Summary:

“Um,” Shane sighs. “It’s a curse, I guess.”
Icy dread and hot anger coalesce into a hard ball in Ilya’s chest. “What curse?”
Shane tosses his head, runs a hand through his hair. He looks out the window, because whatever is going on with him is clearly too agonizing to experience while looking directly at Ilya’s face. He crosses his arms over his chest, lurches a single step towards Ilya like he’s attached to a string pulled taut.
“Remember rookie season,” Shane says, apropos of nothing.
Ilya cuts a sharp, humorless grin. “Most of it.”
“They put you on Curse Protocol. You said it was a hazing thing. And I told you, do you remember, that I’d heard of guys—”
“Getting their dicks cursed off,” Ilya says.
“Yeah,” Shane says, eyes refusing to settle. He looks fucking hunted, like he expects to be brutally struck down in the very near future. “Well.”

Shane Hollander is not the first hockey player to be the victim of a nasty playoff curse, but this one is a little different. Ilya rises to the occasion in a couple of ways.