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  1. the blade of father and son by

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

    2025-12-29

    David loves hockey, he does, he just doesn’t love it the way Yuna and Shane do, in that all- consuming, world-defining way of theirs that binds the two of them together tighter than just blood. Sometimes, David feels like he’s missing out. Mostly, though, he’s glad they have something to share, something that’s uniquely theirs. David loves hockey, he does, he just doesn’t love it the way Yuna and Shane do, in that all- consuming, world-defining way of theirs that binds the two of them together tighter than just blood. Sometimes, David feels like he’s missing out. Mostly, though, he’s glad they have something to share, something that’s uniquely theirs. David doesn’t have something like that with Shane. He loves Shane, he really does, loves him more than breathing, but… Shane knows that Yuna loves him because they speak hockey to each other and understand each other perfectly. David should be able to keep up with them —he played hockey at McGill—but he can’t, somehow, because his relationship with hockey is fundamentally different. For Yuna, hockey is as intrinsic to her as her Japanese heritage: something deep inside her, tied to ideas like belonging and identity. For Shane, it’s much the same. For David, hockey is a sport he was good enough at that he kept playing it until he couldn't play it anymore, and then he did something else. When Shane is three, Yuna buys him skates. “Isn’t it a little early?” David asks. Yuna shakes her head. “You’ve got to start them early,” she says, unlacing the skates, “so that skating is as natural as walking.” David wants to ask why any of that is necessary, but he doesn’t, because he knows why, even if he doesn’t understand it. Because Yuna loves hockey with her whole self. In those early days, David finds himself praying to a God he hasn’t believed in since childhood that Shane will love hockey like Yuna does, because David’s pretty sure it would break her heart if Shane saw hockey the same way David did, through unromantic eyes. His prayers are answered. Hockey is everything to Shane; he loves it with his whole self. He is a difficult kid, or maybe David and Yuna are just unpracticed parents. Shane is particular. He cries a lot, and he fusses over everything, and he doesn’t have any friends because he doesn’t like talking about anything but hockey, doesn’t like doing anything but hockey. And Yuna is happy to indulge him, and David is happy to indulge her. So Shane heads down the same path David was on, some twenty years before, only the world has changed a lot since then. Things are a lot less private. Strangers have opinions on Shane’s style of play and make predictions about where he’ll fall in the draft. Shane is a child. He should be playing Grounders with his friends, laughing and smiling until his face hurts. He should have friends. Instead, he has teammates and coaches and spectators and tag-alongs and rivals, and David doesn’t think any of it is very healthy at all, actually. Shane melts down all the time, over everything. He doesn’t want to eat dinner. He doesn’t want to have a bath. He doesn’t want practise to be over. He doesn’t want to miss a game. He doesn’t want new shin pads. He doesn’t want to go to school early. He doesn’t want to go to school at all. Surely, this behaviour isn’t normal. Surely, David and Yuna aren’t just failing at every turn. Surely there’s a reason why Shane is so… impossible. Why the world seems to stymie him. “I think Shane might be autistic,” one of Shane’s teachers says at Parent-Teacher night, and David doesn’t know what that is, but he’s filled with relief that there’s a word for what they are struggling with, that there are families like theirs out there, children like Shane; that they aren’t alone. Yuna doesn’t see it that way. David should’ve known she wouldn’t. “Don’t tell me what my son is,” she says, angry in the way that she never is. “There’s nothing wrong with him.” But there is something… maybe not wrong with Shane, but different. David tries to bring it up to Yuna, but she shuts it down every time. “How would you know?” she says, with that same anger. “You’re never here. Don’t tell me what my son is.” Yuna’s son. Like David is nothing to Shane, nothing to either of them, intruding on the two of them. Sometimes, at practises, other parents ask David which kid is his, and they are always surprised when the answer is Shane. He must take after his mother, they say, which is their way of saying that he doesn’t look white. “Our son is hurting!”

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    4,157
    Chapters:
    1/1
    Files:
    2 versions
    AO3:
    #76634166

  2. cloth mother, wire mother by

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

    2025-12-27

    There's a balance to these things.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    1,600
    Chapters:
    2/2
    Files:
    2 versions
    AO3:
    #76056536