Summary:

Shane had truly believed that the worst was behind them.

Mostly because his barometer for ‘worst’ had been recalibrated from a weighted mass of worry lodged in the base of his throat about league reactions, and the strain of hiding his heart, rewritten in an instant where he'd known that the worst was actually a notification bubble in a corner where it never showed, next to a name that taught Shane what it was worth to be alive at all; that opened up and spelled terror and the end of the whole goddamn world—but then it wasn't. They didn't end. Shane didn't lose. They made it through the worst.

Surely that meant everything would be okay moving forward, since they'd already survived the worst.

__________

Or: Shane genuinely does believe they've made it through the storm, that the worst came for them and they walked out okay. Breathing. Alive. Together.

Shane—waiting for his fiancé in a hotel room, watching the man he loves more than life collapse on the ice in high definition, the light vanishing from his eyes, the feed cutting just before a crash cart descends upon him—

Shane realizes swiftly—painfully—that he was really fucking wrong.