’t safe to be queer. But having lived my adult life until now in the closet, I can tell you that opening the door feels like liberation.

When I met @jgreen, I felt an instant connection to him at a level so far beyond the physical that it transcended anything I had ever felt before. Justin, I love you so much, and I’m so happy that we are going to share the rest of our lives together.

To all of you, I want you to know that the Adrian you have seen on your screens until now wasn’t a lie. He just wasn’t ready to show the fullness of himself yet. I hope that those of you who have struggled to be your truest selves can see that the sun shines on the other side of the door.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

~ Adrian

This creator has disabled comments on this post.

Liked by ggrey, milessenor, charlieb, jgreen, and 38945 others.

Troy stands in the locker room after practice on December 27th, his heart flayed open by Adrian’s flippant FaceTime breakup and Instagram engagement.

It’s Dallas’ first practice back with the team since his suspension, because the investigation got more heated than expected. 

Every game they've had since the 12th, when Hollander went down, all of their opponents have taken a special pleasure in playing as hard and aggressive as they can. Troy stopped feeling sympathetic about Dallas' suspension extension one game in, when the Boston Bears started checking him like they were trying to send him to space. Clearly some kind of grudge passed on to them by Rozanov. Whatever the case, it's left Troy with bruises in places he's never had them before.

Meanwhile, Dallas has been bitching and moaning about Hollander being a pussy who can’t take a hit, how women are liars trying to extort him for money, how it’s not fair that you can’t have free speech on the ice, apparently.

And then Dallas turns to Troy.

“What the fuck has been up with you, Barrett? Not backing me up on the ice, acting all concerned for fucking pissbaby Hollander, the fuck is your deal?” Dallas commands the attention of the entire room like nothing.

Troy has to be normal. He has to be normal. “I was stopping you from trying to attack him on the ground, dumbass. Did you want to get the shit kicked out of you for punching Canada’s Little Princess when he was down?”

“You should have been in there with me, idiot, so I wasn’t getting swarmed by fucking Price,” Dallas retorts.

Okay, first of all, he was there. Troy just isn’t stupid enough to go picking fights with this version of Ryan Price, who plays like a maniac and can still knock someone out in one punch, even if he doesn’t do it that often.

“Shut the fuck up, Dallas. You’re the one who chose to attack him. I’m not the one who got suspended for running his mouth like an idiot.”

That was stupid. He shouldn’t have said that.

“The fuck do you mean, running my mouth,” Dallas seethes. Angry at Troy, and not himself for a single goddamn second.

He clearly doesn’t think he’s done a damn thing wrong.

“You’re a piece of shit, and a fucking rapist to boot,” Troy blurts out. He would call it unintentional, but it’s been sitting in his mind since the moment he read the post, and followed the comments to find the others, and the masterpost of them that’s been assembled in less than 24 hours. You don’t get that many people breaking themselves apart and pouring it out for the Internet to see without something beneath it. They’re not an organized force looking for money.

The other guys start yelling when the word rapist leaves his mouth. Troy isn’t listening to them.

Dallas laughs, incredulous. “You actually believe those attention whores? Jesus, Barrett, a little too faggy of you.”

Maybe because I am one, Troy thinks, because I was so worried about tucking it away that I didn’t pay attention to what you were doing. 

He breathes in and says flatly, “There are multiple verified accounts of shit you did while my back was turned.”

“What, are you my fucking mom now? Those women are obviously lying.” He says it, still laughing.

Troy can’t hide the angry edge to his voice when he says, “Then how come every one of these happened on a night when I didn’t go out with everyone, and you came back bragging about getting some.”

He’s cross referenced the dates. All times he was flying out to Vancouver for maybe a night with Adrian, or staying in the hotel room to video call.

“Because you’re a fucking buzzkill, Barrett! Every time you go out, you could have all the pussy you want, and they get turned off when you reject them.”

Girls do come up to him. He doesn’t buy them drinks because he doesn’t want to, but they’ll dance on him a little bit, and happily go away when they’re bored of him. Usually if they’re flirting with him, they don’t see Dallas’ appeal. They’re too different for that.

“They don’t get turned off—” Troy cuts himself off. “That doesn’t fucking matter. You’re a fucking rapist, Dallas, and I should have seen it earlier.”

He should have seen it. He shouldn’t have been a fucking coward.

Dallas sneers. “Don’t go all SJW on me Barrett, that’s fucking pathetic.”

Troy doesn’t have anything more to say. He launches forward, swinging his fist and feeling the crack of Kent’s nose under his hand before there are hands on him, dragging him from the bleeding, swearing captain.

Cooper looms in like a shadow. He looks at Kent first. “Kent, go see medical.”

And then he turns to Troy, voice cold. “Barrett, my office.”

“What the hell was that, Barrett?” Cooper asks him harshly. “Trying to punch your captain in the locker room? I want to know where you got that idea, because it for sure doesn’t fly here.”

“I was–”

“Can it,” Cooper interrupts. “And this nonsense about him being a rapist, that’s all noise. People always want to make up controversies.”

“It’s not made up–”

“How would you know that, huh, Barrett? What did you see, a tweet from some puck bunny about feeling rejected because he wouldn’t be her boyfriend?”

“10 women have come forward on Reddit since yesterday.”

“It’s fucking rumors, Barrett,” Cooper hisses. “You just threw out any patience I had with you. I’ve given you a lot of grace, Barrett. I could have buried you a long time ago. But you decide to spend my good will on punching your captain over unsubstantiated rumors.”

“He’s a fucking serial rapist!”

“He is not a rapist, Barrett! In this locker room, he is not a rapist. I care about production in my locker room. As soon as he was out, everyone started fucking up.”

“Because every team in the League started trying to kill us as proxies for him.”

“If it was just that, we wouldn’t be on a 6 game losing streak, because I know you know how to fight, Barrett. Kent is a cornerstone on this team.” 

The implication hangs in the air, that Troy is not, despite everything he’s done.

Maybe because of everything he’s done, now.

“You clearly aren’t up to the challenge,” Cooper says with the weight of an executioner’s blade. “Effective immediately, you will be placed on waivers. Start packing your shit Barrett. I don’t want to see your face again.”

On December 27th, Troy Barrett leaves the Toronto Guardians' practice facility for the last time. 

On December 28th, it comes out that he has been put on waivers, after being a healthy scratch for their last game.

On December 29th, a video of him punching Dallas Kent is leaked on the internet. By the end of the day, Troy is staring down an email with Quebec Nordiques in the signature.

The Nordiques. The team whose captain Dallas Kent speared in the throat, who have turned into a machine in his absence, a meat grinder waiting for vengeance.

And Troy has to report to practice on the 2nd of January.

Brandon Wiebe is no Bruce Cooper. He’s not a wall of muscle, built to be a threat. He looks like he smiles more than he frowns, and if he frowns, it’s more like the flat line that his mouth has fallen into right now.

“Barrett,” Wiebe says, extending his hand out to shake Troy’s. “Glad to see you made it here in one piece.”

“Thank you, Coach Wiebe,” Troy says quietly. “I’m ready to get to work.”

“That’s good.” Wiebe sits back down behind his desk, and Troy sits down gingerly in the chair opposite him. “Before you meet the team, you and I need to have a conversation.”

Troy makes an unintentional noise in his throat that he can’t identify.

“We do things a little differently around here,” Wiebe says, steepling his fingers. “I don’t think I have to be the one to tell you that we don’t have the best relationship with Toronto right now.”

“No, sir,” Troy says. They’re going to turn him into sausage the second he steps into the locker room.

“I don’t run my locker room like that. Our goal is playing good hockey with good people, not running roughshod.”

Good hockey with good people.

Troy can do good hockey on his best day. Good person? That’s not something he deserves.

“I will do my best, Coach.”

“You’re a good player, Barrett.” Wiebe looks at him with an evaluating gaze, like he’s trying to see into the depths of Troy’s soul. “But if I hear one word about you using derogatory language or making anyone uncomfortable, you will be back in here, and we will be reevaluating your place on this team.”

“Yes, sir.” 

“We have a sensitivity training course for you to take. There are a few guys on this team who have been particularly harmed, to put it lightly, in the past. I’ve discussed you coming in with them, and they are willing to give you a chance.”

Names start flashing through Troy’s mind instantly.

Price.

Boodram.

Rozanov.

Hollander.

“I’ll do it,” he says immediately. “Whatever it takes.”

He has to be able to prove that he's still a valuable player.

Wiebe sits back in his seat a little bit. “I hope you aren’t just planning on rushing through so you can play, Barrett.”

“I won’t,” he swears. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m sorry.”

It means nothing, because he hasn’t done anything to earn forgiveness.

“I’m not the one you owe apologies to,” Wiebe says evenly.

“I know.”

Wiebe stands up from his desk. “Come on. Time for you to get some introductions to the support staff.”

Troy follows him out of the room.

The last place they go is the media room.

“Hey, Harris,” Wiebe says, knocking on the door lightly as he enters. “I have a new client for you.”

“Our newest trade, right?” Troy hears as the guy, Harris apparently, comes into view.

He’s a bearded blond guy, about Troy’s height, maybe a little shorter, broad across the shoulders, and stout around the middle, wearing a knit vest that is absolutely littered with buttons and pins. 

A few of them have distinctive rainbows. One says He/Him. 

He holds a hand out for Troy to shake. “Harris Drover. Social Media Admin. I’ll be posting you to our page later today.”

Troy shakes his hand and instantly knows that his palm is clammy in a way that is making it weird. When he lets go, he instinctively goes to wipe the sweat off of his hand before aborting the action, because that’s a fucked up thing to do in front of someone who’s hand you just shook. “Um. I’m Troy Barrett.”

“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,” Wiebe says, making eye contact with Harris before he leaves the room.

“Alright!” Harris claps his hands. “You’ve already been by the equipment room, so it’s time to get you in for your promo photos, and then we’re going to do a quick social media intro.”

Harris directs him over to the photo background while Monica, the photographer, gets set. 

Troy holds the poses they direct him into with the distinct sense that they are disappointed in everything about him.

“Christ, Barrett, you look like I’m holding a gun to your head. Drop the smile, alright?” Monica says, and Troy lets his face settle into what his mom used to call Resting Bitch face.

She checks the camera after a few more minutes and says, “You’re all good here. I have what I need.”

“Great!” Harris comes over to look at the photos for a moment. “Let me know when you’ve uploaded, and I’ll take care of the edit pass before we post. It’s time for some intro videos.” He rubs his hands together.

Troy follows him over to a slightly different set as he keeps talking. “You don’t really have a social media presence, so that’s something we’re going to have to work on.” He turns back to face Troy. “Any idea of what you would want to do? All of the guys take it a little differently; we have BBQ with Bood, Dykstra’s Mixtape, Hockey French with Choui, there’s a bunch of options.”

“I—I don’t know,” Troy says, paralyzed. “Um.”

Harris waves a hand. “We’ll think of something. For now, I’m going to ask you a few questions just to give the fans a little intro to you. Sound good?”

Troy nods.

“Alright. We’re going to do some rapid fire questions, but why don’t you introduce yourself first.”

“I’m Troy Barrett. #17. Right Wing.”

Harris makes a face but keeps going. “Who’s your favorite player?”

“Scott Hunter.” Followed by Rozanov, but he doesn’t think that would go over very well.

That gets a different face that Troy also can’t figure out.

“Favorite music genre?”

“EDM.”

“Do you have a fun pregame ritual?”

“Being early, I guess?” Troy has to think about it a little bit. “I like to be in the room and ready.”

“What’s your treat meal?”

“...Salmon.”

Harris does a double take, but clearly decides not to ask more about it. “Favorite ice cream flavor?”

“Chocolate, I think.”

“You think?”

“I don’t really eat sweets.”

“Huh. Who’s your main in Mario Kart?”

“Mario.”

“Last question: what are you most excited about for your first day of practice with the Diques?”

“...All of the guys are very good. I’m excited to see how the defending champions practice.” He tries to paste on a smile.

Harris ends the video with a tap on the ring-light mounted phone, and says, “Well. We got our intro. That’ll go up a little later. For now, I’m pretty sure you have places to be.”

Troy stands up and walks out of the room with that dismissal.

He knows he was awkward. Probably to the point of embarrassment. He hopes Harris is a good editor, because Troy makes for a shitty interviewee.

Harris seems like he would be a good editor. He's efficient as an admin, certainly. And charismatic.

Troy’s first game with the Nordiques is against the Brooklyn Scouts at home. 

He puts his gear on quietly, not trying to intercede in any of the loud, excited conversation going on in the locker room.

No one is orbiting around a central figure here—people split off into little groups that then collide and form new ones, the sound unceasing.

No one is isolating the rookies. You could call what he’s seeing isolating the new guy, but that's self-inflicted. Troy doesn’t know what to do with himself, at this point. Everyone seems friendly with each other, but definitely wary of him, and for good reason. He hasn't tried to start a conversation with anyone beyond talking about hockey.

It’s almost too peaceful. Troy just wants one of them to do something. Punch him, maybe. 

Sensitivity training every day has just made it harder to look them in the eyes, knowing the things that he's said and done.

Everyone starts lining up to head out for warm-ups. Troy follows, belatedly, realizing it’s a thing.

Shane Hollander stands by the door, all of his gear already on and perfectly placed. Most of the guys still have their helmets off. Troy keeps his off just in case.

This is the fucking Benediction. The first since Hollander got injured.

Hollander goes down the line, starting with the rookies. Haas blushes so red. Dallas would have called him a faggot the second he saw him. Troy has to stifle the thought.

You're a faggot too, Barrett. No room to talk.

Some of the taller guys have to lean down. Price squats briefly, letting Hollander kiss his forehead before he stands back up to his full height and heads down the tunnel.

He’s so calm, compared to how he was before the Diques. Troy was deeply intimidated, the first time he saw him here.

Price just exists here, out and proud, and the biggest fucking dude anyone has ever seen. Baldy and Lundy aren’t quiet about their boyfriends. And Hollander and Rozanov are fucking married. It’s so normal, and yet Troy can’t stop folding himself down into something secret.

More because he knows it doesn't mean shit that he's gay.

He shakes the thought out of his head as the captain keeps moving down the line, effortlessly efficient.

Goddamn, Hollander is a babe. Even if he’s married. No wonder these guys are doing so well. It’s motivation for anyone, and extra for the gay guys.

Finally, Hollander pulls up to him in the line. Everyone except Troy and Rozanov have gone down the tunnel already.

Hollander gives him that evaluating look, the one that everyone has been giving him since he first got traded to the Nordiques, and steps forward.

He grips Troy’s face gently in both hands and plants a kiss on his forehead before saying, “You have a good slapshot, Barrett. Use it.” He releases him with a pat on the cheek and steps toward his husband.

You have a good slapshot, Barrett. Use it.

Use it.

Troy starts his walk down the tunnel. Abruptly, he wants to cry.

Fuck, he hasn’t been touched like that by anyone but his mom in years. Adrian never really liked that kind of casual affection, unless it was leading up to something more.

He’s been awful to Hollander. This whole team, really, while he was in Toronto. He’s been shitty in practice these last couple of days. Shitty for him at least. He can't blame the other guys for it when he's the wrench in the team dynamic.

Hazy came up to him on that first day and said, "I've wanted to punch Kent for years," before slapping Troy on the back and heading to his stall. Everyone else introduced themselves politely.

And Harris...Troy can't think about him right now. He can't think about a bright smile, and what that beard would feel like brushing up against his cheek. 

Troy gets it. He’s a fucking awful person. He’s done one thing right in his career, and that was punching out Dallas and telling him he was a rapist. 

But Hollander still gave him the Benediction, like the years of being a homophobic asshole didn't mean anything.

Or not like they didn’t mean anything. Like he just expected Troy to come in and do better. Like he believes Troy can come in and do better.

Is this what having a nice dad feels like? he wonders absurdly as he keeps walking, dashing away the tears that have started to form before he joins the rest of the team.

When he meets up with the rest of the team, he accidentally makes eye contact with Haas. Troy averts his eyes, fidgeting with his gloves.

When he looks up again, Haas is next to him. 

"It's okay," The rookie says, like Troy needs to be reassured. "It happens, the first time. The Benediction can be very intense."

"He's like that all the time?" Troy blurts out. "How..."

Haas laughs. "You will get used to it. It is very good motivation, no?"

He's not wrong. It makes Troy feel like he can do this, for the first time in a long time.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- Writing that Instagram post actually pissed me off. So much so that I didn't want to write the FaceTime call, he's that annoying.
- The Reddit post was an experiment. I hope it came across well.
- Discrimination in the league is alive and well. It didn't go away with Crowell.
- While Shane, Ilya, and Bood are the captains, they're also some of the people most significantly affected by Troy's past actions. Ryan is a star defenseman and veteran member who's also been affected by Troy's actions. Wiebe is deliberately talking to them, because he knows that their impressions will be reflective of how the team will deal with it. Why not Lundy or Baldy? Coming from the Western Conference, they were not dealing with Troy and Kent and Toronto in general as much.
- There's a couple of additional axes to each as well: anti-blackness towards Bood (more aggression towards him, higher tendency to pick fights), ableism towards Ryan (being afraid to fight him but making fun of his anxiety, especially after he pushed towards limiting fighting), xenophobia towards Ilya (making fun of how he speaks, suspicion over him being Russian, admiration of his previous behavior that turned into intense verbal degradation once it came out that he was married to Shane), and Orientalism towards Shane (making fun of his appearance, feminization [the princess comment as an example], increased verbal insults surrounding him being the assumed bottom in his relationship). It's not as clear cut as racism and homophobia and misogyny.
- Canonically, Harris is 5'7" to Troy's 5'9". I am reading Harris as almost 5'8", while Troy is just hitting the mark for 5'9". This is a short king relationship.
- Yes, that is the Benediction extra, rewritten slightly, because I've fleshed out what I'm doing with the story, so there's a little more going on in Troy's head.

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

Troy Barrett
is the chat name a reference to something

Youngster
the church of Shane Hollander duh

Troy Barrett
what.

Chapter Notes

Harris stiffens a little bit as he hears a knock on the door of the media room.

“Hey, Harris,” Coach Wiebe says casually. “I have a new client for you.”

“Our newest trade, right?” Harris says, as the man himself enters the room after Wiebe.

It’s not like Harris hasn’t seen Troy Barrett before. It’s just that he hasn’t been up close and personal with him.

A flop of dark hair and hard blue eyes greet him. He’s a little shorter than Harris expected, but that might be more of a personality thing. 

He holds a hand out for Barrett to shake. “Harris Drover. Social Media Admin. I’ll be posting you to our page later today.”

Someone had to make the first move, and Harris seizes the opportunity.

Barrett’s hand is damp and he lets go just a little bit too soon. Harris watches him move his hand like he’s going to wipe it and abruptly stops, his hand just hanging in space.

Hm. Not promising, especially for a guy whom everyone has been saying is a notorious homophobe.

“Um. I’m Troy Barrett.”

“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,” Wiebe says. He makes eye contact with Harris and gives him a subtle nod as if to say, will you be good? Harris gives him a tiny nod back as he leaves the room.

The door clicks shut.

Work mode.

“Alright!” Harris claps his hands. “You’ve already been by the equipment room, so it’s time to get you in for your promo photos, and then we’re going to do a quick social media intro.”

Harris walks Barrett over to the photo background while Monica, the photographer, gets set. 

He holds the poses, at least, but looks about as uncomfortable as a human being can be.

“Christ, Barrett, you look like I’m holding a gun to your head. Drop the smile, alright?” Monica says. Barrett’s face falls into a brooding expression, the one Harris has seen on the magazine naming him one of the top 5 hottest players in the MLH.

She checks the camera after a few more minutes and says, “You’re all good here. I have what I need.”

“Great!” Harris comes over to look at the photos for a moment. He looks good enough for the initial posts, but looking inscrutable is only a step above looking like they were threatening him with walking the plank. “Let me know when you’ve uploaded, and I’ll take care of the edit pass before we post. It’s time for some intro videos.” He rubs his hands together and starts walking towards their video set.

Barrett follows him over, completely silent. Harris keeps talking to fill the space. “You don’t really have a social media presence, so that’s something we’re going to have to work on.” He turns back to face Barrett. “Any idea of what you would want to do? All of the guys take it a little differently; we have BBQ with Bood, Dykstra’s Mixtape, Hockey French with Choui, there’s a bunch of options.”

“I—I don’t know,” Barrett says, looking pale. “Um.”

Harris waves a hand to dismiss the idea. “We’ll think of something. For now, I’m going to ask you a few questions just to give the fans a little intro to you. Sound good?”

Barrett nods slightly. Harris goes over to the camera and makes sure all of the settings are correct before he starts the recording.

“Alright. We’re going to do some rapid fire questions, but why don’t you introduce yourself first.”

“I’m Troy Barrett. #17. Right Wing.”

Efficient. Maybe a little bit too much. “Who’s your favorite player?”

“Scott Hunter.” 

That’s a surprise. Not what he expected.

“Favorite music genre?”

“EDM.”

“Do you have a fun pregame ritual?”

“Being early, I guess?” Barrett looks contemplative “I like to be in the room and ready.”

“What’s your treat meal?”

“...Salmon.”

Salmon? Does he know what treat meal means?

Harris doesn’t have time to figure out what else is wrong with Barrett.

“Favorite ice cream flavor?”

“Chocolate, I think.”

“You think?”

“I don’t really eat sweets.” Figures, if salmon is his treat meal. 

“Huh. Who’s your main in Mario Kart?”

“Mario.”

“Last question: what are you most excited about for your first day of practice with the Diques?” This one should be a softball, one they ask everyone in their intro videos, but for the guy who just got violently uprooted from Toronto, it might not be.

Barrett pauses before saying, “...All of the guys are very good. I’m excited to see how the defending champions practice.” The smile he puts on looks more like a grimace, but Harris can work with it.

He ends the video with a tap on the ring-light mounted phone, and says, “Well. We got our intro. That’ll go up a little later. For now, I’m pretty sure you have places to be.” Places that aren’t around an overtly gay social media manager, more like.

Barrett leaves without another word.

It’s a pity he’s so goddamn pretty. Harris hopes that he won’t cause chaos on the team, because most of the guys are his friends. 

They probably won’t take it well if he mentions the handshake thing, so he resolves to keep it to himself.

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques ☑️

Meet the newest Nordique, #17, Troy Barrett!

Voici le tout nouveau Nordique, #17, Troy Barrett!

[Video: Troy Barrett's rapid fire interview with Harris Drover]

troy's smile @barrettgirlie

why did you have to leave toronto!?!?! my pookie :(((

 

vicky @diqueswin

he had better not be an asshole 😤

 

Rick @guardianzzzftw

fuck him. should have just been dumped to the minors. 

 

Alana @leafsntrees

at least he did something about kent

 

Alana @leafsntrees

what the fuck is toronto management thinking

 

Alana @leafsntrees

they've already lost so much talent.

 

vicky @diqueswin

not really a win for the diques either girl

 

vicky @diqueswin

league's probably waiting for them to blow up

For Shane’s first game back from LTIR, they’re playing the Brooklyn Scouts. It’s also, coincidentally, Troy Barrett’s first game as a Quebec Nordique.

Practice with Barrett around has been surprisingly normal. He hasn’t completely clicked with the second line just yet, but that can be attributed to growing pains.

It’s strange to see him on his own, instead of being Kent’s shadow. He’s much quieter when he’s not feeding off of Kent’s energy.

More than that, he seems to be listening to Wiebe’s warnings and actually going to sensitivity training. Everyone has to go at some point, but usually it’s a ‘point and click until you’re done’ situation. Shane keeps seeing Barrett go through the modules every time they’re in the locker room.

They have a game to play. He doesn’t have time to be stressing over the new addition.

Shane stands by the door and waits for them to come to him. At this point, they’ve locked in how fast they do the Benediction.

He whispers his compliments today, his voice still a little bit shot from the injury. He plants kisses with an efficiency heretofore unknown to man.

Everyone is a little excited. Haasy blushes like he used to do at the start of the season. The break must have gotten him out of the habit.

When he gets to the end of the line, Barrett is there, eyes downcast.

Here’s the question. Does Shane want to break the superstition for one guy, however much of an asshole he may be?

He takes a second to think about it. Past history aside, he is at least working hard. Shane can respect that.

Better just to make it quick than to drive a wedge. Doing this will hopefully not make him more of an asshole.

“You have a good slapshot, Barrett. Use it.” He taps Barrett on the cheek and sends him out the door as he steps towards Ilya. 

“You do not have to say anything to me,” Ilya says as Shane gets his hands on his face. “I know it hurts, моя любовь. [my love] Such a good captain, keeping the team motivated.” After Shane kisses him on the lips, Ilya tilts his head down and gives him a kiss on the forehead.

Damn. Maybe he can see why they get so excited about it. “You’re better about the compliments than me, baby.” His voice is a little scratchy by this point. Ilya will take over most of the talking, and he's got hand signals with Gilly and Bood now, which is a fun new trick.

“Means more from you,” Ilya retorts as they walk down the tunnel, the swat to his ass feeling routine. 

It’s nice to be back in the game.

Troy doesn’t know what this supposed meeting is going to entail. Certainly not following the rookies to one of the equipment storage closets near the media room.

When he gets in after following Young, the room is dark.

The light switch clicks, and Troy winces as his eyes adjust to see the rest of the rookies as well as Harris standing in a circle around a table, which is littered with several small plushies of Shane Hollander, hockey cards of varying rarity, a few different magazine spreads, and a large framed poster with a distinctive S.H. in the bottom left corner.

“Um.” Troy stammers out.

“Shit, sorry dude. Forgot to warn you,” Young says as the circle expands to include him.

“I call this meeting to order,” Haas says gravely. “We have a new addition.”

They all turn to look at Troy. He doesn’t even try to smile.

“Describe your first Benediction for us,” Holmberg says dramatically. 

“Spare no detail,” Gillis interjects.

“If you leave anything out we’ll know,” LaPointe says.

Troy gulps nervously.

All of these guys have barely cracked 20. Most of them are taller than him, but still have baby faces. Especially Haas.

And yet.

“...I was last in the line before Rozanov,” he begins hesitantly. “Hollander paused for a moment when he got to me. He took my face in his hands and said, “You have a good slapshot, Barrett. Use it.” His lips were warm. He patted my cheek before I went down the tunnel.”

“I saw him wipe tears away,” Haas says to the group. “Tangible effect.”

They all stare at him for another long moment.

He doesn’t know what to say.

“Young called him Dad after his first one,” Holmberg says.

“Fuck you!” Young squawks. “Stop bringing that up.”

“So it’s like that for everyone. Not just me,” Troy blurts out.

Young’s hand stops in the air from where he was going to slap Holmberg’s arm.

They’re all staring at him again.

Gillis turns to Luca. “Damn. You were right, Haasy.”

“I told you so!”

The rookies start bickering amongst themselves. Harris makes eye contact with Troy.

“Sounds like it was a good experience,” he says, with a smile on his face that isn’t as bright but still lifts the apples of his cheeks and the corners of his eyes. 

“It was,” Troy says, even though it was so much more than that. He can feel his face start to get hot.

“It’s not all interrogations, you know. It’s mostly just joking around.” Harris moves a little bit closer to Troy.

“Okay,” Troy manages to eke out as the rookies’ fight increases in volume.

“You don’t get to make fun of me for the poster, Haasy! You had a Roz poster and your signed artwork!” Young whisper-shouts.

“That’s different!” Luca cries out.

“We know you think he’s hot, Haasy,” LaPointe says. “It’s pretty obvious.”

“It is not!”

“Dude, you’re the only one besides Hollzy who doesn’t ignore the fuckass tattoos,” Gillis says.

“The tattoos are fine! They’re sentimental! He asked me to design another one for him!”

“Holy shit, really? Better make it cool. Does he want another animal? The bear and tiger are kind of a lot.”

Haas scrunches his nose. “He said something about a loon.”

“He wants you to draw a crazy person on his body?” Young asks.

“No, like the bird.”

“Huh.”

Troy throws a look over to Harris to find him suppressing laughter. Harris cocks his head towards the door and Troy follows him out, leaving quietly while the rookies continue to bicker.

“Did you put any thought towards what you wanted to do for your solo feature?” Harris says as they walk.

“I don’t know completely,” Troy says, “but I want to do something for people who have survived sexual assault.”

Harris turns to him, near the door to the media room, his eyebrows practically touching the edge of his toque. “Okay. Like posting in support?”

“I’ve been reading a lot,” Troy says. “Did you know only 6% of sexual assault incidents get reported to the police? Most people think it’s too minor, or that they won’t be believed. It’s horrific.”

Harris’ expression fluctuates. “That is horrible. Where did you find that information? If you have it, we can see about posting it with an infographic. I won’t lie, you will have to be careful about how you approach it.”

“I know,” Troy says, “but I need to say something.”

Harris holds open the door to the media room and gestures as if to say, come on in. Troy follows without a word, the scent of apples making his heart flutter a little bit.

He doesn’t intend to go to the shrine after the first meeting. The SHrine, as Harris calls it. 

It just kind of happens when he’s going to Harris’ office to have coffee and talk with him about what he’s posting. And keeps happening.

It’s a good place to compose himself, at least. He can sit for a while, and not think about getting cheated on, or the crunch of Dallas' nose under his knuckles, or the fact that he's basically still living out of a hotel. Most days, the only reason he makes it to practice is because he can't do anything else. It would mean losing the thin strand of a chance that he has to prove that Toronto fucked up by trading him.

For just this moment, he can look at a beautiful man and not feel bad about it. When he’s in the room with the real Hollander, the guilt drowns almost everything else out. Until he gets the Benediction, at which point Troy rides the high of acknowledgement for as long as he can.

Here, he can look at the Calvin Klein spread without shame. And hold one of the plushies.

He doesn’t tell the rookies, but a few hockey cards, duplicates from his collection, end up on the SHrine.

It works for a while. He has more conversations than he was having before. He’s clicking better with the team, and his line.

He’s been careful, though, because one slip-up will mean that he’s done for good. 

And then, there’s a day in February when he comes out of the closet only to be faced with Ilya Rozanov staring him down.

Troy freezes, realizes the door is still open and that Rozanov can see inside, and frantically shuts it behind him.

“You do not need to do this. I have always known,” Rozanov says as he catches the door with his palm before it can shut. “The babies are not subtle.”

Troy slumps, and walks back into the SHrine. Rozanov follows him, shutting the door behind him and turning the lights back on.

“What I do not understand, Barrett, is why you are in here, looking at photos of my husband.”

Troy gapes a little bit as Rozanov stares him down.

“The rookies,” he waves a hand, “They admire him for his skill. But you are different, Barrett.” He prowls forward. “You called him many things for many years, and yet you are here, on your knees for his image when you barely speak to him in the room. Why?”

“He’s perfect,” Troy says woodenly. “He’s the perfect player. I tried to be like him before I realized that I couldn’t. I was friends with Kent, and it was safer, not to be like that.”

Rozanov audibly snorts. “Safer than what—being gay? This is not news.”

Troy’s breath starts to speed up. “You—you know?”

“No one likes filming for media that much, Barrett. And I see when you avert your eyes.” His pecs flex, and Troy looks, and then reflexively looks away. “But that still does not explain why you are in here.”

“...Haas let me in after the first Benediction.”

Rozanov makes a sound that Troy can’t pinpoint deep in his throat. “I should have known.” He looks Troy up and down. “You have not been intentional asshole, at least.”

“I’m trying,” Troy says. “I’m sorry, Rozanov. You didn’t deserve the things I said to you in Toronto.”

Rozanov huffs an incredulous laugh. “I have thick skin, Barrett. You think I have not heard all this before? You were a kitten, trying to scratch me with your claws.” His look hardens. “You were hiding yourself for safety. All of us have hidden. But you chose to suck up to Kent.”

“Fuck him,” Troy says instantly. “He should be in hell. I know–” His voice breaks for a second. “I know I fucked up. And you don’t have to forgive me. I just need to apologize, because I am working on doing better.”

Rozanov gives him another long look. “I am not the only one who needs to hear this from you.”

“I know.” There is a terror deep in his guts about saying the words again, but he knows he has to.

“Good,” Rozanov says with finality. "...the posts you are doing with Harris, they are good."

"It's mostly him," Troy says. "I just bring him the statistics. He does magic in Canva."

Rozanov smiles a little bit. "Yes, he is very good with Canva. Very good at philanthropy, too. Always at the animal shelter, when he has the time. You should ask him about it." He scans around the room quickly and says, “They really need to get better posters.”

Troy watches him walk out with his stomach feeling like it’s on the floor, before he gets himself together and leaves for Harris’ office.

Harris, broad and rugged and warm and funny and somehow not taken despite all of that.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you like it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- Yes, Harris meeting Troy is the same scene, but Harris' side of it this time.
- While Shane was recovering, Ilya did the Benediction in his stead, reading off of a list of compliments that Shane texted to him, because the guys insisted that if Ilya came up with them it would disrupt the ritual. To be fair, his tend to err on the funnier side.
- it is a fundamental law of the universe that these hockey players have to be a little stupid. this is what the baby diques do, instead of having mob theories or accusing people of having rabies. Do they believe in Shane Hollander as Hockey Jesus? Maybe.
- Are they testing if he's homophobic? Luca is, at least.
- They started the SHrine officially after Shane was injured, because they had one game without the Benediction and lost. Ilya took over, as I mentioned earlier, but that didn't stop the rookies from doing this. They range from 18-20 atp (23 if you add harris). Harris comes in because he found them while going to his office.
- Troy's statistics come from here: Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centers: Statistics: Sexual Violence in Canada
- Troy and Harris' vibe at this point is a variation on Chappell Roan's Naked in Manhattan (an inch away from more than just friends). Also, we both have a crush on Regina George except Regina George is replaced with Shane Hollander.
- If you're noting a difference in their dynamic as compared to Role Model, recall that there are 6 other openly queer players on the Diques. Troy knows exactly what it would look like to be out. He isn't as reliant on Harris as his gay tour guide.
- Vaughn is joking. Mostly.

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

Troy comes out of the game against New York with a Gordie Howe hat trick.

He's breathless in the locker room as the guys clap him on the back. Rozanov is pouting to Hollander about not being the first to get one this year, even though he already has two regular hat tricks on the season.

Chapter Notes

@shanehollanderhockeyplayer posted to Instagram!

[Image: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov on the ice facing off at the 2019 MLH All-Stars Tournament.]

[Image: A group photo including Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter, Carter Vaughn, J.J. Boiziau, Hayden Pike, Cliff Marleau and a number of other MLH All-Stars.]

[Image: Shane Hollander riding one of the cable cars in San Francisco.]

[Image: Shane Hollander with his head tucked into Ilya Rozanov’s shoulder in a dimly lit environment. Both of them are holding drinks.]

shanehollanderhockeyplayer It’s been a long time since I faced off against @rozanov81! Thanks to everyone at this year’s MLH All-Stars tournament.

Liked by rozanov81, yunakhollander, vetrovas, roselandry, whazy, boodzram, lucahaas, scotthunter, vaughny, jjboiziau, haydenpike35 and 126897 others 

rozanov81 the only thing better than seeing your face across from mine on the ice is having it be next to me, my love.

haydenpike35 @jjboiziau @shanehollanderhockeyplayer great to play all together again :)

 ↳ rozanov81 🐭

    ↳ haydenpike35 screw you dude i am not a mouse

grittymlh let me know if you ever want a tour of philly :))

 ↳ rozanov81 NO.

scotthunter good to see you, rook.

It finally comes to a head the night that they play the Admirals in New York. 

Once Shane told Ilya that they are heading to the Kingfisher that night, the invitation immediately gets extended in the Q2 group chat. And then, because a good chunk of the team is already invited, it turns into a team outing. Well, a planned one. They have a game to play first.

They’re in the visitors locker room, and most of the guys are goofing off. Dykstra is trying to wrestle playlist control back from Ilya. The rookies are in a tight-knit circle talking about…something. Shane doesn’t want to know. Wyatt is regaling Ryan with the plot of the newest X-Squad movie, the one that Rose wasn’t in because they killed off her character. Or something.

He’s about to head for the door when he sees Barrett standing rigid near there, the only one fully suited up other than Shane. Everyone else is still fiddling with their tape.

“Captain. Um. Hollander. Can I talk to you for a second?”

What the hell is this going to be about. “Sure. Is this a private conversation, or do you want to have it here?” Secretly, Shane is hoping that this is something quick, because they have a game to play in half an hour.

Barrett visibly swallows. “Here’s fine. Um. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Shane starts wracking his brain for anything Barrett’s done recently. Played like he’s getting no sleep and hasn't eaten a carb in four years? Sure. But that’s the kind of thing that isn’t deserving of an apology to him specifically. It's more of a team thing. A get thee to the trainers thing.

He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I was an asshole to you before I came here. I said a lot of awful things to you and about you, and you didn’t deserve any of it.”

What the fuck is happening.

Barrett forges on: “You don’t have to forgive me. You don’t have to forget it either. I will be making up for it for the rest of my life.” The wording is clearly rehearsed, because Barrett is more awkward than Shane on a good day. It’s a little bit too perfect to be off the dome.

“I just—I need you to know that I respect you a lot, and I’m working on making it better. You gave me a chance and I don’t want you to regret it.” There’s more of what Shane expected. He doesn’t want to be ousted again.

God. Shane doesn’t even know how to respond to that. Truth be told, Barrett mostly fades into the background of Shane’s memory as Kent’s crony. He doesn’t remember the specifics of most of what Barrett said to him before coming to the Diques, because it just wasn’t worth wasting energy on. There are countless people who have said worse, and are still doing it to this day.

Players who call him slant-eyed and chink, who alternate between calling Yuna Hollander a mail order bride and a tiger mom. Journalists who question his leadership and whether he has what it takes the second he loses a game, who ask time and time again if he is white Canadian enough to be in the room. 

There are many days that Shane is grateful for Ilya’s wit, and his commitment to truly devastating chirps that have nothing to do with who someone is and everything to do with what they do on the ice. He makes a point to remember them, because it’s better than letting himself reflect on every goddamn comment he’s gotten since the first time he put on skates.

Barrett is a drop in an endless bucket. But maybe he’s one that’s chosen not to drown Shane any longer.

Fuck. He needs to say something. Barrett looks like he’s working himself up into a panic attack.

“Barrett, I’m glad you’re focused on self-improvement. But ultimately, our job here is to play hockey.”

Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have worded it like that. 

Granted, he does mean it, so it wouldn’t necessarily be better to phrase it more nicely.

That would be lying.

“I’m glad you’re working through it. I don’t think about it much anymore. You are my teammate now. I’m more concerned about you scoring goals. You haven’t done any of that shit while you’ve been here, have you?”

Barrett shakes his head mutely. 

“Then I don’t have a reason to have a problem with you.” Not right now, at least.

They have a job to do. Hockey is always going to be more important than Shane opening up the can of worms that is his past hurts.

The loss of tension in Barrett’s stance is palpable.

Fuck it. They’re already at the door.

Shane leans forward and plants a kiss on his forehead to start the Benediction for the night. “Get out there and warm up, Barrett. I want to see a goal from you tonight.”

Barrett heads out through the locker room door. Shane turns back to see everyone else, dead silent. They all look a little bit shell-shocked.

“Well?” Shane says expectantly. “Should I just go or are we doing this?”

With that, they rush to get in line. Shane does his job, going down the line.

When he gets to Ilya, at the very end, he breaks from routine and sticks his head into his husband’s chest. “Ughhhhhhhhh.”

“I know, солнышко.” [Sunshine] Ilya’s arms come around him.

“Why did he do it before the game?” Shane says, muffled into Ilya’s jersey. “Now I’m going to be thinking about it.”

“Maybe he did not think he had an opportunity otherwise,” Ilya suggests. The vibrations of laughter in his chest belie that suggestion.

Shane looks up and gives Ilya a stink eye. “You knew.”

“I did not,” Ilya says lightly.

Shane glares more forcefully. 

“Well, I knew he was probably going to apologize.” Ilya shrugs. “He talked to me after practice on Friday. I did not know he would do it now. But at least it is over, and maybe he will play better now.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Shane doesn’t think it’ll change much, but who knows. “Okay. We need to head.” He starts detaching from Ilya, but gets tugged back in rapidly.

“Gimme kiss,” Ilya says with conviction. Shane obliges, and gives him one on his forehead for good measure. Ilya returns the favor, and they make their way out into Madison Square Garden.

Troy comes out of the game against New York with a Gordie Howe hat trick.

He's breathless in the locker room as the guys clap him on the back. Rozanov is pouting to Hollander about not being the first to get one this year, even though he already has two regular hat tricks on the season.

"Are you going out tonight?" Haas asks him. 

Troy has to pause to consider the thought. Most of the team is going out tonight, both to celebrate the win and on their standing invitation to the Kingfisher.

The rookies will be staying in because they aren’t old enough to drink in the U.S.. Or at least that’s supposedly what they’re doing.

He could stay in.

“I think Harris is going to the bar with everyone, so it won’t be just you.”

Or maybe he could go out.

“I think I’ll go,” Troy says, missing the look that passes over Haas’ face for a split second.

"Have fun," Haas says, with a cherubic smile on his face. Troy does not want to know what that is about.

Troy tries to blend into the crowd of hockey players going to the Kingfisher. It's an easy task, given how disgustingly cold and wet it is outside. Most people are bundled up.

When they get to the bar, though, it's a little harder to hide. Half the team settles down to watch the Vancouver-LA game that's on the TV. The other half splits off to meet with various New York Admirals.

Troy sits down at the bar and watches a bunch of straight hockey players get flirted with by gay men, without chagrin. Most of them turn down advances by saying they're married.

"Hi there, pretty boy," the voice of the blond bartender shakes Troy out of people-watching. "What can I get for you?"

Troy hasn't even looked at the menu. "A beer. Whatever you have on tap."

"Sure thing."

He’s handed his drink a minute later, as he hands his card over to start a tab.

Being here is surreal. He could never have imagined coming out to a gay bar in Toronto. With Toronto.

Or in Vancouver, for that matter. 

Adrian insisted on them meeting only at his apartment, stealing time at night and on rare off-days. Not that Troy was opposed to it. He has his own things to hide.

But it stings, knowing what else Adrian was hiding from him.

He sips on his beer and listens to the guys shouting at the game.

Fuck. He should be happy. He played the best hockey that he’s done in weeks. 

He apologized to Hollander, Rozanov, Price, and Boodram. He’s promised to do better.

But Dallas Kent is still in Toronto, still their star player, like nothing ever happened. 

Meanwhile, Troy is still afraid that his life is about to be uprooted. Again.

His phone buzzes with a call from Curtis Barrett.

He mutes it, letting it go to voicemail instead of outright rejecting it.

If his dad knew he was here…Troy doesn’t want to think about what would happen.

“Hell of a game,” Vaughny says, slapping Shane and Bood on the back as they head into the bar. “At least we didn’t let you run away with it. That game against the Demons was a massacre.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, echoed by Bood.

“New guy had a good night though. A Gordie Howe? What was he on today?”

Bood cuts in before Shane has to come up with a reasonable answer. “Public apology to the captain, dude.” He gives Shane a nudge to the shoulder.

“Wait, really?” Vaughny asks. “What did you say?”

“I told him we wouldn’t have a problem if he commits to not doing it anymore and plays well,” Shane says hesitantly.

“You upped his Benediction, too,” Bood teases. “Told him you wanted a goal out of him and he swung for the fences.”

“Damn,” Vaughny says. “I really gotta get Scotty doing it if it works that well. HEY SCOTT!” He yells out to the bar.

“WHAT?”

“You gotta start doing the Benediction!”

All of the Diques start yelling. Ilya’s voice cuts above it all. “It does not work unless it is Shane.”

“Bullshit,” Bood calls back. “You did it while he was out.”

Ilya shakes his head as he comes to the table, holding a ginger ale out for Shane. “Was still Shane. I said his words. I give pregame speeches all the time. The Benediction is all Shane.”

Vaughny eyes him. “You sure we can’t steal him?”

Ilya glares, sliding into the booth and putting an arm around Shane. “No.” Shane relaxes into his side.

“Not even if we took you too?”

“Still no. I do not play hockey with dinosaurs.” Ilya gives an affected sniff, his smile threatening to burst at the edges.

“I’ve been meaning to ask—how come you never played your little game with me in the emails?” Vaughny says.

“We can do it now,” Ilya says, staring him down.

“North American river otter,” Shane offers. “Friendly, known for play and social behavior. Effective predators.”

“They hold hands in the water to not get lost and have rocks in their pockets,” Ilya says in delight.

Vaughny looks at them for a second, his face breaking into a huge grin. “That’s the best compliment I think I could have gotten from you.”

“And I got an armadillo?” Bood asks.

“They have natural armor,” Shane says. “Have you ever seen them escape from predators? They can turn into a literal ball of spikes.”

“Okay.” Bood nods appreciatively. “I can get behind that.”

“Told you,” Ilya says, smug. “But we are not done with the game. Shane, you are up.”

“Ugh, really?” He looks at Vaughny for a minute. “You’re still dating Gloria, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Just wanted to make sure. I’m going to say no.”

Ilya hums.

“You don’t think so?”

“I think if we got into why he verges on maybe, we would be here all night.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Vaughny says. “Is this the second question? Scott and Eric won’t tell me what it is.”

“You can probably figure it out, man,” Bood says, laughing a little bit. “I’m a no. It took us a while to figure it out. I want to see if you can do it faster.”

Shane does his best to keep a straight face as Vaughny starts guessing, and cursing every time he’s wrong.

Later on, Shane just observes his team, scattered throughout the bar.

Baldy and Wyatt are doing some kind of goalie to goalie communication with Eric Bennett. They’re talking, and every once in a while someone will throw something at them and all three of their hands will shoot out to snatch it from the air. Shane thinks there’s a point system, but he can’t quite tell. Bennett is clearly losing, because every time Baldy or Wyatt hits one of their imaginary benchmarks, they send him over to the bar.

Although, judging by the look on his face when he talks to the bartender, Kyle, it might not be that much of a punishment.

Dykstra is taking notes while Choui talks about his kids. Caitlyn’s due in a month or two, and the big defenseman has been getting nervous about fatherhood. Lundy looks like he’s absently listening, but he’s nodding along a little too much to be completely ignoring it.

Bood and Vaughny have been pulled into conversation with Scott and Kip, Vaughny clearly trying to cajole Scott into the Benediction and failing.

Ryan’s quietly talking to Ilya about his new therapist. Ilya is, blessedly, letting Shane not talk.

He’s not opposed to therapy. Ilya goes, and it’s really been helping him.

Shane doesn’t need it. He feels great. His life is great. 

Anyway. Barrett is standing up from the bar, a martini glass in one hand and something held in the other. The eyes of a bunch of gay guys follow him across the room as he sits down next to Harris, watching the game.

Shane elbows Ilya in the side. “Baby.”

“What?” Ilya asks, disgruntled.

“Look.” He points as subtly as he can at Barrett and Harris.

Harris lights up as Barrett hands him the drink and shows him whatever he was holding in the other hand.

Ilya smiles, a little devious. “Good. Maybe he will stop–” he cuts himself off.

“Stop what?” Shane asks.

Ilya just shakes his head, eyes on Barrett and Harris walking out of the bar together.

“Stop what, Ilya?”

Troy lies on the bed in his hotel room next to Harris, breathing hard.

“That was…that was good,” Harris says, “Really good.”

“Yeah?” Troy still feels a little bit drunk, but how much of that is alcohol and how much of it is Harris, he can’t tell. “You liked it?”

“Fuck yeah,” Harris says, running a hand along Troy’s flank. “I needed that. It’s been…a while.”

“Me too,” Troy says, feeling it deep within his chest.

Harris suddenly looks a little bit nervous as he sits up. “This wasn’t, like, your first time doing this, right?”

“No,” Troy says truthfully. The honesty is coming a little bit too easily tonight. “I—um. I’m gay. I had a boyfriend, well, ex-boyfriend now. We were together for a little less than a year before I came here. Secretly.” He gestures lamely with his hand, not knowing how to continue.

“That sounds rough.”

Troy lets out a little laugh, and wants to bury his face in Harris’ shoulder. “Well, it was what I could have, there. We were both in the closet. We weren’t planning on coming out. Or at least I wasn’t. I found out he came out and was engaged to another guy from an Instagram post.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Harris says, eyes wide. “Engaged? Was he cheating on you the whole time?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know if he even thought of what we had as a relationship,” Troy says, the words spilling out unbidden. “Maybe I thought he was my boyfriend, but he just thought it was friends with benefits. Or something. Convenient. I went to his and he came to mine whenever we were in the same city.”

“That doesn’t sound like convenience to me,” Harris says.

Troy scoffs a little bit. “It’s the word he used before dumping me. He kept saying that it wasn’t convenient any more, that we should go our separate ways. Guess I know why now.”

“Who the fuck is this guy?” Harris asks, his tone steely.

Troy weighs the possibilities before he opens his mouth. Fuck it. “Adrian de la Cruz.”

“The actor?!?” Harris yelps. “What the actual fuck. I thought he was a gay icon. Turns out he’s a scumbag. I’m so sorry, Troy.”

“It’s okay,” Troy says, meaning it more than he intends to. “I loved him. Or at least I thought I did, I guess. But he found someone better. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.”

“Don’t say that,” Harris says forcefully. “He did not ‘find someone better than you’. He was cheating on you. He broke your heart. And God, you probably couldn’t talk to anyone about this.”

“Yeah,” Troy says quietly.

Harris wraps his arms around Troy, the deep pressure of it soothing.

“I—I don’t know if I’m ready to try again,” Troy mumbles into the hair at the nape of Harris’ neck. “I’m a lot. I did a lot of shitty things. I don’t know if I could…” he trails off, letting the words give you what you deserve swallowed back.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Harris says. “We can just be…friends. Like we have been.”

Troy presses his face deeper into Harris’ shoulder as he says, “Yeah.”

Training Yuri Plisetsky isn’t all that different from competing against him, in Yuuri’s opinion. He’s always been very independent and confident in his skills.

It’s still a little strange to have him listen to what Yuuri says though.

“Remember what we talked about with how you’re articulating your hands,” he says as Yuri skates over to him after running a section of his short program. “You want the difference between the softness and the aggression to show.”

Yuri nods, before starting the section again, adjusting the placement of his hands slightly while he works through the step sequence.

Viktor comes up from behind Yuuri, his hair tickling the side of Yuuri’s neck. “He needs to polish the triple axel entry.”

“I know,” Yuuri says patiently. “We’ll get to it.” He brings a hand up to caress Viktor’s cheek. “You could say it to him, you know.”

“He listens much more to you, Моя звезда.” [my star]

“Quit being gross, old man,” Yuri shouts, proving Viktor’s point. “I’m working here!”

“You had better clean up that back counter entry, Yurio!”

“Fuck off!”

Yuuri has to laugh a little bit, because otherwise he’ll get frustrated with the endless back and forth, and that’s no way to be productive.

“Did Yuuko manage to get tickets?” Viktor asks once the shouting has died down and Yuri is furiously practicing his triple axel.

“Of course she did,” Yuuri snorts. “The girls sat in the ticket queue all night to make sure. They’ll be there. Everyone will.”

“Good.” 

It’s certainly different than it was, this time last year. Yuri isn’t competing for Russia anymore, but as an ANA. He doesn’t have the support of a Federation or a skate club. He just has Yuuri and Viktor. 

Yakov retired from coaching, and immediately landed a position with the ISU, as one of very few Russian coaches uninvolved with the doping scandal. Lilia is still at the Bolshoi. Georgi is doing ice dance now, and Mila has been bouncing around Europe with Sara Crispino.

They’re going to Worlds in Saitama, all dressed in a uniform white. It will be strange not to be representing his home, but that’s how it has to be, for now. 

He and Viktor have a partnership certificate from Saga Prefecture. It's all they can have there.

Maybe, by the time that Yuri retires, progress will have been made.

The living room is a chaotic mess. Shane steps his way around the rookies piled on the floor to find an open spot on the couch. Ilya is standing and fiddling with the remote to make sure the livestream is up and running.

Somehow, mentioning that they were going to watch the figure skating World Championships on their two-day break turned into half the team invading their house.

The kitchen is full of pastries that Nikolai brought from Kolya’s. A truly astounding amount of pirozhki, though Shane suspects they’ll run through it in short order.

Ilya finally gets the livestream operational before he looks back at the couch to sit down and finds it completely full.

He walks over and sits right in Shane’s lap instead of trying to complain about it.

“Move your big head, Rozanov. I can’t see.” Shane starts wriggling underneath his husband, trying to get his head over Ilya’s shoulder.

“Shouldn’t have taken my seat,” Ilya teases. “This is better anyway.” He turns a little bit to the side so he’s not completely blocking the view.

It is better, but Shane isn’t about to admit that to all of their teammates. Ilya’s weight feels like it’s settling Shane into his body, warm and solid. 

They watch the first few groups in the qualifying round, the other guys asking about scoring and the names of different moves as they go through. 

Yuri is the last of group 4, so Shane is only paying so much attention during group 3 when Luca gasps and says, “Sebastian?” while looking at the Swiss skater on screen.

“You know him?” Ilya asks, in unison with the rest of the rookies.

“I used to train with him,” Luca says, eyes following Sebastian on screen as he warms up. “He played hockey when we were kids, but he was a huge fan of Christophe Giacometti. He ended up moving to Zurich to go train at his rink.”

“Have you met Chris?” Shane asks, genuinely curious.

“I went to see Sebastian in Juniors a few times, so yeah.” Luca is blushing, much like he does for the Benediction.

Ilya looks at Luca very closely. “When was this?”

“A couple of years ago? I was sixteen and he’s an icon of Swiss figure skating. I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.” Now he’s really blushing.

“Who’s this Giacometti guy?” Holmberg pipes up.

“Swiss figure skater who used to compete,” Shane says. “He retired from men’s singles last year, but I think he’s been working to try and get same-sex pairs as a competitive category now.”

“You are forgetting his reputation, my love,” Ilya says. “Christophe ‘Sex on Ice’ Giacometti.” He takes another look at Luca, who is still blushing furiously. “He is too old for you, Luca.”

“I am an adult man!” Luca cries out, red in the face and looking very much like a teenager.

"You are a child. An infant. I birthed you from my own hips, and this is the thanks I get?" Ilya says dramatically.

“I’m not interested in him anyway!”

“So it’s Sebastian you’re interested in then,” Young says with a devious smile.

“No–”

“Haasy has a cru~ush!” Gilly sing-songs.

“No!” Luca shouts, as the rest of the rookies start taking up the chant. 

Shane muffles his laughter into Ilya’s shaking shoulder and marvels at how far they’ve come.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- Troy has been practicing this apology for a long time. Shane ending it with the Benediction makes him a little bit insane. Crazy enough to get a Gordie Howe and give Harris an apple Pride pin on the same night.
- Ilya is very carefully not telling Shane exactly where and when Troy apologized to him :)
- If you didn't know, a Gordie Howe hat trick is getting a goal, an assist, and fighting someone, all in one game. There's been commentary about the actual Gordie Howe hat trick involving a cross-check to the face, but Troy got the standard one in this game.
- The rookies are back at the hotel, having an all-hands meeting of the Church of Shane Hollander. They have been trying to push Troy and Harris together for weeks.
- I love writing Carter Vaughn. He's so great.
- Is that a Kyle/Eric cameo? Yes :D
- Shane is a highly unreliable narrator. Does he probably need therapy? Yes. Does he also think he is performing normal guy and thus that makes him a normal guy? Also yes.
- Troy doesn't want to make Harris feel like a rebound :( or like Troy is using him.
- We're back with the YoI characters for a little bit! I've missed them. Yuuri is a little sad about going home as a coach but knowing that his marriage is really only recognized within his family. In 2019, the first in a series of lawsuits came up in Japan, arguing that not allowing same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. There's a long way to go.
- I thought about making Luca a figure skater as well, and then I thought it would be funnier if he just had a crush on a figure skater, because then he'll have Ilya trying to get him to learn figure skating in order to impress said crush.

Chapter 7

Chapter Summary

Ilya has to come in early to execute his scheme in its entirety. Shane is busy with one of his sponsorship obligations, so Ilya has to endure the morning with only a goodbye kiss pressed to his brow, scrunched up in sleep.

Chapter Notes

Ilya has to come in early to execute his scheme in its entirety. Shane is busy with one of his sponsorship obligations, so Ilya has to endure the morning with only a goodbye kiss pressed to his brow, scrunched up in sleep.

He makes it to the rink with time to spare. Only a few people are there when he parks, having taken Shane’s car to disguise that he’s here, at least partially.

The closet dedicated to his husband is unlocked.

Ilya flicks the light switch on.

They’ve really filled it out over the last few months. Countless plushies, now that it’s no longer a limited run. Hockey cards from every year of his career. Posters from his Cup wins, including the one of them kissing. A stack of magazines, all the way up to Ilya’s hip.

He has work to do.

Custom photocards that he spent far too much time on, of Shane in his element as captain and at team gatherings. The pictures of him from home stay at home.

They get strung on fishing line and hung on the wall with the tiny transparent hooks that he has to very carefully place. 

The posters get swapped out for bigger versions, though he keeps the smaller ones in a large manila envelope. 

The plushies get organized by size and arranged in a ritual circle.

He sorts the magazines and marks the pages where Shane is featured.

The last item, a name plate that Ilya stole from the All-Stars Press Conference, gets very carefully placed on the table, with the hockey cards radiating out from it, arranged like the petals of a flower.

He checks his watch when he is done, and slinks down the hall to start getting ready for practice.

PHONE CALL TRANSCRIPT: T. Barrett -> J. Frasier
Date: 29 March 2019
Duration: 04:29

CALL INITIATED

J. Frasier: Hello?

T. Barrett: Hi, Mom.

J. Frasier: Hi baby. You had a good game last night.

T. Barrett: Yeah, uh, it was good.

J. Frasier: Is everything going well with the team? I know you said you were worried about it.

T. Barrett: It’s good, mom. I—I apologized to Hollander yesterday.

J. Frasier: …He's the captain, right? How come you were apologizing? Did you do something?

T. Barrett: I mean, not, like, right now. I said sorry for the shit I said to him in Toronto. 

J. Frasier: Oh.

T. Barrett: I’ve been doing all this reading, and all these workshops, and I felt—bad that I hadn’t said something before. Roz actually confronted me about it when I apologized to him too.

J. Frasier: It’s good that you said something.

T. Barrett: I’m really sorry, Mom.

J. Frasier: You don’t have to apologize to me, Troy. For anything.

T. Barrett: No—I needed to say it. I think—I listened to Dad. Too much. And I know I made it harder for you when he left.

J. Frasier: You didn’t make anything harder, baby. If anything, you were the one good thing I still had after those thirty years.

T. Barrett: (sniffle)

J. Frasier: You know, I was worried about you. Every time I saw you in Toronto, you were more like the man I remembered your father to be when we met. And Kent—he didn’t help with that.

T. Barrett: I should have known better.

J. Frasier: How could you have known? You hadn’t seen anything else. But after, you know, I was happy that you kept talking to me.

T. Barrett: Of course I kept talking to you, Mom. 

J. Frasier: (slight chuckle) And now, I know it was a lot, leaving Toronto. But you sound a little lighter, if that makes sense.

T. Barrett: They’ve been good to me. More than I deserved, honestly.

J. Frasier: Don’t say that about yourself, Troy. They were good to you, and that’s a good thing, but it says more about them than you. If you were good to them, then they’re just returning what they got.

T. Barrett: Okay.

J. Frasier: Are you having fun? Have you made friends?

T. Barrett: Yeah. Uh, the rookies have been very nice, and a couple of the guys, I mean, I knew Hayes from Toronto, so— (trails off)

J. Frasier: (pause) That’s good.

T. Barrett: (longer pause) I need to tell you something.

J. Frasier: Sure, you can tell me anything, baby.

T. Barrett: …

J. Frasier: Troy?

T. Barrett: ...I’m gay. (shaky exhale)

J. Frasier: Oh. (deep breath) Thank you for telling me, sweetie.

T. Barrett: I’ve been scared of saying it for a long time.

J. Frasier: Your father— baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you had to feel afraid like that.

T. Barrett: It’s okay, Mom.

J. Frasier: It’s not okay, Troy. He hurt you. And Toronto, you must have been so afraid, all the time. Hiding everything.

T. Barrett: Yeah. It’s—It’s a lot easier here.

J. Frasier: I can imagine.

T. Barrett: And, um, there’s another friend I made.

J. Frasier: Oh?

T. Barrett: His name is Harris. He does social media for the team.

J. Frasier: Has he been helping you out with your Instagram?

T. Barrett: Yeah. He’s really nice. He’s been a good friend to me.

J. Frasier: …any chance that he might be more than that?

T. Barrett: Mom!

J. Frasier: What?

T. Barrett: I mean (whispered) maybe?

J. Frasier: …well if he’s as nice as you make him out to be, I’d love to meet him someday.

T. Barrett: That would be nice. 

J. Frasier: I know you’ve been through a lot. Don’t let that stop you from keeping what makes you happy. Or who, I should say.

T. Barrett: I’ll try, Mom.

J. Frasier: That’s all I can ask of you.

T. Barrett: I love you, Mom.

J. Frasier: Love you too, Troy.

CALL TERMINATED

“Coming into this end of season match-up between the Boston Bears and Quebec Nordiques, you’d think it’s June already.”

 

“It’s Pride Night here in TD Garden, and both teams are showing out in support.”

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much pride tape. It's been a controversial subject across the league this year, with some teams objecting to the concept, and others embracing it wholeheartedly.”

 

“Well, the Bears and Nordiques have certainly embraced it. Both teams have already clinched their playoff berths for this year, so this one looks like it’s going to be more fun than anything. We’ll see if they let off the steam for the night or if it’s full speed ahead.”

 

“There’s Rozanov down there, chatting with some of his old teammates during this warm-up period. Can’t quite tell what he’s doing there—he’s taking off a glove and showing something to Marleau.”

 

“On the other side, rookies Luca Haas and Giovanni Marini are having a little reunion.”

 

“Two surprise picks out of the Swiss Junior League, and they’ve really made an impact this year.”

Ilya looks out at the crowd, at Boston's black and gold interspersed with rainbow, and the small section of blue and red for the Nordiques.

Ten years ago, he was drafted by this city to bring them back from the bottom of the league.

Nine years ago, he was in Russia, making sure Yuri would be safe in St. Petersburg before he left for America.

Eight years ago, he was playing his hardest to try and beat Shane in the scoring race, striking even at the very end of the regular season.

Seven years ago, he was hoping that Boston could somehow find a way to make it through more than the first round of playoffs.

Six years ago, he had gotten closer, but not close enough to taste it.

Five years ago, he failed at the Olympics, and took every ounce of pain to get the Cup. And fix his mistakes with Shane.

Four years ago, he watched Shane start his first successful Cup run as captain, and took his hand in friendship in front of the world.

Three years ago, he watched Shane do it all again from afar, tucked away in the corner of the arena.

Two years ago, he saw Shane broken on the ice. He left this city behind to follow his love.

One year ago, he was gearing up to win it all with his husband after coming back from his injury and Harvey’s incident. 

And now, he looks at the city that brought him here, and silently thanks her, though he lives here no more.

“A lot of excitement there in the crowd—”

 

“It looks like we have a surprise celebrity guest for the night, swinging by before her Boston takeover show with Trixie Mattel, it’s Katya!”

 

“I’m seeing a few fans out there elated to see the RuPaul’s Drag Race alum and Boston native drag queen.”

 

“Looks like the Nordiques’ alternate captain might be swinging by to say hello.”

Ryan wishes that Fabian could have come to this.

And he knows, at the same time, that probably won't happen for a long, long time.

He's talked about it in therapy. He knows Fabian has too.

It's still fresh.

The uncertainty is the problem. Ryan knows what to expect from the Bears and the Admirals, and the Voyageurs, more recently. He knows what to expect from the Guardians, the Swords, the Blaze and the Thrashers.

But every time they go on the road is unpredictable. It always used to be.

But there's a secondary fear in his mind now every time he steps on the Nordiques' plane, beyond his typical flight anxieties.

There's no knowing who will get targeted like Shane did.

There's no knowing if they won't be able to get back up from it.

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques

The Nordiques are proud winners tonight!

Les Nordiques sont de fiers gagnants ce soir!

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[Image: Score Card Graphic reading QUE 4; BOS 3]

[Image: The Quebec Nordiques standing together, all with pride tape on their sticks for warm-ups and their Pride Night jerseys]

vicky @diqueswin

truly the gayest team in the league

 

selena @rozanovae

ILYA WAVING AND BLOWING KISSES TO KATYA

 

Brad @bradmercer

Keep that shit off the ice. They don't need to shove it in our faces.

Instagram Profile: @TroyBarrett17

Profile Picture: [Image: Troy Barrett in his Pride Night Warm-up Jersey]

Bio: Troy Barrett. Quebec Nordiques #17.

I believe victims of sexual assault.
I believe everyone has the right to dignity, privacy, and safety.
I believe in restorative justice.

@TroyBarrett17 posted to Instagram!

[Image: Troy Barrett in his Pride Night Jersey, in a group photo with Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Matthew Baldwin, Frank Lundin, Ryan Price, and Luca Haas.]

[Image: A graphic with links to various LGBTQIA+ charities and resources as well as resources for survivors of sexual assault.]

TroyBarrett17 I never thought I would be able to do this. I spent a lot of years afraid of what choosing to be honest would mean.

But today I'm choosing to be brave.

I'm gay. And I have always been.

I'm proud to now be on a team that has always chosen acceptance.

Not everyone gets the chance to learn and grow. Not everyone gets the chance to accept themselves and see others accept them for who they are and who they love.

But I did. And I'm committed to making a better world for the people who come after me.

🏳️‍🌈

This creator has disabled comments on this post.

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Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- A little bit of a shorter chapter this time, because I wanted to experiment with some formats.
- Ilya's slowly baiting them into letting him in. Ryan is holding it off as long as he can, because he knows what's going to happen once Shane finds out.
- I loved writing Troy and his mom <3
- The SAPs chat is back! And Troy is actually going to work with Caitlyn, who's a social worker with La Maison, which is a women's shelter in QC.

Solution on page B7:

Chapter 8

Chapter Summary

Ilya Rozanov
very important announcement for all of you fuckers
no playoff sex ban
go home and fuck your wives and husbands and girlfriends/boyfriends/whatever
if you are single get yourself a partner

Chapter Notes

Round 1: Philadelphia Ringers

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques ☑️

Our captains showed up in style for Game 1 against Philly!

Nos capitaines étaient très bien habillés pour le premier match contre Philadelphie!

[Image: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov in well tailored suits, walking into the Centre Vidéotron. Rozanov has a hand on Hollander’s lower back.]

Gritty @grittymlh ☑️

👀

 

Ilya Rozanov @rozanov81☑️

BACK OFF

 

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques ☑️

Our captain’s post-game interview!

Entrevue d'après-match de notre capitaine!

[Image: Score graphic reading QUE 2; PHI 1]

[Video: A sweaty Shane Hollander raking his hand through his hair as he says, “We’re going to have to keep the momentum up going into game 2]

Gritty @grittymlh ☑️

🥵

 

Ilya Rozanov @rozanov81☑️

Do Not Look At Him

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques ☑️

Warming up for Game 2!

On se prépare pour le match 2! 

[Image: The Quebec Nordiques warming up in sync on the ice. Captain Shane Hollander is prominently placed in the center of the frame.]

Gritty @grittymlh ☑️

getting ready 😏

 

Ilya Rozanov @rozanov81☑️

🙅‍♂️

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques ☑️

Coming off the plane in Philadelphia!

À la descente de l'avion à Philadelphie!

[Video: The Quebec Nordiques debarking from the plane, with the captains coming out at the end. Hollander is dressed normally. Rozanov is wearing a t-shirt with a prohibition symbol over Gritty’s face.]

 

Gritty @grittymlh ☑️

i’m open if you ever want that tour :) :) 🙂

 

Ilya Rozanov @rozanov81☑️

there will be no tours, orange freak

The time has come.

They’re warming up in Philly for Game 4. They could end the series tonight.

The freak is nowhere to be seen.

Ilya has his head on a swivel, his back to the away bench. 

Shane is peacefully warming up next to him.

Then, he sees it.

The orange eyes of the beast.

As he makes eye contact with Gritty, his body goes still.

Shane glances over.

“Ilya Irinevich Plisetsky-Rozanov, so help me god, if you fight Gritty, you will be sleeping on the couch for the next year. This is a playoff game. Do not fuck around.”

“I will not fight him,” Ilya says easily. 

“Ilya.”

“Shane.”

“You had better not.”

“I promised you, didn’t I?” Ilya looks over at his husband and pushes himself up from the ground. “I will not fight him, sweetheart.” 

Shane stands up after him. “Okay…”

The freak has gotten on the ice.

He’s holding a bouquet and a little box in his hand.

There’s a sign on his chest that reads:

You Drive Me InShane

covered in pictures of Shane’s face in little hearts.

“Oh,” Shane says faintly. “That’s—”

“Disrespectful,” Ilya says in lieu of other words.

“He’s just trying to throw us off our game,” Shane says weakly as Gritty starts gyrating to the music in Shane’s direction, wiggling the bouquet.

He gets close enough, drops to one furry knee, slides across the ice, and holds out the little box, which has a Ring Pop in it. The sign, flipped over, now reads:

I Showed You My Moves

Care to Take Me for a Spin(-o-rama)?

The arena is roaring with laughter.

Ilya stares down the beast.

The beast stares back.

Ilya puts an assertive arm around Shane, stealing his stick and dropping both over the boards as he says, “Harris?”

The social media manager looks up. “Yeah?”

“Play the song we talked about, please.”

“Song?” Shane says, utterly confused as Ilya tugs him by the hand past Gritty, to the middle of the ice.

Ilya leans in and pecks Shane on the mouth. “Remember how Yuri wanted to choreograph something for us for cross-training last year?”

“Yeah—the exhibition piece…wait.”

“Yes.” Ilya’s smile almost makes his cheeks hurt. “I promised I would not fight him. You did not say anything about this.”

“Baby,” Shane says, exasperated, his arms crossed. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I will not have the orange freak pursuing you. I will put it to rest, моя любовь. [my love] ”

Guitar starts coming over the speakers.

A little smile cracks through Shane’s affected serious facade. “Okay.”

Ilya takes his hand as they start to glide.

I have loved you since we were 18

Long before we both thought the same thing

To be loved and to be in love

All I could do is say that these arms were made for holding you

I wanna love like you made me feel when we were 18 

They end it as they always do, with Ilya dipped back over Shane’s arm, one skate on the ice and the other pointed straight out.

Ilya, upside down, looks into Gritty’s face and sticks his tongue out. 

The mascot hams it up as he drops the bouquet on the ice and storms off, pretending to weep from plastic eyes.

Ilya’s hoping that means that someone will get cake to the face later in the game.

The Nordiques cheer as he tips back up and he and Shane take a very dramatic bow, him more than Shane.

They skate back to the bench to grab their sticks to the sound of applause.

“They’re going to be trying to steal you for ice dancing,” Coach Wiebe says, his eyes dancing with mirth. 

“We’re happy where we are,” Shane says, matter of fact. “And we’ve got a game to win.”

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques ☑️

The Nordiques are moving on to Round 2!

Les Nordiques passent au deuxième tour!

[Video: The Quebec Nordiques crashing together in the middle of the ice at the end of Game 4 in Philadelphia.]

[Image: Score graphic reading QUE 5; PHI 2]

[Image: Shane Hollander dipping Ilya Rozanov over his arm.]

vicky @diqueswin

i CANNOT believe they ended the gritty x rozanov beef with a dance battle

 

Pip @nordyke

how much do you want to bet that Shane told Ilya he wasn't allowed to fight Gritty and he did this instead

 

Ilya Rozanov @rozanov81☑️

🙃

 

Pip @nordyke

OH?!?

Round 2: Toronto Guardians

Dallas Kent is suspended for his off-ice infractions, waiting on both his MLH hearing and his criminal trial.

Toronto is disorganized and flailing without him. It doesn’t stop them from constantly fighting and yelling slurs across the ice, but it makes the scores ridiculous, at least. 

Troy can’t help but think that each victory rings a little bit hollow.

Kent paid his bail. He’s walking around, somewhere outside the rink, waiting for trial.

He’s not on the ice, where Troy could beat the shit out of him and call it a game. The last regular season game they played, Troy was kept off the ice while Kent was on.

Not that it stopped the other guys from gunning for Kent, but the point stands.

Troy will never get to feel Kent’s facial bones shifting under his fist again.

The uncertainty is agony. 

Knowing that all he can do is trust in a system that rarely punishes rich white men like Kent for their crimes.

He has to hope that the survivors get the justice they deserve.

He has to hope that Kent’s attempts at denying the allegations won’t sway the jury.

Troy makes the mistake of looking out into the crowd for Game 4 in Toronto. He glazes over the sea of blue and white until he alights on a face that he recognizes.

Curtis Barrett is sitting in the crowd, wearing an old Guardians jersey with Barrett across the back.

His stomach drops.

He hasn't seen his father in person for months, neither in Toronto nor Vancouver.

The game is a haze of missed passes and checks that border on legal. Wiebe keeps him on the bench in overtime, seeing how poorly he's been playing.

After, once the Guardians got themselves together enough to get one past Hayes and break the seven-game win streak the Nordiques have been on in this playoff run, Troy finds himself lingering in the arena, waiting for his dad to confront him.

Maybe it’s just a form of self-inflicted punishment to wait like this, stuck in the limbo of assumption rather than certainty.

He hasn’t heard from him since he came out as gay.

He hasn’t heard from him since Dallas was arrested.

Troy waits, and asks the arena staff if they’ve seen a man in a Barrett Guardians jersey.

He gets a lot of dirty looks as he waits, Toronto fans cursing his name.

Eventually, he feels a tap on his shoulder. “Troy.”

Harris is standing there with a look of concern.

“Sorry,” Troy says mechanically. “I’ll come back.”

“Were you waiting for someone?”

“My dad,” Troy says quietly. “…I haven’t heard from him since March, but I saw him in the crowd. Thought he might have something to say. I don’t know.” He feels himself hunching in.

Harris just watches him for a second. “Something good to say?”

Troy lets out a laugh that’s more like a cracked sob. “No, probably. He would probably want to beat me up for coming out.” The laughter keeps coming, uncontrollably. “You know, he always liked Dallas better than me. Used to tell me he was a strong man, and a hell of a player. That I should’ve been more like him when I was younger.”

Harris pulls him into a tight hug. Like this, out of his pads and jersey and everything that makes him bigger than he is, it feels like Harris envelops him in warmth and the scent of apples. “You don’t have to wait for him like this. He probably left already.”

“Wouldn’t that be chickening out?” 

Wouldn’t that be giving up on the thought that maybe, maybe Curtis Barrett could accept him?

“He’s the coward,” Harris says firmly, squeezing Troy one noontime before he lets go. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

Troy follows after him, helplessly drawn into his orbit.

He doesn’t see his father at any of the other games in the series.

But he doesn't block his number, just in case.

Round 3: Washington Revolutionaries

Is it selfish not to go to any of the games? Fabian wonders.

He hasn't gone since December. He hasn't tried hard enough.

Ryan hasn't said anything about it. He hasn't forced Fabian to go, to watch from home, or even listen to him talk about it at home. They've been trading takes on personal drama, but nothing relating to the game.

And yet Ryan comes as often as he can when Fabian is performing.

Is it really fair? something in his mind whispers. It's not like he saw a friend almost die at one of your concerts.

Shane is fine. Better than ever apparently, if half the team thinks he's endowing them with superpowers. Which, he might well be. Fabian has seen people do lesser things for the approval of a hot guy.

The feeling twists in his gut with nowhere to go.

Fabian stands anxiously in the back of the box for most of the game, not wanting to put his hand wringing on the big screen.

He hums to himself, tuning out the noise.

The buzzer goes, and with it goes his breath, tucked up tight in his chest.

He comes down with the SAPs.

His low heeled boots slip ever so slightly on the ice, so he walks slowly and surely.

The smile on Ryan's face when he kisses Fabian is better than anything he could have imagined.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- The chapter count has gone up, because there are extras that got turned into part of the story that necessitated another chapter.
- Every time I use the html for the Reddit posts, I'm immediately reminded of why it's the most cumbersome of the media elements that I used for this series. Unfortunately it does go hard when it's all done correctly, so I do have to keep doing it.
- It's the end of the Gritty/Ilya beef! I thought about making them fight, but I wanted to go back to the real roots of this series, which is Shane and Ilya and their connections to figure skating.
- Yes, that is 18 by 1D as their exhibition piece song. Yuri choreographed it for their first anniversary.
- Curtis Barrett is an asshole, but he's also a coward, who does not want to face his son when he is backed up by the queer hockey mafia.
- Fabian <3 it's a short section, but I wanted to explore his headspace around hockey a few months out from the incident! He's trying!

Chapter 9

Chapter Summary

By the time the Nordiques make it to the Finals, they're starting to get tired.

 

Each playoff series has only gotten longer. Washington took them to Game 7 after trading wins back and forth through the entire series.

Chapter Notes

Stanley Cup Finals: Los Angeles Queens

By the time the Nordiques make it to the Finals, they're starting to get tired.

Each playoff series has only gotten longer. Washington took them to Game 7 after trading wins back and forth through the entire series.

Shane wants them to get this one done, because the travel back and forth has been hellish, between the jet lag and the game schedule.

They're at 3 wins to LA's 2. The Cup is in the building tonight.

He looks around the locker room as he works on his tape job, scanning the state of the energy as he makes sure the edges are flat and clean.

The rookies are jittery over in the corner, talking about something. They go quiet every time he looks over, which isn't very helpful for figuring anything out. The vets are sprawled out on their benches, a few working out the persistent injuries that have cropped up over the course of this playoff run.

"Listen up!" Ilya calls out, and the room falls silent. He stands, larger than life, making Shane's heart race.

"We are one game away. Three periods. 60 minutes." Ilya starts to pace around the room, looking each and every player in the eye.

"I do not give a fuck about how all the other games have gone. We are here now. We are going to humiliate LA in front of their home crowd." His teeth glint under the fluorescent lights.

"We know we are the best. This is a fact. I want you to get out there and show me, show everyone that we are going to do it again." There's a rumble of sticks tapping on the ground.

"So leave it all out there, because this is our night. Our Cup. We are not letting it go." He stops in front of Shane, just for a moment before he turns out to face the room.

"Fuck LA. We are going to fuck them so hard that they never reach the Finals again. Fucking fuck LA!"

A shout of "Fuck LA!" goes up around the room, as everyone starts to stand up and get in line.

Shane walks to the doorway.

He doesn't try to be fancy with it. It's been a long slog of games to get them to this point. Everyone is hurting. Everyone is tired.

He kisses their foreheads and says, "Get out there and win this fucking game."

When it gets to just him and Ilya, he runs his fingers over the A on his jersey and says, "Good fucking speech."

Ilya smiles and kisses his forehead before Shane can go for it. "Is all true, Hollander."

Shane grabs Ilya's face, places his kisses and says, "We're going to do it again," as they start their walk down the tunnel.

Quebec Nordiques - Stanley Cup Finals: Mic'ed Up with Alternate Captain Ilya Rozanov

[Video opens on the Nordiques walking down the tunnel towards the ice, Alternate Captain Ilya Rozanov shoulder to shoulder with his husband and Captain, Shane Hollander.]

ILYA ROZANOV: We are going to kill them, my love.

SHANE HOLLANDER: Yeah we are.

IR: They stand no chance.

[As they emerge to start skating out for warm ups, Rozanov plants a quick peck on Hollander's helmet.]

IR: If I score more goals than you today, we get a dog.

SH: What? No! Not happening!

IR: It is happening if I score more goals, keep up, Hollander.

SH: We don't have the time to give a dog everything it would need! We're away all the time. Better to get a cat, because they're more independent.

IR: Ughhhhh, you are ruining my fun Hollander. Fine. If you score more goals, we get cat. If I score more goals we get dog. Deal?

SH: ...deal.

[The captains solemnly shake hands and skate out onto the ice with a burst of speed, joining their teammates.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov, sitting on the bench, avidly tracking whatever is going on on the ice in front of him.]

IR: Close the gap--yes good, take it--take it--find the lane- [whistle blows] Come on!

[Cut.]

[Rozanov, cutting into the neutral zone with the puck on his stick.]

IR: (quick breathing)

[LA's #47 checks Rozanov hard in the shoulder.]

IR: *****! How much did you pay your dentist for those new veneers? Probably too much. They look like plastic vampire teeth. For Halloween.

47: **** you! 

[#47 shoves Rozanov and drops his gloves, but since play had stopped elsewhere on the ice, a penalty is immediately called on him.]

IR: Ha!

[Cut.]

[Rozanov passes the puck to Hollander on the power play, and Hollander sends it into the net with a precise wrist shot. They come together as they head back to the bench.]

SH: One for me.

IR: I assisted. Point is even.

SH: You're the one who specified goals and not points. Point is in my favor.

IR: Ughhhhhhhhh.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov taking a face-off against LA's #29.]

IR: LA is very boring state. Too much traffic. 

29: ...LA is a city, dude.

IR: ...

29: California's the fucking state dude. 

IR: ...

29: (voice growing more desperate) LA is a city, Rozanov. Please tell me you know that. 

[The puck drops, and Rozanov snaps it clean to Barrett as #29 is distracted.]

[Cut.]

[Rozanov on the bench, tapping his stick on the ground]

IR: (singing) Я сошла с ума, я сошла с ума, Мне нужна она, мне нужна она, мне нужна она. [I've lost my mind, I've lost my mind, I need her, I need her, I need her. 
(lyrics from the chorus of t.A.T.U's Я сошла с ума / All the Things She Said)]

[Cut.]

[Rozanov making a line change. Hollander passes him on his way back to the bench.]

IR: Gimme kiss.

[Hollander makes a face, but gives Rozanov a drive-by kiss on the helmet.]

NORDIQUES PLAYERS: (indistinct shouting) No fair--stealing it--rest of us.

IR: Too bad, so sad.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov gets the puck from Haas, lands in the slot and fires it in. The goal horn blares.]

IR: Very good, baby Haasy! I will let you come visit the puppy first.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov, on the bench, is looking down the ice at Wyatt Hayes, who is slumped over, pretending to nap in the goal crease, as play has concentrated in the Nordiques' offensive zone]

IR: Look at this. He is so sad and bored. No pucks for him to catch.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov in the penalty box, shouting every time Hollander skates past him.]

IR: Get it for me sweetheart--good--open to Pricey--watch the--yes!

[The goal horn blares as Hollander kills the penalty with a goal, assisted by Frank Lundin.]

IR: Now I need one.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov comes back to the bench as the lines change.]

IR: My bones are crunchy.

LUCA HAAS: Crunchy?

IR: Like the cereal that you eat that is for babies. Popping, snapping something.

TROY BARRETT: Rice Krispies?

IR: What is this name? I am talking about Haasy's baby cereal.

[Both Barrett and Haas give Rozanov incredulous looks.]

[Cut.]

[Rozanov and Hollander on the power play once again, though this time, Hollander sends the puck through traffic to Rozanov, who sends it in with his signature move as the goalie falls for his faked backhand shot. As the goal horn goes, the captains slam together in a hug.]

IR: Tied at 2!

SH: Yeah, yeah.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov skating rapidly as the puck moves between LA's forwards. He ends up near the goal crease as LA's #78 shoves Barrett, and the two start to tussle.]

IR: Are you having a nice day, Hazy?

WYATT HAYES: I've had worse.

[Cut.]

[Rozanov on the bench standing up as the time runs down in a graphic superimposed on the screen. As soon as it hits zero, Rozanov and the remainder of the Nordiques jump the boards and swarm in the center of the ice. The scoreboard reads QUE 5; LAQ 1.]

IR: (loud indistinct yelling from multiple voices as the other Nordiques are caught on his mic)

[Hollander picks Rozanov up in a hug and spins him around before kissing him on the mouth. Around them, several of the Nordiques start picking each other up.]

SH: We did it, baby!

[End of video.]

The Stanley Cup is wheeled out onto the ice.

The new commissioner, an unassuming white guy whose name Troy can't remember, talks for a few minutes as they stand on the ice, sweat cooling to skin.

The Conn Smythe goes to Hollander. Troy can't think of anyone more deserving of it.

Hollander lifts the Cup again, for the second year in a row, much like he did in 2016.

He hands it to his husband. Rozanov takes it around in a victory lap before it lands in Boodram's hands.

It eventually ends up with Troy, held above his head before it gets passed to Chouinard.

Sheer euphoria fills every inch of Troy's body.

It's not that he never though this would happen. Everyone hopes they'll win a Cup.

But they did it.

Champagne sprays in the locker room, sticky and bubbly over everyone's gear. Hollander and Rozanov are fully making out in the middle of the room. Hands are everywhere.

Dykstra and Chouinard are pouring beer into the Cup and tilting it back to drink from it like it's not 35 pounds of silver trophy. The keeper of the Cup, whose name might be Jeremy, stands by, wincing every time they lift it.

The rookies are screaming and full-tilt running around the room. Baldwin and Hayes have their head pressed together, their pads melding into a single goalie amalgamation. Price and Lundin are both on their phones presumably calling their boyfriends. Boodram opens another bottle of champagne to spray, and catches Troy in this round.

Coach Wiebe looks about as smug as he can be, for a guy who's generally laidback.

And hovering around the edges, Harris has his phone out, recording the celebrations.

Troy waits for him to get Hollander moving over to the post-game media before he tries to get close. He taps on Harris’ shoulder with a hand that’s been forced to stop shaking.

“Hi!” Harris says, as he turns around to face Troy, the phone in his hand falling back to his side.

“Hi,” Troy says, his mouth very dry.

“You did it.” Harris' beaming smile is almost too much to look at.

“Group effort,” Troy says.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be proud of you.”

And there’s the crux of it.

Harris is just objectively too good for Troy. He’s handsome. He’s kind. He’s good with people in a way that makes him so astonishingly good at his job. He’s a little snarky. He’s openly himself and confident.

He’s overcome a lot to be where he is now.

More than that, he’s been a friend to Troy over these last few months, even when they were just bonding over the Church of Shane Hollander.

Not that Troy doesn’t think Hollander is hot.

He’s just extremely taken. And also probably wouldn’t spare Troy the time of day off the ice.

Harris features more prominently in Troy’s mind now anyway.

“Thanks,” he says, not saying any of that, because it would be weird.

“Two in two years is crazy,” Harris says under the roaring din. “I never thought I’d be close enough to see it. It’s not like Ottawa was going to win it. I’m really glad I came here.”

“So am I,” Troy blurts, his body buzzing. “Would you, maybe, want to go out to dinner with me? After we get back from LA?”

Harris’ smile is somehow even brighter. “I thought you’d never ask.”

They lean in and kiss, and kiss, and kiss.

They don't come out of it for the whoops and cheers of their teammates, the money changing hands, the secretive smiles on the rookies' faces or the extremely smug smile on Rozanov's face.

Troy breathes in the scent of apples and grins.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Feel free to tell me what you think.

Quick Notes:

- The official last chapter. It's been a true odyssey writing this. I might have some extras that crop up; we'll see :) Not going to write my official end message until I ponder how long those are going to grow.
- I really wanted to highlight how Shane and Ilya have grown into a pair of captains--how it doesn't matter who wears the C and who wears the A, because they're both leading in the room.
- Another throwback to Figure Skating for Hockey Players, but this time it's Ilya on the mic.
- Shane and Ilya each score 2 goals and 1 assist (2G + 1A), so they're tied on the pet issue still.
- I had to have the champagne shower moment :)
- And Troy and Harris have figured it out :D
- BTW I did edit chapter 6 a little bit and that contextualizes some of what Troy is thinking here. Just in case you read it before I edited.

Chapter 10

Chapter Summary

The extras at the end of the story.

Chapter Notes

Extra #1: Post-Cup Celebrations & Reactions

It's sort of the best of both worlds for them to have won in LA. At least from a partying standpoint. They get the best of the clubbing here and then come home to the Cup parade. The plane ride will be hell, but it will be worth it.

Harris watches as the troop of 23 men pours out of the hotel and down the street, some of them dressed in their game-day suits still, others in clubbing outfits or sweatpants or notably, jean booty shorts with FEAR ME bedazzled on the ass. He does not want to know where Young got those. The Stanley Cup and its minder, Jeremy, crowd surf in the first bar, and get covered in beer and champagne in the second.

At some point, Rose Landry shows up. The half of the team that knows how to be normal greets her and goes back to drinking. The less to say about the other half, the better.

Harris keeps his phone out to document, setting a reminder to review the footage before he posts so they don't look like complete drunken lunatics let loose in the streets of Los Angeles.

Troy holds his hand for most of the night. It's very sweet.

On the other end of things, Harris has never seen Shane let loose like this. He goes from grinding back on his husband in the middle of the dance floor to sneaking out and trying to climb a light pole in the span of 10 minutes. The only reason he doesn't make it up the pole is the aforementioned husband, who is latched onto his back like a limpet, or some sort of lamprey, given the hickeys that Harris can already see on Shane's neck. They've snuck off in every single location the Diques have been to tonight.

It's a true haze of chaos and celebration. LA isn't as much of a hockey town, so they can easily evade the angry Queens fans.

At some point, around 3 AM, Harris' head is vaguely spinning when he sees a familiar, yet unfamiliar face in the crowd.

Troy is still holding his hand. It's fairly damp at this point, but neither of them want to let go.

Harris makes eye contact with Adrian de la Cruz just before he closes them and kisses Troy on the mouth. The dumbfounded look on the actor's face is delightful.

He fades back into the crowd with a sour look on his face.

In the morning, when Harris reviews the footage, he catches Adrian in the background of a few shots, his hands bare of any sort of engagement ring.

Those shots get removed from the overall post, and a couple, zoomed and enhanced, get privately sent to one @jgreen on Instagram.

Quebec Nordiques @quebecnordiques

Back-to-back Stanley Cup Champions!

Champions de la Coupe Stanley deux années de suite!

[Image: Score graphic reading QUE 5; LAQ 1]

[Image: The Quebec Nordiques picking each other up on the ice as they celebrate their win; Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are kissing as Hollander lifts Rozanov. A few of the players in the background are grabbing each other's faces.]

[Image: Captain Shane Hollander being awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy]

[Image: Captain Shane Hollander lifting the Stanley Cup above his head]

[Image: The Quebec Nordiques spraying champagne at each other in the visitor's locker room in Los Angeles]

vicky @diqueswin

BACK TO BACK!!!!!! THE DIQUES DID IT AGAIN

 

troy's smile @barrettgirlie

he went from calling dallas kent a rapist to coming out and then WINNING THE CUP

 

selena @rozanovae

and ilya's just laughing it up the whole goddamn time

 

selena @rozanovae

talking about how they're going to get a dog if he wins and a cat if shane does and then they TIE!?!?

 

Pip @nordyke

GAYEST TEAM IN THE LEAGUE DOES IT AGAIN ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

 

Pip @nordyke

the captains of the last 6 Cup winning teams have all been queer

 

Gracie @hollanova

ROZY GOT PICKED UP THIS TIME. 

 

taylor! @taygagnon

QUEBEC MOMENT OF ALL FUCKING TIME

 

mark @hockeyboooi

we knew this would happen. somehow they snagged some of the best fucking players in the league off the expansion draft

 

mark @hockeyboooi

mark my words they have a dynasty on their hands. sheer dominance.

 

q @suckmydiques

putting that benediction to WORK my GOD

 

mateo @iceday

generational run and they did it twice

 

pierre @malvoyageurs

i know they did better this year, made it to second round and everything, new coach new culture and all that

 

pierre @malvoyageurs

but i'm never going to forgive them for giving up shane hollander so he could go and do this.

 

🙏🏼💋🏒@hollysh!t

HOCKEY JESUS RISES AGAIN

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Congratulations to the defending champions! My thoughts on this win and what it bodes for the offseason: 🧵

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

From a league-wide standpoint, it's remarkable. It makes me wonder what is going to be happening with the CBA this upcoming year.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

After the conference reshuffle that enabled the Nordiques to join the Metropolitan Division, there is still room for additional expansion.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Quebec has proven the potential success of an expansion team, taking the league by storm.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Las Vegas and Seattle are both putting in strong bids to join the Western Division.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Of course, this is without considering the remarkable personnel that have defined the start of this era for the Nordiques.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

You have Shane Hollander, who just won his fourth Cup as Captain in 5 years. His second Conn Smythe, as well.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

3 other key players have each won 3: Rozanov as Captain in Boston and Alternate in Quebec, and Price and Gillis from Boston and New York.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

They took players who were being underutilized all over the league and built them into a Cup-winning machine.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

With this perspective, however, we will have to see how MLH leadership and the MLHPA takes it this offseason with regard to the Nordiques.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Hollander and Rozanov are mainstays in the room, and take up a good chunk of the cap space, though they could be getting paid more elsewhere.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Their contracts are long, and they hit their performance bonuses consistently. It's good news for the team, but not always for the budget.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

The salary cap going up to $79.5 million was the Nordiques' saving grace when they signed Troy Barrett. With Leier and Hollander out on injury,

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

They were able to acquire Barrett and rebuild their top six midseason, when they could have flamed out before building momentum.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

This offseason is critical--several key players are going to be looking at free agency this upcoming year, and they will be in high demand.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Every team wants the magic that has brought the Nordiques to the top of the league twice in the two years since the franchise was revived.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

Since Hollander and Rozanov are locked in, it will be a question of which of the other, more foundation-level players enter the cycle.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

On the defensive side especially, as Jacob LaPointe moves out of his ELC and Ryan Price hits free agency from a short term contract.

 

Hockey Analyst @hockeyanalyst

It's going to be a question of team-friendly deals vs. the potential to be more of a star elsewhere.

@rozanov81 posted to Instagram!

[Image: The Quebec Nordiques celebrating on the ice after winning the Stanley Cup. Shane Katsuki-Hollander is lifting and kissing Ilya Plisetsky-Rozanov.]

[Image: Shane Katsuki-Hollander and Ilya Plisetsky-Rozanov with their backs to the camera. Both are wearing leather WAG jackets. Ilya’s has Katsuki-Hollander across his back while Shane’s has Plisetsky-Rozanov.]

[Image: The Stanley Cup being filled with champagne, surrounded by the Quebec Nordiques]

[Image: A small brown puppy and a black kitten cuddled together in the bowl of the Stanley Cup.]

[Image: Motion blurs that can be recognized as Shane Katsuki-Hollander and Katya Plisetskaya-Rozanova racing on the ice.]

[Image: The Stanley Cup in the passenger seat of Ilya Plisetsky-Rozanov's Porsche Spyder 718 during the Cup parade in Quebec City.]

[Video: Ilya Plisetsky-Rozanov spinning Shane Katsuki Hollander around on the ice (choreography from their pairs exhibition routine to 18 by One Direction)]

[Image: The combined Katsuki-Plisetsky family sitting around a large table and eating pirozhki.]

[Image: Shane Katsuki-Hollander and Ilya Plisetsky-Rozanov taking a selfie with Yuri Plisetsky and Katsuki Yuuri. In the background of the shot, J.J. Leroy has one hand clapped over his mouth and an expression of pure realization.]

rozanov81 @shanehollanderhockeyplayer 🏆💖⛸️🧑🏻‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏼

Liked by shanehollanderhockeyplayer, yunakhollander, vetrovas, whazy, boodzram, lucahaas, cholmberg46, youngboycor, y-plisetsky, y-katsuki, v-nikiforov, and 157294 others 

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shanehollanderhockeyplayer я так сильно тебя люблю [I love you so much]

@v-nikiforov and @y-katsuki posted to Instagram!

[Image: Viktor Nikiforov and Katsuki Yuuri standing in front of an altar, their hands joined. Both men are wearing white suits with intricate detailing.]

[Image: Two hands clasped, framing the setting sun, which glints off of the wedding rings on their hands.]

[Image: The entire Katsuki Family, posed together around Yuuri and Viktor.]

[Image: Yuuri and Viktor doing a tango as their first dance.]

[Image: Yuuri and Viktor, surfing on a crowd of skaters from around the world.]

[Image: Yuuri and Viktor next to Yuri Plisetsky and Otabek Altin. Otabek has an arm over Yuri's shoulders.]

v-nikiforov вечно и навсегда [forever & always]

Liked by y-plisetsky, y-katsuki, giacumetti, shanehollanderhockeyplayer, yunakhollander, phichitchulanont, vetrovas, babamila, crispysara,and 234587 others 

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Extra #2: The Study of the Benediction

Notes written in a notebook carried around by Luca Haas, ostensibly for drawing in. Notes from each member are done in gel pen after Haas received them as a gag gift.

Benediction Notes

12/16/18

taking down notes becuase we need a record of whats actually happneing with the benedicction ~ young

bro ur spelling is so bad ~ gillis

Here's what we know so far:

- It started when the captain kissed Roz on the forehead before a game and he scored a hat trick, so everyone insisted on getting it after that. Simple routine.
- Everyone reports feeling good about themselves after they get one, usually in some combination of the captain's approval and the genuine compliment, as well as the show of affection. Degree varies.
- It's hard to tell what makes one better than another. Sometimes the result is just average. Sometimes it's a hat trick.

The Question Is: What's the Pattern?

~ Haas

damn haas u rly have us investigating ~ holmberg

prolly a good thing atp
i haven't figured out much since i've been here
and gilly's been here even longer ~ LP

RUDE

We have at least one example of it not being done in recent days.

u can say the game sukced ass bro
we know we were there

well how r we going to get it back if cap is like
out
for the next few weeks

option: we bring him into the locker room and have him there just for the ritual

bro he's nt allowd to move his head
hows he going to do that

idk we lean down?????

he can't speak either
prob the bigger issue

Could we not just have Rozanov take it over?

dude we know u have a crush on him

It's not like that!

haasy might have a point
if it's like church u don't pray to jesus all the time
sometimes u gotta call one of the saints
like saint anthony for lost things

idk if roz is a saint tho

ig we could go with hockey jesus' husband and call it a day
he'd def do it

ya but its not the same
caps got an energy

Maybe he reads compliments that the captain writes?

it's a good option
now all we have to do is ask him to do it
i vote haasy

haasy

haasy

haasy

...
You all are very rude sometimes.

1/5/19

bruh barrett looked like he was having a religious experience

worse than young honestly

FUCK YOU

He cried. I saw him.

wow

have u guys noticed that he does it differently for us

Not significantly?
I would say the difference comes down to reading the energy as paternal or fraternal.

tf is that supposed to mean

If it's more like a father or a brother.

lol young is def on the dad side

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

3/14/19

barrett with the gordie howe is crazy

that was a Religious Experience™ for SURE

I would call that an outlier. There were other factors that influenced the situation.

yea

agree

4/3/19

I think we have the official list.

The Ideal Benediction must include:
- Personal compliment from Shane Hollander, splitting the difference between detail and hype for the upcoming game.
- Some amount of paternal/fraternal energy
- Forehead kiss lasting no less than 1 second and no longer than 2.5 seconds

Additional Conditions:
- It works better after a pregame speech from Roz
- The order can be random, but Roz always has to go last, or else he will steal it from everyone else

damn haasy u rly did figure it out

Extra #3: Spreading the Word of the Church of Shane Hollander

This is a loose outline for how I think it would go. Shoutout to Viterveep for inspiring this idea and our lovely conversation about witchcraft in Catholicism.

• The Church of Shane Hollander manages to stay relatively undercover after its founding, which is to say that a majority of the Quebec Nordiques have joined, even if they are only loosely affiliated and think of it as more of a jokey hazing thing anyway.
• Critically, Ilya knows, and Shane doesn't. He's aware that the rookies were a little awestruck for a while, and sometimes sneak off to do things together, but it registers to him as them being friends.
• The SHrine has grown significantly since its inception. In order to limit it from expanding out of the room and becoming known, there is a rule that the members can add no more than one additional item with each home game during the regular season. Before playoffs, they do a reorganization to make sure it is kept tidy, and anything extraneous gets donated out within the Church. This is a non optional tradition started by Ilya, and performed by Ilya every year.
• At All-Stars 2020, Shane is asked to perform the Benediction for his All-Stars team. He does it.
• This spreads the Word to a number of other teams across the league.

What's the good Word? Well, if you recall from when Troy joined the Church, these are the tenets. (They've added to them.)

1. Respect and receive the good word of the Benediction as Captain Shane Hollander deigns to give it, as outlined by Bishop Luca Haas at the start of the Quebec Nordiques' second Cup Run.
2. Always try to play your best. Leave it all out there on the ice. Hockey is not to be played halfheartedly.
3. Do not speak of the Church to those uninitiated in its customs. Should a player express interest, they must be evaluated in their devotion to the cause.
4. Ilya Rozanov will claim he is the Pope of the Church of Shane Hollander. He has not been officially named as such. He is something of a controversial figure; sometimes considered a Saint, sometimes considered akin to the snake in the Garden of Eden. He will draw you in, but beware of crossing the boundaries of his marriage. He might be rabid.
5. Fuck Dallas Kent (FDK).

How do people start finding out?

• It begins with one extremely sleep-deprived Nick Chouinard talking to the press. He is asked about the large squad of rookies on the team, and whether he thinks they mesh well with the organization.
• Chouinard: Sure, they're doing great. Been going to Church a lot. Their little rituals are funny.
• The rituals in question, of course, are meeting at the SHrine, and receiving the Benediction. Nothing too crazy, it's just framed oddly.
• This gets a run of press asking whether the Nordiques are trying to be Catholic.
• They get a firm no on that, which only raises more questions.
• An anonymous source leaks photos of an object from the SHrine, but not the entirety of it.
• The object? One of those Jesus prayer candles, except it's Shane Hollander.
• Sales for it go through the roof. People are getting them and using them as good luck charms. There's a minor controversy about occult activity.
• People start calling him Shane Hollander the Blessed, after realizing that he can't be canonized as a saint until 5 years after his death.
• Gritty tweets a photo of himself holding one of this candles. It mildly reignites the beef.
• But for Shane Hollander, the chronically offline king? He knows none of this. None.

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! Writing the In All But Name series has been a truly wonderful journey, and I couldn't have done it without the support of everyone who commented and shared ideas and their love for this story. I'm so incredibly grateful to all of you. Please feel free to tell me what you think!

End Notes:

- Calculated out the average of how much I was writing per day for my overall HR series and it's 2955 words per day. For In All But Name it's 3369 words per day. My document has 55 tabs.
- Harris is getting just a touch of revenge on Adrian.
- The Hockey Analyst speculation is some actual speculation from me, because there's no way the league would just let them get away with it after Back-to-Back Stanley Cups. They don't have the cap space to pay everyone superstar salaries. A balance has to be struck in order for everyone to succeed.
- More on this: Both Shane and Ilya are hovering right around $10 million/year for 8 years, which is much less than they would be worth (if we go by the highest paid contracts in 2019 it would be around $15 million each) on another team. So they're already taking team friendly, long term deals, but the combination of them is ~25% of the teams total cap hit. They won't be breaking records for pay because they're more invested in staying and winning together. They do have a significant proportion of off-ice income through their sponsorships--Shane has multiple midlevel contracts that add up beneath his larger ones (Reebok & Rolex), while Ilya has two larger one with Porsche and Adidas, plus they have Shane's real estate empire, which he's more invested in in this 'verse. They're certainly not hurting for money, and they're bringing in a lot of revenue for the team on their star power alone, but they do want the team to have the space to compensate the other players fairly.
- Also Shane gets merch royalties for the little dolls. It's part of the contract that Yuna works out when they start making them.
- J.J. Leroy has finally figured it out :)
- Viktor and Yuuri got married! It's more of a formality and a reason to have a party, but still. They're married and safe where they are, and they're looking to the future.
- I did my best to make each of the rookies distinct in their writing style so you can read it without needing the colors.
- You too can join the Church of Shane Hollander.